Talks

Transcript:

DATE: 19810301

TITLE: THE STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

I’d like to read to you this morning from the “Vision” magazine, Swami Ramdas’ article entitled, “God, the One Refuge:”

No human being in this world can say that he has not the moments of acute depression, harrowing sense of loss, blankness of despair, and pangs of agony, suspense and utter grief. In these crucial moments he has sought a way of escape from the painful condition to which he is subjected. He looks for some hand strong enough to lift him out of his slough of despondency. His aching heart cries for help, but he receives no response from anywhere. His crest-fallen spirit sinks lower still. His so-called friends, relations, and fellow men in the world fail him. Who can then save him and grant him peace? Where is hope for him?

Then, like a flash, the words of saints and devotees of God rush into his mind. Yes! There is one great hope, there is one great refuge, there is one great saviour, and He is God. God is the Friend of the helpless and the shelter of the weak and the suffering. He is the Protector and Nourisher of the world. He is the most loving Parent of all beings and creatures.

You do not appeal to Him in vain. The instant you turn your face to Him and long to be folded in His almighty embrace, that instant He pours on you the soothing light of His infinite grace. Your heavy-laden heart is at once unloaded of its sorrow. Your mind is bathed in the nectar of peace. Your soul, like a bird set free, now sings a song of freedom and joy. You feel intuitively that you have now come under the protection of an All-powerful Being. You become conscious that He is ever with you, in you, about you, watching, guiding and guarding you with the most loving vigilance and care.

Such is the experience of many a saint and devotee of the past and the present. Such is the experience of Ramdas, who writes these lines. Really, there is no safer and surer refuge for a creature than the Supreme Lord of the universe.

Remember this Lord, and feel always humble and childlike before Him. Offer yourself entirely to Him and enjoy forever and ever the blessings of true peace and freedom. Love Him beyond all the things and objects. Hold Him as your All-in-all. He is to be found in your own heart.

And this is a little article that was written by Kipling, and it describes the ideal state of being:

Only the Master shall praise us

And only the Master shall blame

And no one shall work for money

And no one shall work for fame

But each for the joy of working

And each in his own separate star

Shall paint the thing as he sees it

For the God of things as they are.

I think that is perfectly beautiful.

Our Bible reading this morning is from John, Chapter 12, beginning with Verse 23:

23 And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.

24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

26 If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

27 Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.

28 Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

29 The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake to him.

30 Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes.

31 Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all me.

My subject this morning is “The Stairway to Heaven.” That stairway to heaven is to be found only within yourselves. In the exoteric teachings, for centuries, in all the face of the world, we find the people engrossed with the outer things. We find them engrossed in various forms of worship. And they use various objects—statues, perhaps; incense. They light candles. They have many things on which to concentrate their minds in order that they might, as they think, worship God. These things are wonderful in the beginning. You can go through these exercises, and in fixing your mind upon these things which represent a form of worship to you, you are able to take your minds away from the worldly things and to gradually place them upon God.

In the beginning, because of the way we have been taught—we have not been taught to go within and seek God who is the Sole Dweller in our beings—we look to all of the outer images. We look to the historical God. We look to the historical Christ, by whatever name he is called in the various religions of the world. We look everywhere outside of ourselves. We are even taught to look out into the outer heavens for the second coming of the Christ, and yet he himself said that the kingdom of heaven is within. And therefore, if that be so, as I have mentioned many times, the kingdom of heaven is to be found by man within himself, where is this second coming of the Christ to manifest itself except out of the cloud of heaven within your own being when you are sufficiently purified to receive him?

But there is much work to be done, and man, because of his involvement with the senses, would rather spend his time in visiting, in gossiping, in satisfying his desires. He goes out and he buys innumerable things, always to decorate his home, to decorate his own being, to satisfy his desire to do things, to have things, to possess things, and he forgets the tremendous treasure that is waiting for him to explore and to finally find if he will pick up his cross and follow the Christ. And that cross is his own body. And he will find this stored in the center of his own being. And that treasure that is stored there is so great that it is beyond human words to describe.

The Bible starts, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But God the Absolute, in the absolute First-ness, shall we say, of not even being, existed within Himself. He was the Beyond, the First Cause. And we, in our human state of consciousness, think of everything in the relative state, everything in a state of duality; and yet, there is nothing but God in this whole universe.

He existed before creation, beyond creation, and that is called the First World, if you will, or the First Beyond Everything. It was a state of existence, and everything was contained within Himself. But He did not move. And then He moved, and He brought the Word into existence. He became the Deity whom men worship. He became the First Cause and He manifested that Cause as Light. And then He vibrated forth and He breathed into that form which He had created, and then life as we know it started to exist in all forms—this whole universe. It was merely an expression of that which was within Himself.

But though He was One in that manifested state, within Him were all of the separate logos or cells of His one body. And He expressed all of this in various forms. He breathed, into every part of this world, the life which had lain dormant within Himself. But man has created duality because he has separated himself in his consciousness from God. And so, because he thinks of God, then he thinks of himself as separate and that he must go back to God, he creates duality; whereas, everything there is, is only an expression of that One.

Now, there are four worlds, and the first world is the spiritual world. And that is the world of divine ideas, and that is called “the First Cause,” or that which becomes a body, so to speak. And the intelligence goes into that causal body and manifests forth as consciousness, as intelligence.

And then, as He expressed Himself farther into the world, He created a psychic body. And that psychic body has formed the same as this outer form of the whole universe and of ourselves individually. It can think, it can see, it can hear, it can smell, and so on, just as the physical body can. And then it projected forth and it became the gross body. So we have these bodies manifested in this world in all of creation.

But then, there is said to be a fourth body, and in Christian terminology we call it “hell,” or “Hades,” and that body comes into manifestation only after death. And it comes into manifestation only from those souls that have kept themselves in the lower states of consciousness, who have over‑indulged in sex, who have gone in for the lustful things of the world—for murder, for rape, for all of the things that will be destructive. And then man wonders why he cannot indulge in these things. And he is kept in a separate prison house, or, as we say, hell, and because of the terrible torture that he himself has brought upon himself through indulgence in the things of the flesh and in all of these things that are against the laws of God, he cries out in torment. He cries out in torment.

Now the brain is the higher part of your body, and that controls and governs the mind and the higher etheric breath. And the heart center controls the lower breath, the digestive organs, the lower part of the higher spiritual, shall we say. And then we have the navel, which has to do with the creative force in the universe, and then of course the coccygeal center, which has to do more with lust and with sex.

All of these things are there. And the world itself is divided into seven hierarchies, and we are the miniature part of that outer world, and we are complete in the microcosmic sense, just as complete as that outer universe. And we have all of that universe within ourselves.

There are seven steps in the outer universe and there are seven steps in our bodies, in our inner universe, and these seven steps are the seven spinal centers.

Now, coiled at the base of the universe as we know it—and that universe contains all of everything there is, all of the hierarchies, all of the stellar systems, everything there is—there is a coiled electrical force, or a serpent force, which goes out, in the universal sense, and furnishes light and energy and intelligence to all of the worlds. And in each man is that same serpent force which is spoken of in the Bible, which is coiled at the base of the spine. And the Hindus call it “the kundalini force.”

In the beginning when man’s animal nature is predominant within him, he indulges, as I have said, in all of the things of the senses. He is not interested in God. He is not interested in spiritual things. He is interested in the gross things of the world. And he expresses himself perhaps in dirty words, and we hear much of this going on today, these four‑letter words. We see people groveling in the sexual aspect of humanity. Everything that is gross, we see it coming into manifestation. And he thinks that this is the “in” thing to do, and it is not.

There is nothing wrong in being refined. There is nothing wrong in the beauty that is all around us, and that we can express from within ourselves and create that beauty in our own inner world.

Don’t forget that it says here, and it’s the last verse in this that I read you: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” The Christ is the intelligence. He is the life, the energy, the power, the everything in you, in every single man, but he is born the son of man, in the human state of consciousness, which in the beginning is the animal state of man. And that animal state must be transformed. And then he becomes a higher type of man, a human ego, one that one can be proud to know. But that is still in the human state, and that son of man, that spiritual part which is called the “son of man,” must be lifted up. It must be transformed before it can become the Christed One, the Son of God. And in order to do that, you have to take definite steps.

There is a story of a man who went to a great sage, and he asked him to teach him.

And he said, “Alright. I will give you something to do.” He said, “Take that lamp over there and light it.”

The man tried, and tried again, to light the lamp, but the lamp would not light. The wick would not burn. And the reason was because it was filled with water. So he said, “I cannot do it.”

The sage said to him, “Of course you cannot do it.” He said, “Now empty the lamp.” And he said, “Put in place of the water, oil.” He said, “Take the wick and squeeze the water out of it and then light it, and you will find that the lamp will burn.”

And so the man did this, each one of these things, and he lit the lamp and the lamp burned.

Now, the water designates your desire for worldly things, and as long as you have the desire for worldly things within yourself, your lamp cannot be lit with the Spirit of God.

And so the wick, that had to have the water squeezed out of it, denotes renunciation of worldly things. What does this renunciation mean? Does it mean that you have to give up all of the things which you have been used to enjoying all of your lives? Does it mean you have to give up your clothes, your possessions, your houses, your family, all of these things? No. It means you have to give up your attachment to them. And until you are willing to give up that attachment and not be possessed by them, you cannot make any spiritual progress. But when you do, you can be in the world—live in it, enjoy it to the utmost—and yet not be of it.

