CONTENTS
Introductory
I. The Body Electric
II. Every Cell Thinks
III. The Preservation Of The Body
IV. The Divine Alembic
V. The Fountain Of Youth
VI. The Playground Of The Spirit
VII. Soul Culture
VIII. The Glorified Body
IX. Generation And Regeneration
X. Prosperity
XI. Paths Of Pleasantness
XII. The Word Made Flesh
“A body host thou prepared me”— Heb. 10:5.
“Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy
One to see corruption.”—Psalms 16:10.
‘I sing the body electric.
The armies of those I love engirth me,
and I engirth them.
They will not let me off until I go
with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them and charge them
full with the charge of the soul.”
—Walt Whitman.
INTRODUCTORY
THE great truths which are now abroad in the minds of the people under the various names of New Thought, Mindcure, Mental, Christian, Divine and Spiritual Science, have become proven facts to thousands, substantiated by daily experiences. But there are thousands more who yearn for realization of these principles, which they have accepted intellectually but find difficult to demonstrate in the life-problems that confront them. It is for the sake of the latter that these lectures, which have been formed from practical data in the lives and experiences of good healers, teachers, and students, are now given. Especially have the facts here accumulated been found helpful in self-treatment.
The writer has endeavored, while giving relative facts for everyday living, to keep the consciousness of the student one with Absolute Truth, which is above symbolism, above cause and effect, and is pure Being, not any state of becoming. And, if at any time the reader finds a statement that is contradictory to the Absolute, let such not hesitate to set aside the relative presentation for the Absolute, for in this way that will really be accomplished which was intended by this writing—the healing and uplift of the reader.
Annie Rix Militz.
Sierra Madre, Cal., July, 1913.
I.
THE BODY ELECTRIC.
The Real Body—Salvation—The forming of the earthly body—The twelve departments—The head— The five senses—Unselfishness heals them—The eyes, perception—The ears, understanding—The nose, discrimination—The taste, judgment—The touch, cognition—Paralysis—The luminous face.
AN and God are one, spiritual, immortal, perfect in essence and in expression. The body is the expression of mind; and divine mind is expressed by the glorified body, wherein health is eternal, life is immortal, and beauty, grace, and strength never pass away.
The real body was never born; it is the eternal expression of the Holy Spirit. Every one has this perfect body. It is beautiful, a sun brilliant beyond description. It has never known imperfection. There is no disease in it. It cannot be spoiled. It cannot fade. It is the body of our God-being.
The true manifestation of the absolute is itself absolute and not describable in terms that are relative or that include opposites. “Ye are the temple of the living God.”—II Cor. 6:16. “We have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”—II Cor. 5:1. It was “the pattern in the mount” that caused Moses’ face to shine with such brilliance. It was this Body Electric that transfigured Jesus on Mount Tabor when his mind had been exalted in prayer.
Whenever and wherever this sunbody shines through or is reflected upon this form of flesh, there we see vigor and health, beauty, youth, intelligence, love, and all that is admirable in human embodiment. It is possible for its effulgence so to fill the human consciousness that the body of appearance, like the glass bulb over the electric light, will show forth nothing but its presence and power, and then is consummated that which was prophesied, “mortality swallowed up of life.”
Truth, believed and applied, delivers the body from all “the ills that flesh is heir to.” Salvation is for the body and mind as well as for the soul. Jesus Christ is called the “Saviour of the body,” and certainly his ministry was full of body-salvation, saving eyes from blindness, ears from deafness, limbs from paralysis, flesh from leprous corruption, minds from insanity, and whole bodies from death.
It is not by taking thought that this body is transformed. “Which of you by taking (anxious) thought, can add one cubit to his stature?” Not by being attached to the body and thinking upon it, but by perceiving the truth of your real being, your divine self and its perfection, you reflect upon this body its beauty and health and all that is desirable to be expressed in this body. Therefore, we stand unattached to this personality. We view it from the viewpoint of the spirit and transform it as free beings—not bound to it, but one with God.
This earthly body of time and space has been formed by human thinking and feeling, and it can be reformed by new thoughts and new feelings, patterned after the glorious body of our God-being. This human body is not material, it is mental, and the organs are ways of thinking. Each organism is a collection or aggregation of thought. This understanding of your body can reveal to you just what kind of thinking belongs to each organ.
Right thinking manifests as healthy organism. To illustrate, the cells of the heart are formed by love thoughts. If your thoughts of and about love are normal and true, then the heart action and organism are healthy, but if there are unhappy thoughts about love—that you have little of it, that it may change, that it has failed, that you have lost love and have been hungry for love— these may picture forth as a poor action and a poor formation of the heart.
There are twelve chief departments of the human body: (1) head; (2) neck; (3) arms and hands; (4) breast; (5) heart; (6) solar plexus; (7) loins; (8) generative organs; (9) thighs; (10) knees; (11) calves and ankles; (12) feet. Each will be considered by itself in these lectures and in the order in which they are named. First, the head, which includes also the face and the five senses.
The head stands for our thoughts concerning intelligence, those thoughts which we have accepted from others, either consciously or unconsciously, and those which we have originated about intelligence. The head that would express itself normally should be fashioned from the standpoint of divine intelligence; that is, with no sense of limitation, having a free circulation of ideas, never congested with fear or false self-centering, or empty from sense of ignorance or lack.
There is but one mind—it is wise and free, it thinks truly. Meditate upon the God-mind and thereby reflect its character in the human mind and head. Let God’s thoughts of love and trustin-good charge the mentality, and no worry can congest the brain-cells. Remembering ever who you are, divine and all-powerful in your being, makes you truly self-possessed—you keep your head, you cannot “lose your head.” God-wisdom gives one perfect hold upon one’s self. Therein is no confusion, no growing hot-headed. Divine intelligence is cool and clear and strong and blessed. Meditation on it will show these in the physical head; will bring peace, poise, and freedom in one’s thinking power.
Those who have thought that their brains determine how much they can think or know or reason have limited themselves by that very thought. Therefore, we cease to consider the brain as anything more than a convenience and a means—not the originator —of thought, its vehicle by which we touch this realm of appearance and translate the intelligence which is divine into this, the form open to human cognition. This freedom in the head, this wholesome expression of our reasoning faculties, is because we see ourselves greater than flesh, greater than organism. We see ourselves, as the very intelligence of God, here made manifest.
The five senses record our thoughts or belief about consciousness. They stand for the union and communion between the within and the without; they radiate intelligence and they receive it. They, who keep these senses young, clear, full and free, do so because of the touch of the divine consciousness, which is universal and unlimited. Not confined to their own selfish views or seeking their own selfish ends, they let these suns radiate and respond to the far away and the near alike.
Humanity ranks the senses according to the universality of their cognition, the eyes being first because conscious of the things farthest away, the ears do not reach so far, the nose next and then the organs of taste and touch. Each sense rises in power and honor as it opens to the universal consciousness. Therefore unselfishness is the healing of the senses.
The eyes stand for perception; the ears for understanding; the nose for discrimination; the taste for judgment; the touch for cognition.
Perception of the true One in all is the clearness, quickness, and brightness of the eyes. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light,” full of life and the radiance of the Body Electric. The evil eye is the double view of mortality, drunk with the delusion of another presence beside God, eating the mirage-tree of opposites. We dismiss all sense of duplicity and guile, we return to the innocent vision of the goodness in everybody.
All spots, every blemish, disappears from our eyes. We will not behold the mote in our brother’s eyes, for we pluck the beam from our own. No fierce passion shall harden and darken our eyeballs, no bitter tears shall weaken our optic nerve. God gives us the eyes too pure to behold iniquity, therefore we do not suspect or criticize or note our neighbor’s failings. This is the healthiness, the purity, the clearness, and the renewal of our vision.
The ears stand for understanding. “By hearing comes understanding,” and this understanding must be upon the foundation of truth, lest there be a refusal to listen. They who would be healed of deafness must know how to listen with the meek and lowly heart, must be willing to listen and be obedient. For the listening and the obedience are that softness and pliability, that alertness and cheerfulness, which cause one to be quick to respond, for this is the expression of understanding.
They who suffer from deafness are often very willful, being unwilling to listen, to obey, and even to co-operate. Your real ears cannot be closed, cannot be dulled with time or experience. They are acute and true, because in truth your understanding is perfect.
The nose represents discrimination, a true sense of smell being present when the belief in evil is not admitted to dull the delicate powers of discrimination, nor on the other hand a fatuous belief in relative good allowed to spoil their .keen edge. To realize evil as mere negation, and good as affirmation, and to be unmoved by either, gives poise and perfect balance in discrimination. We put aside materialism and sensuality to catch the sweet perfume of the presence of the Spirit.
The taste portrays our judgment, not only as to food and drink but all matters. This is shown by the familiar expression “good taste,” meaning judgment-sense. The taste excels by the exercise of good judgment in all ways. All peculiarities are yielded to the Spirit, which adjusts and restores to freshness and youthful zest, making appetite subservient to wisdom.
The touch stands for cognition. Those who suffer from lack of the consciousness called “touch,” can be healed by several ways of cognition; not alone some special cognition but by a universal touch with the whole world, that will allow you to receive and not resist; to co-operate and not suffer from the crossing of another will contrary to yours. There is then no separation between your will and the divine.
It is the divine self within us that illumines the face, the rising or coming forth of the sun of righteousness with healing in its beams—the emerging of the Body Electric. It is the awakening of the soul that clarifies the skin and softens the contour and lines of the face. Oftentimes, it is the wooden, heavy, materialistic look on the face that spoils the beauty which is really there. Let the mind rise above the materiality, and keep the face towards the divine self. The beautiful complexion of the nuns, the fair luminous skin of the little child, are because of the closeness of their hearts to the Spirit—both within and without.
Arise, shine! your light has come! The Body Electric is here. It is yours, reader. It is of you I write whoever you are. Were your glorious being to uncover its beauty and splendor to our mortal eyes, we must bow our head and hide our eyes, feeling we cannot bear the light—the glory of the transcendent expression of your Body Electric.
II.
EVERY CELL THINKS.
Re-forming old cells—Goldwin Smith’s prophecy— The body mirrors your thought—Brain in the throat —Our little cell-selves—Subconscious mentality—Grace —The neck—The voice.
Meditation: “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God.
Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”—Romans 12: 1, 2.
AS each cell of the body was built by generation, so must each cell be rebuilt by regeneration. As life, love, and intelligence entered into their first forming, so new life, new love, and renewed intelligence will re-form the same cells; old thoughts make old bodies, but new thoughts make new bodies.
Among the new thoughts that have seized the scientists, is that man’s body does not need to decay, at least, not so soon as it has hitherto; but a man’s youth may be prolonged, old age deferred, and he may continue all his life an embodiment of vigor, health, and power.
Professor Goldwin Smith in a flight of scientific prophecy foresaw it quite possible that we might shuffle off our old bodies, as a snake sheds its skin, by knowing how to renew the flesh beneath. Certain physicians are turning their attention from curing disease to seeking the secret of renewing the body, and one famous doctor is spending all his efforts, time, and money to discover the art of rebuilding cellular tissue that has broken with disease or the encroachments of old age. The responsiveness of the blood, nerves, and cells to the emotions, as in blushing and paling, and to suggestion, as when a hypnotist raises a blister with a postage stamp by telling his subject that the stamp he puts on her arm will produce that effect, is making the scientist ponder these days, more than ever before.
“Every cell thinks,” says the great Edison. The brain may be the seat of thought, but it cannot confine it; thought is everywhere—the divine Mind, the real Thinker, is omnipresent. Your real body is all thought, all intelligence.
The body of appearance reflects like a mirror the dominant thoughts that you have held in mind. If you have held that you are ignorant and dull, or that you are subject to materiality and prone to evil, or that you are impure in your origin and in your living, these thoughts are reflected in like pictures upon this body of appearance.
When you stand before a mirror and desire to correct your image in that mirror, what is it that you correct? The one that is being reflected. If you see a spot on the face in the mirror, you cleanse the face out of the mirror, in order that the one in the mirror shall show forth aright. So this body of appearance is a mirror, reflecting your mentality, and to transform this body from expressing ignorance and corruption and deadness there must be the transforming of the mind.
By true self-knowledge we understand, first of all, our real self in all its perfection, its beauty, and Godhood, and, as we look at the real, we understand the shadow. Only as you know your true self can you express aright the self that reflects it. Therefore, continually, we turn to the divine self and know it first, and so understand the self of appearances as it should be understood. As we have seen, our divine self is full of thinking, so also we understand the reflection. The self of appearances is all thinking. Every cell thinks.
Once it was believed that the gray matter of the brain was confined within the skull. Now physicians and other students of physiology tell us that this same “gray matter” is found in other parts of the body, for instance, in the tips of the fingers of the blind, where the thinking has been consciously much exercised. One physician tells us that there is a little brain in the throat, and it often seems to be an independent thinking organ. An operator on the throat must become a friend and confidant of that little brain, or his operation will not be successful. The little brain has a memory, and if the operator’s hand has slipped and misused that throat, the brain in the head may consent to the operation and desire it, but that little throatbrain will resist even if it be months after the mistake, and, if the operator persists, the patient may be thrown into convulsions, such is the memory of that little brain. And what has been discovered in the throat and in the finger-tips will yet be discovered throughout the whole body, because we will consciously think in every part. At present much of the thinking is involuntary, not with the co-operation of the I or central consciousness, but selfknowledge brings you where you cooperate with yourself, and there is harmony and unity in all the activities of the body, because of confidence throughout in the master of it.
