Talks

Transcript:

DATE: 19800416

TITLE: MS THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

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Summary (Transcript below this Summary):

Mother begins Her Talk reading an article by Swami Ramdas, entitled: You Are the Image of the Eternal (from The Vision magazine).

This holds a sweeping vision of the Immortal residing in every atom of space, and within every single soul in existence.  Papa proclaims:

“It is really a matter for supreme wonder, that while the Beloved is ever residing within you, you are not aware of it.”  This brings attention to the fore.  He follows this by heartfully bringing His vision center-point into each:  “He pervades your being through and through.”  

Now Mother goes to the KJV Bible, reading from St. Matthew, Chapter 22, vs:35: Here Jesus is being tested by a lawyer, who asks “Which is the greatest Commandment in the law?”  Jesus immediately responds by declaring the first and great Commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”   And secondly “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

To cement this commandment into awareness, Mother now tells the story of the pilgrim*, who left his house in the valley, and becomes unable to ascend to the summit of the mountain to be with the Lord.  He is told by the Lord to return to his house below, and to clean it, and to put it in order… a task that feels utterly distasteful to the man, who embarks on a journey, both harrowing and transformative, opening up the doors to the unexplored rooms of his filthy house, to meet aspects of his own being, that are needful of recognition, love and nurturing, in order to be made holy and at peace. Will he be able to endure another door?  One cannot help but empathize with his plight.  It is the story of every man seeking true freedom! (It is not, however, told as a haunting tale in a book, but as a living IMPERATIVE, on how we must master our emotions, and enter into brotherhood with every other soul, as we ascend the mountain of realization.

Mother gives us no quarter!  She relentlessly brings up the Commandments.  “These are the things in each of us that we must conquer.”

On ‘loving the Lord thy God’, She underlines: “So until you love Him with all your heart, so that you are willing to give up everybody and everything that you hold dear to you, you are not obeying the Lord’s Commandments”

“Your mind should dwell on nothing but the Lord, nothing at all…” 

Here we are given the incentive to ceaselessly chant the Name of God within, night and day, at work, or at play, “If you get in the habit of it, it will glue your mind to Him…and He will do the most brilliant work through you that you ever saw in your life!”

* Mother told the same story of the pilgrim climbing up the mountain in Her (Truth Series #20 talk entitled: The Great Promise)  I personally find the #20 version more eloquent, longer and richer in nuance in Her voice’s telling of it, but tying this story into the theme she chose for this talk, is also commanding.  The talks were given at different points in Her life, a matter to note.

At the end of Her talk on The House of the Lord, Mother exclaims with full Power: “If you will do this, I promise you, upon my word before God, that your lives will change…” 

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Transcript:

I’d like to read you an article from The Vision, written by Swami Ramdas. The title of it is, “You Are the Image of the Eternal.”

It is by pure devotion that you can purify your heart and lay it at the feet of your eternal Beloved. Devotion to Him means a keen aspiration for His vision and the resultant continuous remembrance of Him. Do not be beguiled by various methods of approach to Him. This is the simplest path.

Look upon the Beloved as your sole aim and goal. To discover your kinship with Him is the one purpose of your life. To seek union with Him and realize His presence in you and everywhere around you is the object for which you are born as a human being.

You know craving for material wealth, glory, status and fame do not bring you real peace and freedom. To be with the Beloved, to know that you and He are one and to live ever in this exalted consciousness means a joy and ecstasy which cannot be described in words.

It is really a matter for supreme wonder that while the Beloved is ever residing within you, you are not aware of it. You have not to go far to behold Him nor has He to come to you from afar. He pervades your being through and through as also the entire universe before you. All your activities are inspired by His will and power, for the matter of that, this power alone is responsible for all movements in this world manifestation.

So, in the ultimate vision and realization of the Beloved, you become conscious of your perfect identity with Him in all His aspects. You are a veritable embodiment of divine bliss and peace.

The above blessed state is achieved easily by cherishing towards the Beloved genuine love and devotion. It is now that the Beloved’s Grace floods your life and transmutes you into His very image and Being.

Our Bible reading tonight is from Matthew, Chapter 22 beginning with Verse 35:

35. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
36. Master, which is the great [Mother said “greatest” here] commandment in the law?
37. Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38. This is the first and great commandment.
39. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
40. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

I want to talk to you tonight about your body temple which is the ‘House of the Lord’.

I wanted to start by telling you a story of a pilgrim, who started on his spiritual journey. And he got halfway up a mountain and he could go no further. And he laid there, totally exhausted. He tried to move his limbs. He tried to call out for help. But he could do neither. He could go no further. He was absolutely stuck there. It seems as though he couldn’t go down; he couldn’t go up; he couldn’t go sideways.

So finally he lay there and he called out to the Lord, “Lord, help me. You must help me to climb the mountain.” All of a sudden, he opened his eyes because he felt a presence in front of him, and that presence looked like a man. The man was silent and strong and beautiful, and He said, “Yes, my son, what is it?” He said, “Lord, I have started the journey to climb up the mountain so that I might be one with You.” And he said, “I have come only halfway and I am unable to go any further. You must help me.”

And He said to him, “My son, the reason you have not been able to climb any further,” He said, “is that you have not set your house in order.”

“Oh,” he said, “my house. I’ve left that long ago, far behind me,” and he shuddered.

The Lord said, “Perhaps you did, my son,” He said, “but obviously it has not yet left you. There is work for you to do yet, in your house; you must descend the mountain again and set your house in order.” He said, “Then when you set your house in order, not only will you be able to climb the mountain but,” He said, “I shall come to you and I shall help you.”