And when you reach that point where you are willing to dedicate every part of your life, your being, your possessions, all of those that you call dear, to God—to let go and let God—then and then alone will this great light manifest itself within your being. And you will find that in giving up everything that you held dear, that you gave up nothing except that which was your own in the beginning and which will remain your own forevermore, to use but not to abuse—that you have attained freedom and not bondage; that you have become the son, the daughter of the freewoman and you have been released from the bondswoman, that of the human within yourself which kept you in captivity.

And as the light burns then, it brings on the third quality, which is wisdom. All of these things the master taught. “This,” he said, “that is all you need. Now go forth and live, and you will find that you are God.”

What a wonderful story, and it is true. We are God in human form. The Christ that we have worshipped for 2,000 years as existing in only one body, is that universal Christ-consciousness—energy, power, beauty, glory, everything; peace—that first emanated from the Deity which we call God. And when He first manifested Himself, He became God the Father, or Spirit, and He projected Himself into the womb of the nature which He has created, and brought forth a form. And that was the Word which took on the form of flesh in the whole universe, not just in one man.

But from time to time, down through the ages, when the world is full of sin, of darkness, of corruption, and men’s minds and hearts are without any thought, any feeling of God, then God sends what is called an incarnation, or an avatar, as the Hindus express it—one who is a direct descent from God Himself, to bring forth the light of Truth into the world and to change the consciousness of men, and to complete the cycle which has gone out from Himself to the very bottom of darkness and bring it back into the light of consciousness, understanding, brilliance; where men may not even need to create in the way that they do outwardly now, but that they can create with thought. They can create forms. They can impregnate into the womb of all creation that which they want to see manifested.

And I have told you before of sitting at the feet of this great Master, Maharaj Swami Ashokananda, and having him tell me that in the olden days, the stories came, were handed down, in India, of men who had truly manifested themselves as being one with God. And it was not necessary for them to have a physical union with a woman in order to create a child; but rather, they would think a thought and the pregnancy took place. They would reach over and touch her on the forehead or on the breast, and the woman would be impregnated and would bring forth a wonderful spiritual child.

Now, to people who are bound in the senses, who see nothing wrong in constantly indulging in things of the physical nature, this is an absolutely abhorrent idea and they think of what they give up in the way of sensation. But I would like to mention to these people that what they are depriving themselves of in the way of the feeling of the bliss of God is so much greater, in every sense of the word, that there is absolutely no words in the human sense that can be used to describe the difference because when you are truly lifted up, when you have actually picked up your cross, which is your body, and you have followed the Christ (which means to emulate him in every detail, to climb your ladder to heaven, the stairway to heaven within yourself through the seven spinal centers,) as this kundalini force rises and it hits every center it experiences that which goes on in that particular world within yourself, and it becomes a part of that. It tastes it, so to speak. And then it rises above it, and goes to the next one, and it unfolds another world within yourself.

And this all happens within, not without. You are dimly conscious of the outer world, but you are engrossed in that experience which God Himself has catapulted you into because He knows that finally your mind has turned to Him, your heart has opened up to receive only His love; that you are sick of all of this duality and what you’ve put yourselves through. And believe me, we put ourselves through it. Nobody does it to us.

But there’s one saving grace: that no matter what you have done, that God is ready to forgive us, each and every one of us. He forgives us. And whatever we have done in the past—and it is said that it takes a million years for man’s consciousness to evolve from the time he went out from God until he returns totally to the bosom of God—you go through many lives, many experiences, and finally reach that state of oneness or perfection.

And so, it happens within yourself that you go through these seven worlds, or seven spinal centers, until finally you escape from the body, the object that you were manifesting in, and you become that which you were before creation. And that is called the “death state,” which Jesus the Christ is said to have experienced.

And these avatars, these Christs—and they are called by different names only because the people speak a different language. But they are speaking of the same One Father God, the same thing One Christ-consciousness, Power, Intelligence, Joy, Beauty, everything. They speak of that same One in their own language. And because of our ignorance, we think that these people, who speak the name of God and of Christ in their own language, in their own words, are heathens, and it is not so. It is not so.

We are all God’s children. We are all a part of Him, all a part of creation, and man should not distinguish between men because of color, because of creed, because of caste, because all are the separate cells of His one body.

And when our consciousness is lifted up, we are filled with the bliss of His Infinite Presence. We have gone through all of these worlds. We have conquered them. We have become the great adventurer. We have gone on the great adventure of exploring what is within our own private microcosmic universe, and we have risen above it.

You don’t do that by paying attention to “Mr. In‑Between,” of becoming involved in visions, of astral travel, of levitation, of all of the things that man is so entranced with today—of psychic readings, of regressions into former incarnations.

Don’t forget that whenever you go to a regressionist, and that regression is successful, you bring into your present state of consciousness and awareness that which you were before and that which you have paid the price for, or haven’t paid the price for, and which God in His mercy has let lie dormant because He doesn’t want you to have to deal with it. Because how do you know what you were? How do you know what you did? You can’t all be William the Conquerors or all be Cleopatras, for goodness sakes. You know? And how many of them do we find around, that these couch-readers tell about? And what does it do? It enhances the human ego: “Oh, I was a great king.” “I was a great pharaoh.” “I was a great this or that or the other thing,” or, “I was a great saint.”

What difference does it make what you were? Whatever you were has become a part of what you are in your consciousness this very moment, and what you think, say and do this moment determines what all of your future, all of your tomorrows will be. And I clue you that if you want them to be good, then you’d better think positive thoughts. You’d better change your consciousness and your way of doing things, and your life, and your attachments to the things of the outside world. You can enjoy them but don’t be attached to them because every time you put forth an attachment to something or somebody, you give a part of yourself to that. And in order to reach the millennium, in order to reach the highest of that which you are capable of reaching within yourself, you have to draw all of the pieces of yourself back together and take it inside and lift it up.

Now, we worship Jesus the Christ in the orthodox sense as being the only begotten, the only manifested Son of God, and he came in a human body. And that he was great, there can be no doubt. He was the ultimate in the expression of divinity in man, but so was Krishna, so was the Buddha, so, it is said, was Confucius. And certainly there are millions of people today who worship Mohammed, Zoroaster, that down through the ages these great ones have come. And what difference by what name we call him? It is God made manifest.

And God is not so limited, so curtailed, that He can make only one. The only one that He made (and He did make that one) was the Universal Christ, that one who first expressed himself from the bosom of God, who became the “carpenter” of the universe and then lodged in every atom of creation which had expressed itself as being a part of God.

You have this whole world to explore within yourselves, all of the light forms. And don’t forget that you have created a universe within yourself, within yourself. Don’t forget that Jesus says here,

26 If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

You can become an heir with Christ. You can become equal to Christ; and yet, if you make that statement to an orthodox religionist, they will look at you in horror and think you are an angel of Satan. And yet, if they would only read what it says in here: “I of myself am nothing,” said the Christ. “I of myself am nothing. It is my Father who doeth the works.” [paraphrased from John 14:10] And “He who has seen me, has seen the Father [paraphrased from John 14:9] because the Father expresses in me, His son.” But He expresses in you, His son, His daughter, in everything that there is.

Let us universalize our minds and not limit the Christ. Let us see him spread all over space. Let us envision this great Light, this great Beauty, this great Power, and emulate that, make ourselves into that. Climb the spinal stairway to the heaven within your own being, and then transcend even that, into the so‑called death state. And then, when you return, you will become a lamp to light the way for many. This must come to every man at some time.

Another couple of verses out of the Bible: John, Chapter 3 beginning with Verse 14,

14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:

Now, Moses represents the law. In the parable, or in allegoric form, Moses received the Ten Commandments, which are called by different names but yet which are the Ten Commandments in every great religion of the world. And the law, then, finally went into operation and it lifted up this kundalini force or this serpent force (which is an electrical force coiled at the base of every man’s spine) in the wilderness. And we are a wilderness, believe me, and there are the wild animals of our desires roaming this wilderness. And it is through this that the son of man must go.

And don’t forget that the more you indulge in the things of the senses, the more you are going to have to endure and go through, which you have caused yourself, when the time comes when God knows you’re ready. And He is the only one that knows, because He is within you and He knows when your heart is with Him, when every part of your being longs, reaches out, aches for union with Him and you cry for Him and you’re willing to give up everything and even to die for Him.

And isn’t it an amazing thing that the orthodox Christians say, “Have you accepted Christ as your personal savior?” And if you say, “Yes,” then you go into this euphoric state and you are supposed to be saved. Saved from what? Saved from what? You have not made any effort, and yet it says in the Bible that salvation is the “pearl of great price,” and it must be paid not vicariously by one man, the Christ, who lived 2,000 years ago, but by the Christ within you, the savior within you, because that is the spiritual part of the human: the savior, the son of man. And that one must be lifted up into Divine Consciousness until he becomes the Christed One, the Son of God.

Then from Chapter 8, Verse 28:

…when ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he,

And get this:

…that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.

29 And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.

When you come to the point where you are ready to please God alone, and not yourself, you will have arrived at the beginning of climbing your ladder, your stairway, your spiritual stairway, into the heaven within your own being.

You have such a beautiful world. You have all gifts there. You have wisdom, you have power, you have bliss, you have joy, you have beauty, you have light, you have peace, all waiting for you if you will but let go of the things of the senses and reach out for the things of the Spirit. Eat of the meat of the Spirit, drink of the wine of the Spirit, and don’t be satisfied with anything less until you reach your goal, which is the millennium, and which is the destiny of every single man, and which is the only purpose for which he came.

He’s not put here to satisfy his senses. He is put here with senses, true, and they must be used, because in order to exist we have to think, see, hear, smell, taste, feel. And all that we experience then is related to the brain and becomes a part of our conscious mind and our memory storehouse, and even if we don’t consciously remember it, it’s in there because we have put it there. It’s like making a phonograph record, and the needle keeps on going, and winding and winding and winding until you dissolve into light and there is no needle, there is no record, there is no music, there is no sound. There is the Stillness.