The cells of your body can be seen as little selves or people, forming a government over which you exercise good rule by becoming acquainted with your people, educating public sentiment in noble thinking, putting away internal strife, hatred, and other forms of inharmony. Certain persons suffer because they have hated and despised parts and functions of their bodies. Hatred withers, paralyzes, and congests. No one can do his best under disapproval—seek out a way to think kindly, generously, truly, of yourself.
With the passing of old thoughts, old cellular formations pass. Substitute new cells by meditation upon your divine origin, the God-power within you, and your high ideals as the reality of your being. Not that one should sit like Hindu sanyasis in the jungle, but, in the daily walks of life, think upon the spiritual, the Godlike, the beautiful, and the good, as all that is true in one’s self and in every one.
The passions become controlled. You will master passions that you once held to be natural, and therefore never even thought of overcoming. Anger that that you thought was spiritedness, impatience that you deemed alertness, and other feelings that you discover to be on the side of evil and lacking in strength and power, pass utterly from you, while their divine opposites abide within you.
Habits which we have formed, and which have sunk into what has been called the subconscious mentality, lie back of the involuntary muscles; but by identifying one’s self with the universal consciousness and power—mystically called “taking Christ upon you” —you realize power over every muscle, even the inner organs obeying your will, as when a Hatha Yogi can move his heart from one side of his chest to another, suspend breathing at will, and practically arrest all decay in his physical form.
The special kind of thoughts that are written in any certain part of the human form may be known by the language commonly used about it, similes and metaphors giving us the mental correspondence. Thus in the last lecture, we saw how customary it is to associate the head with intelligence, and now, by that same method of associating, we see the neck standing for grace, not simply the attribute in a physical sense, but for the realization of the grace of God working in the affairs of men. “Keep sound wisdom and discretion; so shall they be life unto thy soul and grace to thy neck.” —Proverbs 3: 21, 22.
Grace has not been rightly understood. It has been used so much in religion, as a prerogative of God alone, that men have separated spiritual grace from the ordinary grace which we admire in human form and action. Let us unite the inner grace with the outer, that we may be lacking in neither.
The grace of God working in man’s nature because of noble compassion, and the supreme love that meets all as equals to whom reverence and homage are rendered, do nothing from the basis of cause and effect, nor as a matter of reward, but from pure, spiritual Being, the nature that you are. Grace forgives without a thought of there being anything to forgive. Grace confers favors with no thought but, “This is my Beloved in whom I am well pleased.” It is above the opposites, virtue and vice, with their rewards and punishments. Moral right and wrong are not considered by the grace of divine love—it knows no condemnation of nor resistance to evil. It finds only Itself in all. “Of His fullness have all we received, and grace for grace.”—John 1:16.
To be graceful and gracious in form and manner—changelessly so—we must know the great self, that is all grace. That part of our body which indicates our openness to this divine presence is the neck—a marvelous combination, turning every way, so strong and yet bending so easily.
When the neck needs healing—the muscles and the nerves needing help (not the glands—there is something special to be considered with them) then let the sufferer consider, “Am I gracious to all? Am I willing that the evil-doer shall go unpunished? Am I resisting the divine guidance?” Stiffnecked, the Israelites were called when they let perversity, the opposite to grace, and pride and rebellion rise within them, and resist their greatest Good.
Loosen up your human will and let inspiration take away every mental twist and crankiness. Be at peace with yourself; be poised; maintain your center in the One who is perfect balance. The neck is the balancing place and union between the head and the heart and can well express this grace, which is beautiful—the perfect union of the intellect and intuition that gives to each a right place and equal honor.
The throat pictures forth our faith in power to express ourselves, both in silence and audibly. The human voice must reflect the voice of God. The utterance of Spirit is clear and free, full and sweet, and meditation on this voice within you will bring the human voice to its right expression.
If there is an uncertain sound in your voice; if it hesitates; if it does not ring true at times, and seems muffled, or harsh and strident, then these things can be corrected by meditating often upon the voice of God within you, which is gentle, rich, clear, and true. Voice the message of comfort and kindness, of peace and of harmony; speak pleasantly; curse not, nor blame, nor express harshness or that which cuts and stings. The voice of the Spirit within us has no uncertain sound. Listen to it! So shall this outer voice come to its own true expression.
III.
THE PRESERVATION OF THE BODY.
Importance to progress of race—Carrying the message of Truth—The embalming of the Egyptians— Purity, the great preserver—The medieval monks— Saints—Conservation — Power—Shoulders, arms, and hands—Burdens—Responsibility—Human will—God’s Hand—Selfless love.
Meditation: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”—I Cor. 15: 53.
EVERY individual who is progressive confers a benefit upon his race by preserving his body as many years as he can, strong and healthy, with senses intact, retaining all the vigor of maturity, and all the resilience of youth. For thus he advances the race, which develops only as the individuals progress themselves and contribute to the progression of others.
The preservation of the body is important also in order to perpetuate to the senses of mankind what it carries: the message of Truth, the healing power, the talent, and genius that bring joy to thousands. These it holds, as a precious perfume is held in a sealed jar, or gold and silver in an iron safe.
Men build massive vaults to guard insensible statues, fragile vases, fading pictures, and other temporal treasures, but how few are working to preserve these precious temples, that contain living art treasures!
How supinely has humanity yielded to the idea that all must decay and pass away with the march of time and the friction of the world! It has stood powerless before accidents, diseases, and death, letting the dragon of ignorance swallow even the noblest and fairest of its loved ones. Think of a talented man, a minister of the Gospel, cut off in the height of his service to humanity by a bit of cork lodging in his throat while drawing a stopper from a medicine bottle with his teeth! Oh, the irony of fate!
But these things are changing. The race is waking up! And the consciousness that has lain dormant in the minds of men, that there is a way to preserve these bodies even to the end of the age, is stirring, never again to be dulled by the materialism and the unbelief of a sin-ridden, disease-bound people.
The way to keep the body from corruption was an occult knowledge with the old Egyptian priesthood, the real idea back of the embalming of their dead; the wise ones understanding that it was to preserve the body in life, whereas the common people interpreted these teachings to mean the preservation of the body after death, for some future reinhabiting, when all flesh should stand together on the earth, clothed in immortality. It was a blind attempt to carry out a divine instruction.
That which preserves our bodies is the purity that springs from within, making us absolutely free from corruption. First of all in mind and heart, then in word and deed. These, all purified, picture in the body as cleanness in every cell, purity throughout every organ and in its functions, so that when a soul has reached the acme of usefulness, beauty, and goodness in the flesh, it can stand there uninterrupted in its manifestation of the glory of God. Its purity springs from purity. God is the source of all purity made manifest in the flesh; and we turn to divinity that dwells within us to prove our purity and our freedom from corruption; and proving our purity in mind, heart, and soul, the senses cognize it as preservation, that is, freedom from all mixtures, from the adulteration of fermentation—all that corrupts and corrodes.
Purity is God-preservation. It reflects in the flesh, as cleanness through and through,—not mere external cleanness that comes from bathing, nor yet the internal, which comes from much thought and care of the body, but cleanness which is from the cleanliness of the Spirit, without effort on the part of the human being.
The medieval monks believed that it was the pure life of a religious saint, which prevented the decay of his body after death, and the church has canonized certain of its saints because of finding their bodies, after centuries of interment, so little changed that diligent inquiry was made into their histories, resulting in bringing to light records of pure and lovely lives, worthy to be called the saints or Holy Ones, of whom it is written, “Thou wilt not let thine Holy One see corruption.”
Not only is purity at the root of this preservation of the body, but also knowledge — understanding of ourselves, and the power that is within us to conserve certain fluids of the body through right self-control and realization of the source of our power and life. This conservation will be considered later in the lecture on Generation and Regeneration.
This preserving power which springs from the soul takes form in the body as a right distribution of the fluids, liquids, and solid parts, so that eventually there is nothing useless about the human expression, nothing in the way, but all reveals the “beauty of holiness.”
Power is especially expressed through that third department of man, the shoulders, arms, and hands. Yet the body of a man does not always represent his standing in mentality, but rather his belief about the presence and condition of these qualities in himself and in his world. Thus, a her.d does not always represent its owner’s intelligence, but his belief as to the presence and power of intelligence in himself and in his world. The neck does not always show how much grace there is in the soul, but instead it maybe indicating one’s belief as to the reality of grace or graciousness in the world. So, our belief about power is represented in our shoulders, arms, and hands.
Our shoulders signify our belief in power to uphold. If you realize ability in the relationships that you feel called to uphold, then your shoulders are erect, poised, strong, and free. They will be curved or angular, according to your beliefs about your relationship to the race; if it is that of upholding in a square way, then there are square shoulders; if in a graceful way more than the way of strength, then the curves in your shoulders will be pronounced ; but whether square or curved, they should be strong and erect and your back not bent with a sense of being overburdened.
When people think they have so many burdens to carry and so very much to uphold, they get a little hump between their shoulders. Even in youth this has been seen, where too much responsibility in some relationship of life has been assumed.
Like Atlas, we try to carry the world on our shoulders. Our world is ourself, and we are one with our world, as we know it is within and not altogether outside ourselves. We know then the world is what we make it, and it need not make us unless we choose.
“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” says the great Shoulder of the universe (“and the government shall be upon his shoulder,” Isaiah 9:6), the great Burden-Bearer who is not borne down nor weighted by anything He upholds.
“Cast your burdens upon the Lord,” is the inspired instruction; and so we drop our burdens into Omnipresence, and it is as though we made nothing of them; they cease to be burdens in the sense of heaviness and weariness. The Almighty is never bowed down with burden-bearing. Let Omnipotence be your yoke-fellow, “Take my yoke upon you, . . . for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matt. 11: 29, 30.
There is but one responsibility—the response to the Spirit, ever ready in the heart and on the lips (“Man’s word shall be his burden,” Jer. 23:36) and in it is joy, not heaviness.
If there is pain in the shoulder, if there is a sense of inharmony or disturbance of any kind, the healing is through knowing there is no responsibility to be borne, no burden to carry, you are Spirit, you are free.
The arms stand for belief in power to extend your thoughts, works, influence, or life. If you are normal in your feeling of ability to radiate and go forth in your expressions of power, then your arms do not trouble you; but if there is a feeling of limitation, of being bound so that you cannot serve or influence those who seem far from you, these beliefs out-picture as the arms in pain or helplessness.
Certain people who have felt that their power depended upon their human will have tried to extend that power, but have had it crossed or resisted by another human will, and their arms have dropped to their sides paralyzed.
Paralysis comes through a sense of “thus far and no farther” shown in people whose strong, human will has been thwarted, crossed, or opposed by a will before which they feel powerless. The healing of paralysis is the realization of but one will—the Divine Will, that wills the good of the whole.
A lady after coming into truth was still unable to overcome a terrible sense of pain and powerlessness that came at times into her arms. While telling her trouble she also described a feeling of desire which she had had to go to a poor woman, a stranger, and give her healing.
“But she would think I was presumptuous and my friends would think me insane if I offered spiritual treatment,” she said.
She was shown the connection between her refusal to extend her power and the trouble in her arms. Thereupon she corrected herself and healed the woman by God-power, for the “stranger” received her gladly and the lady herself was delivered from the torment that had been in her arms.
The hands represent our belief about deeds, and especially our belief in power and skill in doing things. When you believe that you are doing what you can, as well as you can, your hands are all right. They work easily and freely, so long as there is the consciousness of letting the inner skill and power work through your deeds. But if there is a feeling of inefficiency, or that the skill is not used along lines true and straightforward, or that things are hard and cruel, these thoughts may be the cause of the crook in the fingers and the pain and sometimes weakness which end in uselessness.
Your hand is God’s Hand, all sufficient to do whatever blessed deed it is your wish to do. Let no self-condemnation, nor that of others, ever delude you into failure. You are sufficient unto yourself.
Let this trinity of power, your shoulders, arms, and hands, demonstrate the omnipotence of your Good everywhere. There is no need of bearing heavy burdens, of holding back your good intentions, no need of wire-pulling, or underhand work, or the exploiting of one’s fellow-beings.
Selfless love is the power that keeps these manifestations true; that service which is not for gain, not an exchange or for reward, but is a joy just in the doing. Sometimes, though there has been an unselfish serving, yet there is a sense of injustice or of hard work, or of doing things that receive only ingratitude and unkindness. Such a sense may seem to spoil this trinity, that should never be spoiled.
True thoughts manifest as true contour in the body. To love service, to love to exercise your power for and not against others, to bless them with the blessings with which you have been endowed, this is the way to show forth the beauty, health, and strength of the shoulders, arms, and hands that glorify both God and man.
IV.
THE DIVINE ALEMBIC.
Changing lead into gold—Human transmutation— Heart, the seat of love—Lungs, belief in universal love —Chest and breast, protecting and nourishing love— Cancerous growth—The London case—Consumption— Unbelief, coldness, or hatred—”Blood-letting —The Blood of Jesus Christ.
Meditation : “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”—Proverbs 4: 23.
