Talks

Transcript:

Title: The Truth Behind the Parables

Date: May 14, 1980

I’d like to read to you from “The Art of Being,” by Wilferd A. Peterson.

The art of being is the assumption that you may possess this very minute, those qualities of spirit and attitudes of mind that make for radiant living. It is being great now, being forgiving now, being tolerant now, being happy now, instead of postponing positive and constructive living to some vague and indefinite future.

It is developing an awareness of the infinite possibilities in each magic moment. It is coming into a full realization that the master voice, the secret of victorious being, when he declared that the Kingdom of God is not afar off, but that it is within you now.

I’d like to read to you from St. Matthew, Chapter 13, beginning with Verse 1.

• • 1. The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.
    2. And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.
    3. And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;
    4. And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:
    5. Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:
    6. And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.
    7. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:
    8. But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.
    9. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
    10. And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
    11. He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
    12. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
    13. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
    14. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:
    15. For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
    16. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.
    17. For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.

I want to speak to you this morning about the truth behind the parables. Everything, practically in the world starts with a seed. We even seed the clouds in order to get rain. So we have to start with the seed as the germ of all life. And that seed is a mystery indeed because it is a seed with a coating on the outside of it, a skin, a cloak if you will. But inside of it is contained the essence of that which the seed will one day develop into.

I remember when I was a child and went to Sunday school, it was a Roman Catholic Church and one of the first questions, if not the first, which was asked of us “What is a mystery?” And the answer to that was given as “A mystery is a truth which we cannot fully understand.”

Now that is true only in part because as we put our feet upon the spiritual path and progress, as we open our hearts, our minds, our souls to God and give ourselves to Him in full measure, the day comes when the mysteries are revealed to us, when we’re lifted up into the consciousness of God, when we have so dedicated ourselves, surrendered ourselves and reached out for God to the point where with every part of our being there is nothing for us but the desire for union with Him, then He will lift us up and He will show us all of the truth behind the mystery.

And the tremendous thing about it is that, that truth is contained within ourselves, every single one of us. Just think that even the cross of our own body, grows out of a seed. What a wonderful thought that is. Just as a seed is planted in the ground, and it must be fertilized, it must be watered, some seeds are planted in ground that is not good, and they fall by the wayside. Others are planted among thorns, and they bring forth thistles.

And this is telling us the story of what each particular soul goes through, as he starts out on his road to God, because not all souls are fully opened yet. Some of them are in the beginning grades of school, and so, they take, they choose whatever religion. Some of them, in the beginning, choose no religion at all. They label themselves as atheists. But when they do start to put their feet on the spiritual path, they choose that religion which their child‑like minds are able to comprehend, and to receive. But God is there; because He is equally present everywhere. And as their consciousness grows, just as a seed grows, so also the mysteries are revealed to them. And gradually, more and more facets of the diamond are revealed.

Now, many people go out and teach when they’ve had a few revelations. Maybe they’ve had a few visions. Maybe they’ve had a few experiences. Maybe they’ve been lifted up into what is called the rapture. But that is only the highest human experience. It is not something which you should dwell in. You should go through that, discard it, refuse it, if you will. And go on, and go through the full crucifixion. Go through the purgatory, or the purging, and then, eventually you will enter the kingdom of heaven within your own being. And you will get the bliss of God, the eternal bliss; that which doesn’t just come and go as the rapture does, but the eternal bliss of God.

I know this very well, because I know how drastically I was tempted a couple of times to enter into that, and to be absorbed by it. And a couple of times, it really got to me. But I went through it. I went to the other side. For some reason, I had to do that. And I knew that I had to do this, that there was more to be learned, more to be experienced.

This idea of vicarious atonement, given to mankind by one man who lived 2,000 years ago, is totally without foundation. Because it is the Christ in you, the savior within you, who atones for the sins which you individually commit. And you are committed to pay the price for those sins of separation from God.

Now, as I’ve said before, there’s only one sin, and that is this idea of separation from God, because contained within that one sin are all the rest of the sins that we think of in the universe. Because if we did not have this idea of separation, then certainly, we wouldn’t feel that we were doing anything wrong because we would be lifted up. We would be absorbed in the bliss, and the joy, and the happiness, and the totality, the fullness of God. And it’s beautiful.