“Be still and know that I am God,” it says in the 46th Psalm. Be still! So time should be spent in meditation, in communion with God within yourself. That should be the first thought in your mind each day, and the last in the evening. It should permeate every moment of your consciousness throughout the day. And you must know that whatever you do, that of yourself you can do nothing, even as Christ said, but that it is your Father who doeth the works. He feeds you the ideas, He feeds you the strength. He feeds you the will, the power to bring into manifestation everything that comes from you, and in truth you of yourself are nothing. Neither am I. It is my Father who doeth the works.

Do you think I can stand up here and speak to you, I who have never graduated from a school in my life, in the way that I do? The school of life that I have graduated from is the universe and the school of Spirit, and I paid the full price.

And these people who look at me askance and think I’m an angel of Satan because I don’t believe just the way they do—I do believe in the Christ with all my heart, my mind, my soul, to the extent that I gave my own personal life to Him to do with as He willed. I went through the state of death. I returned. I went through all of the experiences that are described in parables here so that I could return and tell you the Truth! Whether you believe it or not is your option, but I do tell you the Truth. And that is real love for Christ.

If you asked a so-called Christian, who says that he is absolutely a dedicated Christian, “Would you be willing to die for Christ?” (which is what is meant when you pick up your cross and follow him)— “Would you die for Him?”—you wouldn’t have very many takers. My love for him was so great that I did. And yet, some call me an angel of Satan because I don’t believe the way they do.

I can understand their point of view. It is their present state of consciousness. God is there because He’s everywhere equally present. I give them that right because they are where they are supposed to be, where God has placed them. And I do not blame them because they cannot understand where I am, where I have been, where I have come from.

But I want this for each and every one of you because, you see, what is there to fear? Having gone through all of that, still I stand before you. And the power that comes from me, the words that come from me, come not from myself but from Him who sent me, just as He sent you. And you have, and can become, anything that you see in me, and greater. Remember that Jesus said. “All of these works that I do, ye may do also. And even greater works than these that I do, ye may do.” [paraphrased from John 14:12] And I say the same things to you.

Many of you say to me in private conversations, “Oh, but look what you are.”

How do you think I got that way?

Somebody said the same thing to my own spiritual teacher one time: “But Master,” you know, “look what you are.”

He said, “Yes. But how do you think I got that way?”

He got that way by putting God before himself, by giving up his own lust, his own desires, and thinking about God alone, of acting for God alone.

In your jobs, in whatever you do; in your housework, in taking care of your children. In whatever work that you are involved in at the moment, know that God is doing it through the form which He created—He alone—and that you have the blessed privilege of being the witness to that which the Father does in you. And with everything that you do, do for Him alone, not for your little self, and the joy and the peace and the bliss and the power which will come to you is beyond my power to describe to you in human words because bliss is a thing that must be felt.

And do not mistake the “rapture,” or the ecstasy—which is the highest state of human development and which the exoteric Christian reaches out for when he thinks that the graves are going to open up and that all of these people are going to come forth when the second coming of the Christ comes—don’t concentrate on that rapture, but go through it. Pass it, and go through what is necessary, what God puts you through, in order to attain the ultimate: the bliss and the everlasting oneness, peace, glory of knowing that you are one with God in human form.

Reach out for it. Climb your ladder. Climb the seven steps and approach it with joy. Approach it with tears, if you wish, but approach it, because you do not know what you are depriving yourself of.

I work hard. The body becomes so-called “ill” at times; and yet, amazingly enough, every blessed time almost (maybe once in a while there’s a slight exception) nothing is wrong with this body.

Recently, I had a physical. My heart had been kicking up. And yet, the results came out that it was better than it was the last time. Now, how do you account for that? It is because God gives me certain things to work out in my body for all of those who follow with me. It isn’t something that I take on myself; He gives it to me. And I accept it willingly. And when you see me this way, don’t think, “Well, she should be perfect.” I am what my Father makes me because I am totally surrendered to Him.

This body, I gave up long years ago to His service. I gave it to Him. I asked Him to take it and use it as He willed. And nobody took my free will away from me. It is my will to do only the will of my Father. And He may use every last shred of me—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually—to do His work, to try to help those who are still suffering and in darkness.

This is what I want. This is what I dedicate myself to. And you will see that if each one of you will pick up your cross and follow the Christ and dedicate yourself to Him with all of your heart, your mind and your soul, you will know what I mean. You will find the joy of giving. You will find the joy even of suffering for, not yourself anymore because you’ve paid the full price, but for others, in order that we may have a new world, a new life, a new everything—where there is peace, not only on earth but in the earth of your own being, and so that you can live suspended between the earth and the heaven, the human and the Divine, and not give up anything of either, but have the best: the peace, the wonder, the beauty, the glory of all, because it is one world, and that world is God.

I’d like to close by briefly reading you something which I think is entrancing. It’s entitled, “The Purple Dream.” And this was written way back in 1934 by a man who was with my Guru. And his name was James M. Warnack:

Once in a saffron twilight, a Purple Dream went searching for a soul to whom she might offer her friendship, and she saw a rich man in his counting house. And the man pleased her. And she hovered about him with joy in her eyes. But when he left the mart for his home, he took no wealth of thought nor gold of sympathy with him. And the Dream deserted him, for she saw that the shining treasure that his hands caressed was the symbol not of goodness but of greed.

And the Dream flew away to seek for one more worthy of her beauty, and she found a man that she thought she could love, for she watched him as he passed through the doors of a temple, whispering holy words from sacred books. But as he knelt at the altar, a shadow passed between him and the Dream, and entering the heart of the man at prayer, made murky all the red rivers in his veins. And the Dream passed on, for she could not dwell within a darkened mind.

A man of learning next she found, and thought to find a home within his heart. But soon, she saw that he was one whose knowledge of appearances had made him blind to the glories of the unseen.

On and on flew the Dream, hoping, ‘ere the night should fall, to find one spirit that would recognize and welcome her. Yet, no one seemed to know her, nor to want her, and she saw no one who made her heart rejoice.

The Purple Dream folded her rainbow-tinted wings for a brief rest before her contemplated return to the Mother of Dreams beyond the veil of time. Sitting alone beneath a magnolia tree, she suddenly beheld a little girl not far away, and the child was weeping because her doll had fallen to the ground and its tiny arms were broken. Gathering the doll in her arms, the little girl started homeward, pressing her baby to her breast and crying as though her heart would break.

And the Purple Dream took the star-bordered mantle of evening and wiped the tears from the eyes of the child, and she followed the little one home and lay by her side all the night.

And the child awoke with a smile in the morning, for the Dream had found her own.

Isn’t that beautiful?

You know, the world needs each and every one of us. The world is what we make it. The world is what we think it to be, so let us see it filled with the beauty, the wonder, the light of God. Let us think only positive thoughts and bring into the manifestation within our own lives the greatest dream of all: our union with God. And when you have that union, you are one with every single man, woman and child, every part of creation in all of this world and beyond.

Who would not want such a fate? And you wake up one morning and realize that all, all is your Self, that I AM THAT I AM—God, in human form.

 

Transcript:

DATE: 19810222

TITLE: MS THE POWER TO BECOME

I want to read to you this morning from the Vision Magazine, an article written by Swami Ramdas entitled “God Our Mainstay.”

If there is one who can always stand by us and on whom we can place complete reliance, that one is God alone. Usually a man depends upon so many persons and objects of life for help, relief, and security. Very often such a dependence results in sore disillusionment. At the moment of stress, trial and necessity, they all fail him. But he who looks to God and makes Him his sole friend, protector and guide can feel always safe, courageous and happy. It is the experience of many devotees that trust in God at the time of acute crisis in their life has brought them instant inner tranquility and outer relief. Such instances are common in the lives of the devotees chronicled in the scriptures of all faiths in the world. To such, God is the living reality. They feel His protecting hand. They realize His presence at all times. They live in the ecstasy of unbroken union with Him.

When ego is totally absent, when the mind has dissolved itself in the Divine Consciousness and all sense of duality and diversity has disappeared, it is now we know that God is the sole ruler seated in our hearts, wherefrom He inspires, leads, and controls all our mental, vital, and physical activities. It is now that we become absolutely fearless and remain ever free and cheerful, as the child does in the presence of its mother. Verily, God is infinitely more tender and loving than the physical mother. When you have once discovered your filial link in relationship with Him, what a wonderful change takes place in your life. How exalted, blissful, and peaceful you become. Your life now flows like the crystal, pure rippling river producing the music of eternity.

Reliance on God should not take a gross and material form. Dependence on Him means primarily inner strength, intrepidity, and assurance, for God dwells in us. He provides for all things. His will is supreme. It works always for the good of all. The heart of the devotee who has placed himself in the hands of God is therefore unruffled, serene, and perfectly at peace. And, like the summer sky, no clouds of cares and anxieties cross over it. This state is the one true achievement of life. It cannot be understood by mere hearing or reading about it. When your mind turns inward and loses itself in the infinity and immortality of your real being, then you will know the sublimity of this realization.

[pause]

Hmm. I just found it here. How nice.

Go into the world with eyes open to new beauty, with ears open to new sounds, with hands open to new needs, with minds open to new truth, with souls open to a new Spirit, and may the Lord go with you.

Our Bible reading this morning is one that you are all familiar with. We read it many, many times but it is always new, and it always has something new to offer. From the Gospel of John Chapter 1 beginning with verse 1.