THE old alchemists, who were the forbears of the chemists of our day, believed that all the baser metals were gold in the making; that lead and antimony and silver were but stages in the development of the precious metal, and that it was possible for man to hasten the process by his knowledge and the introduction of an element or ingredient, which they kept a profound secret.
First, the metal must be melted and raised to a great heat in the crucible; then chemicals which have been prepared in the alembic or retorts of the laboratory must be added, and, finally, the mystic substance must be dropped in at the crucial moment, by the hand of a master, and so that which went into the crucible the base metal, lead, comes forth pure gold.
So allied with the works of these philosophers of the still are the processes that take place in the natural man, while going through his transmutation from the bestial to the Godlike, that the mystic recipes which they wrote, they claimed described both, and he who would seek would find that mystic ingredient, and then discover that it was the same element in both processes.
In the human transmutation the fires are love, the base metal, the old self with its carnal body. The Master hand that begins the conversion of the old nature gives all attention to love for the softening and refining, and, for increasing power, concentrates the love upon the Great One and steadily pours the vital breath of the Holy Spirit upon the flame until a pentecostal moment transfigures the flesh, and the born-of-flame enters into bodily immortality.
The preparation may seem long but the consummation is in a moment. In the preparation we go from one renewed consciousness and form of renewed vitality and health to another, and the great renewer is love. Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law, and love is the most important factor in the regeneration.
The seat of love is the heart, the divine alembic of this wonderful laboratory—the human body.
The realm of love-thinking is represented by the region of the breast, lungs, and heart. What we think about love is pictured forth in the tissues, forms, capacity, and functioning of this trinity.
If one’s beliefs are normal then health abounds. The chest and breast, standing respectively for protecting and nourishing love, expand and broaden with realization of the fathermother quality towards humanity. The lungs, vehicle of communion with the expansive air, stand for the universality of true love, and, by willingness to communicate love to all without fear or selfishness, are strong and healthy. The heart stands for centering love, wherein is distilled the verj elixir of life, when love is not centered upon things or people or aught else of time or sense, but upon the Only One.
When there is disease in this part of the body—in any member of this trinity—it is because there have been erroneous thoughts about love. The heart that feels that it is kept from love—not having received the love that it should, seems to be weak with the sense of lack; yet the strength of that heart will be in loving, not in being loved. Perhaps that has been its failing; that it has been disappointed in its loving— not giving itself to the great love which does not desire any return. To love with the love which does not care that it is not loved will strengthen the tissues, fill out the cells, and cause that positive, strong expression, which is the healing of a weak heart.
The heart that thinks its love has been misused and misunderstood appears to break and fall. But it is not possible to misuse real love. It is not possible to refuse real love. Real love is never wasted. It is never falsely placed, and so the restoration of the broken heart is in knowing that you have never loved but One in all your life, and that One never misunderstands, and that love is never wasted.
Heart failure comes from the thought that love can fail. “Love never faileth.” This is the word to speak tc your heart. The full consciousness that love never fails leaves the heart absolutely intact. The thought that was the reality of the sword that pierced the heart of Jesus Christ was expressed in his words upon the cross: “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Had not such a thought crossed his mind, he could not have died (yet he was “to taste death once, for all”), so great was his consciousness of omnipresent life that it would have been impossible to kill him.
The lungs, which stand for our thought about universality of love, are narrow and warped and the cells flattened, when one has been content to be narrow in one’s loving, to draw lines, and to think much upon “mine and thine.” The narrow chest, and the lungs whose breath is short, can grow broad and deep in their capacity, and free in their breathing, as they will be universal in their loving; not to think of my family or my house and my relations, but of the whole—the holy family.
The breast and chest stand for the protecting and nourishing father mother love. When that love is selfish, or of such a nature that it does not seek to protect or to nourish the whole humanity, it will picture out as disease in the breast and in the chest. Among such are false growths, like cancer. Cancer can be healed by our realization that there are no parasites, no imposition, no selfishness. “Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.”—Matthew 15: 13.
Do you know that you can instruct the little cells around a cancerous growth so that they will close up and stop nourishing that cancer? It is a wonderful way to heal cancer. The little cells that cry out with pain as their nutriment is taken from them and they are made to give to this monster, can be soothed and comforted and instructed :—
“You do not need to feed anything that God has not made! You do not need to contribute to any growth which is not from God!”
And even while you speak these words, you can fairly see the little cells look up in astonishment, and shut down upon nourishing that fungus; and, for very lack of nourishment, I have seen a cancer come out of its socket as a nut out of a shell, clean as could be. And this was the principal treatment:—
“Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up; there is nothing in you that is obliged to feed a false growth.”
When in London, I gave it to my class, one young lady made a practical application of it almost immediately. For a case was brought to her of a young man given up by the doctor with cancer in the stomach; he had been told that he could not live without an operation. But even then they gave him no hope, because the test showed that the growth was woven in with arteries that it would be most dangerous to sever. He was treated by using the above statements, and, after a number of days’ treatments, threw off the cancer from his stomach, a mass of gangrene, which the physicians examined with wonderment. And they also examined the coating of his stomach and found it clean and perfect with new cell formations.
Lungs that are diseased in what is called consumption, which also involves the heart and blood vessels, are renewed through, first of all, right headthinking, then true heart-thinking,— first the right thought, then the right feeling. These two must go together. One is to meditate upon the truth of one’s inheritance, that one is not the offspring of the flesh, and therefore has not inherited tendency toward consumption, but the offspring of the Spirit, having a perfect father-mother, God. This is the first thought on true being: the constitution is made in perfection, not weakness; in positiveness, in power to express healthy life, and power of self-renewal. Next, there must be right thoughts concerning the will. The will-to-be-well we must always have. There are some people who fade because they give up that will-to-be-well. They will to die, they are glad that they are failing and passing.
How well I remember the case of a young woman in the San Francisco Home of Truth who hovered for days upon the brink determined to die. In her delirium (?) she talked continually with relatives who had gone before, rejoicing that she would soon join them. A physician interested in the work of the healers was watching the case, because he was himself converted to the belief in God-power to heal the sick.
On hearing her pleadings: “Let me go, I don’t want to live!” he said: “You will have to change her mind from wanting to die, or she will go. I have known cases where there was even no danger to end in death because the patient desired to die!”
Then she was argued with, not silently but aloud, and she was made to see her real desire; to live here, now, the happy life; and when she gave her consent her recovery went forward rapidly, and to-day she is a happy, healthy lover of Truth with a long, useful life before her.
But in consumption there is almost always an eagerness to live, even such a clutching for life that they are like drowning people, who in their panic impede the movements of their rescuer, and they need to bring forward the real trust—not a mere hope, often without foundation—in the Godlife, that will relax them and let them glide into the safe healing, that is for them.
Doctors and nurses are changing some of the old ideas about consumption, such as the danger from cold and from moving air, etc. To-day there is a standing-up to these things that is contributing largely to the conquest of the disease. But there are certain pernicious thoughts that you and I must put to flight, namely, the thoughts concerning contagion, which we are to meet with the Truth. There is a positiveness within us that will make our cells immune to false suggestions and poisonous germs; one must rise up in the positiveness of one’s pure self and know that none of these can be imposed upon one, or keep hold after they seem to have lodged. The clogging of the cells ceases and the corruption is removed by that positive consciousness of the life and love and health that spring from within and go out to meet and stand up before these enemies. There is but one substance that we can receive from the atmosphere, dust, and climate, and that is, God.
So much for the thinking. And now for the feeling, which is the more important. First of all in this realm, the human love must be lifted up to the divine, for it is the limited human love that is the starting point of the false manifestation. It may be only that phase called homesickness that causes the first negative state that is receptive to “colds,” and continued depression results in a chronic condition. Where is your home? Heaven is your true home. It is in your own heart, within yourself. Abide there in Spirit and perfect satisfaction is yours.
Sometimes the human love is accompanied with a sense of shame or guilt, such as a daughter’s shame because of her father’s drunkenness. I once knew a sweet young girl who continually cried over her father’s drinking, he was so cruel to her mother, and so selfish and so humiliating to the whole family. And thus she was consuming away with sorrow. Only the rising above the earthly relationship, beyond pride or shame, to the realm of angelpower, can make the love-fires burn clear and free.
Thwarted ambition, greedy desires for possession, are other forms of the consuming passion. The only true ambition is aspiration towards one’s own true God-being.
One of the commonest errors is feeling the loss of the love of the beloved, the husband or wife or friend or lover. Then comes a decline. If you are a true healer, you will uncover the error in your patient, because by being sympathetic, kind, and loving you invite confidence, so that the one who comes to you will be glad to tell you the trouble. Then bring forward the truth, that love and life are not for the husband’s or the wife’s sake, but for the sake of the one Great Self, the earthly relation being but an avenue or trellis on which to train the love of God, who is the one Husband, the ope Wife, the one Lover. Thus may the love be lifted up. In that love there is no loss, no jealousy, no infidelity, but simply changeless faith and full appreciation of the God-Spirit that really dwells in those that are loved.
It is not that you give up any love; you simply lift it up and put it in its right place, instead of thinking it has failed you and that you should tear it out of your life. Thank God that you have loved! “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” There is but one love; it is divine no matter where it seems to be placed, and if we have no false thoughts associated with it, then it can burn, bright, clear, and free, and it means health and life and immortality of the body. But if we try to suppress love’s flame, it is just as when one stops up the chimney, the fire that would otherwise go up without any soot, turns back and fills the house with smoke.
It is love that warms and makes us comfortable, and if any suffer from coldness in any part of the body, let them be warmed by the love in their hearts for humanity. Increase that love to the melting of “hardness of heart”—atrophy, fatty degeneration, etc. Hardness of heart has three kinds of expression: namely, unbelief, coldness, and hatred. Unbelief will be expressed as fear and discouragement and materialism. Coldness, as indifference, selfishness, deadness towards humanity round about you, while hatred has many of the false manifestations of malice, revenge, envy, unforgiveness, and so on.
We are healed of unbelief by being willing to believe in the good only, no matter if our senses testify to the contrary; being willing to lift ourselves from our materialistic conclusions and to let ourselves believe in the Great Spirit—the universal benefactor of humanity; by destroying fear; not allowing discouragement to get hold upon us; warming one’s self by words of Truth and words of faith.
Coldness—probably this has been least noticed by those who do not love much. They have justified coldness. They have considered it all right not to love certain people or to love other people more. They do not see it possible to be the lover of every human being. All the ecstasy, all the idealism, all the wonderful joy that belong to the happiest lover in the world belong to you and me in loving everybody. You go from one heavenly state to another. The world is all rose-colored to the lover and “all mankind loves a lover.”
You can walk in heaven and attract to yourself love by being the lovor of humanity. Begin to build these fires by letting your meditations go out in these directions. The lover sees no flaw and will serve to the end. You v take to yourself the Heart of God.
Hatred passes as you persist in forgiving. As you will not nurse your bitterness and revenge, but insist upon casting these out, so will you be warmed by love, and that blood which should express the perfect thoughts of love and life will be strong and free.
Love-life warms the blood, and if you would have free circulation then let your love go forth through you freely to all, willing to serve all. The blood pictures your latest conscious thoughts, showing their nature by its quality and its quantity. If you would have pure blood, give yourself over to purity. If you would have blood that is right, plenteous, and perfect, then let your latest thoughts be true, and they will give that character to your blood. Let the blood of Christ flow through your veins—live the life of Jesus Christ—the life that is shed freely abroad like light is that which is “shed for the remission of sins.”
The old idea of “blood-letting” to cure diseases was to displace the bad blood with the new fresh clean fluid. Only new thinking can do this. The blood of the Lamb (emblem of innocence, harmlessness, and non-resistance to evil) takes away the sin of the world by being in us the life that is pure, kind, and filled with the Christ-wisdom that dissolves evil with good.
“Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” Give your love nature over to the Highest; see that these love-fires are well supplied with fuel, and you will find that all the issues of life are fine and noble and grand, and your whole body is renewed because the renewal has gone down unto the realm of beginnings.
V.
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.
The time of renewed ^outh is now—Happiness— Prof. Shaler’s book—Continued growth—Ruts of conservatism, fear, revenge—Freedom from anxiety—Joy and plasticity—Unforgiveness ages one—Digestive region—Sensitiveness and stomach trouble—Solar plexus, a registry—Liver, belief in justice—Bowels, our sympathies.
Meditation: “Thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”—Ps. 103: 5.
“I know that the splendor of youth
Witt return to me yet, and my soul
Will float in the sunlight of beauty
and truth Where the tides of the Infinite roll.”
MOST people when they read these words let their imaginations fly to a time far in the future and a place way beyond, after death, finding it difficult to believe that youth could ever return to them this side the grave. But it has not always been so with those who have faith in a restored youth.
In the Middle Ages it was not uncommon for a man to journey forth in search of an actual fountain which should restore to him the strength, beauty, and joy that belong to the early years of human life. But the Wise Ones of that time knew that the fountain of youth, the elixir of life, and the philosopher’s stone were all one, that is, Truth, and the place to find them was within one’s self.
Youth is the time of happiness. Heaven, being eternal happiness, must be a state of perpetual youth. Old age has no place in the divine mind, and they that live the spiritual life are always young in heart. But the young in heart should also be young in body, renewed in their bones, muscles, and senses.
The scientist, Professor Shaler of Harvard University, has given us some marvelous facts in his book, “The Individual.” He proves that among animals, the length of life is determined by the length of time it takes them to mature. The longer the period of growing, the greater the age that the animal attains. Among mammals the duration of life is five times the extent of the growing time.
