THE TEMPLE NOT MADE WITH HANDS
by Walter Clemow Lanyon
CONTENTS
Out of the East
Subjectivity
Olympian Dust
Illusion
Recognition
Cloven Tongue
The Poisonous Flower
The Chastening
The Extension of the Senses
Seeing
Hearing
Tasting
Touching
Smelling
Embodiment
I Come Not to Destroy
That Which Concerneth Me
From Walking Up and Down and To and Fro
The Friendly Enemy
In All Thy Ways
Thank You, Father
Ye Must Be Born Again
Setting the Captive Free
Resist Not
No Condemnation
Being Being
The Acts of God
The God-Spake Voice
Believest Thou This?
When Ye Pray
OUT OF THE EAST
Chapter One
As the wind bloweth, I go now,
And ye know not whither.
With a warm breath I have blown upon your seedlings, I have blessed you as a warm rain.
Aye, and from the northeast, icy
And stern was the blast of my indignation
Against the weeds of treachery ---
Against the waste of unclean furrows and broken barns, Wherein mice ate the seed I gave you without stint. Now look ye to the harvest, for I go, And neither tear nor bell nor burning sacrifice
Shall summons me again to teach anew
What I have taught so often that your ears are weary, And ye are fat from hearing and not doing.
-Druid Taliesin*
* Taken, with permission, from writings of Talbot Mundy.
YES, "Ye are fat from hearing, and not doing." Hearing endless words of and about the truth and never
really hearing the WORD within your soul. Afraid to listen to the voice within you, preferring to listen to another
give his idea of what it all means. It probably does mean just what he says to him and for him --- but that will
not fit into the scheme of your things. "You have grown fat by not doing" --- what an indictment. How
can you do anything when you have only the words of another and not the power within them. When will you listen
to the VOICE within you and stop discounting yourself --- you too are my temple --- remember this. Cyrano asks
this pertinent question:
"What would you have me do? Use the fire God gave me to burn incense all day long under the nose of wood and stone? No, thank you." Burning incense to personalities, organizations, false gods and more especially to the human egos, is the surest way to call down the wrath of God. When you pray, will you dare to stand in the effulgent LIGHT of the Temple, unafraid --- with the boldness that comes of pure recognition of God --- and ask, simply and with assurance? Or will you seek for the praise and patronage of a great personal god-to climb to heights you could not reach alone? Will you in this golden Light try to demonstrate gold?
Organizations are but the shadows of the personalities who created them. When the energy of the personality is spent, the thing falls to pieces and becomes a memory. Without the Spirit, nothing lasts. That is why Jesus warned against the worship of personalities. "Call not me good." He saw the evil of following personalities, however lofty. Follow ME --- follow the SPIRIT. When you do, you will see ME in a thousand, thousand masks-and eventually will be able to call ME into being by your recognition of ME. Yes, even in the mass of corruption and death, with all its indications of futility, you will call ME forth and I will come through joyously. Yes, I shall come, as surely as a reflection in the mirror laughs when you laugh. When you pray, come joyously into the Temple. Put away your desires for the nonce --- enter, and be still. Presently, you will see the "desires" in all their perfection which He has prepared for those who LOVE THE LORD. You will see things that eyes have not seen. The petty desires you left at the temple gates when you entered to pray will have faded into insignificance, for the "things that are prepared for those who love the Lord" are so much greater. And you will learn the reason for the deep secrecy --- you will tell no man. Ye accuse me of keeping secret knowledge That I should share among you,
As if a she bear should show you her cubs Or a thrush should tell you where her eggs are nested. There is nothing --- nay, no knowledge hidden Saving only from him who seeketh
The wherewithal to fatten ignorance.
-Druid Taliesint*
If ye have ought against your brother or yourself, first lay your gift on the altar. Stop the useless trying to get something. Pray the prayer of recognition and rejoicing for once, and see what happens. Much will take place when you are ready --- things more wonderful than you have planned or thought will happen.