Now, after we are born, and that birth starts with the beginning of a seed. After we are born, then comes this baptism. And so in order to express what happens within man, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, then we are baptized with water. And we know that there are religious sects who actually dip their people into water, either into a stream, a lake, or a tub, or whatever. And recently, when we were hunting for a church, we saw a Baptist church out in Mountlake Terrace, and right up in front, they had a big wooden tub. And the real‑estate agent who showed us the tub said that that was the hot tub. The hot tub—that’s where they douse them in. And that’s supposed to cleanse them of their sin, but it doesn’t, you see. That is just water. There must come further the baptism of fire. That is where the kundalini or the serpent force starts to rise in the spine and permeates the whole body, the whole being.

And then we are reminded of Moses and the burning bush. Don’t you see how all of these mysteries, these parables relate to something that actually happens within you as human beings. And it speaks of Moses and the burning bush, and your body is referred to as the tree and as the bush. And so that is what it is speaking about when you start to have these higher spiritual experiences and then it speaks to the baptism of blood. Now that is very little known in the West.

They say, off the top of their heads, “Have you been washed in the blood of Christ?” And they haven’t the faintest idea of what they mean by it. They think that because you accept Jesus Christ, the man who lived 2,000 years ago as your personal savior that you are washed clean in the blood which he personally shed for you on his own cross which they considered to be wooden 2,000 years ago and this is not true. It is not true. The baptism of blood is a totally different thing. It is an inner experience where your whole circulatory system is changed from your physical body to the astral body. And so your consciousness is released from this physical body and then it is transferred into the astral or the electrical body. And when this happens, you feel the pain of this change that takes place within yourself.

And I have told you about the wife of the minister who said to me once (she was a Pentecostal minister’s wife) and she said to me, “Have you been washed in the blood of Christ?” And I said to her, “What should have happened to me if I had been?” And it stopped her cold. She said, “What do you mean?” I said, “You asked me if I had the experience of being washed in the blood of Christ. Obviously, something should have happened to me. What should have happened to me? Explain it to me. Describe it to me.” And she couldn’t do it. She said, “Well, I don’t mean that you were washed actually in blood.” I said, “What do you mean?” She couldn’t tell me. So I sat her down and told her for two hours because I went through it. I went through it in India. I went through the hell of it. I went through the pain of it and believe me, it was not easy.

And every time one circulatory tract was completed, then the navel automatically depressed and that was very painful. And I said to God, “Will it be long yet?” I was tied, hand and foot in the form of a cross on a bed. And He said, “No, not much longer now.” And I was thrashing from side to side, you see, so many cubits this way and so many cubits that way as it says in Revelation, as this transition takes place within yourself. And it was really an experience. I could hear this blood gurgling inside. And that is like the wine of the spirit.

You see, they speak of the marriage at Cana where Jesus turned water into wine and his mother at this marriage said, “They have no wine.” And he said to his mother, Woman, my hour has not yet come. So she instructed the servants to bring six jugfuls of water to him. And again, we have the six spinal centers involved in this. And she said to do as he bid you. And the water was changed into the wine of the Spirit and the marriage took place between the soul and God, but yet, he did this in advance as an indication, as a gesture of what was going to come. And then one of the guests there said that usually people serve their good wine first, and then gave the people bad wine afterwards because they were so drunk with the good wine that they didn’t realize the difference. But you, he said, have given us the good wine. So, this is another parable and this is the true meaning of it when the soul goes through these tremendous experiences.

Then we have another one. Let’s take John the Baptist. He came before the Christ and he represents intuition, the still, small voice of God that really, comes and goes in the beginning. And if you will listen to it, it gets stronger and stronger and stronger, but still, it is merely an intuitive voice. And he said that he came before, but that he was not worthy of the one who would come after him. And that is the Christ who comes, the total stream of Christ consciousness which comes into the individual’s being and flows through just like a stream of water, constantly.