Well, the man cried out in pain. He didn’t want to go back down at all. He looked every which way to see if he couldn’t find a way of evading what the Lord had asked him to do. At last, he could find no reason why he should just remain there, unable to go forward, and he went back down the mountain, all the weary way. He went up the path toward his house and he took out the key behind the flower pot, and he opened the door. And he saw much disorder in the house. He had always prided himself on feeling that he had kept a pretty decent sort of house. But now as he looked around it, he saw that the house indeed was not as it should be. So he cleaned it the best he could. While he was at the mountain with the Lord, he told the Lord—he said, “Lord, there are even doors in my house which I have never dared to open. I cannot go back down there.” And the Lord said that he must go back.

So having cleaned the house initially, he stood before the first door. It took him a long time before he could get the courage to even stand there. And as he stood there, a terrible fear overtook him and he said, “I’m afraid! I’m afraid! I am filled with fear. I cannot open the door!” But he forced himself to open the door. And there it was all gloomy and the place was filled with cobwebs. And the dim light that shone through the door—he saw a wraith-like creature that looked something like himself, cowering on the floor. And as he went in, he struck a light and he looked at the creature. And his heart was open to him and he felt great pity for him. And he said to him, “Come, I will take you out of this dark room, and I will see to it that your room is clean.”

So he took the poor figure out and he took care of him, and he went in and he scoured the room and he scoured the lamps and he scoured the windows and he scoured everything, until the room was absolutely meticulously clean. And he lived with the horror-wraith and gradually, as he got used to him—day after day—one day the sunlight shone in the room, and as he looked for the wraith, it was gone. He had absorbed the fear that had been this wraith outside of himself.

Well, he waited awhile because it took great courage to go again to the second door. But finally he geared himself to that. And one day, he walked up to the second door and all of the sudden he doubled up in pain and he said, “Oh, I hurt! I hurt!” And still he knew that he must open that door, no matter how he hurt. It felt like something was a spear, piercing his bowels. But he took hold of the handle of the door and he walked in. And again, in the dim light he saw another wraith that looked like himself, just bent all over and writhing in pain. And he said, “You poor creature. Come with me and I shall take care of you.” And he took the wraith out and he took care of him, and he went back and he cleaned the room until it was absolutely sparkling. The floors were cleaned; the walls were cleaned; the lamps were polished; the windows were polished. Everything was absolutely spotless. Then he went out and he continued living with the poor, sick and hurting wraith, until again one day, the sunlight came into the room and the wraith had disappeared. And he knew that he had conquered both fear and pain.

It took him a little while before he had gained courage again to go to the third door. But finally he did, and as he stood outside of the door, he felt his whole body getting hot with anger. Oh, he was angry! Anyone who would come before him would have been killed; he was so filled with anger. But he grabbed the knob of the door and he thrust it open. And there he saw a great demon-like figure that looked like himself. And he’d conquered his fear, as best he could, of him and he walked in because he knew that this was something he must do also. And he walked up and took the man and he said, “Come.” He said, “I shall take care of you also.” So he took this demon out and he worked with him for weeks, for days and for months. And he cleaned the room and polished it all up, until finally one day that which had caused him anger, had disappeared into the sunlight.

Now, it took him two or three years before he could get up sufficient courage to open the fourth door. And as he stood outside, he felt his body starting to writhe with passion. And he felt all the delicious thrills over his body, and a longing, a longing for something he knew not what. He finally took hold of the door and he opened that, and he saw a creature lying on the bed—half-man, half-woman, stark naked. And the creature was writhing, and it was writhing in all directions, holding out its arms to him, begging him to come, saying, “I must have you! I must have you! I must have this that I call love. You must satisfy my longing.”

And he walked into the room and he looked at the creature. The creature looked at him with begging eyes. “Come to me! Indulge in me!” And he said, “No, not anymore.” And he took the creature by the arms and he said, “I shall conquer you, if it’s the last thing I shall ever do.” And he took the creature out. And it is not known how long he had to wrestle with this creature called passion, but he finally conquered that. And he cleaned out that room in his house. And finally he was filled with the light of God, and he sat and rested. And he thought his work was all done.

But just as he was feeling at peace with himself, he saw another small door open, and a bony arm reach out. And he realized that it was the hand of death, and he said, “Oh, I have not made death my friend. I must make death my friend.” So he went to that door and as he opened it, expecting to see the figure of death, instead he saw the great radiant figure of the Lord before him, and He said, “Now, my son, you have cleaned your house; you have set your house in order. Come with me and I shall take you to the mountaintop.”

That’s one of the most beautiful stories I think I have ever read, and I wanted to share it with you because these are the things, within each of us, that we must conquer. Remember that it said in this Bible verse this evening, these verses, “Ye shall love the Lord with all of thy heart.” Now, that means that your heart must not be open to anything but the Lord, because He is all things: He is Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent. He is everything that is, and He is that Life, that Power, that Love, that Peace, that everything-ness that is wonderful within yourself.

So until you love Him with all of your heart, so that you are willing to give up everybody and everything that you hold dear to you, you are not obeying the Lord’s commandments. You must love Him with all of your soul! You cannot be a house divided against itself and expect to stand. Nor can you expect to start to climb up the mountain and reach the summit, because it will not happen. You must give Him all of your soul. Most of us are halfway in between, and sometimes it’s only one-tenth with the Lord, if it is that much, and the other nine-tenths are with the opposing force. And the attention is upon everything but God.

