Talks

Transcript:

DATE: 19810315

TITLE: MS YOU ARE THE ARCHITECT OF YOUR UNIVERSE

I’d like to read you this morning an article from “The Greatness of God,” by Charles L. Allen.

Here is one of the grandest verses in the Bible: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;” (Psalms, Chapter 8, beginning Verse 3.)

Have you ever wondered why God made the world so beautiful, so impressive, so big? Nobody knows how big the heavens are, with their millions, maybe billions of stars. God didn’t have to make it that big in order for the earth to exist.

Why did God make it so that every morning the glory of a sunrise would come over the earth, and every evening the quiet beauty of the sunset? He could have arranged it so the day would come and go in some less impressive manner.

Have you ever looked at a great mountain range and wondered why God made those high peaks? God could have left the mountains out of His creation. Mountains aren’t really good for anything. They can’t be cultivated, and beyond a certain point they don’t even grow trees. We do not need mountains in order to live on this earth.

I have flown across the trackless deserts of the west. As I looked at the endless miles of hot sand, I wondered why God made them that way. The deserts aren’t good for anything. No food can grow there. The few creatures who live there are worthless to mankind.

Most impressed am I when I look at the ocean. Nobody really knows how big the ocean is. In places, it is literally miles deep. It seems an awful waste. God could have fixed His creation so that rain could come without creating that vast reservoir of water. Why did He make the ocean?

God had a reason for making oceans, mountains, skies and deserts. He never wastes anything. The psalmist said, “When I consider Thy heavens.” The tragedy is that many people live amid God’s creation and never consider it.

A thoughtless person once said to Helen Keller, “Isn’t it awful to be blind?”

She replied, “Not half so bad as to have two good eyes and never see anything.”

And there are people who are content with a mighty small world; they never consider the heavens. They never really see anything big.

When you look into the face of the sky and consider something of its infinite size, you realize that no little God created it. He had to have big ideas and unlimited abilities. Truly, we come to realize our God is a great God. Realizing His greatness, we are not as afraid of what might happen in His world. Our troubles seem hard to bear, but nothing can defeat the will and purposes of the Eternal Father.

I have watched colossal storms roar across the mountains. Heavy clouds come thundering in and everything gets dark. You begin to wonder if the world isn’t going to be destroyed. Then the clouds break up, and you see the green mountainside bathed in sunlight and you know that if you wait out the storm, there will be sunlight again.

When we have trouble and everything seems lost, with a picture of the greatness of God in mind we gain courage and calmness. On the other hand, when the sun is shining and the breezes are gentle, we know it will not always remain so. Sooner or later it will cloud up and rain again, so we make preparations during the good weather for the bad that is sure to follow. Likewise, when we are blessed with a life that is smooth and good, we remember that we must be ready for the trouble that is sure to come. Realizing the greatness of God, our minds are stretched to take the long view of life, not living for just the moment but considering the whole.

We are in too big a hurry, and we run by far more than we catch up with. The Bible tells us, “Be still and know that I am God.” Beauty doesn’t shout. Loveliness is quiet. Our finest moods are not clamorous. The familiar appeals of the Divine are always in calm tones, a “still small voice.”

Here is the New Testament picture of Jesus: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me.” The Divine is not obtrusive. He bursts in no one’s life unbidden. He is reserved and courteous.

This is from the book, “Fragile Moments.”

Our Bible reading this morning is Psalm 139:

139 O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.

2 Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

3 Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

4 For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.

5 Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

9 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

11 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

12 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.

14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

17 How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!

18 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.

19 Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.

20 For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.

21 Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?

22 I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

This morning, if I’m able to do it, I have chosen as my subject “You Are the Builder, the Architect of Your Universe.” And this is certainly true.

Everything in this world has speeded up so much. Man has devised so many things for his comfort, for his pleasure, to exercise and put forth his ego, that he has even left himself far behind. If you think of it, we give very, very little thought to God during the day. It’s not true of all, but it is true of most, and this whole world, as we see it today, is the result of it—the cataclysms, the earthquakes, the fires; people doing terrible things, destructive things—and they don’t stop to think that they are the architects of their own destiny, that truly every thought, every word, every action that goes forth from you is building your particular life, your particular destiny, and you cannot escape from it. We think to hide.