And what happened to John the Baptist? You see, this story that’s told about his coming and teaching the people through intuition is really very, very deep seated. And it tells in the end that his head was cut off and Herodias, the wife of Herod had been his brother’s wife, Philip’s wife, and it was wrong. And so John the Baptist told Herodias that it was wrong for her to be married to her husband’s brother. And still, she went ahead and lived with him, so she hated John the Baptist for this. She wanted to kill him but she didn’t know how she would go about it. So one day, they were having a celebration, a birthday, and Herodias’ daughter, Salome, was brought before the king and made to dance. She was very beautiful and she appealed to him. He lusted after her. He desired her to the degree that he said, ask anything of me, and I will give it unto you, ask anything. So she went to her mother and she asked her mother what it was that she should ask him for. And her mother said, ask him for the head of John the Baptist to be brought on a platter. And so, much as he regretted it, he ordered this done.

Now, what does that mean? It means that the sex urge became so great that the voice of intuition is cut off. It is wasted. And you are tempted by this, shall we say, a harlot of the universe within yourself, and that the minute that you waste that seed and it goes to the ground, then you no longer have it in you as strength, as power, and as direction. And that’s the true meaning of the cutting off of the head of John the Baptist.

And you can go on and on and on. Even unto the time when Peter denied knowing the Christ. At the time, he was going on the road to go Golgotha. Three different times he denied knowing him. Why? Because Jesus the savior, the son of man, represents the human ego. Peter represents the truth, and so Peter had to deny the human ego. He had to deny Jesus the man three times as the consciousness was released from each one of the three bodily jars and then lifted up. It died, it descended into hell. And the third day or the day that it was released from the idea or the causal body, then it arose from the dead, appeared to the disciples, gave them the power of the Holy Ghost. Where before he’d been the ghost of the real Self or God, the human ego, the son of man, then he became the Son of God, the Christed one. And so, he was lifted up and it says: He gave the power of the Holy Ghost to his disciples. He ate with them, he supped with them. And then he ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of his Father.

And as I’ve said before, there’s only a nod given to that ascension. But that takes three days or three separate periods of time to go through, just the same as the descension into the hell of your own being or the subconscious takes. And it isn’t until you have gone all the way over the top, beyond duality, till you have died fully, not only the ego of the five senses, but the ego of the ten subtle qualities of the mind, are you fully one with God, are you fully an enlightened creature.

And that’s why you see the serpents shown on the heads of the Mother Kali and of the god Shiva, because the serpent force or the force of duality has gone up the spine, through the brain, and the Christed one, or Krishna as they call the Christ, has taken over the kingdom. It’s tremendous.

But after his death, remember that they broke the legs of the two thieves on either side of the Christ. These are the forces of good and evil. But the legs of the Christ they did not break. That’s because the others were these dual forces. They were just symbolic of this good and evil force, the positive and negative within every man. And they couldn’t last after the Christ took over the kingdom.

There’s the arising from the dead. Now again, Hades means the place of darkness, of ignorance. And when you go through these tremendous experiences, when you have the courage to lay your life at the feet of God, then you arise from the death of ignorance and of darkness. And where before you had the parables, now you have the truth behind the mysteries. And having paid the full price for it, there isn’t anybody on Earth could dissuade you that you do not have the price. You have given your life in truth for Christ. It’s just not a gesture of going up in front of an altar and saying, “I accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior.”

It is in fact that price must be paid, because it even says so in this chapter. “For whosoever hath to Him shall be given and he shall have more abundance. But whosoever hath not, from Him shall be taken away even that which he hath. Therefore, speak I to them in parables because they seeing, see not, and hearing, they hear not. Neither do they understand.”

They are still in a state of darkness and ignorance. There are veils of darkness before their consciousness. And then it talks about the prophecy of Esaias being filled by saying, “By hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive.”

I don’t know how many times I have talked to people of the Orthodox faith, of the Pentecostal faith, and I can’t get through to them at all. And they think I am crazy when I tell them the truth that I have experienced. And they label me, as I have told you before, an angel of Satan. They have burned me in effigy. And they call this Christianity. And they have not even seen me, many of them. Many of them don’t know what I teach. And they think I’m teaching a heathen religion. It’s like the early Gnostics who really had the truth, but were many of them killed because they were teaching the truth behind the parables.