I have also said that you must love Him with all of your mind. That means that your mind should dwell on nothing but the Lord, nothing at all! And there’s only one way to keep the mind in constant communion with God, and that is to repeat His holy Name to yourself. Do it from the time you wake up in the morning, until the time you go to bed. Now you say, “How can I work and still repeat the Name of the Lord?” But if you get in the habit of it, it will glue your mind to Him, and you can do the most brilliant work! You can keep your mind on the Lord because He is forever in the background. And His Name, His Word, is forever constantly humming within yourself. And He will do the most brilliant work through you that you ever saw in all of your life.

And you must love Him with all of your strength. That means all of the power that is within you! And you have untapped power that you don’t even dream of! If you would stop scattering your energy in all directions, and bring all of the parts of yourself that you have put into all of the earthly pleasures—all of the people that you fancy you love—and bring all of this attention back, and take it inside of yourself, into this temple, which is indeed the House of the Lord, and offer it all to Him—with all of your heart, with all of your mind, with all of your soul and with all of your strength—you would find power within you that you never even dreamed of. And that power can be used for many things. But you must use that power only for good, only for good, never to invade anyone else’s privacy, never to use power over them, never to do anything but to let that power flow through you, and in full surrender to God let Him use it, in those places and with those people that He so wills.

When you are an empty vessel, empty of all of the humanness within you, then the Lord comes in, in all of His glory, and you divinize your whole body. This doesn’t mean that you cease to be a human being, that you cease to have the ability to have fun, to live in the world—to laugh, to play, to work, to do all of the things that everyone else does—but you do it in the conscious Oneness with God, because He is the Lord and the Master, finally, of His own house, which is your body temple. And that pseudo-self, that which you now call ‘you’, has disappeared from existence. The only thing that is left is the little part that remembers that once it was the son of man, the human self, the human ego. But now it has become the Son of God. But it acts as the witness of what the Christ, who has taken over your temple and dwells there, does within you.

How tremendous it is to have this feeling of purity, of innocence. Remember that it says in there that you must become as a little child in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. And it means what it says, that you can laugh—you can play; you can dance; you can act like a little child. This now does not mean to be childish, but child-like. It does not mean to let your human ego take over and think that you are greater than anybody else, that you have greater talents, that nobody else has a chance but you, because in truth each and every one of us, in our human status, are absolutely nothing, nothing at all! We just think we are because this, in truth, is the house, the temple not made by hands.

When we can come to that state of surrender, when every thought, every word, every action, every moment of our lives is surrendered to Him, and we listen for His voice of direction, and we do whatever that voice tells us to do, in full humility, knowing that of ourselves we do nothing, that it is our Father who doeth the works, it is then and then alone that our life becomes a glorious thing, a successful thing! You can never expect success—you can never expect to reach your full potential—until you put Him first, not last. Seek ye first God and His kingdom, and then—and then alone, will all of the other things be added unto you.

Still, we keep hoping: “Lord, if you will give me this; if You will do this for me; if You will take this away from me; then I will do all of these things that You ask of me, but not until You give me what I want first.” And it will never happen, I clue you, never in this world. You have to give Him all of yourself, and you have to learn to love your neighbor as yourself. And that neighbor isn’t just the person next door; it starts with you yourself, that neighbor which you call your human-self. You have to learn to have a good self-image, to learn that you are the temple of the Lord, and that He is that Indwelling Presence and that He is a very important Person.

You have to learn to live with the members of your family in total love and harmony, forgetting yourself in service not to them as individual human beings, but to God-in-them. And for all the flack that you get, for all the dissension that comes at you, the opposition, know that that is the Lord in that form, doing what is necessary to absolutely push you to your oneness with God—because where does the human being have to go but up, when he has nobody or nothing else to depend on but God? And if that one, in that form in your family, serves that purpose, then bless him or her beyond all others! And love them. Love God-in-them.

And then your neighbors around you and the people you work with, and the people all over the world—send out that Christ-love to them, because whatever you send forth from yourself will return in kind. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. As ye give, so shall ye receive. And in these troubled times, this is needed as it was never before needed on this earth in the history of mankind. We have to change this stream of hatred, of lust, of violence, of power, of these hungry power-people that are destroying the world, and make it a fit and a safe place where we can dwell again, in comfort and in safety, with our families and our friends.

What have we turned this world into? Because this world is the sum total of every single thing that has gone out from each and every one of us, because even the flicker of your eyelash carries with it its own vibration, and returns in kind. There is not one single thing that does not fit this law; it is the law of the universe! Whatever goes up must come down; whatever seed is planted in the ground will bear the fruit of its own likeness. And you have that power in your hands.

Think of the power, that unleashed, un-thought-of power that is within you, that you could change your life, your world. And you do it through the power of positive thinking, of positive action, with no thought of harm or hatred or enmity toward anyone, but with the thought of: ‘how can I serve first God, and then God in every human being that I meet?’ And if you will keep up with that thought, and with that desire, and follow it up with action, you will find that your tree of effort will bear the greatest fruit in the world.

But you cannot put it forth positively one day and cancel it out with negative thoughts, negative words, negative actions the next day, and expect to see results because it will not happen. And you yourself have caused it not to happen because you have cancelled out that which you had put forth positively, as good. You’ve got to keep it going.

As I mentioned before, Dr. Peal’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking, is one of the most powerful things that any man has ever given to humanity! It started a whole new line of thought. It has been in the scriptures since the beginning, but it was not brought to man’s attention in the graphic way that this man has brought it. He has done a great thing for humanity. All of the psychologists now are trying to dig us out of the graves of our own making. And what we have stored up in the subconscious and comes out in the various troubles and trials and tribulations, sometimes beyond our control, all of these things are creatures of our own making. We have been delving into so many things.