If I AM to "give you the desires of your heart," you must be able to take them. How can you take them if you are only trying to believe in a God who transcends all thought patterns of your life? How can you possibly receive the desires of your heart unless you realize that something greater than your thought process will bring them to pass? How can you succeed unless you have discovered that victories are not won on a battlefield of mental effort and argument, but in the garden of your heart?
All belief in karmic debt will loosen and disappear the moment you enter the LIFE which is in Christ Jesus. The moment you cease looking to the ancestors and their evil history, by recognizing the FATHER, then the old karmic pictures become nil. "Call no man (NOT any man) your father." The Divine impulsion which brought you into your temple-body holds your Destiny. You release all of the qualities of the human father the moment you cease identifying yourself with him. You see a sudden and miraculous change taking place when you call no man your father-and appropriate the birthright of SPIRIT and view your Golden Destiny stretching before you. Slay him? Shoot your arrows at the moon, ye impotently ignorant. He who hath earned a destiny shall run his course, Though earth, air, fire and sea were all in league against him. Look then to your little evil,
Even that is fearsome because it is so little. Slay that, lest it betray you
When the hour of His destiny Sendeth him forth to test your manhood.
-Druid Taliesin*
Nothing can destroy the Christ within you, once you have discovered its reality. "Slay him?" It is like
shooting arrows at the moon. Nothing shall stop the on-rush of his presence within you, hurrying in his unhurried
way, to the fulfillment of YOUR Divine DESTINY. You have released the fate of the man born of woman, few of days
and full of trouble, and have entered into the Divine Heritage of the Son of God. You have "earned a destiny"
and shall fulfill it with ease and beauty "Though earth, air, fire and sea were all in league against him."
Nothing shall withstand the Brightness of his coming.
SUBJECTIVITY
Chapter Two
IN Oriental teaching there is a degree in which man frees himself from "subjectivity." Subjectivity is
that state of being under the power or authority of another or a system of ideas, or a code of action derived from
the findings of the senses.
When man frees himself from this "subjectivity," he recognizes that "all mentation, viz., their appearance, presence, change or disappearance (in the field of consciousness) have no genuine reality. They are neither in a temporal nor in a spatial (having nature of space) relation with the ONE SOUL, for they are NOT self-existent." In other words, when man enters into the ONE-ness he loses all the duality of life, which he now sees as the illusion he once called reality. He sees the rose within the rose and the substance within the symbol and knows where REALITY lies. Likewise, he sees the LIFE unchangeable and eternal in the manifestations of health, which is but a limited concept of LIFE put through the glass darkly of appearances which man has accepted and to which he has become subject. To the savage, things which are natural to an engineer appear as magic and the workings of a tribal God. He does not understand them, so fears them-and hence can be hurt by them, as a child in its ignorance can be injured by electricity. When we recognize even in a small degree that all states of "mentation," every degree of the human thought or finding, that is, all appearances, presence, changes, and even their disappearances, have in actuality no reality, then we begin to experience freedom. Appearances are but shadows cast by spirit in the world of illusion. Hence man does walk through the shadows of belief, even as he is told he shall walk through fire, water, closed doors, and even death-not to work miracles, not to mystify or to induce worship, but because when he is "sealed" in the WORD of Jesus Christ, he discovers that all the "mentations" of the human mind are but illusions. And if it be necessary for him literally to set them aside, he will do so, as Jesus did in all his so-called miracles. The illusion of the mind, under subjectivity of the human, self-made laws, saw the healings of Jesus as something from on-high, or something from the realm of mystery-but Jesus was automatically operating the LAW OF GOD, and took no cognizance of the "mentation" of the human thought. When you live in the recognition of the true values of LIFE, you rise above "subjectivity" of the human mind and are freed into the realm of pure Spirit. At this level, what you "tell the Father in secret" is declared from the housetops of