But it is high time that man came into the knowledge of who and what he is in God. And that this kingdom, this treasure is within himself and he has access to it, that God lives inside of him, that Jesus, the son of man, is his human self and that the Christed one, Jesus, the Son of God, is his spiritual self. And that in order to come into the fullness of his being, to become one whole person, to become master of himself, he must go through that which is necessary in order to attain it. There can be no cheating. And when you cheat, as I have said many times before, you cheat only yourself.

It is a tremendous thing to be taught the truth. It is a tremendous thing to know that you have a whole universe inside of yourself; that you have the sun which expresses the Son of God within you, right within your forehead; that you have within your solar plexus the moon, which is your second brain or your psychic center; that you have the stars in your spinal center, and you have the candlesticks there, and as your consciousness rises and grows in God, that these spinal centers light up like a Christmas tree.

And then finally, the supreme moment when you have had the courage to go over the top, to give yourself totally to God that the thousand-petalled lotus of the brain opens up. And your whole being is flooded with the light that comes from this great light of God, which is your real Self, that one who sits on the throne of your consciousness and the altar of your heart. Your heart opens up then, not just to a few, but to the whole world. And each man you count as your child in God.

And yet you know beyond all question of a doubt that you of yourself are nothing, but if you are something, that you are merely the child and the servant of God and of everyone you meet. This is the real truth. And until you know that, until you’re willing to give up the constant pleasures of the senses and spend your time in meditation, in reading spiritual books, in doing the techniques which you’ve been taught to practice, you will never become what you can become. You will become brilliant. You will become affluent. Not perhaps in the things of the world, but what are they worth? They, as it says in here, are eaten up by moths, they rust, they disintegrate, and they return into dust. The only thing you can take with you is what you build within yourselves, within yourselves, the things of the spirit.

And the more advancements you make in this incarnation, the less you’re going to have to do that is distasteful in the next and the closer you get to realizing the kingdom of heaven. It says, and I have repeated it over and over again, that if we will seek God first, every other thing that we need, that we want, that we desire, will be added unto us. And instead, we pray to Him for things. Instead of going to Him first and asking Him for union with Himself, we ask for things. Just sit quietly, relax, take a deep breath, and let everything go. And then put your mind upon Him alone. Don’t think of your illness, don’t think of your troubles, how much money you need, what problem you have here and there and the other place, but think only of Him and all else shall be added unto you.

I’ve told you over and over again I am the living example of that. I live on God’s bounty alone, on His charity, and yet my coffers are never empty. And I give and I give, and I do and I do, and I love the giving and the doing. And yet He has to make it possible for me to do so, but it comes, it comes. Why? Because I did what it said. I put Him first and I loved Him more than I loved my little self. And I gave myself in full measure even unto death for Him, because I loved Him.

And you ask how many Christians today if they are willing to do that, and you won’t find all that many takers. They’re afraid. And yet I stand before you fully alive, more alive than I’ve ever been in my life, with more energy. I work day and night, seven days a week. And the body gets tired, it gets worn out. And sometimes I get so tired, this body does, that I can scarcely make myself do what God puts before me to do, and still I keep on doing it. And pretty soon, like yesterday, I was totally depleted. I have been for a few days. All of a sudden, I got the most tremendous burst of energy and it was like I was reborn, a new person.

And again, I accomplished a great deal of work. But you see, I don’t ask Him, “Lord, do this for me. Lord, do that for me. Lord, give me this. Lord, give me that.” I forget to ask Him to do anything for me and that is the God’s truth and He knows it. And I make up my mind, “Well, I’m going to keep a few days off and just rest and not take telephone calls as they come in. Just keep myself out of things.”

The first thing I know, something comes over my recorder call and the hand automatically goes to the telephone and picks it up, because somebody’s in trouble. I can’t always do that, and I’m not always directed to do that. And so if I don’t do what the individual expects me to, it is because my Boss says that they have to be on their own at this present time; because I will not go against anything that He tells me. He is the president of the universe and I listen to Him alone. And I don’t care if everybody else in the world denies me. If they all spit upon me, no matter what they do to me, still my love is for Him, my devotion is for Him, my service is for Him, and I will do what He says, if I die a second death or a third death this time, because I’ve already put this first one in