I picked up a magazine today and I saw a very evil face looking out of there, and if you send so much money, this man will tell you how to have power over other people’s minds. What are we coming to? People are going to ‘couch readers’ every day, wanting to be regressed to former incarnations. I have seen people who have done this. I have known them before they have done it and I have seen them since—and believe me they are not the same people—because, don’t forget, we are on an evolutionary path and what we have done in the past has brought us to this moment. And it is said that if the soul continues to progress to its final union with God, then the things that it has done in the past, God mercifully blocks out of our consciousness.

If He wanted us to know, and if He does want us to know, He will tell us! We should not interfere with it because when you go back into these former lifetimes, you can dredge up some things and make them a part of this present personality, things that you had forgotten about, that laid dormant and that you had the opportunity for overcoming, and you do not do it. Instead, your curiosity as to whether you were a king or the Queen of Sheba or Cleopatra, or whatever—it is amazing how many Alexander the Greats and how many Cleopatras and Anthonys and all that people have been told they are, all over the world, and all for the almighty dollar.

I don’t want anybody delving into the in-between stages; I want you to fix your attention upon God-through-Christ. Keep your mind on Him alone, and not go into these other things, because they will cause you nothing but trouble. There are many methods to help clean out the subconscious mind. But don’t forget when that housecleaning takes place, you’ve got to deal with the empty space. You’ve got to set your house in order. You just haven’t cleaned it out so that you can go back out and do the same things all over again in the human state, and expect that you’ve gotten any reward, any benefit from it because you have not! You’ve got to put God in that empty space. You’ve got to keep on cleaning that house until it stays clean—it becomes a habit to keep it clean.

And above all, you’ve got to get away from the human euphoric state of love, into the Divine Love for God and for Christ, by whatever Name you want to call Him, because don’t forget that Christ is universal. He is the cornerstone of every religion, in this whole universe. He is that One which was the result of the union between God-the-Father and God-the-Divine-Mother. And He is universal. He is the first born of every creature, it says in the scriptures. So that means that He is that Intelligence, that Power, that Light, that Strength, that Love, that Purity, that everything which is the final state to which man must climb, and become one with, within himself.

If we would use our power of speech to repeat the Name of the Lord, instead of to use it to gossip, to destroy people, to constantly tear people down, our lives would change in a great big hurry. If we would use our vision to see only the beautiful, in everyone and in everything that comes before us, and try to bring beauty into our own consciousness, our own person would become beautiful. To bring beauty into the way you furnish your house, in the way you conduct your life, you would start to beautify not only those things around you, but the world around you. And gradually, as this contagious beauty spreads, it would spread to the hearts and the minds of men everywhere! And they would no longer wish to be at war with their brothers. They would no longer wish to kill them; they would no longer wish to have power over them. But they would realize that all the power they ever dreamed of is right within themselves, if they would only make the effort to become one with it, to realize that it’s there, to learn how to use it for God and for good.

The desire for money has taken over the world. The desire for power has taken over the world. But it isn’t good money and it isn’t good power. The power of God is the only power on this earth and we are the temple of God; yet, we have made it a den of thieves, as the Christ said. And the gold that we are looking for is not the gold that is buried under the earth, and which they are charging such fancy prices for today, but it is the gold of the spirit. The wine that we would drink is not the alcohol that we put into our bodies, and saturate our brains with, but it is the wine of the spirit, and that wine is the sweetest wine that anybody could drink.

Everything that is in that Bible, it is within each and every man, from the beginning of creation until the end, where the soul finally has climbed to the top of the mountain and has become one with its Maker, and then that One stands tall and straight, in full control. It is totally surrendered to God. But it is not in the form of someone who goes around and wears sackcloth and ashes, and acts holier than thou, with a sanctimonious expression on their faces. It is someone who is filled with love, with joy, with laughter, with dancing in the streets, with seeing the beauty of God everywhere, but of harming no man, and least of all, yourself, because you are the keeper of this temple, and it is up to you to clean your house, this House of the Lord and set your house in order. If you will do this, I promise you, upon my word before God, that your lives will change and you will become supermen. You will be God-men, and yet “you” will be nothing. In all of the humility of which you are capable, you will know in truth that this is the House of the Lord in which you live, and it is your Father who doeth the works.

 

Transcript:

DATE: 19801029

TITLE: ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE

I would like to read to you tonight a couple of prayers that were written by my Guru, and it’s from the book, “Whispers from Eternity.” Now, these prayers have been altered since his passing, but these are his prayers in all of their original beauty. And he was filled with love for God. I have never seen anyone who loved God as much as he did, and the way he expressed it, in such poetic words. And the beauty of his soul came through, and I am sure that you will agree when you hear this. This is, “A Prayer at Eventide:”

The day is done. Refreshed and sanctified with the sunshine of the day, I pass through the portals of evening dimly adorned with faint stars to enter into the temple of silence and worship Thee. I worship Thy Spirit of approaching calmness.

What prayers shall I offer, for I have no words to offer Thee? I shall light a little fire of devotion on the altar of my soul. Will that light suffice to bring Thee into my dark temple: my dimly lighted temple, dark with my ignorance? Come! I crave, I yearn for Thee!

And this one is entitled “Prayer at Night”.