I was thinking this morning it’s an amazing thing when you go inside of yourself and commune with God, the thoughts that come to you, that all of a sudden unfold. And I was thinking how, in the beginning, God created all of the heavens and the earth and He planted all the seeds in the ground; He made the trees. And then He started building occupants for His creation, so we have the fish in the sea and the birds flying in the air. We have animals walking on the earth. We have the vegetables and the fruit growing from the earth, we have cattle, and all of these things are put there for man’s purpose, and He has dominion over all of them. But He made man, and He made man in His image and in His likeness. In God is all Perfection, all Beauty, all Wonder, all Love, all Light. All of the good things, the wonderful things, the beautiful things on this earth, God is. And He gave man the power to become the Sons of God. He’s the “firstborn of every creature.”

God is within you, and I tell you that there is nothing you could do, no place where you can go and hide what you do from God, because you carry Him with you, and somehow, regardless of how you try to cover it up, it is shouted from the hilltop.

And I was thinking about the fall of man. Here, man was made with all of this perfection, all of this beauty. He could do everything. He could have dominion over all things, use it! There was only one thing he couldn’t do, and that was to eat the fruit in the midst of the garden.

Now, that has to do with the sex force because we are a “tree,” we are a “house,” but we are also the “garden of the Lord.” We are a “temple,” we are the “cross,” we are the “robe,” we are the “burning bush.” We are all of these things. But God made us in complete and total innocence. But man chose to go against the will of God, and when he chose to do that, he fell from grace. He hid, and he’s been hiding within himself ever since.

We live in two worlds. We live within our hidden world, where we go places, we do things. We think we get away with it, and we hide it inside of ourselves, but on the outside we sometimes act like cherubs, like angels.

It’s amazing the things that I run across in my dealing with all the people. And don’t think that I’m holding myself up as a paragon of virtue because every human being has been through all of this, and will continue to do that and be that until he decides to put God first. But as you know, the rules and regulations I make are very, very few. We have almost no ritual because I want the full attention upon God. I have asked that there be no smoking, no drinking, and no drug abuse/usage. You can use it for medicinal purposes, when the doctor prescribes it, but not otherwise.

So people go on. All of them continue to come. To look at them and to see the way they live, you would think that they were doing everything just the way that they should be doing; and yet, somehow it comes out and you find that people whom you thought might do God the honor of giving up cigarettes, of giving up liquor, of not using drugs anymore, and perhaps getting their sex life in order and not indulging before marriage, and then trying to do everything they can to keep the marriage [indecipherable], haven’t been doing that at all. Some of them are chain-smokers. Some of them are drinking in private. Some of them—

Nobody is on drugs as far as I know at the present time, but it hasn’t been too long since some of them that have been with me for a long time were still indulging in drugs. And I had one case where an individual loved God very much, but they’d been on drugs, and when they went into this experience they again started in the drugs. It was pot, laced with heroin. For heaven’s sakes! And then I’m supposed to guide that one through all of these byways of the spiritual experience and see to it that they are helped to their God‑realization. No way can I be responsible for things like this!

When people continue to do things like this and pretend to be something else, they are what Jesus said. They are hypocrites. And they will never go anyplace. “For what does it profiteth a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” [paraphrased from Mark 8:36]

Everybody wants the utmost in life. They say they want God‑realization. And yet, how few are willing to pay all of the price? How few are willing to say, “Here am I, Lord. Take me. Do with me as you will?” That means total obedience. It means total surrender of everything that you are attached to in your senses, be it position, be it name, wealth, fame, the reward for your deeds, your family, anything!

You have to give up everything for God. But the amazing thing about it is that when you have given up everything in total surrender, the day comes, and not too far distant after you’ve done that, when you realize that you haven’t given up a thing except the things which have caused you trouble and worry and concern all of your life, which have kept you in bondage. And instead, because you have given up everything—that is, your attachment to it—you have everything more abundantly.

And it is high time that we realize that we can’t play games with God because God knows. He lives inside of us. He is that Life, that Intelligence, that Presence, that Power, that Will, that everything that is within us.

I would rather have somebody be honest with me, even though it may get them in trouble and it may hurt me, than to stand and look at me, like cherubs, and lie in my [sic] teeth. I will not respect them, believe me. And you try and you try and you try, over a long period of time; and when you haven’t gotten results, then you give up and you go to the ones that are really ready, willing and eager to go. Why should you waste your time on people that are constantly playing games, that are constantly playing hide‑and‑seek with you, with God, with everybody, and particularly with themselves?