I tell you these truths because I want you to know what’s happening inside of you. We have between here and a couple of other places, twelve people going through spiritual experiences now such as I described. And if someone wasn’t around to tell them what it was all about, they are in trouble. I know because I’ve had people who have tried every place to get help, as I did myself at one point when I came back to America from India. And I was going through this false state of ecstasy and many experiences. And I went to a Swami in New York hoping to get help because I had heard that he’d had been in the Himalayas for 20 years and I thought, “Well, surely he must know something about what’s going on.” And he knew nothing. He had been running a printing press if you please. And I told him about some of my experiences, and he said, “Oh, none of our Swamis have those experiences.” He said they’re all very brilliant men. I said, “Brilliance is not necessarily a sign of God‑realization, Swamiji.” My husband was horrified. And I gave the man five dollars for his time and walked out, and I went on my own.

And there were times when I was in New York, and people were coming, students, and I was in this strange experience. I was the Divine Mother at one time, and another, God was having me take the part of the harlot of the universe. And I remember one fella came in and here I was sitting in half Lotus posture going back and forth, back and forth like this because I was forced to do this. This is what my body wanted to do at that time because of the loosening of the atomic structure. And he says, “Mother, what are you doing?” I said, “Well, I’m rocking on my cross, of course. What do you think?”

Strange things. You dance. You sing, because song controls the elements of your body. You place a glass on a table, and you play an instrument, or you sing very loudly, and you can shatter that glass without it’s even being touched. So, we know that sound controls the elements and it does in our own bodies and so does the movement, the loosening part. And I was put through all of the Hindu techniques of yoga, physically. And I’ve never done one of them except the meditative posture in all of my life this time. Yet, it seems the memory from another lifetime came into being and whatever was necessary was done. That is how God arranges it. You give yourself to Him; you don’t have to worry about what you know or what you’re going to do. Keep your mind on Him, and He will do the work.

I remember one; he was supposed to be the greatest Hatha Yogi in all of India when I was there ten years ago. And I think I’ve told you about it when I knelt at his feet, and he put his hands on my head. And he went, “Wow!” He laughed, he cried, he shouted. I thought he’d gone mad. I wondered who this mad man was that I’d come before. And he couldn’t speak English, and he kept saying “Beta, Beta.” And I said to the interpreter, “What’s the matter with him?” And he said, “Well, he says that you were his chief chela incarnations ago. And he calls you Beta, his son, his spiritual son.” I said, “But I’m a woman.” He said, “He’s paying you the greatest honor. He remembers you as his son. And he said he has followed your life ever since you were born. And he has called you to India. And he said he is so overjoyed to see you.”

Well, strangely enough, before I went to India, before I’d ever heard of him, it was given to me that I would meet a great Hatha Yogi. And so, the second time I met him; he gave me his mantle, that was his spiritual inheritance. He gave me all of his powers, and he joined his soul to mine. None of which I wanted and none of which I asked for, but I had them. I also had whatever karma went with it. And it was not a pleasant experience. But through the grace of God and the direction of Swami Ashokananda, I kept my mind off of him and the things that were happening. I put it on God, and it disappeared to the point where I could write him again.

I was notified of his death, and by all intents and purposes according to spiritual law, I should have gone back and taken charge of the ashram. All of this would have been my spiritual inheritance. I would have been the guru of his disciples, and I wanted no part of it because I already had a straight pipeline between God and myself. And when he did this to me, he really threw me into something, and I didn’t like it.

I want God alone. God alone. I don’t need to have my human ego satisfied in that way. All I want is that God’s will be done. All I want is to help you to come to that point when you too will want to do only that which God directs you to do, when you want Him so badly, when your love for Him is so great that you will be willing to give up everything, sit at His feet, implore Him to put you through whatever is necessary in order that you might find your union with Him.

He is so tremendous, this God who dwells within us. He is the bliss, the power, the intelligence, the love, the beauty, the everything‑ness that we are looking for in all of these outside things and never in this world will we find them. And if you put your feet on the path, and then you go back, you lose your light and many times it takes you centuries to get it back again, to get to where you were. And you lose the opportunity of having your guru, that one who has gone all the way to God and who alone is able to help you through all of the dark lanes that will take you to your final God‑realization, where you will be lifted up and you will be held in the arms of God, in His eternal bliss forevermore.