	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 any thing made that was made.
	In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
	And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
	There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
	The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
	He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
	That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
	He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
	He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
	But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
	Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

This morning I would like to speak to you on the power to become. This chapter tells about it completely. I also want to read to you from a book that was published in 1910. It’s wonderful to get revelations from God. And they say that there are three ways that you can determine whether or not the revelations you receive are hallucinatory, figments of your imagination, or whether they are the real truth that comes from God.

One is that another God‑realized Soul verifies it. The other is that you find it in the scriptures or in some other way that is verifiable. And the third is that it becomes prophecy fulfilled.

This is a tremendous book. My daughter, Barbara, gave it or is loaning it to me to read. And it’s just full of wonderful truth and surprises. And it’s entitled “The Apocalypse Unsealed.” [by James M Pryse] It speaks first of the visible sensuous world. And the first one is “the perception of images.” The second one is “faith” and “psychic groping.” These first two are matters of “opinion” and “illusory knowledge.” The second is entitled “the intelligible, suprasensuous world.” This has to do with “philosophic reason and direct cognition.” And it has to do with “wisdom” and “true knowledge.”

The first of these degrees covers the whole field of the inductive physical sciences, which are concerned with investigating the phenomena of external nature; the second degree embraces exoteric religion and all phases of blind belief; and these two degrees pertaining to the phrenic or lower mind comprise all the knowledge available to those whose consciousness does not transcend the illusions of the material world. The third degree relates to speculative philosophy, which seeks to arrive at first principles by the effort of pure reason; the fourth degree is the direct apprehension of truth by the lucid mind independently of any reasoning process; and these two degrees, pertaining to the noetic or higher mind, represent the field of knowledge open to those whose consciousness rises to the world of spiritual reality. Elsewhere, Plato speaks of the mantic state, which he describes as a kind of madness produced “by a divine release from the ordinary ways of men.”

(I’m sure that all of you know that when we use the word exoteric, we are speaking of that which is outside of ourselves and when we speak of the esoteric, it is that which is to be found within ourselves, within our own hearts, within our own consciousness – Mother)

The exoteric scientist and religionist rely on the physical senses, the psychic emotions, and the intellectual faculties as these are in the present stage of human evolution; and while the scientist somewhat enlarges the scope of the senses by employing the telescope, the microscope, and other mechanical devices, the religionist puts his trust in the mutilated (and I want you to look at that word “mutilated”) records of suppositional revelations received from the remote past. But the esotericist, refusing to be confined within the narrow limits of the senses and the mental faculties, and recognizing that the gnostic powers of the soul are hopelessly hampered and obscured by its imperfect instrument, the physical body, devotes himself to what may be termed intensive self‑evolution, the conquest and utilization of all the forces and faculties that lie latent in that fontal essence within himself which is the primary source of all the elements and powers of his being, of all that he is, has been, and will be. By gaining conscious control of the hidden potencies which are the proximate cause of his individual evolution, he seeks to traverse in a comparatively brief period of time the path leading to spiritual illumination and liberation from terrestrial bondage, rushing forward, as it were, toward that goal which the human race as a whole, advancing in an almost imperceptible rate of progress, will reach only after eons of time. His effort is not so much to know as to become; and herein lies the tremendous import of the Delphic inscription: “Know Thyself,” which is the keynote of esotericism. For the esotericist understands that true self‑knowledge can be attained only through self‑development of the highest possible sense of the term, a development which begins with introspection and the awakening of creative and regenerative forces which now slumber in man’s inner protoplasmic nature, like the vivific potency in the ovum, and which when roused into activity transform him ultimately into a divine being bodied in a deathless ethereal form of ineffable beauty. This process of transcendental self‑conquest, the giving birth to oneself as a spiritual being, evolving from the concealed essence of one’s own embryonic nature a self‑luminous immortal body, is the sole subject-matter of the Apocalypse, as it is also the burden of the four Evangels; but, whereas in his Evangel, Ionnes has been content to follow the form of statement found in the three Synoptics, in the Apocalypse he has given an almost complete outline of the psycho-physiological process of regeneration or, as he calls it in his Evangel, the birth “from above.”

Now we have discussed many times this tremendous change which takes place in each one who has the courage to be a soldier of God, who has the courage to pick up his cross and follow Him even unto death in order that he might become His disciple. We shy away from this word called “death,” but there is no such thing as death. There is only a state of change, a deeper sleep; the putting aside the old garment and putting on a new one. You wake to the dawn of a new incarnation, a new life. And you proceed from where you left off the night before or the life before. And it goes on and on until your body becomes completely filled with the light of God where you are lifted up above all of duality where you live in that immortal state and you have earned that crown of eternal life. You think that that is impossible? Not at all. It is the most possible thing in the world.

There are many in this group that have been going through spiritual experiences. I understand what they go through. It is not easy. They are misunderstood because it is a strange experience when the soul is lifted up by God, and you are drawn into the inner realm of your being. And you are made to do strange things because don’t forget that you are on the battlefield between the two forces, which are forever at war within you.

That magnetic force, the good thief, which is eternally trying to take you to the realization of your Oneness with God and the bad thief that is trying to keep you in the world of the senses. You do many strange things. You may appear strange. People feel strange around people who are going through this experience.

And when they go through this so‑called death state, they’re still able afterwards to function in the human body because they arise from the dead so to speak, in their consciousness but just like you go to a funeral and you stand before a corpse or you sit in the congregation and the casket is up in front of you, you have a strange feeling about death.

And that is because you do not understand it because there is absolutely nothing to fear. There is a world beyond this world just like this world, only it is a light world. And it is a beautiful world. It has places in it just as we have hospitals and prisons. And we have all of the good places.

And for those of the elite we have special places like kings, queens, and sometimes saints, although usually they stay in the lowliest places. It depends on where they are and what their environmental training has been. They have these same things in the upper world. God gives us life, and He alone has the power to take that life from us.

There is much going on now in the way of conversation about euthanasia: whether or not one, if he is in tremendous pain, has the right to say that he doesn’t want to live anymore, has control over his life. In one way he does because he has free will. But if he does such a thing, then he must realize that in taking his own life he has committed a terrible…the worst sin in fact if you want to call it a sin against God, against life itself. So, he must go back to the beginning of his humanness, and that’s why we have abortions. That’s why we have miscarriages.

That’s why we have mothers who long for children and don’t have them because perhaps in another lifetime their acts brought this particular thing upon them. And so they want another chance. And these chances have to be taken time after time after time until finally you come to the same state. And you face the same decision that you had to face when you decided to do away with what you call your life, but you cannot kill life, you see, because God is eternal. And He is life. He is life. He is intelligence. He is power. His is the only presence in the world. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. So, in the beginning we have God as pure Spirit, and then He manifested Himself as God the Father. And He married God the Mother in the form of nature. He projected His spirit into the womb of nature. And in Him was life and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not because as humans we comprehend not because of the false training that we have had, that we are truly God in human form. That it is His light, His life, His intelligence—everything—His power and His will that motivates us and enables us to live in this world.

Then there was a man sent from God whose name was John. Now in the human ego consciousness when man starts to develop on the spiritual path, he starts to get premonitions. Sometimes he has hunches as we call them. He knows something is going to happen or that it isn’t going to happen. He has some fear within himself, and so this is called intuition.

And John the Baptist came to teach us about intuition. Don’t forget that Jesus said that the Bible was written in parables, and behind each parable is a kernel of truth. And when you have graduated into the higher realms of the spiritual world, then that truth is revealed to you.

So, that which came in the beginning to baptize you was that intuitive force, that still small voice which comes and which goes. The same came for a witness to bear witness of a life that all men through Him might believe. It says that John the Baptist was not that light but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light which lighteth every man that comes into the world.

What is that light? That is the Christ in you, and you will remember that he said that he was not worthy to touch the feet of the Christ. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. Jesus was the carpenter of the universe.

And, He lived in the body, not only of one man, who lived two thousand years ago, but He lives in the bodies of every single one who is present, and not present, the world over. He came unto his own, and His own received Him not.

He is within you, and you don’t realize He is there, because your mind has been so definitely programmed to realize, and to know that there was only one Son of God, Jesus, the Christ, who was born two thousand years ago. Don’t forget he was born the son of man. He became the Christed one, the newborn in God, only after the crucifixion. So, that’s when we should be celebrating his birth, when that first Christ consciousness is born within each and every one of you.

But, as many as received him, and this denies what we have been taught, in the exoteric sense, but, as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the Sons of God, even to them, that believe on his name. That is definite proof that he was saying, I am not the only one.

To all who receive this Christ consciousness, to them is given the power to become the Sons of God. And, it says, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Because, that second birth that everyone speaks of in the exoteric sense, happens within yourselves.

You have the most tremendous power that is in existence within you, because that power is the power of God. It can move mountains. It can change your life overnight, if you will only take hold of it, and dedicate yourselves totally to God. If God is everything there is, where is He not.

And, again, as I have said many times before, if God created the world, and nothing was created except by Him, then where does Satan come in, except as a figment of man’s imagination. It is pure delusion. Yet, we have given him form, and substance, through our very faith, our belief in him, which should be given only to God. I do not believe in concentrating on sin, on hellfire, and damnation, and the devil. I do not believe in concentrating on the mark of the beast, on evil. I believe in concentrating upon God alone. God alone.

My form, as a form of every spiritual teacher, is here only to serve God, and God in you. It is not to be deified, in no way. Whatever comes to me in that way, I give to Him, because, He is the sole everything of my being.

And, I can tell you, that if you will seek Him first, above all things, that all the desires of your heart that you ever had, will be taken care of. You will be lifted up into the Heaven of your own being. Because, did he not say that God, and the Kingdom of Heaven, are within? And, that he would come a second time, out of the cloud of Heaven, within your own consciousness. That happens, not outside. It may happen, because to God all things are possible. And, when it speaks of all the earthquakes, man has given, what is in the exoteric sense in the Bible, such power.