So this thing that God showed me was that they fell from grace and they wanted to cover themselves. So we do fall from grace, and we cover ourselves with this outer ego. We are the Janus-faced God, with two sides to our face, one side the way we want to present it to the world—and therefore have their approbation, their respect, their love—and the other one is a face of darkness that we keep hidden deep inside of ourselves, deep inside.

We have to become everything that it says in the scriptures. And of all of the religions in the world, I think Christianity has gone backwards and has stood still for hundreds and hundreds of years because for some reason or other in the beginning, whoever had jurisdiction over it decided to make a new religion, to cover up the real Truth that was known long before Christ.

It is said that India is the cradle of all religions, and they had the Truth long before that Truth was ever put into words in the scriptures. And the word of Truth was handed down by the seers, by the sages, the men of realization, to those whom they knew were ready and would take what they gave them and do something about it, and change themselves and their own lives. But they felt that because not everybody was ready, they would cover up that Truth and they would write in story form. They would write a fable; they would write a parable. And if you were smart enough, intelligent enough, you could pierce beyond the outer and you could see the moral, the Truth of what was really being told. And the amazing thing was that it was the history, the story of the evolution of every man from the human to the Divine, (in our own case, the Old Testament and the New Testament) what the son of man does. He had his concubines, he had many wives, and he did many things. And he killed and he slaughtered, and he came to think that if he were to slaughter animals, like a goat or a lamb or whatever, as an offering to God, that this would grant him virtue, that it would grant him something wonderful in heaven.

Well, the goats and the lambs, the sheep, are within us, and the greatest of all is the “Lamb of God,” which we call the Christ, which the Hindus call Krishna, and which all of the Buddhists call Buddha—the Supreme, the Pure Intelligence.

But what have we done with all of it? What have we done with it? Don’t you realize that with every thought, every word, every action that comes forth from you, that you are building your future, your destiny? You reach out for all of the things that will bring you fame, money, the satisfaction of your desires, to put yourself forth in your gifts, and do you stop to thank the Maker, the Giver of all of these things? In most cases, no.

You don’t put Him first. He is not on your mind the first thing when you get up in the morning. You do not get up early enough to communion with Him. You do not go to bed early enough, so that you are too tired to commune with Him. You don’t take time out in the day to realize that He is there, that He has provided the sun and the moon and the stars. He has provided your job, He’s provided the clothes that you wear on your back, He’s provided the food that you put in your mouth, He has provided your loved ones.

He also provides your difficulties because you yourself have made them and you are co‑architect with God. And any difficulties that you have, you have made for yourself because of your disobedience to God’s laws.

When I say “you,” I am including myself in all of this. We have all done it. But as I say, only when you feel God’s love in your heart, when your love for Him is greater than love for yourself, or for anyone or for anything on this earth that you could possess or call your own, then He comes and He lifts you up, and the change starts.

But nobody wants to pay the price: “Oh, I don’t want to go through that.” But do you realize that there comes a day when you have to go through that? Because that is the sole reason you were put on this earth, to fulfill your destiny of realizing that you are God in human form, to become one with Him! You already are, but you have to realize it. And until you do that, things will never shape up. You will continue to have trouble, you will continue to do without, you will continue to find hatred and love sleeping together, side by side. It is inevitable because you have built the foundation for your own life, your own place where you live in the world, and stick by stick, brick by brick, bits of cement by bits of cement, or bits of mud or straw for your thatched roof, whatever, you have built it in your own house. And until you decide to do some remodeling, nothing is going to happen.

I would suggest that you make a blueprint of how you want to remodel your life and the house in which you live, and that you stick by that, and that you do not stop until you have it completed. And if you have an old ugly house filled with the sin of separation from God, filled with all of the poisons that you put into your system, that you clean it out and you make something beautiful for God.

I don’t know if I can remember the total story, but I have told it before, about a very wealthy man who took his wife and his servant to a master, asking that all of them become his disciples. So the master went inside of himself for a few moments and communed with God, and he came out and he said, “Well, we shall see. I would like to give all of you a test. I’m going to give each of you a banana, and I want you to go someplace where you are completely hidden from God and eat it, and then return to me. And the one that satisfies my test will be the one that I will accept as a disciple.”