“But,” says Shaler, “man is the exception. For he is about thirty years maturing, and ought therefore to live to be one hundred and fifty.” “An impossible figure!” says a reviewer. And why?
Instead of seeing such a duration of life as abnormal, rather should one expect to reach that age (unless one be translated), and beyond that period, through knowing how to prolong one’s time of maturing or how to resume growing even after it has been arrested.
Growth is change. As long as the mentality can change, there will be growth. There is the Mind that changes not, it is the Divine Mind. But the human mind is subject to change, being but a reflection, and its changes can be ever for the better.
The youthful consciousness does not get into ruts; into old grooves of unbelief, of conventionality, conservatism, fear of public opinion, revenge, hatred, and other beliefs in evil. Therefore they who would be perpetually youthful must dismiss these habits of thought and rest in the optimistic consciousness that sees the ever-present Now, always good, always happy, always free. This accounts for the resilience of the child and of youth in the presence of sorrow, disappointment, and losses by death. The recuperative power that dwells within us is the youthful power. Children quickly recover from blows and pain, and youth rebounds speedily from sorrow, and all this because of unbelief in evil.
Freedom from anxiety is a special prerogative of youth. Sarah Bernhardt declares that this is one reason why she remains so young; that she will not be anxious. They that have habits of worry, fear, and fault-finding make wrinkles. To be free from wrinkles in the face—whether they be fine or heavy—we must keep from getting into ruts of false thinking.
Joy knows no time. How the hours fly when hearts are happy! Joy is the youthfulness of the consciousness. Youth is counted the joyous time, and they who would renew their youth should associate happiness with the word youth, not immaturity; not think of it as lack but as fullness of the kingdom of heaven—unfading, self-renewing joy.
Plasticity of consciousness, mobility of mind, these are what make for youthfulness. Have new thoughts continually, thus renewing your mentality; and expect to grow until you show forth perfection; the longer you grow, the longer you shall live.
Happily for us, that Master, who taught most clearly and distinctly about immortality, remains always an image of youthful maturity in our minds. Only thirty years of age, we never think of Jesus Christ as an old man but as perpetual youth, full of vigor and interest and of all that gives life and zest, beauty and strength.
The youth that is perfectly young, is free from condemnation and unforgiveness and does not hold hard feelings. Refusing to hold hardness in mind will bless the very cells of your bones and the tissue of your muscles. Not to settle down to hatred and unforgiveness, but to be open and soft and pliable to the Good—this is the way of perpetual youth.
That realm of the mentality that is our receptivity to new thought is represented by the digestive region of the body. Therefore we will consider this department in this lecture. Just as new material is introduced into the body through the alimentary canal, so new ideas enter the mentality by a definite openness and receptivity to them.
To be fearless in accepting new ideas, to know that you can trust the Great Wisdom within you to discriminate as to those ideas, refusing some and retaining others, is the state of mind expressed in the stomach, liver, and bowels as normal activity and functioning.
The stomach is especially influenced by surface thoughts. Sensitiveness to bad news, fears, worriments, unkindness, inharmonious speech and action, are some of the causes of indigestion. But if one is a philosopher and meets everything in a philosophical way, easily and trustfully, knowing that all things work together for good, then the stomach works in a normal way.
The stomach is the sentinel of the body, challenging everything that is sent to its care, questioning its right to be embodied. Sometimes it assumes altogether too much, and thinks it is bound to do and look after everything, forgetting that there is any other department to take care of things. There are some people who have that nature; they feel responsibility so, think they have so much to do, are so watchful about matters for which they need have no concern. Such an attitude affects the whole digestive region, especially the lower bowel.
“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink,” “Eat such things as are set before you,” “Nothing from without a man entering into him can defile him,” “If they drink any deadly thing it shall not harm them,” are some of the sayings of the Master, who came saving men’s bodies as well as their souls.
Your diet corresponds to the thoughts you have been receiving. Give no place to untrue thoughts, yet if they come to you unbidden and not of your own choosing, though they are poison they will not hurt you. If all the time, money, and effort that have been spent upon regulating one’s diet were given over to purifying the heart and filling it with noble, generous, holy thoughts, disease of the stomach would totally disappear.
That great nerve center called the solar plexus is the registry of our delicate and aesthetic thoughts and feelings, and, when not sensitive to evil, is a quick and sure means of defense from mental imposition. Shrinking through fear and timidity and trembling because of the unknown affect this center. Invoke the Spirit, your true defense when such sensations appear. Or, if a sinking or sickening feeling comes at “the pit of the stomach,” let it be like an alarm bell telling you to remember that the Almighty enfolds you, and keeps you, and there is nothing to fear.
Our belief about justice and our general views as to life are registered in the liver. If there is a subconscious contentment as to the order of things, that justice is meted out even though appearances deny it, and that life is all right, that the sweet and the bitter are evenly distributed, and there is no resentment, then the action of the liver will be normal. But if there is a continual feeling of injustice, and bitterness arising out of it; a feeling that things are going wrong and that you do not know how to right them, these will picture as a diseased condition of the liver. Turn to your thoughts and give yourself to right reasoning concerning life. Regard it from the Godconsciousness, the point of view that is based upon the allness of the Good. Be free from the sophistries of a mentality that “judges according to the appearance.”
“Till a dart strike through his liver” is the fate written of the foolish young man that is seduced by sophistries, the “strange woman” of Proverbs. Folly and false reasonings are personified by the writer of Proverbs, in the seventh chapter, as an evil woman, the opposite of Wisdom of whom he says, “She is more precious than rubies.”
Reasoning from the senses may seem plausible and right at first, but in the end it leads to bitterest conclusions. “The lips of the strange woman drop as an honeycomb, but her end is bitter as wormwood.” (Prov. 5:3, 4.)
By the grace of the God-power within you, all bitterness and sense of injustice can pass away, and you can enter into the realization that in the end it will all be proven that one Great Law only was working, that which rights every wrong and measures to everyone according to true compensation, ministered by those who know the whole from beginning to end.
The third of this group, which has been called the lower trinity, is the bowels, which represent our sympathies—”bowels of mercies” is a familiar scriptural phrase. When the feelings which we have for our fellowbeings are normal this realm is orderly in its expression. But there is a generosity that is too lax, then there is a false fullness; on the other hand when little sympathy goes forth to others there is a dryness and thinness in proportion to the selfishness. A normal responsiveness to humanity is a fellow feeling, alive and hearty, which does not shut itself up against people but distributes righteously and liberally the good of which one is steward.
In all this correspondence there is no entering into detail, because unsuitable to so brief a writing. Nor is it profitable, as a rule, to dwell upon these symbols.
Only as we realize the mastery of our thoughts can we always substitute the new and youthful cell for the old and useless form. And the less material the desires and the mentality grow, the less fermentation and materialization will be in evidence until finally with the assurance that perfection “has done her perfect work,” each cell will shine as the sun, transmuting all that comes to it into its own beauty, through recognizing that none has ever come to it or gone forth from it but the One that is God.
VI.
THE PLAYGROUND OF THE
SPIRIT.
The Real and the Unreal—Eyesight—Discrimination—Pygmalion and Galatea—Maya or illusion—Playing fair—Gambling—Riddle of Life—Playing cards— Golf—The passing show—X in the problem—Detached from I-ness—Wisdom’s Way.
Meditation: “Let us eat and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”—Luke 15:23, 24.
“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”—Proverbs 17: 22.
ON our way renewing these earthly bodies of ours, puzzling questions arise, the answers to which mean a relief to the unnecessary tension put upon existence, and a relaxation that aids in healing and in the renewal of one’s youth.
Among these questions are, “How shall we look upon appearances? Why should there ever have been an appearance? And what was the beginning of it?”
Let us consider these questions simply and directly, for the true answers have to do with the healing of many forms of waning health and power, among which is that of our eyesight. Whenever we see into and through the problems of the ages we annul the race-beliefs of weakening eyesight caused by advancing age.
Discrimination between the real and the unreal comes with knowledge of Truth. The Real is God and God’s manifestation, which is altogether perfect and changeless. The Unreal is the realm of appearance, which is a reflection of the Real, and when it is a true reflection then we have Eden; but when it is a deflection, distorted and untrue, we have a world of sorrow and sin.
The Realm of the Real is the sphere of true work or creation, while the realm of reflection is the playground of the Spirit.
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” is a proverb that might also apply to the spiritual life. It is the very serious and heavy regard which men have had for spirituality that has made most religions seem repulsive and unnatural to the young and the joyous of heart. Not enough emphasis has been placed upon the joy of the Lord. No one can solve the riddle of life who has no sense of humor, and only as we discern the playful side of the Spirit can we find her secret and solve her mystery.
One of the ancestors of Jesus was Isaac, whose name means “laughter”; that is, one must have the merry heart to bring forth finally the whole Truth that shall save our world.
The story of Eden is a vision of the playground of your Spirit wherein you fashioned a clay-man that you loved a* Pygmalion, the Greek sculptor, loved the beautiful statue Galatea that he had carved—loved so that he prayed the gods to give her life and a soul; and when his prayers were granted he married her. Thus you, the Lord of life and love, breathed into the image that you had made the breath of selfconsciousness and then sought to guide it into sweet companionship with yourself. In the midst of this happy playground grows a mysterious play-tree called “illusion” or maya, the tree of opposites, the fruit of which no one can really eat, but if any one deceives himself into thinking he can eat of it, he dreams dreams and his innocent illusions become delusions—an intoxicated view of good and evil wherein right values and proportions are lost.
When we as mortals cease to seek experience in good and evil, then the veils drop from our eyes and we see fair Eden again and the play of the Spirit even as we also see the realm of Earnestness and know it as the Real.
Keeping our eyes upon the Man of God—the Christ-Self—we cast reflections that are like the Real, and we take lightly the things that are passing, changeable, and miserable, and we keep our peace and wisdom before folly and wickedness.
We play fair and abide by the rules of the game, which rules are those of the righteousness of the Spirit. There is no cheating, no envy, no slander, no fault-finding, and no forgetting that it is not real. It is taking seriously the things that are not of the Spirit that spoils things. It is only when a game becomes a professional business that joy takes wings and sorrows enter. This is the error in gambling.
The world is filled with illustrations of this play of the Spirit. Life itself has been called a riddle and we are all seeking the answer to it. It is declared by the wise that when the answer is found it will fill us with wonderment, it is so simple, so plain, so direct. Although the answer is being repeated in our ears day after day it is not heard; just as the answers to some of our childish riddles cannot be understood by certain of us who are dull until at an auspicious moment, the right word is accented and we see the answer and wonder that we had not seen it all along.
All games that interest us can become parables to reveal the play of the Spirit. Take cards, for instance; in the beginning cards were the scripture of the nations that used them. As the cards fell so they divined the will of the gods. Those who can look back of the game can see life portrayed. Even the “little joker” stands for that element which enters into our lives interfering with all the former and ordinary rules and always victorious. This is the way the Truth works in our lives. A man may be scheduled to die at a certain time. But the Spirit sets aside the old laws and he lives.
So with the game of golf. It seems hard work, but it is a game. So men travel over much ground and never think how hard the hill is to climb, nor how far they have to go, nor how much strength is used up. They are only thinking of the goal. They will go on from one green to another because they are playing, and this represents that bringing the play of the Spirit into our work, so that our life here, instead of being hard and such a serious undertaking, can be even as the game of golf, wherein we keep our eye upon the goal and are not concerned with the traveling in between us and its achievement.
“All the world’s a stage,” sings the poet, “and all the men and women merely players.” To be able to look through the performance and to know these are only parts which people are playing; that the Spirit is not involved in the actions of the sinner; that the great Life is not involved in disease; to be able to distinguish the players from their parts; this it is to be free from delusion, and to enjoy the passing show, and not to be too concerned between the acts.
“The Lord laugheth in the heavens.” The laughter of the Spirit has no sting in it. It is innocent; it is the laughter of children. As we watch the little child, we see again the play of the Spirit. Their life is full of “makebelieve.” They love their dolls, though they know they are not real. They long for them to speak and to love them in return. But as they mature, the love of dolls passes because there begins to come into their lives that of which the dolls were the substitute— the real baby. And we let go of these appearances called life as we see the True, the Eternal, coming to us; we no longer cling to the “make-believe” when once we have received the reality.
Illusions have their place in the realm of divine enjoyment and, if we will consider, they are the principal ingredient in our earthly pleasures—the play of the colors in a beautiful sunset, the dancing of light and shade upon the landscape, the rainbow in the fountain, the comedy, the masquerade, the pageant—these are all fleeting and illusory. Illusion is all right, but it must never change into delusion for then comes confusion, deception, intoxication, misery.
We seem to be in a maze as to this earth-life and these physical bodies, but Jesus Christ has the thread that can lead us out of it and change our fears and our tears into joy and laughter, as we come safely through and review the intricacies of our earth-experiences and understand.
Jesus understood this earthly self to be but a representative and that if we would only become detached from it, we could do with it what we will. Therefore he taught the way, “Deny thyself.”