The belief in it is so strong that it is happening. But he, man, has made it happen through the destructive uses that he has made of the power within himself. He has discovered the atom bomb, and has exploded it in the bowels of the earth, in the water, in the ocean, in the sky. And, then he wonders why the air which he breathes is contaminated.

He throws his debris in the river, and he wonders why the rivers are no longer sparkling with fresh water. And, he is drinking water now that is not fit to drink, because it has to be doctored so much to take care of the vile things that men put in it. Man has brought this upon himself. He has built a cloud around this hemisphere and the sun literally can’t get through, nor can the fresh air that we use to breathe. Can it be changed? Is it too late? No, not if each and every one of you put God first.

It is very interesting to me to speak to people about God, especially in close encounters. Because, some hang on every word, they are so tuned in. And, whenever I speak to them, when I say I, I am using that perpendicular pronoun, which is God within myself, because, I am merely the witness of what he says, thinks, and does, through this form which he made. Some are entranced, and they are lifted up. And, some of them cry, and others cannot keep their attention fixed.

When the day comes when you can sit before a spiritual teacher, and be so engrossed in listening about the truth of God, that nothing can deter you, and you feel upset, or something upsets you, then you have arrived at the beginning of the ladder on which you can climb to get your own God‑realization.

You have the power of wit. You have the power of speech. You have the power to see. You have the power to hear. You have the power to taste. You have the power to feel. All of these powers, you have within yourselves, and you must think, “What can I do to make my life better?”

There is one great thing that you can do, and that is to learn how to go into deep meditation within yourselves, not just to pray on an extraneous basis, just like you hear in some of the churches when they say, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name, Thy kingdom come, and so on. And you can scarcely determine what the words are. Do you think that those prayers reach God? No way. No way. You have to praise Him in the silence. Be still, and know that I am God. Be still, and know that I am God.

I remember a story that I read. It was way back in 1934. It was written by a man who had been in prison. He had committed some terrible crime, but there was a great soul in the prison who changed this man’s life.

And he took on a new name. And he took the name, Star Daily. Now many times I’ve wondered if it wasn’t because he’d been taught that method of mediation, of looking for that spiritual eye, that single eye in the center of his forehead, and that he saw that star, daily. And anyway, he became very famous throughout the United States, and he wrote many books and gave many lectures.

But there’s one story that I remember reading that he told about a dream that he had had three times a year for four consecutive years. And then he had it in April of the fifth year, and don’t forget that this was long before the atom bomb was discovered, and used.

And he said that it was as though, he wasn’t on earth but he was in another realm, which of course he is now, and he was floating above the earth and as he looked down upon it he saw a tremendous desert waste. There didn’t seem to be anything growing on that waste.

And as he looked in the distance, he saw a group of people running. It was like a dark cloud in itself, or vapor. And they kept running and running, and looking fearfully behind them. And as they passed where he was floating above them, he looked back and he saw another dark cloud coming and overtaking them, covering them totally so that he saw nothing.

Finally, the cloud disappeared into the distance. As he looked again, he saw that there were many lying on the earth. But also he saw, here and there, bodies sitting in full lotus posture, in absolute stillness.

And these were the ones he said whom God told him had conquered the desire to breathe. My Guru many times said breathlessness is deathlessness. Breath is the cord which ties the soul to the body, by a very simple technique, which most of you have been taught.

It is in the Ecclesiastes, in the Old Testament. You learn to watch your breath. And as you become aware of the fact that you are breathing, at first rapidly perhaps, but not in any way trying to control it; just watch the fact that you are breathing. Become aware of it. Your breath gradually slows down until you are not breathing at all. And that stops all the functioning in your body. And you sit in a state of suspended animation. Nothing that happens above you or around you, in the sense of the atomic bomb or any power like it, can harm you.

Now, what about the earthquakes? Certainly, we’re experiencing them all over the world. It seems that the time has come. There’s been a book published, “We are the Earthquake Generation” and was published previously and since the Mount St. Helen eruption there is a new book with that included in it. It’s a very fascinating book.

Now, you can be filled with fear at all that’s happening or you can rush to God on the wings of prayer and meditation and these, securing Him, no matter what happens or where you are. And don’t forget that wherever you run, God is. Wherever you run, whatever your fate is is going to keep up with you, take up with you. And this is proven time after time. A whole airplane full of people crashes, and one person is saved out of that airplane full of people. Why? It wasn’t his time to go.

So we can’t run. We have to stay and face reality. And we have the power and the peace and the trust and the faith in God to do that, if we will only use it. Let us stop wasting our time. Let us use this tremendous power that God has given us within ourselves to learn how to truly live.

I don’t teach a religion, although it is said that religion is to teach you how to contact God; with a few, simple techniques that I give you, you might call it that. But we go beyond religion. We don’t concentrate on anything but God. We set our human goals for one purpose alone. And that is that we may bring forth the special gifts that God has given us. “Let us make something beautiful for God” as Mother Teresa says. And her life is a living example of that.

Let us be willing to give not just one moment or one hour of our lives a week, or two hours. But let us give Him every moment of our lives as He has given it to us, in conscious union with Him, in conscious communion with Him. Realize that to Him is given all power over Heaven and Earth, if you will only contact that Christ within yourself. He is wonderful. He is beautiful. He is all that exists in all this world. And all that seems evil is only delusion.

We can always find excuses not to do what we should. But if we will sit down and examine ourselves, then use our will power instead of “I won’t do this and I won’t do that.” You can use that constructively, too if you refuse to have what’s offered to you sometimes and resist so‑called temptation. But if you do succumb to temptation remember that you have written your own law upon your own forehead, with your own hand.

And for every action there’s an opposite and equal reaction. And so for every wrong thing that you think, say or do, you are going to pay for it. And nobody has done it to you. You have done it to yourselves, because you have refused to put God first. You do not realize the beauty, the truth, the wonder of living in God.

You punish yourselves. Sometimes you stay in a situation that is unbearable to you. It destroys you, and yet you have the power to move out of it, to begin a new life, if you only will. What it takes is faith and trust; not in things, not in people but in that Supreme Power of the universe and in the Christ in you. Every day surround yourself with His beauty, His wonder, His light.

Feel His peace. Open your heart to His love. That is the cave where you may go and worship Him. And you may go into the mountain of your own being. The thing that Jesus did when He went up into the mountain to pray. He went into that mountain of higher consciousness, in order that he might contact God and find out from that source of all things what to give to His people. He fed the multitudes with a few loaves of bread and a few fishes. He changed water into wine. Do you think that he did these things literally? They can be done.

When I was in India I heard the story about Swami Ramdas whose article I read you this morning, about his taking a trip one time on a train and when he reached his destination there were thousands of people there to greet this holy man.

Somebody gave him a big bag of rock candy. He took one bite and he passed it around. And it went from hand to hand and all the multitudes of people that had come to meet him and returned to him was some candy in the bag. Now how do you account for that? I have seen many miracles in my journeys to India.

Things that are seemingly unbelievable, but believe me I have seen them and I have gone back a second time to make sure that I wasn’t fostering any delusion within myself. You have such power within yourself to use things, to do things, to use your will constructively, to make of yourself supermen, to be examples for the world.

Just think if each of you were to contact just one person and through the tremendous light that shone within your own being, you could inspire that individual to seek God first within himself and to bring him into the fold. Soon we would have an army of people and would you suffer from it? No, you would gain. You would gain because you had reached out. You had been a witness for Christ. You had given of that tremendous love which you will find within your own heart, within your own, beats to somebody else. And just because you don’t have the whole ocean alongside of you from which to dip your cup, you have only a small stream, don’t fail to fill that cup with whatever you have, because in doing so, your own cup of water will grow. It’s beautiful, it’s wonderful and it’s what it says in here.

But as many as received, how many really want to receive Him? The reason they don’t, many times, when they change from the exoteric to the esoteric, is because they have fear within themselves and that’s natural, it’s understandable, because you don’t know what to expect and when you’re told that you must die for Christ, because to pick up your cross and follow him with your cross, which is your body, is to emulate him in every detail.

What dies is the human ego, the son of man. That false part of yourself which keeps your consciousness bound in the senses. And what springs forth? What rises from the grave of this so-called death, is the Christ in you, the little one, the new one in God.

And just as it takes three days or three separate periods of time, to descend into the hell or the subconscious mind of your own being, so also it takes three days or three separate experiences to ascend into the Heaven of your own being. And you do not become the fully Christed One, heir with Christ, One with God until you have conquered the ten subtle qualities of the mind in which are held the memories of that which the senses enjoyed.

So, you must keep on until you go through that sixth center which is the center of Christ consciousness. You have seven spinal centers. The sixth is that center of Christ consciousness. I am the way, the truth and the light. Nobody can go to the Father except through me, through that state of consciousness, then you go to the Father.

That One who created all things including the Christ and don’t forget that he himself says, I of myself am nothing. And yet we worship him and forget the Father God. It is my Father who doeth the works. He put forth His Christ consciousness, His Christ power, His Christ intelligence, His Christ will, His Christ everything. It is that which is in every atom of space and in every form that walks the Earth.

And until we realize that, until we find that within ourselves, until we have the courage to give up the things that destroy us, the people, the associations that destroy us, the habits that destroy us and put our attention on God and be what we should, obeying His commandments, we will not ever get out of our troubled situation. And we will still go on wandering in the dark; one minute up, one minute down, one minute filled with joy and happiness because something that we want has been given to us and the next minute down in the dumps because it has been taken away from us. And that will continue as long as you are in a human state of consciousness. It will continue from now until eternity. It will never get better until you change and only you, with God’s help, can do that.