With closed eyes, I sit in the temple of night and worship Thee. The light of the sun with a million alluring things, has vanished. One by one, I have closed the doors of my senses, lest the fragrance of the rose, or the song of the nightingale distract my love for Thee. I am alone in this dark, dark temple. I have left everything, but where art Thou? Darkness is haunting; but unafraid I am groping, seeking, crying for Thee. Wilt Thou leave me alone? Come, show Thyself!

The door of my memory swings open. Throbbingly thrilled, my heart looks for Thee, but I find Thee not. Halt! Ye throng of a million thoughts and experiences past! Come not into my sacred temple. I close the bursting thought-pressed door and run everywhere to find Thee. Where art Thou?

Darkness deepens, and as I sit still, in deepening despair, I behold a little taper of concentration burning within me. I stand up, and madly rush through the dimly lighted temple—the farther I go, the deeper the darkness becomes. I clasp the empty darkness in hope of seizing Thee. Finding Thee not, in despair I return again, and see the taper dimly burning.

I sing outwardly a loud prayer: my large tear-drops and my loud gusts of prayers almost extinguish the taper. I shall pray no more with loud words: I shall not rush or run about in the temple of Stygian darkness—I shall sit still. I shall not drown the taper with my tears. I command my breath to make no sound: I rebuke my boisterous love for Thee.

The taper of meditation burns brighter now. Oh, how maddening! I cannot worship Thee with words, but only with wistful yearning. Brighter the light grows: I behold Thee now. Thou art I. I worship Thee.

As night hides everything, I shall worship Thee in hidden silence.

At night all creatures sleep: with the night let me sleep in Thee under cover of darkness—

Thou and I in lovely silent union! I am glad with the joy of all minds. I shall use the screen of the night to hide myself from the tempting things of the day.

O Night, when I am worried, throw thy veil of silent darkness around me. Create a dark temple for me wherever I go, that I may invoke and call Him, Whom I love, at any time, anywhere, everywhere.

And so he lived his life.

And our Bible chapter tonight is from Revelations, Chapter 13, beginning with Verse 1:

13 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.

7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

9 If any man have an ear, let him hear.

10 He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,

14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Now, that’s a very, very difficult chapter for anybody reading it to understand unless you have been through the experience of picking up your own cross and following the Christ in order that you might become his disciple.

I’ve chosen a very interesting subject for my talk tonight: “Armchair Detective,” and I’d like to tell you a story to start out with.

One time, it was way back in the 1800’s, it was one evening and it was just at dusk, and there was heard in a beautiful mansion a great commotion going on upstairs. And the maidservant, hearing this great commotion, ran upstairs as fast as she could to see what had happened to her mistress.

And a man who looked very terrible (his hair was all tousled; he looked rough, unshaven, all the rest) ran down the stairs and pushed her aside. As he got down, one of the tenants saw him. And as he went outside, there was a girl, fourteen years old, who saw him.

So when they went upstairs to investigate, they found that Marian Gilchrist, the mistress of the house, had been murdered.

And there was a great hue and cry. And upon investigation of her home and her own personal quarters, it was found that a crescent-shaped diamond brooch was missing.

So they sent out word, and a description of the man, and finally he was captured and he was brought to trial. And they found that he was a German immigrant, and that he ran a gambling house. And I’ve forgotten what his first name is, but his last name was Slater.

Well, all three of these witnesses identified the man as being the one they saw, and so he was sentenced for life and put in prison. For nineteen years he stayed in that prison, and the man knew that he was going to stay there for the rest of his life unless he got some help.

There was only one person that he could think of that could help him. This man was a very prominent doctor and physician in London. He wrote the man a letter and he explained all of the circumstances, and he professed his innocence. And he begged this doctor, with all of his heart and mind and soul, to investigate his case and free him.

So the doctor was moved by the letter, and he started, from his armchair, to do some work. And he wrote letters, and he discovered that the maid who had formerly been with this Marian Gilchrist had married and moved to America. He also discovered that the young girl, fourteen, had married and was still living in London. So he sent people to interview both of them.

And they both professed a fear, a doubt that they had fingered the wrong man, that this was not the man, actually, for whom they had testified against that they’d seen coming down the stairs.

And so, further investigation with the pawnshop broker found that this man had brought in a crescent-shaped diamond brooch, but he had brought it in before the murder was committed.

Well, this doctor took all of the information that he gathered, to Parliament, and he pleaded the man’s case. And finally, after nineteen years of imprisonment, the man was released because he was proven, beyond all question of a doubt, that he was innocent. Even the judge had been prejudiced against him.

So, he was relieved of a lifetime sentence. And that man, who was the armchair detective, was none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was the author of this great detective, “Sherlock Holmes,” the books about him.

So I was reading that story the other day, and I thought, “What a tremendous title for a sermon: ‘Armchair Detective.’”

Now, in this work we are taught not only to pray with words to God, but we are given specific and definite techniques, which are in the Old Testament, so that we might sit and learn to concentrate, to focus our attention fully upon God within ourselves—not a God who is outside of ourselves in the heaven, one that we can never contact; not a Christ that lived 2,000 years ago, who is said to be the only begotten Son of God, because Jesus himself said that the kingdom of heaven is within. And if he is to come a second time out of the cloud of heaven, then he cannot come anyplace except within our own consciousness, the heaven of our own being, when we are sufficiently purified to receive him.

So we are taught these techniques, and we are led to a path where someone who has been through the spiritual experiences which are described in the Bible, can really teach the truth, because as I have said many times it is one thing to have faith through belief, but a totally different thing to have specific and definite knowledge through experience.