This body that you have called yours is only x in the problem of life. It is a pretty problem and it is all arranged before you, and you are moving this body through it, as the mathematician moves x from one side of the equation to the other. And, like him, if you learn and follow the rules for the outworking of this problem, you will gradually eliminate all the unnecessary factors, until you have brought x to its simplicity, and you can say x equals thus and so—”the value of the unknown quantity.” And when we find the answer to x, then x is rubbed out. It is said even of Jesus Christ, that when all things are made subject to him, then he also will be “put under,” that God may be All in All.
This is one way to get hold of the solution of our life-problem, to see our personality as x. Now if a student steps up to the blackboard and after writing down “Let x represent the value of the unknown quantity,” instead of listening to the teacher, begins to play with sc, that student will not get very far in solving the problem. Some of us are so interested in our personality and the personality of other people that we are missing the solution running back of the personality, and we need to keep our eye single to the Spirit—the Me that is the reality back of this appearance.
We must be free from self-conceit; free from sensitiveness. Be able to stand independent of your personality, that you may get your true perspective. You can be so near to a mountain that you cannot see it. We hold a penny over our eye, and we cannot see the mighty planets that swing above us. Thus we may hold this little self so before our eye that we spoil our perspective and confuse our value-sense.
If we can stand away from this personality, unattached, we shall often see the causes that lie back of the false appearances and be able to correct them. Wisdom’s Way is a “path of pleasantness,” because both the play and the work are seen in their place and their trueness. And her final revelation is that play and work are one in the Spirit, and humanity, on its way back to divinity, will joy in uniting them; and thus hard work and foolish play will both pass away in the grace and the skill, the joy and the harmony, of the magical merging of work into play and play into work never more to be separated on earth.
Meditation: “For it is neither herb nor mollifying plaster that restoreth them to health, but Thy word, 0 Lord, which healeth all things.”— Wisdom of Solomon.
“Neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul; for the reason why the cure of many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas is because they are ignorant of the whole, which ought to be studied also, for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.”—Plato.
VII.
SOUL CULTURE.
Poisonous effect of evil passions—Turning attention from body to soul—Harmony between the within and the without—Why animal natures are well—The Commandments—Standards of beauty—Venus de Milo —Refinement and grace—Chronic disease—The backbone—Christ magnified.
THE experiments of a well known scientist have proven to his individual satisfaction that evil passions like anger, lust, jealousy, and so forth, act as poisons in the body, corroding the delicate tissues and vitiating the secretions. “Envy is rottenness to the bones”—Book of Proverbs.
The metaphysician finds that he cannot give free rein to anger, as he goes on in the regeneration. The new cells, whose basis of life is harmony, cannot stand before harsh discord. He finds that withering selfishness, corrupting lusts, rusting avarice, puffing pride, deadening sloth and drunkenness must pass away before the divine edict: “Behold I make all things new.”
“Thy sins are forgiven thee. Go and sin no more lest a worse thing come upon thee,” is the message of the Christ, as he heals the paralytic and the devil-possessed.
The soul all sinless as God made it, immortal, holy, “in whom is no blemish,” the One, all-beauty and all-grace, is called forth by the Truth and acclaimed Master of the House, and, before its reign, the darkness of disease and death flee away.
The candidate for a renewed body wisely turns from thinking about the organism to cultivating the knowledge and the expression of his soul. It is not a mere matter of condemnation or policy that he sees certain virtues as an advantage, but he proves that these virtues actually express themselves in glorified cells, in wholesome blood in the body, and picture forth as grace and beauty in the form; and, rising above mere morality, he goes on into the next state—the righteousness that exceeds morality—which is his real Being in truth.
When he is merely moral, he does right because he fears to do otherwise; simply because he has been trained in doing right, and he is full of condemnation of wrong; such a one may be full of disease, for the within and the without are not one. They are working at cross-purposes, and sometimes, when he is under the ban of hypocrisy, he will be fair to look upon without, but falls the victim of his own secret thoughts, which are so contrary to his external living. The way of regeneration—the way of our perfect renewal —is to keep constantly this harmony between the within and the without.
Sometimes the question is raised: “How is it that people who seem to be living quite upon the animal plane do not suffer from disease? They are not spiritual and often not even moral.”
It is because there is no quarrel between the inner and the outer. Such a man may be living up to his own ideals that he has made for himself; but, so surely as he is Spirit, and not flesh—is not a mere body, but a soul—he will receive the inner urge, some incentive to “come up higher.” It may be the love of a woman who has higher ideals than his and up to whose standard he desires to measure. Then comes “the judgment,” and if he cannot come up to her ideals there follows the struggle between his higher and his lower natures, and, without a knowledge of principles, he is not able to stand, and we then see a strong man smitten down, and weak as water.
The Commandments as to conduct of life were not given to imprison men. Those who have obeyed them from fear, or have been good because they did not dare to be anything else, have thrown themselves into mental prisons. Whereas all these Commandments were given for man’s liberty. If you will not steal, lie, kill, or lust, then you will avoid certain destructive feelings which bring on disease and death; you will enter into immortality—this was the understanding of the Mosaic presentation. Moses had this light within himself by which he lived to be 120 years old, and when he passed he had not lost one of his faculties, but was as youthful as ever in his consciousness.
Where do we get our standards of wholesome expression, our standards of beauty and of grace? Why do we believe that the straight nose is handsomer than the tip-tilted one? Why do we think that the curved lips, ruddy as coral, and with that slight protruding of the upper lip over the lower, is a truer standard for the mouth than the opposite? Why do we like the clear eye? What is there that charms us in certain features and contours of the face and lines of the body? It is this: Men have observed that these expressions which we admire, accompany certain manifestations of soul, that natures that bear these characteristics are generally admirable as to their interior qualities. There are exceptions, as when the ideals of youth have been lost but the beauty remains—but such beauty is fleeting.
For the most part, these things are out-pictured in the child; the beautiful clear eyes and complexion, the rosebud mouth, the shining hair, all tokens of innocent love and purity, which qualities, when combined in the older ones, will show forth in exactly the same beauty of features.
The ancient Greeks, who give the standards of beauty to the art of today, especially men like Plato, who looked beyond the body to the Soul, saw the connection between beautiful soultraits and beauties of the body, and their sculptors portrayed them so well that no art has ever excelled theirs. One stands before that ancient Greek work, Venus de Milo, mounted in its crimson-draped rotunda in the Louvre of Paris, in silent rapture—its beauty is so lifelike, its smile so sweetly dignified and yet so lovingly human—the mystery of womanhood, caught for centuries by that master hand of old. Let us continue to investigate these ideals of the race and trace them to their source. Then we shall see that we admire the erect form because a power for righteousness is back of it; that we see beauty in the supple body, because soul-grace is its cause, a power to adjust one’s self mentally to opposition and agree with the crosses of experience, and be agreeable, where naturally one would be disagreeable; that we love curves in form and feature because they express the rounding of the love-life, yet we also admire squareness in build of those who, by it, express strength and integrity.
Refinement and grace of body have their rise in refined thinking; to attain them, put away thoughts of which you might be ashamed, thoughts which belong to the low and unclean. Knowing the grace of God gives graciousness of manner and makes one graceful in form and movement. Grace is that consciousness which is above recognition of the opposites, such as good and evil, high and low, and is ever the same to all. The most graceful beings are children, who make no difference as to age, or race, or position, in dispensing their favors—the more childlike they are, the more universal.
Chronic diseases pass from us with Soul culture. We bring forth to the physical the beauty of our souls and, through knowledge of Truth, we first dissipate our surface errors as to the causes of disease. We prove that material causes are but secondary, and do not have place and power, as we cease to fear them or talk about them as the source of disease. Then the errors that lie at the root of the diseases are disclosed, for it is observed that when we give way to those false expressions called vices we have certain diseaseeffects; and as we counteract these vices by Truth and by bringing forward the opposite virtues, the pains cease and the disease becomes subject to us. The corruption that has gathered because of impure living; the ruptures in blood-vessels and organs that have come through our destructive tendencies; the weaknesses that have registered in our organs from our flaccidity towards the principles of life; and all the other forms of discomfort are counteracted, and replaced by new cells and new activities, through a persistent reversal of the old way of thinking and living.
“Gird up your loins.” Practice selfcontrol is the Scriptural instruction. The spine and back especially show forth one’s belief about Will. “To have backbone” has been proverbial in describing those of strong and courageous will. Sometimes one’s will has been resisted so persistently by another’s that there have come curves in the back, as when a sapling meets a heavy stone. But let that will be given over more and more to righteousness, and no human opposition can affect it. Perverse wills, full of domineering, even tyranny, in a previous existence, have marked their owners with deformities, from which they may recover by being molded under their Christ Will. Weak spines are developed into strong, straight backbones by the cultivation of the spiritual character into true positiveness.
“In my flesh, I shall see God,” triumphantly cries that victor over much tribulation, Job, who also proved what he said in so much that his health and wealth and happiness were increased threefold after his trial. Within this flesh you are to see God shining through this body, a great light of beauty, youth, and grace.
“Christ shall be magnified in my body,” says Paul, and as a fair image embodied in a crystal is enlarged and enhanced by the clearness and perfection of the crystal sphere, so the Christ in us shall be magnified and glorified through the purity and trueness of our soul-and-body united perfectly in one, “God made manifest in the flesh.”
VIII.
THE GLORIFIED BODY.
The Transfiguration—Power of prayer—Materialism of thought makes the body opaque—The X-rays— Moses’ face—The temple of Solomon—David’s errors —Judgment—Organs of elimination—Kidneys stand for our belief in judging—Criticism and sarcasm—Dishonored organs made honorable^-The passing of these organs—Divine light taking their place.
Meditation : “Glorify God in your body.”—I Cor. 6:20.
“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”—John 17:5.
AT one time, Jesus Christ withdrew from the crowd that followed him and with three disciples went up a mountain and gave himself to fervent and enraptured prayer, which so uplifted his human mind that his very flesh became like alabaster with a light shining through so dazzling that his disciples could not continue to look on him. The light glowed with such power that his garments were filled with it and there was nothing in him or about him but light.
The transfiguration was but the bright shining of the Real Body “eternal in the heavens”—”the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” So Jesus described it as he prayed: “Glorify me, 0 Father, with thine own Self.”
Prayer or communion with the One, on the heights of your being, raises the whole nature, sometimes into a great faith before which nothing is impossible; sometimes into an ecstasy of Love, the cosmic bliss; sometimes into ineffable glory of illumination, both within and without; sometimes into a lightness of body so that it rises into the air, as it is said St. Theresa experienced when absorbed in divine communion. Such is the power of the Word.
But these are Sabbath-day events. The other six days, the power and the light are there just the same, but the body looks just as it did of old. Nevertheless, Truth is loosening the bonds of materiality; and the attachment between the cells grows less so that the old, dull opaqueness may at any moment pass entirely away. “Then the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”
The dullness of the human form comes from the earthiness of thought and the muddiness in feeling, which settle in the cells in what the physicians technically call “dirt.” Clairvoyants see a diseased part of the body as a dark mass, lead-colored. Ignorance is back of it all. “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.”—Dan. 12:3.
Spiritual enlightenment makes the body translucent. The X-ray has shown there is much difference between the bodies of human beings. The writer once saw by the X-ray the hearts of two young men as a dark object in the chest of each with a slight pulsating movement. But the heart of one of them showed very much more clearly than the other. He was devoted to Truth and very pure in mind, while the other was living an ordinary life in the world.
But there is another reason why our bodies seem very opaque, even though we are living spiritual lives. A veil envelops us and hides us—a wise provision—until the consummation of all things; as when Moses, coming down from Mount Sinai where he had been face to face with God, was obliged to put a veil over his illumined face in order to communicate with his fellowbeings without discomforting them. He had been close to his Divine Self and his eyes had “steadfastly beheld” —like Stephen—the glory of God and his face became “as it had been the face of an angel.”
We are hastening the end of the old order as we keep our eyes “on the mark of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ,” that Pattern in the Mount, and grow like what we keep in our vision. “That thou seest, that thou beest.” “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” means that if your eye sees the one only-perfect One all the time then every cell of your body will be clear and the white light of that One which you are will shine through as the electric light shines through the glass globe that surrounds it.
“But if thine eye be evil,”—your seeing given over to the perception of sin, selfishness, suspicion, malice, and so forth, then darkness settles upon and beclouds the body.
The Hebrew tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple, “built of stone made ready before it was brought thither; so that there was neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building,” were types of our Real Body. And the process of building typified the bringing forth a body here on the earth which should represent that Real Body.
This great act was expected of David, but he could not bring it to pass because of the two errors in his life, adultery and murder, for which he could not find forgiveness since the Christ-knowledge had not yet been flashed upon the world as it was later through his descendant. It is only the Jesus-Christ-Consciousness in us that can build the body of light, for with that consciousness no one can “convince (convict) you of sin.”
The error of David has been the common weakness that has arrested many candidates for immortality. With inspired insight of man’s destiny, they have gone on to great heights, but seduced by sex-sophistry they have turned aside from the straightway, and entered the broad path whose end is physical death. “An error of judgment” has been their undoing. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” “they err in vision, they stumble in judgment.”
David illustrates the arrested consciousness ; the arriving at the place of unforgiven sin; the coming under selfcondemnation, through disobeying the inner voice. “Why is light given to a man whose way is hid? he cries, not recognizing that, though he carries the lamp within, he hides the way himself by his own disobedience.