So they thought that was very easy. The servant took his banana and he went in a closet and ate it. The closet door was closed. He was in total darkness. Surely, God couldn’t see him there. And the man went out and he found a house which was vacant. He went inside. There was no one around. He looked outside, all over the woods that surrounded it; He was not there. No one was there. So he ate his banana.

Both returned to the master, and the master said, “Oh my. Have you found a place where you can hide from God so easily?”

“Oh yes.” They were sure they hadn’t been seen.

But time passed, and the woman, the wife of the man, had not returned. They waited for her all day long. Finally, toward evening, she returned—weary, bedraggled, absolutely exhausted, and her banana still in her hand. And she said, “I am sorry, my lord. I went all over, but no place could I find where God could not see me.” She said, “I went into a house, but I felt His Presence there. I went into a closet,” and she said, “still, in the darkness of the closet I found His light. I went into the forest and I could feel His Presence all around me, and I could hear Him chirping from the birds. I could hear the rustle of the leaves. I could hear His life in every part of creation. I saw His sun which He had created, shining down upon me. I could feel the breezes. Everything, every place I went, God was there. I could not hide from Him. So I have returned to you to tell you that I have failed.”

So the master took her hand and looked at her with great love. He said, “My child, you alone have met the test.” And he turned to her husband and to the servant and he said, “You may take her as your spiritual teacher, your guru, because she alone knows that God is everywhere equally present.”

And so it is. You cannot hide from Him.

Why do you not make God the foundation of your lives? Why do you not stop the quarreling, the bickering, the hatred, the gossip, the putting yourself forth, the feeling put down if somebody doesn’t do everything just the way you think they should in order to make you comfortable and happy? Why do you think that your way is always right and everybody else is wrong, putting the blame on someone else when you have so much work to do within yourselves? Why?

If everybody were to look just to the building of their own temple, the house of the Lord, and make it into a thing of wonder and beauty, then all of the tomorrows would turn out beautifully. You would find success, but you would not be attached to it at all.

I found another Bible passage, from Jeremiah:

23 Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?

24 Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.

And this is true. There is no place we can go and hide from God, not any place. And it is said that the Guru is God that has come in human form to make you realize who and what you are in God; to take you out of the little self, the deceitful, the “vile creature,” as the human ego is called, into the wonder and the beauty of your Christhood.

There was once a saint who was so wonderful, so beautiful, that God flowed from him just as the stars give light and the flowers give fragrance from their being. If there was one thing about him that you could really pin down, it was that constantly he gave and he forgave. So the angels, seeing that he was the way he was, couldn’t quite understand it, but they thought so highly of him that they wanted to come to earth and give him a miracle. They wanted to find out what he wanted. So they appeared to him and they started praising him for all his works.

He said, “But I have done nothing.”

They said, “Well, we feel that you have. We want to ask God to give you a miracle. Do you want to heal the sick?”

He said, “No. That is God’s prerogative. That is God’s prerogative.”

He said, “Do you want to lead men out of the darkness into the light, so that they will raise their eyes to the heavens?”

“No,” he said. “That is the work of the angels.”

So they said, “Do you want to be a model of patience so that all men of virtue, so that all men may know that God is within you, and thereby inspire them?”

“No,” he said. “I do not wish to do that because if I had that gift,” he said, “then they would think of me and not of God.” (What humility.)

So they said, “What do you want?”

“Well, if there’s one thing,” he said, “that I want, it is that God might give me grace. If I have God’s grace, do I not have everything?”

The angels still weren’t satisfied, so they went to God and they talked to Him about it. And God said “What does he want?”

“Well, he doesn’t want anything.”

He said, “Well, go back and ask him again.”

So they went back and they said, “If you do not tell us what miracle you want, a miracle will be forced upon you.”

So he said, “Alright. If I can have anything that I want, I would want that I would do a great deal of good without knowing anything about it.”

Now, what do you think of that? “I would do a great deal of good without anybody knowing anything about it.”

Still, the angels were not satisfied, so they decided that wherever he walked, when his shadow was behind him or on either side of him and he was not aware of it, that because he was as he was—so humble, so pure, so completely at one with God—that wherever he walked, that he would do good and his goodness was spread over the earth. So wherever the shadow of the saint fell, then arid deserts came into being and grass grew upon; dried-up streams were filled with water; children and men and women who were ill, were healed instantly. The grace of God descended upon them. Their whole lives were changed. And because of his unwillingness to be anything of himself, wanting only that God should be there and should be served, only He should be thought about, they even forgot his name, and they called him the Ghost, the Holy Ghost.