Any spiritual teacher, who stands before you can inspire you, can give you the truth of their own experience. They can give you all that they have, but you are the one who has to take what they give and take it inside of yourself and make it work. And you start in by letting go of the thoughts, of the things that you want to get rid of and putting your mind on God and the things that you want to attain in Him.

Start seeing the good in people. Stop talking about them. We have the power of speech and that little cannon ball, the tongue can do more damage in five seconds than an atom bomb. It can destroy a life, a reputation. There isn’t a person on this earth that hasn’t had some sort of a sin and that sin as I’ve told you many times, do you know it’s just one thing to me, and that’s separation from God.

That idea of separation from God contains all the sins in the world, every one of them. And if you could accept, I and my Father are one this moment, equally with that idea that you have accepted of your separation from God, you would have it made but you won’t do it. You won’t permit yourself to do that. You hang on to the things of the senses. You cause yourself worry and torture and this is valuable time that could be spent in raising yourselves into something that is superhuman. You could walk the earth a child of God. completely heir with Christ. And only those who have eyes to see can tell what you have become, because you wear the same body, you have the same habit patterns of dress, of make‑up, of eating, whatever.

Maybe there have been some changes, but by and large you look the same and only those who have eyes to see can tell that you have really died to the world. The world has ended within you. The volcanoes have erupted, the earthquakes have happened, the floods have come within your own being and destroyed all of those forms that you have built in your consciousness, because you’ve built a whole universe within yourself. And so when the Christ arises within you, the graves within yourself open up and those who are meant to, will come forth, and this will be a new Heaven and a new Earth.

Not on the outside, but first within yourself, because everything happens within first and is projected outward. And God proved that when He was and then He created the heavens and the earth and all of the things in it. I would like to ask you to remember to use this power for your own highest good, to start from this moment on to think only of God and how you might serve Him.

Serve Him in everyone you meet. Love all of the good things in that person. See good in them even when you can’t see good in them. And praise even the littlest thing when you can praise them. And you will find that their hearts will open up, that they are sick. The greatest sickness in the world is a desire to be loved and not receiving it. And people search for it everywhere in the human sense.

Seldom do they really find what they’re looking for. But I tell you, if you will go within yourself and find union with that bridegroom who is the Christ in you, you will know love such as you have never dreamed of in this world. And that love will guide you, it will sustain you, it will provide every single need that you have, now and forever after.

Transcript:

DATE: 19810617

TITLE: MS THE RELIGION OF TRUTH

I’ve chosen for my topic tonight, “The Religion of Truth.”

I would like to read to you an article written by Swami Ramdas, entitled, “World Fellowship:”

The Eternal Divine Principle, which is the cause of the world-manifestation is at once an immanent and transcendent Reality, so to realize this great Truth, we have to go within ourselves. Since the Truth is all‑pervading, it forms an immortal and indissoluble link that unites all beings and creatures in the world. This is an all‑inclusive and all-comprehensive Reality.

Inherently, we are universal and perfect in nature. When man awakens to the consciousness of this perfection of his existence, he feels, through the inner spiritual experience, that he is one with all beings and things in the universe—nay, that the entire revelation of nature in its various aspects and multifarious activities is the expression of his own infinite and eternal being.

Utter freedom, bliss, power and peace are only for him or her who has attained to this supreme beatific vision. In this vision, the ephemeral values of life disappear, and man, shuffling off his local, limited and imperfect nature, stands revealed as a veritable embodiment of Divine effulgence, power and glory. Now, universal love is his creed, universal vision his religion.

The momentous changes we are now witnessing in the affairs of humanity are the signs of a transitional period, veering humanity towards the acceptance of an universal consciousness and brotherhood. Chaos and confusion bring forth order and harmony. A long night ends in a resplendent day. The wail of misery and pain is succeeded by joy and exultation. War, strife and bloodshed, washing away the dirt of selfish human nature, pave the way to unity, harmony and peace.

A superficial view of affairs as they prevail at present seems to offer ample food for a pessimist who is ever busy singing the one refrain of despair and despondency, but the seer, who sees things afar and whose inward vision reveals to him the glory of a future filled with goodwill, harmony and joy, is carrying his heartening message to the perplexed humanity.

The question would be asked whether the optimistic view of the seer is at all possible or practicable of consummation. The Divine Principle, embedded in the very life of the universe, stands for unity and harmony, and this Infinite Power, in its spontaneous out-growth, strives to bring about order out of chaos. So, the note of despair and disbelief has no place in a world which is rapidly evolving towards a supreme state of world union and world fellowship.

If, with a wide sweep of vision, we care to observe the great changes that are happening in the world, we have to admit that the Almighty Power has been deeply engaged in breaking down the walls of ignorance that have so long kept apart man from man, community from community, religion from religion, and nation from nation. The light has now dawned on humanity, a light which is arousing them to the knowledge of the common and eternal bond that unites them into one life and one unit.

Let every one of us put his shoulders to this giant wheel of evolution and hasten the coming of the magnificent kingdom of cosmic vision, harmony and peace.

And this was written in April of 1936 by my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, entitled, “The Unseen Church:”

On the soil of eternity, I built an Unseen Church where all might worship. Here, under the blue dome, illumined by sun, moon, aurora, Milky Way and wisdom lights, are gathered the assembled star families, island universes, solar systems, and the little earth with its millions of families of many religions.

Every day, during the vesper hour, the flying angels of thoughts soar over infinity, calling mute and noisy beings to forsake their age-long slumber and join the cosmic service of awakening.

The altars of one rhythm, united hearts of commingled lives, of molten gold of cosmic union and electrified matter, were dimly burning with His gentle, enchanting Presence.

The comets arrived and shed their joyous tears of light; the stars poured their twinkles at His Feet of Eternity, and the prodigal souls shed tears of repentance for age-long forgetful wanderings.

All the blossoms of the earth opened the cork of petals and loosened their liquid fragrance on His omnipresent altar. The dew of devotion from the heart of all true tears meekly but steadily flowed over His feet of forgiveness.

Love, hate, light and gloom, wisdom and ignorance, good and bad, all thronged into the Church of All Creation. Then, a silent sermon of the Infinite was heard in the silence. A silent song of mirth filled the chalice of all lives. A silent smile of light drove the hidden gloom away from all.

Under the silent spell of His sermon, love embraced hate, light hugged gloom, wisdom transmuted ignorance, good charmed bad. Many religions embraced His one faith of Truth, many hearts dissolved into one altar of Heart, many loves became His One Pure Love, and many souls became One Spirit. And all of them sang, with one voice, the chorus of one religion, one life, one truth, one goal, one devotion, one love, and One Spirit.

Now from Colossians, Chapter 1, beginning with Verse 12:

1. We give thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:
2. Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:
3. In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:
4. Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:
5. For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
6. And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
7. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
8. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;
9. And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.
10. And you, that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled.
11. In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:
12. If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister;
13. Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church:

It would be a wonderful thing if you will only stop to reflect upon it deeply, if everyone were to give up the idea that they belong to a certain church, to a certain religion by a certain name, and think of himself only as a disciple of God. It would be a wonderful thing if there was one religion under God because there is only one God who is the Father of us all.

If you continue to follow the social religions, and by that I mean those that follow the dogmatic path, and instead of exploring the higher truth of the Spirit, then indeed you will not make true spiritual progress. You must go beyond all religion in order to find the religion of Truth. That path is to be trod only within yourself.

Everything hinges on your own conscious willingness to receive the Truth, to reach out for it, to want it with everything you have. If you are satisfied with platitudes, with fairy tales, with parables, then this type of thing that I am speaking of is not yet for you. But to the one who is willing to pick up his cross, which is his body, and lay down his life for God, and by that, I mean not to die a human death in the way we think of the physical death but to give up his life in total surrender to God, to go through whatever spiritual experiences are necessary for him to realize this great Truth within himself, that he is indeed the temple of the living God—Remember that it says in John, 8, Verse 31: “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

When you first start on the path, you come to a spiritual teacher who has picked up his or her cross and has trod the path on the way to glory, who has gone over the top and found the real Truth within himself or herself, you approach it in accordance with that which is within your own consciousness.

Many come and ask questions about their daily life. Many come asking for prayers and help in sickness, in trouble, in finding jobs, whatever. There are many, many requests along that line. But it is the obligation, the responsibility of the teacher of Truth to get them back on the track and to put forth the saying, which is above all others in the Bible, that if you will seek God and the kingdom of heaven first, then all of the other things shall be added unto you.

That knowledge, that kingdom, that heaven—and that hell, if you will—are within yourself, and your life is exactly what you will make it. But if you really are a seeker of Truth, then you will want to know the Truth behind all of these so-called phrases that are put before us. You will forget about the historical religion you have been taught and you will do as the Christ enjoined, to seek the kingdom of heaven within yourself, because he said that is where it is to be found.

Now you must have the methods for doing that, and in the few simple techniques which we give, which are natural to the workings of your own being: the technique of the spiritual eye, the technique of hearing the Word of God, or the Om sound, which the Christians call Amen or A[h]men; and the watching of the breath so that the breath may be completely still and the body remain in a state of suspended animation. These are the techniques, the few techniques which are taught to you, and they will take you a tremendous way. You will have great experiences in God.

But the greatest gift that you can give God is your love, your obedience and your total surrender of everything which you call your self and your own, and few indeed are willing to give that.

You will say, “Well, I will give this. Yes, I’m willing to do it. I will give this. But what about my children? I’m responsible. What about my job? I have to work, don’t I, to earn a living? I can’t keep my mind on God all of the time and still keep my mind concentrated on my work.”