This body must be set free from the dark spots, the dirt, the opaqueness, that prevent the shining of the bright one within. In other words, the process of elimination must be true, must be righteous. In the Christ consciousness, the judgment is just. “If I judge, my judgment is just,” for there is no judging “after the appearance, but judging righteous judgment.” This is the highest place we can reach in judging; but there is a place where you pass even out of judgment. But first of all, let us consider the righteous judgment. For in the righteous judgment, sins are completely annulled. The elimination is perfect. “The righteous God trieth the reins.” “Cleanse thou me from secret faults.”
If our judgment is normal, then we are healthy in the eliminating region of the body. The whole region of elimination, not only the kidneys, but the other excretory organs, must stand free and normal, through our realizing that the judgment of God is in the world, a perfect justice, always eliminating the useless, casting out that which is not the expression of the highest, and retaining that which allows the light to shine. The reins stand for the inner, subtle feelings of judgment, the tender feelings of judgment. The kidneys stand for our belief in the ordinary processes of judgment.
If there seems to be overwork with the kidneys, and they seem not equal to that which has been brought to bear upon them, it is because in the thinking and in the feeling there have been unnecessary judgments, which are not of the highest—which are not just, not kind, not merciful. The commonest ways of this false judgment are being expressed in criticism, unkindness, sarcasm, cutting remarks, fault-finding, looking for the errors, picking out the weaknesses, and thinking over people’s shortcomings.
The habit of criticizing others may start with more or less good judgment and justice. But because of the belief in evil it is continually overreaching the mark until finally we see people who are full of acid thoughts picturing them out in the flesh, and having kidneys that are not able to throw off the false accumulations that are settling in the bones as hardness; a lime condition in the joints and a surplus of sugar in the flesh and blood.
Instead of our paying attention to the diet, the full attention should be given to the uplifting of our thoughts, the softening and sweetening of our judgment concerning our fellow-beings, having faith and trust in the divinity in others, and withdrawing condemnation and criticism from our fellow-beings. So important is this point that Jesus Christ was continually dwelling upon it. “Judge not that ye be not judged.” “Condemn not lest ye be condemned.” Why do you try to take the moat out of your brother’s eye when there is the beam in your own eye?
So long as you criticise and condemn, you open yourself to criticism and condemnation of others. Therefore the way of light is the way of seeing no evil; with eyes too pure to behold iniquity.
Certain people are suffering from kidney trouble because they have such poor judgment. They are weak and vacillating, being falsely negative and lacking in good judgment. Even a floating kidney has been traced to that cause, a mixed, uncertain, weak judgment, which never makes anything decided or clear or strong, and this state of judgment is as much an error as the other extreme.
The realm of the excretory and generative organs has always been counted dishonorable, and mortals have justified themselves in despising and even hating these organs. The Hebrews had it as one of the rules in clothing that a belt should always be worn to separate the honorable part of the body from the dishonorable.
Therefore this region must be redeemed from the condemnation—even the curse that has been put upon it. And the way is to condemn and despise no one and no thing, and to see purity everywhere. “To the pure all things are pure.”
This is the place where forgiveness of sin has its ultimate expression. When sins are cast out one stands free in one’s own consciousness, so that there is no longer a fault-finding with one’s self. Then there is perfect elimination in the body and the excretory organs act normal and healthy.
But this stage is reached only as you forgive others; as you have righteous judgment concerning others; and even refuse to judge at all; whether they be clean or unclean; whether they be good or evil. This is indeed a step—to refuse to judge. For oftentimes, it would seem as though that power and privilege is given to certain ones in the race, because of their justice and because of the righteousness in their judgment.
It is true that we rise above judgment so that we think no longer in judgment. So also, shall the organs of elimination pass away, and light take the place of them. This is the beginning of the body of light you are to manifest in the flesh. When all necessity of elimination passes, then even the organs of elimination shall be eliminated, and where each organ of shame has been God’s holy light shall shine, and that which has been counted last and least in divine manifestation shall be first to shine with the light of regeneration. It is the divine order and equity. “When ye shall see the abomination that maketh desolate stand in the holy place (whoso readeth let him understand),” then know that old things are indeed passing utterly away, all things are becoming new. Give your whole being over to exalting the lowly; bringing to honor those who have been despised and have suffered from shame; giving kindliness in place of contempt; loving consideration in place of spurning and neglect.
Let your light so shine that men will glorify the Truth that has so wonderfully glorified you.
And when the light shines from your face, and men see the halo about your head and the beautiful aureole about your body, let them be to you but forerunners of the supernal glory that shall break forth at the center of your human form, the great sun of your solar system, over which you have been appointed a Lord by the Supreme God of gods, Ruler of the Universe.
Meditation: “The Lord is in His holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before Him.”—Habakkuk 2: 20.
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are”
—I Cor. 3:16,17.
IX.
GENERATION AND REGENERATION.
The three states, generation, degeneration, and regeneration—Honoring the human form—Holy of Holies—Purity—Three false attitudes towards generation, ignorance, fear, hatred—High ideals—No sex in Spirit—In generation is death—Thoughts about Creative power—The fruit of our works—False beliefs about sex — Chinese Nay Tan—Satisfaction—Marriage of Body and Soul.
THE physical body while passing through this realm of opposites is in one of three states, and in its different parts may be partaking of all three, namely: generation, degeneration, and regeneration. The cells are reproducing themselves, or passing through’ dissolution, and when these processes come under the influence of Spirit, the laws of regeneration finally bring forth forms that altogether cease from birth and death, being the bodies of the resurrection. The perfect reflection of the Spirit in the flesh shows forth a body of beauty, strength, health, and immortality that is a true interpretation of the human vision of the ideal.
Therefore, because of the reality that is back of this human flesh, we honor even this mortal frame instead of despising and misusing it. The veneration which the Hebrews had for their tabernacle because consecrated to God, we give to this human form, and for the same reason. It is our opportunity to glorify God on the earth, and therefore we would present our “bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,” and would have our “whole bodies preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In the tabernacle of the Hebrews, which typified the body, was a Holy of Holies in which the priest entered once a year to make atonement for the people, and it was considered the place of the indwelling Spirit, upon which the Shekinah light rested. Nothing could enter it that was unclean, or abide in its presence; and the priest before entering had to have a special preparation that he might be able to bear the light and the pressure of purity and sublimity that was brought to bear upon him.
This Holy of Holies is in you, and it is represented especially by the realm of generation. This is truly the sacred realm. And no one can know the truth about it but by having1 the purest, cleanest, most holy thoughts concerning all the generative organs and their functions.
The subjects connected with generation have been tabooed by almost everybody. Even words to express the functions and the forms are unknown. It has been expressly held secret until such a time as humanity would hold it sacred. The subject cannot be approached except from the standpoint of absolute purity.
Truly this is what we should believe of ourselves: that the purity that was ours as babes is still with us, and the assumptions of the years of carnality are as old garments to be cast off forever, as no part of us at all.
“I am pure! I am pure! I am pure!” cries the wise devotee of Osiris, brought before the forty-two judges of the dead. Let us be healed of our belief in the reality of impurity, by keeping our eyes ever upon God’s Holy One, our own true Self. Thus shall we be able to face this, the great mystery, the key of which is the key to heaven or to hell.
There have been three false attitudes toward generation: first, ignorance, second, fear, and third, hatred.
Ignorance is back of misuse and misunderstanding, and those who have suffered because of ignorance are filled with fear concerning the subject, and certain ones have gone to the extreme of hatred, and these must be put away completely in order that a normal expression may be had in the organs of generation. For back of diseased physical organs lie errors of thought.
When looking at the subject of generation, there should be high ideals. The highest ideals that have been held all down the ages about generation are not too high. Here is revealed the same truth which Paul had, that marriage is honorable, not to be condemned, not to be counted unclean, nor placed in a despicable light, but to be seen from the highest viewpoint, even though there still seems to be a higher. We are not prepared for the highest of all, until we can put marriage in its right place.
In looking at the true marriage, the husband is seen as the Lord, the wife as the Soul, and thus this relationship symbolizes the union with God. And God is the one to be held in mind continually between husband and wife. He should make it a matter of principle to deal with the woman that is his partner as he would with his soul, it matters not how ungrateful she may seem to be. As he would have his own soul honored and held in high repute by his fellow beings, so also he should place his wife. And she should honor the Lord in her husband, it matters not how little he deserves it, how far he is from expressing the divinity that dwells within. Because of truth, she will seek to find the Lord in him, and in so doing she uplifts and aids her own union with God. All his earthly relationship is but a sacrament, a symbol ; and like baptism and the communion supper, symbols in the church, will pass away when the reality comes, because they have served their purpose, and are no longer necessary. For then the false thoughts that made sex will have utterly passed away.
In Spirit there is no sex. Sex means separation. The origin of the word shows that. It comes from the Latin “To cut; to separate.” There is an old teaching that has come down to us, that we are cut apart and away from our other half; that we are separated from ourselves; and the natural feeling is that our other half is here somewhere and we must find it on this planet. The truth is that you are already perfect in your real being, and that what you seem to be separated from is your God. And when you find your God, you find your whole Self, and that Self includes both male and female.
In generation is death. They who generate also degenerate. But in regeneration is life and immortality. Regeneration carries us out of generation.
In the renewal of the body, the generative organs come to a normal expression, by true thoughts concerning generation. The organs represent (1) our thoughts about our creative power; (2) our beliefs about the fruit of our works; (3) our belief about sex. If you have true balanced ideas concerning these three you are not troubled with any ill health or disturbance in the functions or form of these organs. But (1) if you feel yourself not having much creative power in any one department of life and you depreciate yourself; or feel that you have not much initiative and lack efficiency, then there is a sense of hunger, a missing of something, and this is pictured out as weakness, and lack of satisfaction in the generative region. (2) If you feel that the fruits of the work of your brain, your heart, or your hands are not perfect, or that they are not appreciated, or that they are failures, then this belief pictures out in the form of failing, falling, or loss in the generative realm; again (3) if there have been perverted and false thoughts about sex, these will be expressed in forms of disease or disturbance among these functions, tissues, or secretions. We need only to remember, first of all, the source of our creative power; that it is unlimited; that our creations are spiritual, not material. Keep the aspirations high and free from thoughts about people, or money, or fame. Put soul into your work, and create only for your God—the Ideal of all the ages.
Meditate upon the Fruits of the Spirit, which the divine Self brings forth through you.
Give yourself to absolute Purity in every thought and feeling as to sex.
To those who are able to receive it there is a teaching of complete transmutation of the fluids of the body, beginning with the seed, by which the body of regeneration may be a tangible, practical presence here, the vehicle of union between heaven and earth. The Chinese mystics call the process nay tan, and name the breath, the saliva, and the fecundating fluid, as the three constituents of the new body, through being conserved and transmuted. But even this body is not the highest, as they know who receive it, but is on the Way.
Whoever walks this way of the regeneration, walks in satisfaction; is companionable to himself; is not seeking companionship, because of finding ideal company in every human being and in all nature; knows no lonesomeness; is full of light; is full of new ideas and revelations continually. So he is a good companion to himself every moment of his life. And there is a marriage takes place, of his body to his soul, and they can never be divorced by death. He keeps his eye upon that perfect One, which he is in his Real Being, that transcendent sphere wherein both male and female are as one, and enters into the real joys of which the earthly experiences are but temporal symbols.
The Soul and Body joined together by Truth can never be separated, for “whom God hath joined” no man can put asunder, and thenceforth all knowledge comes to both, conjoined; and “there is no more night”; no more conflict or warring of selves. And the new Adam-Eves have passed by the angel with the flaming sword, and henceforth eat of the fruit of the Tree of Immortality, having returned to their first bliss, their Eden, never to wander again.
Meditation : “IF thou return to the Almighty, thou shall be built up, thou
shall put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles. Then shalt thou lay up gold
as dust. . . . Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defense, and thou shalt have
plenty of silver.”—Job 22: 23 to 25.
X.
PROSPERITY.
Wealth and health are synonymous—Ignorance of source of prosperity—The rich mentality—The Patriarchs’ wealth — Wrestling with the Angel — Legs represent belief about support—Laws of Prosperity— Right Thinking—Cheerfulness—Generosity or soul— Healthy bones—Too much adipose or leanness—Crystal out a new world.
WEALTH in circumstances and health in body are synonymous terms in the economics of the Spirit. For our affairs are but our larger body and both the smaller organism and the larger are states of mind that act and react upon each other. Yet both can be ruled by that which is divine and Lord of all, our true consciousness, with which we are connected through knowledge and faith.
Ignorance of the source of eternal prosperity lies at the root of poverty, and the uncertainty that our freedom and comfort will last.
Worriment and fear are poisons that undermine the very bones, and make the blood poor, and the tissues and nerves weak. The love of money and the desire for possessions bring withering to the body (as witness the miser), or fatty degeneration to the organs that are most negative.
The true state of man is abundant wealth. We manifest it in the realm of appearance through bringing forward our rich mentality, which is a consciousness of the Soul-wealth that is the reality of earthly prosperity. The patriarchs among the Hebrews knew this truth, that being “rich towards God” meant riches in flocks, and fruits, and gold, as the representations of the real wealth. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all men of riches and honor. But even these went through their times of darkness, as when Jacob went “halt on his thigh,” through fear concerning the fate of the morrow. When doubt and fear assail one as to support, this doubt is commonly expressed in the bones, especially the thighs and thigh bones.