That’s beautiful. That is really beautiful—the Holy Ghost. Can you imagine, with the thoughts that are in your mind, and have been in the minds of all of us, with the deeds that we do, the words that we speak, if we had that total purity so greatly that wherever we went men would be healed and would lift their face of God? How wonderful it would be.

Is it not worthy, is it not worthwhile, to build a temple for God that way, to live a life in that temple that is pure, dedicated to Him alone; to give up all of the things that are harmful, that you have to cover up and hide and be deceitful about and lie about? Would it not be wonderful to be straight out, with no pretense, to have the courage to be your God-self, your Real Self, accountable to no man but only to God? Would you not feel a wonderful release from God?

You know, so many places in the Bible it speaks about the “fear of the Lord,” and people have taken that to be “afraid of Him.” But originally, that word meant, for fear, “awe- inspiring.” Awe-inspiring. God is so great that He inspires awe, not fear of Him, because He’s a loving Father. He wants to give us all of the good things of His heaven and of His earth, and instead, we have built a hell within His temple, and we never want to go to the heaven that we are assured is within ourselves.

If you put God first, if you give up all of the things that you are doing in secret, that you know very well are not for your good and in accordance with God’s law—if you clean out His temple, if you cast out the “money-changers,” the thought constantly of gain, of name, of fame, of money, and put instead only the thought of God, only the desire to serve Him—your whole lives will change, never to be the same again. Indeed, you will be gods, gods in human form, and how badly this is needed in this world at this present time—how badly.

When is it going to change? How is it going to change? How are we going to avert this terrible catastrophe that is all around us? We don’t have to wait for it; it’s happening if we do not change ourselves. Are we going to be swallowed up in the earth or are we going to be among those few that are so at one with God that they can sit in the half-lotus posture without breath, without being disturbed, without fear, with the mind completely withdrawn and absorbed upon God, and that the trouble will pass us by? And when it is all over, we will still be sitting, the forerunners of the new race, the “elect” that are going to build a new heaven and a new earth, not only on earth but in the earth of their own being.

Why do you think all of these things are happening? It is because man has so disobeyed the laws of God and of his own being that this is what is causing it. Man’s actions alone, inside and out, are causing all of the things that are upon us now. And they will never change until we change, until we sit down and make our blueprints, like the architect does, and decide how we are going to build a new temple for God. When we do that, we don’t need to have fear, we don’t need to worry.

I have no fear of death. I have been through it, and I am still here. And the wonderful thing is, you see, that God built my temple, your temple, this “temple not made with hands,” and He Himself is the Sole Dweller in it. And God cannot die, because He existed before He put forth life from Himself, before He created one thing, or expressed that which was within Himself is a better way of putting it. He existed, and He will exist for all eternity; otherwise, He could not be Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Everlasting, Eternal, and all the rest of it, which we are taught that He is.

Let’s wake up to what the Bible really says! Let us know that it is written in parables and let us know that we must get rid of this vile creature within ourselves and bring forth the living Christ.

Do you think you will be deprived? You will have so much wealth of the Spirit that any little thing that you need will be given to you just like that. [Mother snaps her fingers.] Ask me. I know. And yet, I want nothing but Him. I want nothing but to serve Him. He is my boss and I will do only what He directs me to do. I don’t care what anybody plans for me or wants me to do: Whatever my Lord says, that I will do. Whatever the cost to myself, I will do.

You cannot withdraw from life, but you must go forth and put forth the life of God. You must light your candle and put it on a hilltop so that every man passing by will see that light of God and reach out for it and try to light his own candle for the Lord. When you have accomplished that—and most of us have a long way to go, but yet nowhere because God is within us—when you have accomplished this, you will find that you live a life of wonder, of beauty, of fulfillment, that you will have everything you ever dreamed of, and more.

But as long as you keep yourself in bondage, then you will not respect yourself, and men will not respect you, and you will never reach your goal. And even that which you get, in the outer sense, will crumble before you because it will be eaten up in the world cataclysm that will take place. But the man of God will stand straight and tall, and regardless of whether the body goes or not, he will still live, he will still have a life. And that light will continue to shine and will take on a new form because it will be a light of the everlasting God who is within each of us and everywhere equally present.