I have heard these things, and a million more, given as excuses not to follow the path of God, not to put Him first. And yet, without Him we are nothing and we can do nothing because He is the Sole Creator, Sustainer and Dissolver of this universe.

As Ramdas’s article stated, we are going through tremendous changes. The world is evolving at a very rapid pace. Things are disintegrating, even the earth itself, before our very eyes. There are unreal accidents happening. And we turn on the television or pick up the newspaper or listen to the radio [and] every single day we hear of some tragic accident that has happened, and sometimes many in one day. And we think all of the morbid thoughts: “The end of the world is come,” and “Gloom is upon us. We’re going to be destroyed.” And I tell you this, that some may be, this is true, but what we should be thinking about is the destruction of the “son of man,” the human ego. We should be thinking of transforming the animal nature within us into that of the Son of God, the Christed One, because each and every one that is here, and beyond, has the power to become an heir with Christ if you will but pick up your cross which is your body and emulate Him in every detail, to make Him first in your life.

Above all things, think of God first. Give Him your complete love and devotion, with all of your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. Do that, and then things will start to happen. The Truth will be revealed to you. You will know that this body is the cross that is spoken of in the Bible. You will realize that he is the head of the body. Again, the body, the church.

He said this is the “temple of the living God.” This is the church that is spoken of; and yet, all of the orthodox churches today think that they are the body of Christ. In no way! They are merely a building. Some of them are made out of bricks, some of them out of cement, some of them out of wood, some of them out of straw. Some just erect something simple in a forest. But it is the body of every man that is the church, the temple of the living God.

It is the body of man in which heaven is to be found. It is the body of man in which the Christ will descend out of the cloud of that heaven into your consciousness when you have purified yourself sufficiently to receive Him. It is this body that holds the answer to everything that is in the scriptures. But because man was not, at the time these scriptures were written, ready to hear the Truth, nor had he earned it, then a fairytale, if you will, a parable, was woven around the Truth and it was covered up so that the blind, the ignorant, and those who had evil ways would not be able to take advantage of it. But to those few who had this burning desire within themselves— within their minds, their hearts, their souls—to reach out and discover the Truth of the Infinite, these men went into the laboratories of their own souls and they experimented. They explored the inner kingdom, until they came out with some fantastic answers.

And these things are just not words, but they proved to themselves the power and the glory of that which they discovered. They became filled with the light of God. They realized their oneness with God. They realized that there was only One Creator, only one who should be given full respect, full allegiance, full love to, and that was God, the Creator of everything there is.

Do you think we can do anything by ourselves? In no way! We have to have a fountain of knowledge, of wisdom, of power, of love flowing into our bodies at all times, and the key to that is the flow from the Infinite through the medulla of every single individual soul. And that positive and negative force goes straight through to what we call the Christ Center, and then it is distributed through the brain, down through the sub‑powerhouses, the spinal centers, and each spinal center has jurisdiction over the function of one part of the body.

And it is constantly being charged. Just like the battery of a car needs recharging, so also we need to be recharged from the Infinite. Still, we are constantly thinking of all of the things that we say, that we do, that we discover, that we are responsible for, and we do it with a great human-ego sense. And as long as we know that we do it, instead of realizing that it is God Himself who does all things for us and through us, we will never become the great souls that we have the power within us to become.

There are many tests that come to the disciple as he puts his feet upon the path. Sometimes when you first start in and you are totally determined that you are going to find the Truth within yourself, that you’re going to be obedient to God, that you’re going to give up all of your bad habits, it seems as though all hell breaks loose and all of the things that you feared have come upon you. This is your test in the beginning, and there are many who draw away from that test and they run away with their back turned to the spiritual teacher and to God, going back into the pleasures of the senses, and also, don’t forget, the misery, the trials, the tribulations, the sorrow, the hurt, all of the things that you want to get rid of.

And as long as you remain in that state, so it will be. But when you’re willing to go through your tests and to prove yourself in the fire of testing, and to reach out beyond and above all that comes before you, to go through it and go to the other side of it, then one day you will start to feel the tremendous feeling of power, of love, of a complete change within yourself such as you have never known before.

Your whole being changes, so that you don’t want to associate with the same company as you associated with before. You are willing to give up liquor, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs. You are willing to change your habits of sex indulgence and lay everything you are and everything you have at the feet of the Lord, and reach out and say, “Lord, here am I. Take me. Do with me as You will. Let me be your child and your servant. Guide me. Direct me in all that I do.” And when you go within yourself and listen for that “still small voice,” that voice of intuition, gradually it will grow and grow and grow, until every time when you go inside of yourself you will be given new truths. You will take a new and another step up the ladder of God‑realization. Your consciousness will expand.

In the beginning, you may even have headaches. That is a very natural result of meditation and of practicing some of the techniques that are given. But don’t worry about it. Just like the seed of a child is planted in the mother’s body and her body has to accommodate it by expanding to receive it and its growth, just so, the seed of God‑realization is planted in your consciousness and in your heart. And as it grows, the expansion takes place and sometimes you have a headache. Sometimes you have pains. Sometimes the serpent‑like force, which lies at the base of the spine, starts to climb. It reverses itself from being constantly misused through sexual indulgence and it starts to go upward instead. And as you experience that, the body seems to catch on fire. And I’ve told you all, when that gets too bad, to put an ice pack on top of your head and it will dissipate itself very rapidly.

But the time will come when there will be no more expansion because you will have realized the fullness of your growth. You will have delivered the Christ Child within yourself. There will be no burning because all that was dross within you will have been purified. But it takes effort, it takes dedication, and you have a decision to make as to which road you want to travel. Do you want to travel the world of the senses and keep on being buffeted between the forces of so‑called good and evil, or do you want to take control of your mind, your body, your soul and your destiny and become the master of yourself, and therefore of your life and all that is within it?

As you grow in spiritual development, there are three tests that you must particularly watch out for. One is the test of power, and there are many, even advertisements in magazines of all types today, telling you how you can use your mind-power, asking you to send for information so that you can have control over other people’s minds, over their lives, over their actions and they don’t even know that this is being practiced. What a terrible thing to do, to invade somebody else’s privacy.

There’s much going on in the way of hypnotic efforts these days. It is being used as a cure‑all for many things. But don’t forget that when you go put yourself in the hands of a hypnotist, you are putting yourself in their power, and if you do it over a period of time, the results may not be good. Many things can happen, and you lose control of that which, if you put your mind to it, you could do yourself. There are extenuating circumstances in everything, and I’m a total realist and I make exceptions to every rule, as God directs me to do, but I’m speaking in terms of generality.

I think there have only been one or two people in all of the years that I’ve been teaching, that I have recommended that they use this treatment of hypnotism in order to help them, and it has. It has brought them out. But I certainly don’t recommend it. I recommend, rather, that you go within yourself and meditate, that you learn to control your mind, because everything in the way of your actions, your movements, your speech, originates in idea-form, and it is brought forth into manifestation through these other faculties which you have been given.

When you finally reach the state where you feel the power of God in you and you are able to use this power, make sure that you don’t think that you use it, or that you have power, because you of yourself are nothing; it is your Father who doeth the works. Remember that always.

I have, as I have told you before, through God’s grace and totally with His help, raised a man from the dead. Many have been healed through God in this body. Some of them, I haven’t even been aware of the fact that my body was being used for this purpose. And still, if I took somebody in my arms or laid my hands on them, and sometimes when I didn’t even touch them—as happened with one saint in India, still this man who hadn’t been able to get up and down by himself for seven long years, through the tremendous impact of the Spirit of God, rushed to me, put my hands on his forehead, on his head, said that I was his Divine Mother, that I must accept him as my son. And I was flabbergasted. All I could think of to say was “whatever God wills.” And this man, who hadn’t been able to get up and down for seven years, got down all by himself, prostrated full‑length on the ground and put his head on my feet, and got up by himself. This was a man who had three ashrams and thousands of followers. Now, I didn’t do one God-blessed thing. How could I take credit for it?

In the case of the man raised from the dead, I knew nothing about it. But I was brought there, I was asked to help, and so I asked God, if it was His will, to show me what to do. And He did. But to this day, I cannot take credit for anything that has happened.

Many times, I don’t find out about what my body is being used for until sometimes a week or two weeks or three weeks, or sometimes longer. I know that I’m going through certain things, that I’m probably working them out. But I don’t do it. I would be afraid to. I would be afraid to use power on any single human being. Unless God said, “Lay your hands on this one. Do this. Do that,” no way do I move! And I do not want anybody who follows with me to do anything like that, because God is the Supreme Power in the universe. He is the Healer, He is the Doer, He is the Sustainer. He is the Everything! We of ourselves are indeed nothing. So when you feel this sense of power, if He uses you to do something, then don’t take the credit for yourself and start to be filled with vain glory; but rather, give all of the credit to Him. It is your opportunity to develop humility.

Another thing that you must watch for on the way up is to be self‑righteous: when you have attained a certain state, to feel yourself better than anyone else. You are not. You are still just one of the children of God. True, you may have gone through tremendous experiences, you may have become master of yourself, but that doesn’t make you any different or any better than anyone else in God’s sight. It just makes you a more willing, a cleaner vessel that He may use, because He made it to do His work because He is the Doer. What do we have to feel self‑righteous about? Just exactly what?

So, these things must be taken into consideration. And on the way up many times, as you start to grow in numbers, then either you’re born in wealth, or with wealth in your family, and you’re used to it, you’re accustomed to it, and all the things that it buys—or, on your way up you accumulate wealth. Now, what you accumulate can be used to store up for yourself to be used to better your own situation, to get things for yourself—better houses, more cars, this, that, and the other thing—or it can be used merely to satisfy your basic needs and then use it for the help, the upliftment of all humanity.