When Jacob was upon the eve of meeting his brother Esau, who had become his enemy and was very powerful, there was the prospect of his (Jacob’s) losing all his lands and flocks and household, through seizure by Esau. And Jacob wrestled all night with the Angel of the Lord to get the blessing.
“I will not let thee go till thou bless me,” Jacob said, and he won. Yet in fear and trembling he met his brother, who ran to him and embraced him, for Jacob had made the union with the Angel of Esau the night before.
The story of Esau and Jacob—what Jacob was doing in that night season— is a wonderful lesson to every one of us, in prosperity. Esau was standing to Jacob as the symbol of a likely disaster; a great failure; a terrible event that might mean his downfall; and yet to be true he must meet Esau, in his Spirit, before he met him in the flesh. Therefore there came the struggle, the wrestling; and that through which Jacob went the night before he met Esau is what you are doing lying upon your bed, thinking that to-morrow the rent must be paid; or there is that note coming due; or there is the mortgage; a sick sense of something working in your affairs which you feel is undermining you and you cannot name it.
In wisdom you meet this, as Jacob met that angel. It seems to contend with you—this consciousness—and you wrestle with it, and though you are tempted at times to give up, and to let it go, you are in the wisdom of this patriarch and master, if you cry out, “I will not let thee go until thou bless me.”
Our realization of support, morally and financially as well as physically, is recorded in our lower limbs, and if that is normal, then the flesh, nerves, and bones of our legs, are healthy and free. But if there is sense of weakness and uncertainty about being upheld in what one undertakes, or a feeling of lack as to support, the thighs and legs will express the inharmony. The experience so common to old age of displacement or breaking of the hip bones is one with the poverty-fears that so often becloud declining years.
The possession of mere outward riches is not sufficient to give lasting peace; only the uncovering of one’s rich mentality will establish eternal happiness. Every one comes into the world with this rich mentality. It works for us continually, whether we are conscious of it or not. And when we cooperate with it in any way, it externalizes as earthly abundance.
Money, at best, is a sign and a convenience; is nothing in itself but what man has made it. To be a slave to it, to worship it, and to put it in place of Soul or Spirit, is to invite old age and death. Therefore, let us be renewed in our very bones, by entering into the carelessness and innocence of the little child, who takes no thought for the morrow, and who does not measure its happiness by its accumulation.
The Laws of Prosperity are spiritual Laws, not material. And these laws are revealed to those who seek first the kingdom, and the righteousness of God. To have the mind of God and the heart of God; to live the life of God and to love with the love of God; is to have the secret of the rich life revealed, and there follows all peace and trust and rest and freedom. In that consciousness we know that we shall never be forsaken; that we always have been taken care of and that we always shall be; that our support and our supply is as natural to us as our life—indeed, is of the same nature. All these problems and experiences through which people are passing, are because they do not seek, first, oneness with God.
“I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” are the words of Moses, who proved that God prospers “the righteous”—what does he mean by “righteous”? Some one who is simply good? Or, can it be something more? For, oftentimes we find a man who is good, who says he always tries to do right by his neighbor, and who is just and generous, yet he is poor, and always has been poor, and there is no prospect of his being anything else. Instead of doubting these words of the prophet, rather should we begin to inquire into our own belief about righteousness.
“By their fruits you shall know them.” If I am in great poverty, if I am hampered by debt, if I must still worry and fear, and not know where my next meal is coming from, I am in ignorance. I must get understanding, and get knowledge. There is righteousness for me to fulfill, which I have not yet fulfilled; and instead of doubting this statement rather doubt one’s own mortal ways and thinking, the speaking, the acting, that there may be this righteousness in fullness, and then the things after which the nations seek can be added.
Let us consider the righteous thinking. One of the forms of it is embodied in the commandment: “Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth.”—Deut. 8: 18; which means that we are not to think that we have it by our personal powers. The wit and industry, astuteness, forehandedness, and foresight which we may have, themselves, are rich gifts from divinity, and almost invariably accompany the other forms of God’s prosperity. Give God the glory for it all and so keep the connection between your little Self and it Great Reality, your God-Self.
Another spiritual Law of Prosperity is Cheerfulness expressed in all optimistic ways; a cheerful spirit, a bright face, a loving heart, a trustful tone. Such a consciousness “makes fat thy bones.” The bones stand for our foundation thoughts, and if they have become dry and brittle, a new youthful foundation must be laid in joyous thinking. “He shall renew thy youth” in the very bones, by the Good Cheer quality of your rich mentality.
Generosity of soul is another divine Law of Prosperity. Freedom from envy, which, according to Proverbs 14: 30, “is rottenness of the bones,” belongs to the rich consciousness. Free giving and fearless contribution to the welfare of others belong to the great Way; yet not spilling one’s self or being like a sieve, through lack of judgment and principle. A slack hand comes from weakness, not strength. Nevertheless unprincipled generosity is nearer the kingdom than the tight hand of worldly thrift.
“If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity and thy darkness be as the noonday.
“And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.”—Isaiah 58:10, 11.
Freedom from sense of loss is another spiritual Law for Prosperity hi body and in affairs. Meditation on loss, whether of property or reputation, of friends through misunderstanding or death, is prolific of loss in property, and bodies grow weak and poor and affairs lean and hungry through such errors.
A poised, rounded body is the expression of even-mindedness, as to gain or loss. A false sense of accumulation of goods, a gathering, mentally, to one’s self more than is fit, or not distributing in the measure that one gathers, is the error back of too much adipose tissue.
“Go sell all that thou hast and give to the poor” is a drastic meditation to be realized for the healing of some extreme cases. On the other hand, poorness of the body is one of the outpicturings of poorness of thought, not always financial poorness—there are other forms of mean or miserly thinking. Away with them!
Whatever one’s estate, there is never any room for complaint. Those who would express the true body had best not find fault with what they have. Complaining about one’s body militates against it and interferes with your manifestation of that which you desire. To complain because you are too large or too small, too thin or too fat, or any other undesirable thing, is from a false standpoint and is not the way of the renewing, rebuilding, and reforming of the body. “A good report maketh the bones fat.”—Prov. 15: 30.
“The heart of the wise teacheth his mouth, and addeth learning to his lips. Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.”—Proverbs 16: 23, 24.
Speak the Truth, that is now true of your heavenly body and your heavenly affairs: “I am all right,” and “All is well.” And the words which you form in heart and mind, after the fair pattern in God’s realm, shall form anew the world in which you now appear.
“And though wrong grind thee small,
and all thine ends defeat—
Yet shall thy world grow polar to thee,
slowly taught,
And crystal out a new world like thy
thought.”
XI.
PATHS OF PLEASANTNESS.
Gloom and fear signs of missing the Way—The child and the youth naturally joyous—The knees, our belief in the power of non-resistance—Beauty of feet— Healing swollen feet and hard places on them—Walking by the Spirit, no weariness—Feet-washing—Safety from accidents, through attention to warnings—External experience indicators of mental state.
Meditation: “Thou wilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”—Ps. 16:11.
“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”— Prov. 3:13,17.
LIFE is God, and to live the life is to walk with God, the heavenly way, the path of joy. “All the way to heaven is heaven.” In it there are no thorns, no sorrows, no misunderstandings, no poverty or disease of any kind. The path of life is the fullness of joy. The path of life is the path of God. At the right hand of God are pleasures for evermore, and at the left hand, and one with God, which is to be in heaven.
It is the way of the transgressor that is hard, not the way of truth. Gloom, despondency, discouragement and fear are signs of missing the way, and the eyes must be lifted up and the divine will sought, with prayer and meditation, until the normal state of peace and joy returns.
The mind stayed on God is kept in perfect peace. It is both natural and spiritual to be joyous. The child that is natural is not gloomy, nor despondent, but joyous. Even in the midst of death, if it smiles or laughs, it is counted normal and all right, for it is a child, and joyousness is its right estate.
Sorrow is quickly forgotten in youth, for youth is the joyous state. To drink of the fountain of youth is to drink of joyousness, the brightness and the lightness, the freedom and the resilience of youth. The merry laugh, the quick response, the bright eye, all these expressions of joyousness are still youthful though many years are to the account of a human being; and in age the peace that crowns great years is still the peace of joy; not the peace of resignation nor the forced peace of submission; but the active peace that is the bloom and the fruitage of the joy that rests in divinity—the “joy of the Lord.”
“The joy of the Lord shall be your strength” throughout your whole being. Joy and happiness bring grace to every part of the body and especially is it strength to the knees. Happiness and joyousness manifest as fearlessness, and fearlessness is strength in the knees. Those who are normal in their consciousness of joy will have certain manifestations through these great joints, so that the knees are strong and yet free, not stiff but elastic.
Our knees stand for our belief in the power of non-resistance. This belief is rightly placed through wisdom— through knowing one’s self—that there is nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to resist, nothing to create pride in us. When the joy of life is free then there is freedom in the knees through agreement, and the love that causes the knee to bow easily. There are two reasons for bowing the knee, the false one of slavery and the true one of love. When we read that “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow,” the bowing of the knee is in the acknowledgment of the love, not the slavery of the one who bends; it is the bowing of the knee of the lover, the one who serves and gives homage, and who honors himself, even as he honors his loved one, in the bending of the knee.
Wisdom is back of the non-resistance to evil, the non-resistance to injury, which makes one conqueror; the wisdom that knows the nothingness of evil, that it is not to be resisted, but to be met and overcome with truth, so that there is the yielding before it but to conquer, the bending before it but to rebound, master, and not slave.
The coming of the Christ brings “the oil of joy for mourning,” which overcomes friction and makes the way of life smooth. This is ease in all joints of the body: to see that there is no place for sorrow, no place for discouragement. He shall give “the oil of joy for mourning”; sorrow must fly away; tears must be wiped from the eyes; and all sense of friction must pass from the consciousness with the coming of the Christ.
“How beautiful are the feet of them that bring us glad tidings,” we read in the Scripture. The feet of the Spirit are the thoughts that are swift and sure and that truly walk the way of life. Our belief concerning the way of life is pictured out in the feet. If our thoughts are true concerning the way of life, and according to the right views of life; seeing that divinity always walks the path of peace and the way of pleasantness; that there is nothing hard in the divine life; that life is easy and free and smooth and as a bed of roses in the way of truth; then the feet are normal, without any pain or false manifestations. But it has been taught, even in religions, that the way of life is hard; that the way of right is particularly thorny and difficult to walk, and all this teaching is from a false basis. It is to the false-thinking man and the false-believing man that the way is hard; as long as we think our way is hard, or material, or painful, there will be the picturing of hard places upon the feet, swollen feet, and the painful joints. The healing is the removing from the mind that false idea that life is hard, that one’s path is material, and that one’s walk in life is miserable. There is but one walk, one path, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” says the Christ; the Way is peace, the Truth is happiness, and the Life is rest, refreshment, comfort everywhere and in every way.
Those who think of life as hard, also believe that things are imposed upon them; that certain relationships are hard to bear; and that contact with the world makes life difficult to live. Now, “greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” Rise up in your strength and learn to be more positive, and know that he that is within is mightier than anything without yourself. This is especially helpful when you are being pressed upon in your body, by something external, being chafed or blistered by something contacting, and pressing down the little cells that then do not receive the air or blood because they are under such pressure. To yield supinely to the external pressure and feel that you are being imposed on by hard conditions is to forget the power that dwells within you, that can spring up and press against foreign things, not with resistance, but simply by knowing itself as pure Being.
A lady, who was walking on the streets of London with a Truth teacher, said she felt she could not take another step, because the bottoms of her feet felt so swollen and full of pain from certain calloused places, and every step was as on sharp-pointed stones. The teacher said to her, “The life that is in you is more positive than this sidewalk; you do not need to flatten, or yield before materiality; let each little cell rise up in the consciousness of living and being, and no longer be imposed upon by false conditions.” She grasped the thought so completely that she did not remember, until the next day, that she had not suffered any more after the teacher had spoken. Her feet grew positive in the power to rise in Being, to stand, not aggressively, or resistingly, but just being what they truly are—Spirit.
Joyousness especially expresses itself in the feet, in the ankle, and in the quick flying feet, the dancing feet, that “dance before the Lord” in Joyousness. The feet are light and swift and quick that live in the joyous consciousness, that know that life is not a burden, that our path is not hard, that we are not material and heavy and pressed down with the weight of sorrow, or the hardship of slavery. This is the beauty of the feet, that they themselves shall receive glad tidings, as well as carry glad tidings.
The feet also represent our understanding that we walk with God. This perception lifts your feet off the earth, makes you light throughout your whole being, so that you move, not by your feet, but by your Spirit. Have you ever experienced the uplift one can receive from another person’s desire to help you up a steep grade, or flight of steps, by just touching your back with the finger?
Once when the writer was climbing up Mt. Wilson in Southern California, as the climb began to be tiresome, and her body to feel very heavy, the thought came: “I am not walking by physical strength, but by the Spirit,” and with every step she silently repeated the words of Zechariah 4:6: “Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts,” when suddenly she felt herself lifted along the mountain trail as though with wings, and, while her feet went through the mechanical motion of walking, they no longer carried her body, and all the rest of the climb was an ecstasy of joy.