So you sit in your chair, with a woolen blanket under you each time, to cut off the vibration from the earth (both morning and evening, hopefully), and you make your contact with God at the dawn, or the beginning of a day, and at the end of the day, so that you are dedicating the day to Him; and then, at the end of the day, you are thanking Him for all of the experiences of the day, and making peace with Him in whatever way is necessary before you go to sleep at night. And you should go to sleep with the thought of God in your mind, and the promise of a new day and a better day each time. And you should awaken each morning and the first thought that should come in your mind is God, because He is responsible for your whole existence.

When you sit in this chair and you start to have experiences, which God gives you, you are lifted up and you find out the true meaning of what is meant when it says that he who will not pick up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Now as I’ve pointed out before, every man on this earth is made in the form of a cross as he stands upright with his arms outstretched and his feet together, and it is upon this cross that the human ego, the son of man, must be crucified.

You go through many experiences. You look for the light which Jesus talked about: “The light of the body is the eye; therefore let thine eye be single and thy whole body shall be filled with light.” You listen to His Word, which is the word Aum—A.U.M.—which is taken from the original Sanskrit and which all of the Christian world calls Amen (Ah-men) or Amen (Ay-men). And the Mohammedans call it Amin: A.M.I.N. You listen for that Word. And as I’ve told you many times before—many of you have experienced it—it’s a very high-pitched sound which you hear inside.

You learn to watch your breath and slow that breath down so that your whole body becomes peaceful and quiet, and even to the point where you don’t have to breathe anymore, but yet you are fully conscious, consciously in control of your body, and you can bring the breath back into manifestation and operation at any time you wish. Now, this is called a state of suspended animation, and you are revigorating your body. You are not wearing out this body. You are not making the heart operate as it has to in order to keep all of the operations in the body going on.

All of these things, you learn to do gradually. And they are not offbeat things; they’re right in this Bible. But don’t forget that the word “breath” was, in those days, supplanted by the word “wind” because the breath came through the windpipe. So when you see, in the Old Testament, sometimes it refers actually to the wind as we think of it outside, but in many cases it refers to the breath. And there are many, many what the Hindus call pranayamic exercises for breath-control in this Old Testament, but they are put under this heading.

So as you sit in your armchair, you are listening to the voice of God. And after you have been through certain spiritual experiences, which He alone can put you through, when He alone knows that it is time for you to experience them—and that time comes when, with all of your heart, your mind, your soul and your strength you have dedicated yourself to God—that you want your union with Him. You want to be lifted up out of this world of trouble and diversity, and all that goes with it—all of the so-called evil around you—and you want surcease from it. You want to feel the bliss of God’s Infinite Presence.

Now in the Christian world today, in one particular sect of Christianity, there is much stress put upon the mark of the beast, and great fear that that mark will be accepted by those that might choose not to follow the good path of the Christ. And then, there is much stress put also on the fact that if you will overcome all of the things that you must overcome—if you will accept the Lord Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God, and as your personal savior—that the day will come when it is time for the second coming of the Christ, that you will all be lifted up together in a state called the “rapture.”

I have been through that state. I was lifted up into that state, and I must tell you that it is a trap because it is the highest state of human development, and you are still in a euphoric human state of consciousness when this so-called bliss comes to you. And it is not real bliss. It is an ecstasy, perhaps, a rapture, and very, very tempting. You’re filled with it. You are in a euphoric state. Nothing seems exactly as it was before. And you reach out for it; you want to be filled with it. But you must have the courage to refuse that and go on because if you are to pick up your cross, which is your body, and follow the Christ and truly be his disciple, then to follow him means to emulate him in every single way, even unto death.

And you must do this. And that death is the son of man within yourself, the human ego, which represents the gross ego of the five senses. And that is what this chapter refers to because it says,

13 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

Now, the seven heads represent the spinal centers, and the forces of good and evil within them. And this is the ego of the five senses, the son of man. And the ten horns are the ten subtle qualities of the mind, which contain the memory of all of the things that the senses enjoyed.

And it describes this beast. And in one place in here it speaks about after the crucifixion of the gross ego of the five senses, how the beast rises up out of the sea with a wound on his head, and the dragon (which represents the mind) again tries to seat the beast on the throne and have all worship it so that the memory of the things that you have enjoyed in the senses is still with you. And if this memory can again promote, create and foster the desire to express in the senses, then you are back again in the same state.

3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after it. [the beast]

And then all of the forces within you worship this beast.

You have a whole universe within yourself to discover, and the armchair detective (which is the soul at that time) is sitting in this chair discovering actually the mystery of his own being—of unraveling that mystery, of finding out who the culprit is. And that culprit is the human ego. It is the animal nature of man, of every man. And that animal nature, which we inherited from the animal kingdom and which has been with us for centuries, must be overcome; it must be put to sleep. And you must use the power of God within yourself to purify and rise above all of these things which are keeping you in bondage.

Remember in one place in the Bible where it speaks of the son of the freewoman and the son of the bondswoman? And the son of the bondswoman is bound by all of the things of his senses and he thinks that this world out here is the real world, and it is not. The real world is the world within yourself, and you create your own universe by your thoughts, your words and your actions.

When you get to this state, you start to get visions and you start to get prophesies. And you get visions, perhaps, of things that have gone on in the past and of things to come. I remember the first vision I got when I was lifted up, and this was a totally unexpected, unexplained, new experience to me. And it was as though God took me back to the beginning of creation, and I saw all of creation unfold, step by step. And then, gradually, I saw it peopled with all of the human beings of the earth, and it was a great procession. It was a tremendous experience!