So it is very, very important that you are not trapped by any one of these three things on the way up. But if you persist, the day will come when God will lift you up. He will put you through whatever experiences He knows are for your highest good and which you have earned to go through. You have been here through many incarnations and this is the time, the opportunity when you have the very great privilege of realizing who and what you are in Truth: to explore the inner universe of your own being, to reach out for the greatness which is contained within your God‑self, to find that Self in the sanctuary of your own soul and become one with It, and once and for all cast off the “creature,” the “beast,” whose mark is 666.

That is the number of man—man in his human-ego state, because the six centers below the seventh spinal center—The last one is where you find God; that is within your consciousness. But the others are attached to your idea body, your astral or electrical body, which controls and governs your nervous system, and finally your physical body. These three are the numbers 666 that are spoken of in the scriptures as being the number of man. And as long as you are still in the consciousness of man, you are still to some degree in the state of animal consciousness because you have all of the desires of lust, of greed, of anger, of passion, of pride, of vanity.

All of these various things are within yourself. But if you will make the effort to fix your mind upon God alone, to set yourself the greatest goal of all, which is to realize your True Self and become one with that Self, then all of the other things are going to be added unto you. But you’re just not sitting with your hands folded in the meantime; you are listening to the voice of God every moment. You are realizing that it is through His power, through His blessing, through His words, through His strength, through His everything, that you are able to function and do the things that you do.

And if you will only let go and let God, and listen for His voice of direction—Sometimes it’s His direction that you do nothing. But everybody wants to get in on the act. And each of us do many things, and many times they’re very helpful and they wrought many, many changes in the lives, not only our own lives, but in the lives of others around us.

And this is one way we serve God in one another. But sometimes it comes to pass that having done everything we know how, nothing has worked, and we have no choice but to put everything in God’s hands and say, “Well, Lord, I’ve done everything I know how. If anything is to be done, you must do it.” And when we do this—when we are totally relaxed, when we are totally surrendered to Him—we rise above the problem, we let go of it, and we let God. And believe me, He can perform miracles. I’ve had this happen in my life, I can’t tell you how many times, so I know that I speak the truth because the truth can only be proven when it works for you. It becomes the fulfilment of prophecy.

God prophesizes within you. He gives you information. He gives it to you through intuition in the beginning, which comes and goes. That is the “baptism by John.” But it is not the baptism of the “one which is to come” because finally when the price has been paid and the Christ has taken over your kingdom, you have become one with that Supreme Power within yourself. Then the flow becomes steady from God, within your consciousness, as to each separate thing that you think, say and do. You no longer have the responsibility, except to be the witness of that which He does through this form which He made.

And it is the most fascinating thing in the world to be that witness, to have so totally surrendered yourself to Him that there is nothing there but the Christ within you, and to watch how He performs—watch how He handles every situation, every individual that comes before you; watch how He provides for you, watch how He changes your world; watch how He turns that which was in darkness into light, that which was in poverty into riches, that which was barren into production of every kind. And you find gifts within yourself that you never dreamed you had.

And it doesn’t matter how young you are or how old you are; you can start this moment and make something of yourself. You can build a new religion based upon Truth alone, not upon the name: “I belong to this organization,” “I belong to this religion, (and the full emphasis is on that) but I hate everything else. Nothing else is good except what I follow. They don’t have the truth. I alone have it.”

And there have been wars and people have been killed because of this method of procedure in so‑called “religion,” in so‑called “faith” and following and love of Christ. How can they dare to think such a thing? There is only one religion, and that is the religion of Truth.

Many years ago, (this is in the original teachings of my Guru) he said,

Do not admire the dogmatism of any religion. I believe that dogmatism is due to material causes. Churches should be the laboratories of spiritual experience. Their dogmas should be burned, and the Truth retained. I want to bring to the minds of different religionists that the time has come not to hold on to the belief in dogmas but let the mind of God freely flow through your hearts. My purpose is not to show the supremacy of any religion, but to reveal Truth wherever it is.

How wonderful. Then he went on to say,

Self‑realization Fellowship (which is his organization) is not a sect, but offers a technique by which you can calm the body and the mind. To become a member, it is not necessary to change your religion. What is necessary is to establish a fellowship of all religions and to find the quickest route that leads to God. We do not try to monopolize Truth.

Do you see the beauty of that? If you are a follower of the Follower of Truth, you are God’s child. We must have nothing but the realization of God, the religion of Truth, so let us make up our minds to follow the Truth. As Jesus said, “The truth shall make you free.”

Today, I received a magazine from the organization. [SRF] He died in 1952. The teachings are no longer recognizable. But that isn’t important because each one can go within himself and find that Truth there. But in that magazine was an article which belied, which destroyed everything that was said by this great Master in this lesson which was written back in 1938.

Everything was gathered unto yourself. Anybody that dared to say that they were a disciple of his and to operate on their own, or to dedicate anything to him, no matter how great he was to them or how much he had done for them, was beyond the pail. How terrible! How terrible. And yet, it is done to every great master who comes, since the beginning of time. The disciples always seem to know better than the Master.

And the truth is that the Master came to give through the price which he paid, through his own sweat and blood, so to speak. He has found the Truth, and he comes and he gives it to those who follow with him. Then somebody thinks they know how to do it better, or that he didn’t do it well enough, or his words aren’t just right, and everything is changed around. And those that come, the pity of it, the terrible part of it is that they don’t know that everything has been watered down, has been changed, and is no longer what the Master gave; that they’re getting “fool’s gold” instead of the true gold of the Spirit.

Somehow, if God ever permits me to write, I hope to find some way to keep it as God has given it to me, as He has put me through the Truth. I don’t want it changed, because unless you yourself have been through the fire of testing, unless you have gone all the way and returned, then you are not in a position to judge whether something is true or not. Write from your own state of consciousness, but do not change that which has been given. That is taking license of the first order.

As all of you know, we don’t operate under a name. We don’t charge for anything that we do. Everything is on a voluntary basis here. People of all religions are welcome here. And I don’t want anybody going out and being a missionary in the sense that you put your foot in the door, ring the bell, and insist that you have the only truth that there is, because you don’t!

God is everywhere equally present and there are many great souls in this world who have paid the price for knowing the Truth. But you can find that Truth within yourself, and as God brings people before you, or takes you to people and they evidence an interest in what you are because of what you have become through your following the Truth, then they want to know, then give it to them. But don’t force it upon them. I want freedom of will exercised.

You all know the rules that I have laid down, and those rules are not for my sake but for yours because this temple of God must be kept pure, the mind must be kept pure. And you should reach out and do everything you can to maintain that purity: to choose the right friends, to live according to the commandments which are given in every great religion in the world, and not to make up your own rules and regulations but to really get busy and find out the tremendous power, the tremendous light, the tremendous beauty, the tremendous love and peace and glory and bliss that are within yourself, that are your very Self.

This is what I come to give you, to broaden your minds, not to make them narrower. I want to embrace all the world with the Truth which God has put me through and revealed to me. Many of you have had some of these experiences yourself and so you know that what I have told you in the past is the Truth because you yourselves have experienced them.

But it will expand; it will grow. But it will only grow if we love one another, if we are friends, one to the other; if we live the good life, if we give everybody the great privilege of worshiping God in the way that God directs him to worship Him.

Nobody is held here. If you take a vow of initiation, that is another thing. But you are told in many ways, many times, before you take that vow, that it is a very serious thing and should not be broken, because when you break a vow that is taken before God, then there is a very definite karmic result from that. So you must remain faithful to your vow. But don’t take it if you don’t feel that you can keep it. But otherwise, you are free to come, you are free to go.

Everyone that is here, somebody else has brought. I haven’t gone after you. Anyone that wants to leave, I let them go and I don’t go after them. But many return. They go many, many places, and some of them come and tell me that they have never found what they have at this group, that the people are so warm and loving, and they feel truly like they’re their brothers and their sisters, that we are all one family in God.

Would to God, as this world changes, that this spreads, that we can embrace and take within the fold everybody who is interested in seeking the Truth. And that Truth, don’t forget, is to be found within yourself.

So make your one religion the religion of Truth. Forget names. Forget forms. Forget all of the dogma that you have been taught. Forget the historical facts that have been laid before you as being the truth. Everything that is the Truth is to be found within yourself.

All of the things that are written about in the Bible will happen within yourself. Different names have been given to them in accordance with the culture, the language, and the way of the people who have been taught Truth from wherever God has placed them, but because they wear a dark skin, they wear different clothes, they have different customs and they speak a foreign language, we call them “heathens,” “infidels,” “heretics.” How stupid can we get?

God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient. He is All, and All in all. There is none other but He. So remember that, if you never remember another thing I say, and broaden your concepts, to love all people everywhere, no matter what their religious belief. Help them where they are. If they want to come out and be with us on a steady basis, fine. If they want to go to their church and come occasionally and be with us, fine. Each one is born with his own free will, his own free choice to do, to choose, to become whatever he has within him to become, and it depends on he himself as to what he makes of this blessed privilege.

You have the power to make yourself a beggar. You have a power to take yourself down into the depths of despair, of degradation. But you also have the power to lift yourself up and to become great in God, to bring forth the gifts that He has given you and to make them work for all mankind. But one thing I ask of you, and that is what he said at the last: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you,” “and your neighbor as yourself.” [paraphrased from Matthew 22:39]

And if you will do that, believe me you will become great in God, and the day will come when you will find yourself inside of yourself, saying, “Oh, my Father God, Blessed Spirit, I am He. I am He.” And you will open your eyes and you will see God and yourself as one, and you will see Him embraced in all of creation.