In the story of the manifestation of the Christ through Jesus, there is one act, that is very marked in his ministry, called “the washing of the feet of the disciples.” Read John 13:1 to 17, and meditate upon the symbolism of this work. The feet, being the point of contact between the human body and the earth, represent that point of the consciousness, spiritual or mental, that is tangent to the realm of appearances. It must be free from the sense of the necessity of matter and fleshly experiences, which is adulteration; and from the sense of attachment, not woven into maya, like the roots of a tree, but free as an angel.
We free our earthly feet from every form of corruption through declaring the truth of our spiritual feet, unsoiled by delusion of evil or matter. Yet while we abide unstained by the errors of mortality, we must not condemn nor despise aught in the realm of appearances.
Nothing is unclean of itself, nothing is to be counted despicable or contemptible. Remove all thought of contempt for anything or anybody, whenever washing the feet. According to the Hindu idea the people who do menial and low tasks, those of the lowest caste, came from the feet of Brahm. The perfect man is the circle wherein there is the meeting of the head and the feet. There is no separation, in the perfect man, between the head and the feet, all are one and all are of equal honor.
“He maketh my feet as hind’s feet,” the Psalmist declares, that is, like the mountain deer which springs from rock to rock and never slips. These are good words to keep the feet from slipping. If you feel your feet are being taken out from under you or you stumble, these should be signs to you, and the Word should be spoken that will prevent you from outpicturing anything worse. Speak the Word, that “in spirit and in truth your feet are secure.” These signs may indicate some liability you are about to incur; you are not, perhaps, open to the guidance of the Spirit as you should be, in taking a new step in your affairs; you may seem to make a mistake, even a failure. But this can be prevented or changed by your true word sent forth with realization.
Instead of being provoked with yourself, when your feet trip, or disturbed over your injuries, or the shame of falling, speak the Truth: “I am kept by the Spirit; I cannot make a misstep, I cannot go wrong, I cannot stumble. The Spirit keeps my feet in the way of life, peace, and righteousness,” and then you will be saved not only internally, but externally. You will be saved from taking a false mental step and from some outward expression that would be painful and humiliating.
There are no accidents in Spirit. There is nothing that happens by chance. Nothing that is called an accident can be in your experience if you keep close to the Christ. Often declare the Truth: “All my path is pleasantness and all my way is peace. The Way of life is the Way of peace, the path of pleasantness, in which there is no pain, no stumbling, no sorrow, no misery. I believe in the way of life, that is holy, healthy, peaceful, perfect, beautiful, even while I walk in the flesh.”
XII.
THE WORD MADE FLESH.
Perception illuminates the body—Intelligence, the head—Grace, the neck—Universality, the lungs—Love, the heart—Man, the Word of God—Translation in body, like that in language—Jesus, Saviour of the body—Nonattachment, freedom in the cells—The Ascension.
Meditation: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth.”—John 1: 14.
“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light”—Matt. 6:22.
THE light of the body is the perception. Perceiving nothing but intelligence manifests as the bright shining of the intellect, freedom in the thinking and reasoning; poise and peace expressed through the head. The senses shine with the light of consciousness. These gateways and doorways in the House of the Lord let forth the light and receive the light equally, so that the eyes are bright, full, and quick to see, and the ears are alert and true, and every sense is acute, a perfect, luminous orb of consciousness.
The eye singled to grace gives freedom in the neck, graciousness, ease, and perfection through that center of power, the throat and the neck. The eye that sees that right is universal— the perception that is broad, deep, and far-reaching, manifests as freedom of the lungs; and to see love as pure and strong and changeless, and in itself its own reward, makes a heart that is a great shining orb of living light. The perception that power is of God and therefore Omnipotence, manifests through the arms, shoulders, and hands as perfect execution, skill, and freedom from sense of burden.
Keeping the eye single to truth fills the whole organism with light—the digestive region, and especially the organs that have been counted dishonorable and despised, not to be mentioned, not even to be thought upon, or presented before the eye of man or God. Purity of perception lifts up the whole body, so that the organs of elimination become great lights, and the shame passes, and there is nothing but the expression of righteousness, judgment, and purity in every part of the body.
We find ease as to support and peace and quietness, so that the thighs are orderly—they, too, shine with the light. It is not the red blood of the unredeemed flesh that courses through this body, but the bright electric light running through the veins, making luminous the skin, the heart, the extremities; all brightness, all color and light, all beauty and grace of the Body Electric. This is the Word of God translated into the flesh.
Man is the spoken word of God— God’s thought made manifest and visible. God is ever expressing; the Word is coexistent with the thought. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.”—John 1: 1, 2, 3. God and man are coexistent throughout eternity. You are the Word of God, and, as the Word of God, your expression is perfect, nothing to be added to it and nothing to be taken away.
This is the beautiful privilege that is yours, to translate that Word from its language of heaven into its language of earth, and that translation is called “the Word made flesh.” We have used the word “translation” in describing the wonderful divine act that took place with Enoch. “By faith Enoch was translated, that he should not see death.”—Heb. 11:5. It has been used also to describe the going of Elijah. What has been applied to a Spiritual process, we also apply to languages. We translate from one language to another, and yet the expression in neither language is lost; and the process is not through the destroying of one to produce the other, but both exist together, for the idea that is expressed in both is one and the same. Thus the idea which is back of the Word that you are, and which is now in the language of heaven, is to be translated into the language of earth.
Translation is reciprocal, and there is a translation from Spirit into flesh and from flesh into Spirit. The translation that took place with Enoch and Elijah was of the idea, which they had brought to a great height in the flesh, into the Spirit. Wherever there is a translation one way, there is the possibility of translating back. Therefore we find Elijah upon the Mount of Transfiguration able to be translated from his spiritual expression, which was invisible to ordinary eyes, into that visible form which could be recognized by the eyes of flesh. As Elijah and Moses were communing with Jesus upon the Mount of Transfiguration, they were all three visible to the eyes of John and Peter and James (Mark 9: 2, 3, 4). Continually there walk among us men and women who are translated perfectly from Spirit into flesh; Abraham entertained such and they appeared to him in the door of his tent as men of flesh (Gen. 18:2). They were able to walk in the realm invisible to humanity and also to walk among men and partake of the same activities in ordinary life that mere mortals enjoy. Manoah and his wife communed with such a Master (Judges 13).
The translation of Elijah and Enoch seems more common in history than the other, the translation of Spirit into flesh, such as was made visible in Jesus. Jesus became the perfect translation of the Spirit into flesh; it was not the Spirit becoming flesh; there is quite a difference between “becoming” and “translation.” The English language does not become German when a translation is made from one language to the other. The languages remain the same, but the same idea is expressed in both, so that the translator manifests himself to those who are in the consciousness of both tongues, with equal facility. This, let us understand, is the meaning of the translation which is “immortality in the flesh,” which is your ability to express the idea which you are in the Divine mind, in the realm of Spirit, and in the realm of flesh, equally; so that you are recognized by those who function alone in the realm heavenly—of the Spirit, and also in the realm earthly—of the flesh. This privilege belongs to the perception of truth that is the divine seeing and knowing, so that, without death, destruction, or anything that expresses separation you can manifest where you will, upon what plane, in what form and to whom you will.
You are God’s Word made flesh, translated from the Spirit into flesh, and you are on your way, translating from flesh into Spirit. Now, we know a translation may sometimes seem very imperfect, so that it is quite difficult to understand the translator; and that is the reason why some people seem so little understood; and the translator needs to learn both languages more perfectly. To understand the language of heaven, while associated with the earth, makes- us good translators so that we can be easily understood, both in heaven and on earth. It means that we shall picture forth in this body the incorruptibility of our heavenly body; that we shall show forth in this flesh the wisdom, the love, the purity, the peace, the poise, and every good that belongs to our divine self.
Jesus Christ was “the Saviour of the body,” taking the flesh out of the corruptible—out of leprosy—into the purity of the flesh of a young child; taking the eyes out of the darkness and blackness of night, into the clear bright shining of the divine light in every little cell of the eyeballs; filling the cells, in every part of the bodies of those about him, who sought his healing, with pure, live Substance.
Paul declares “this corruptible must put on incorruption; this mortal must put on immortality,” and this is our privilege, that this be done to-day. Eventually, it is prophesied, this will be done throughout the whole planet. But they who take up this to-day are saved from much—from the ravages of time and disease, poverty and death. Now is salvation come to the earth; now is the day of saving; it is not to be put off one hour. “All flesh,” we read in the Scripture, “shall see the salvation of God,” shall have the perception of incorruptibility, of indestructibility, a perfect freedom from hurt or harm. “Thou hast given him power over all flesh.” Who is this “him”? It is that Christ which dwells in you and me, as well as in Jesus. “My flesh shall rest in hope for thou wilt not . . . suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” —Psalm 16: 9, 10.
Immortality in the flesh is the Word made flesh. The Way that the Word is perfectly translated into the flesh is the Way of Immortality, of perfect health and freedom and the full, rounded life while you walk the earth. The Soul is the builder; the body is the work. The Pattern in the Mount is held before the soul-consciousness, until every cell is rebuilt throughout the whole body by this perception of truth. To see this is the great work that your Father has given you to do: to prove that there is nothing but perfection; that there is nothing but peace and purity and goodness, even here in this center which is called the flesh; to have your eyes opened and know why you are here.
When the pressure is upon you to express, and you think it is music that you desire, or painting, or building, or housework, remember there is only one urge upon you, and that is to build the body of the Lord, to manifest the Holy Temple.
Every one is the Word of God with power to create. To have an ideal before you, of the perfect manifestation of the Spirit in the flesh, is to have that which Michael Angelo declares to be the best thing possible. “Nothing,” he says, “makes the soul so pure, so religious, as to endeavor to create something perfect. For God is perfection, and whoever strives for it strives for something Godlike!”
Whatever you put your mind to, do it with your Spirit as unto the Lord, and see that, in all things you are making, you are bringing forth and remaking yourself. Practice non-attachment, not justifying disappointment or fear concerning the things and people that you love. Apparently we are brought to crucifixion continually that we shall be detached in our expression in the flesh. As long as we feel fearful concerning separation from our loved ones, and hold to things, to money, to relatives—we have an expression in our body of the very cells hooking one into another; and these cells should be free that they may be reformed. Pray the prayer of freedom: “I am attached to nothing! In Spirit and in Truth I do not cling to anything or any personality. I am free.” By this there follows a loosening up between the very cells of your body, so that the air can flow freely between those cells. For you should be able to move these cells one upon another and not have them bound to any system, or fixed by any set way of thinking.
As long as there are rules and regulations, and we have fixed habits, and are attached to certain phases and relationships, so long do the cells of our body cling to each other. But it is written, “There shall not be one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.” This body must be dissolved by the recognition of truth working in and through you. Jesus said, “I have power to lay it [my life] down and I have power to take it again.” No man can take your life from you, but you can, through knowledge of truth and co-operation with the Spirit, loosen up every cell in your body, so have a free body in the flesh.
The thought of death is banished from the one who walks in the consciousness that perfect life knows no death. Yet shall we not make this change? There is a way laid out, the Christ way of the Ascension, wherein the body, if it were described in scientific terms, would be said to be raised in vibration so that there is a merging of the flesh into the light of our divine body, to re-emerge into earth manifestation at will, just as one can raise the vibrations of a piece of iron, so, first of all, it glows with a red heat and then with a white heat, and then it is all light, and you cannot see any iron at all; and it can return to the piece of iron that it was in the beginning. All this power is through man’s divine intelligence and ability to apply certain laws of Spirit. It is a masterly work and it is your privilege to accomplish it by the truth you may receive and apply.
What of those who, like Stephen, (Acts 7: 54 to 60) have passed, with their eyes upon the Spirit, full of spirituality and love? Again, I will answer that such are taken care of, for they will receive instruction in the invisible until the day when all shall stand in the flesh, and manifest the Word, which they are, in bodies of flesh. The Instructed are not subject to the second death, but they wait—not in deadness nor in sleep, but full of Godconsciousness of blessing all humanity there, or wherever they may be sent.
They who pass without this knowledge are taken care of also. Everyone must get it, and there are certain who think they have the truth, but as Paul says, they “fall asleep not discerning the Lord’s body” (I Cor. 11: 29, 30), the body of perfection, which we all have, and of which we partake daily when we will eat the words of Truth.
Meet every suggestion of evil with Truth, every doubt, every disturbance, every false belief. Substitute for them some word of Truth. Let us eat the words of Jesus Christ, giving ourselves to prayers of love and wisdom. Let us keep close to the Spirit, so that this mortal shall put on immortality, this corruptible shall put on incorruption.
Let your soul come forward and have the upper hand and do the work, and, as the flesh becomes nothing, meek and lowly, your divinity will work through you. Often speak to the Spirit, realizing that you are not doing this by your intellect—not by willing it to be done. Remember it is God that works and wills through you, to do whatever ought to be done by you, to renew, to regenerate, to bring into the manifestation in the flesh, that which you are in the Spirit—God’s Word of Truth, God’s divine utterance, which is eternal and perfect, the Light of the world, which Light you must let shine.
“Build thee more stately mansions,
0 my soul;
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the
last,”
not “shut thee from heaven” as the poet sings, but approach thee to heaven’s dome until no arch can separate thee from her heights, but the temple, which thou art on earth, shall prove God’s Temple “in heaven, not made by hands,” eternal, glorious, transcendentally beautiful and perfect, World without End! Amen.
The End