And you have that power to create forms within yourself. So when it speaks of the judges and the kings and all of the blasphemers and all the rest of them, you have created these forms within your own being, within your own consciousness, and therefore within your own life, and you live with it.

Now, when it comes to the final time when you are to go through this tremendous experience wherein God lifts you up and He puts you through many things in order to take you to Himself so that you might transform the son of man, the human ego, to the Son of God, the Christed One, heir with Christ within yourself—when that time comes, then you are given many, many experiences.

And when it speaks of those that must be killed, and the cries of anguish, it is speaking of the torture of the soul. St. John wrote about it in “The Dark Night of the Soul.” It’s a classic, and it tells of what the soul goes through. Now, each one goes through his own. Because somebody has a difficult experience isn’t a sign that everyone is going to have exactly the same experience because God alone knows when you are ready to receive all of these gifts, to be put through this experience, and to be lifted up into the consciousness of who and what you are in Him—God alone. And He knows what you should go through. And you go through exactly what you have earned to go through.

And that’s why I keep telling you, at all times, to think good thoughts, to give forth nothing but love and understanding and service, to keep your minds upon God every moment, through Christ. Remember it: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody can go to the Father except through me,” through that state of Christ-consciousness which is within yourselves.

Then, in here, and it says, “If any man have an ear, let him hear.” In other words, the Bible is written in parables, and only when you have dedicated and surrendered yourself totally to God does He start to reveal what these scriptures really mean.

And many are lead into captivity, many are killed, and these are the thought-forms which you have built within yourself.

And then it says,

11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

Now, that is the good thief. But he’s still a thief, even as the bad thief is, and he keeps you in a state of duality. He keeps you from realizing your oneness with God.

12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

That’s the ego of the five senses.

13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,

And again, we’re speaking of the serpent force in the spine. Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, and that wilderness is within yourself because you live in the midst of a jungle.

And so this kundalini fire, as the Hindus call it, and the Serpent Force, which the Christians call it, starts to rise in the spine and your whole body feels sometimes as though it’s being burned with electricity. It’s quite an experience. But it is a purifying experience because fire cleanses.

And there is much deceit. And this opposing force, or the bad thief, tries to tempt you, with all sorts of visions, to keep you enslaved in the senses. And the good thief tries to tell the soul that he must reach up for God and do all of the things that are good.

15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast,

So that, again, is your consciousness which gives power to the ego sense which wants to express itself through the pleasures of the senses.

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Then it says,

18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Now in all the Pentecostal faiths they are very frightened at the moment, and they tell you, “Don’t let anybody put the mark of the beast upon you.” So I’ve asked some of them what they mean when they say “Don’t let them put the mark of the beast.” What is the mark?

And they said, “Well, they put it on your right hand and or on your forehead.”

And I said, “What is it they put on there?”

“Well, it’s like a stamp, a luminescent stamp that they put on.”

Well, they used to do this in dance halls or in places where you went for amusement, so that if you went out for a breath of fresh air you’d have this invisible (it was invisible in the light) stamp on your hand. But in a fluorescent light, they would be able to see that you had paid your way in, and they’d let you in again.

And this isn’t what it means at all! In the first place, man himself is made like the Trinity. He first is created through the joining together of the ovum and the spermatozoa. And so there is the one seed, or the father Abraham, from which comes forth all of the begats in the Bible. And so the first set of begats (there are three of them) has to do with the creation of the idea body, because everything in this world is created in idea form first.

You cannot create anything outside of yourself unless you first think. You get a thought, and that thought takes form. You cannot think without creating a thought of a person, a place or a thing. It’s literally impossible.

And so, you create this thought. And so the body is first created through thought. And there are seven spinal centers, or as it tells about having seven heads and ten horns. But you have the main powerhouse, which is the head. And the life force enters the body through the medulla, goes straight through to the Christ center, and is distributed through the brain, and then goes down to the six sub-powerhouses, each of one which controls a certain part of your body. And so, this body is formed.

And next comes the electrical, or the astral body, and that is the body which controls your nervous system. And as you see pictures of saints and pictures of the Christ, and pictures of many of the Eastern saints, you see a great halo around them, or you see a great light all around the body, an aura, and that aura you can see, if you have the eyes to see, on anyone. And the auras are different colors, depending on the life of the individual and the state of the consciousness of that particular individual.

And so, this light shines forth, and when you see a great light, like a yellow light surrounding the body of an individual—if you see the body disappear, only the outline there, and the body filled with light—know that that soul is a great soul. But only those who have eyes to see can see it.

I remember attending lectures that my Guru gave many, many years ago, and as I looked at him, all of a sudden his body would disappear. I’d see merely this dark outline. And then that light would take over; it would fill his body and would expand until it was over the whole platform and there was nothing but light.

I had such an experience one night, and then as I looked around the room, I saw the same thing all over. It was just as though I saw the form, and the whole room was filled with light and all these outlines. But there was light inside [and] outside.

I thought I was hallucinating. I closed my eyes, and I didn’t know just exactly how to handle it. And I opened them, and still it was there. And no matter how many times I did it, still it was. I was having a spiritual experience. Because of my own love for God, I was lifted up and I actually saw this.

So then, finally and last, comes the physical or the gross body, and we call this body “I,” “my body.” But who is the “I” that has this body? It has a body, it has a mind, it has a soul. So it has these things, it wears them as a garment, but it is not these things. It lives in the midst of this temple, which is the temple of the living God. And it is God Himself who sits on the throne of your consciousness, who governs and controls and watches every moment of your life, every movement of your life.

And so this is the number of the human man, with the six centers, each one joined together: three bodies with six centers—6-6-6—which it says right here:

Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

So that is the true meaning of the number of the beast. That is the mark of the beast.

Until each man, each human being, rises above this human consciousness, then he is still in that animal consciousness. He is still the son of man, even as it tells that Jesus was born the son of man, and he became the Christed One after the crucifixion. His birth was foretold, but it is foretold in every single man, not just in one, because it says that he is the firstborn of every creature. In Colossians, it says that. St. Paul said it. So it is the Christ in you.

And you have to lift yourself above these animal tendencies. You have to open your heart to God; you have to live the good life; you have to love God with all of your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength; you have to love everyone as Christ has loved us, and your neighbor as yourself. And don’t forget, that neighbor is just not the one who lives next door, but it is every man, woman and child in this whole universe because we are all neighbors. Some of us live a little bit farther away than others, but we have all of these neighbors. They are all our brothers and sisters because there is but One Father God.

Now, you hear many explanations, as I say, about this mark of the beast, but I am telling you the truth, because I sat—an armchair detective—I went through the experiences first. And always, God would put me through the experience first, and then He would take me to the Bible and say to me, “This is what you have just experienced.” In other words, I had to be tested.

I wasn’t given the information first and then could go through the experience with some knowledge of what I was going to go through; rather, I was lifted up totally. I’d never heard of anything like this. Never in all of the services that I attended, never in any of the words that I had heard from a priest or a minister or a rabbi had I, in my wildest dreams, imagined the truth of what I actually experienced. But I had to be tested.

I had to prove my love for God. I had to lift up that son of man, and having lifted him up, I had to go through the experience of crucifixion, or transformation, within myself. And when I did that, then I had to descend into the hell or the subconscious of my own being and face all of my actions for perhaps not only this lifetime but many lifetimes.

And I had to be lifted up again. I had to arise from the dead, and I had to appear to the twelve disciples, or the twelve powers within myself. And whereas I gave up the ghost, or the human ego (that is, the ghost of the Real Self, or God), then I was filled with the power of the Holy Ghost, or the Divine Ego, because man cannot live upon this earth in a human body without an ego, without a center.

And so, I went through all of these experiences, and as I went through them, then God would take me back to the Bible and say, “This is the true meaning of it. This is the truth behind the parables.”

Now, any orthodox Christian can argue with me as long as they want, and they could not make me deviate from my statements of truth one iota because I have lived the experience. And because they happen to have faith-through-belief in what they have been told, (much of it erroneous because the ones that have taught them have not taken the trouble to really realize and read what this Bible says) it doesn’t affect me in the least, because even if I were to be killed for it, if I were to die for it, I would still stand because I know because I experienced it. I paid the price. And so that’s how I can stand up here and tell you the truth.

And I can help you to avoid this human rapture. You may taste it, you may go through a bit of it, but go through it! Be willing to go through the experiences necessary—through purgatory, if you will, or the purging of all that is not of God within your body—and be lifted up into the heaven of your own beings. And you do that by living the life, by following God’s commandments, by emulating the Christ in all the things that we are told about him.

He was a good man. He was not interested in the priests, the Pharisees, the Sadducees at all; in fact, he spoke out against them. But rather, he consorted with publicans and sinners, the woman taken in adultery. These were the ones that he came to save. These were the ones that he gave his life for. These were the ones that he spent all of the time preaching to.

And what I am trying to do, what I am here for, is to teach you the methods, the love, the devotion, that you may go inside of yourself and find the Christ in you. Use all that is given us of the Universal Christ and pick up your cross and follow him in order that you might be his disciple. And it is only when you do this, when you go past the sixth center into the seventh, the thousand-petalled lotus of the brain, as the Hindus call it, when the whole being opens up and the body is filled with light. And then the serpent force goes through the brain and on top. And that’s why you see the serpent as the symbol on the top of the Mother Kali, in India, and the god Shiva, because evil has gone out and there is no one there but God, God alone, in that form.

So keep your minds on Him. Pray to Him, meditate upon Him, listen to Him. Open yourselves up to your feeling. Open your hearts and give love and service to everyone you meet. And watch the tongue. Watch the tongue. That little cannon ball, the tongue, can do more damage than anything in the world. But if you learn to keep a prayer to God on your lips at all times, the day will come when you repeat just one phrase— “Lord, make me perfect in Thee,”—and say it over and over again, with full conscious knowledge of what you are saying:

“Lord, I want to be perfect in Thee. I want to find my oneness with Thee. I want to overcome this humanness within myself, this duality.”

If you do that, you won’t live, as I have told you, in a never-never land, but for the first time in your life you will know who and what you are, and you will actually know the meaning of life and how to live it. And it will be a life of peace, of happiness, of joy, of love, of beauty, of accomplishment, and of the bliss of God. And you will know that what you had was a life of darkness, a life of nothingness, a life of torture, because there is nothing all over the universe that now you cannot enjoy because you have paid that price. You have risen above the law. You are no longer subject to it. And from the son of man, you have become an heir with Christ: the Christed One, the Son of God.

And so the story, the parable about the prodigal son comes into being.  And when you, finally having turned your face away from God through an eternity perhaps, have again turned your face toward Him—and He welcomes you with open arms and He spreads before you His great banquet feast of love, and He picks you up in His arms of everlasting bliss and He holds you safe forevermore—believe me, it is worth every single thing, every price you would think that you have to pay.

Don’t be laggards. Reach out for the millennium. Reach out for the maximum of that which you can be and that which you can experience in God, because God is all of life and you are He in human form.