manifestation as a natural sequence. Nothing else could happen. When Jesus went WITHIN and shut the door, he entered the degree beyond subjectivity of any and all human thinking and manifestation, and he then functioned from the place of GOD. Here he found the REALITY that does not pass away and is not subject to belief, nor space, nor time --- but revealed the NOW-NESS of GOD. Finally, the freeing of oneself from the "mentations" of the human belief causes man to take his rightful place in regard to the coming and going of things. Unto Caesar are the things of Caesar rendered, and unto God the things which are God's --- and the discovery of rendering unto God the POWER which is animating everything in the universe will cause a subtle change to take place in manifestation. It takes the power away from the inanimate thing and places it where it belongs. To discover God as LIFE in the temple --- body, is to cause the manifestation of health to rise many degrees in the body. To contemplate God as LIFE is to cause the action of this LIFE in the temple-body to be equal to anything which it has to perform-even though this may seem beyond the accepted possibilities of the body. When this release from subjectivity takes place, many of the revelations of Jesus Christ will become natural and normal. The unenlightened being has nothing but his subjectivity to follow --- and this can be on any one of a thousand levels. Thus the savage, in following his pattern is doing the best he can, and until he becomes Christ-enlightened, he continues to function under the laws of his subjectivity. Thus, if he believes that sitting in a draught causes him to have a stiff neck or get pneumonia, he will come under the law of his accepted subjectivity and produce these effects --- and will have to use other laws to relieve himself.
OLYMPIAN DUST
Chapter Three
Into the Light, into the fire ---
To the innermost core of the deathless flame I ascend-I aspire.
Under me rolls the whirling earth
With the noise of a myriad wheels that run Ever 'round and about the sun.
Over me circles the splendid heaven
Strewn with stars and noon and even,
Soul serene, float with my rainbow wings unfurled, Alone with Love, 'twixt God and the world.
-Marie Corelli
MANIFESTATION will only remain as long as it is held in consciousness. The moment a thing appears, it is on its
way out. It begins a process of disintegration, going back into the Divine Dust from which it was shapened. The
Greeks called it Olympian dust. In the beginning God made man out of the "dust"-and breathed into him
the breath (fire) of Life, and he became a LIVING SOUL. "Dust thou art, to dust returneth" is said of
the manifestation, not the SOUL of man. By the consciousness of Life can man stay the manifestation indefinitely
and can renew the garments and shoes that waxed old. The renewing fire of consciousness revivifies it. All the
mysteries are revealed when you enter in and become ONE with the Christ. The blending of the Christ with the body
causes the perfect Temple to appear. The rock you smite will not give forth springs of living water to amuse the
curious. If a miracle were necessary, it would be performed naturally and easily. There were many things Jesus
could not tell because of the unbelief --- but now you believe in a power greater than human thought and are experiencing
and feeling the new consciousness coming into being. In like manner, anything that is released from consciousness
will depart, having had the life force drained from it.
"Yes," it is said, "I can pick it up or lay it down." The Jesus Christ consciousness has the POWER to self-resurrect the "dead" body, and to rehabilitate the disintegrating body.
Out of consciousness, out of your world;
IN consciousness, IN your world.
When the human thought is broken, the God thought flows and integrates itself through the Temple. Then it is that the IDEA or Cosmic Urge of God comes to man. As he gazes at this NEW idea, it becomes clearer and clearer, until he can say "It is done,"-and see it appear. "In ALL (every one of them) thy Ways, ACKNOWLEDGE HIM --- and HE shall direct thy paths." The hell of human pictures and beliefs in which you find yourself will suddenly change into the FLAME of Love. Where you stand, the ground is HOLY --- when you recognize the ONE.
"It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye Than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
The Needle's Eye was a gate through which to enter Jerusalem. It was so low that in order to enter, a camel must
be completely divested of its load. So man, in entering into the Consciousness of Jesus Christ, finds he cannot
enter until he is divested of all the load of human belief. When he "unloads," or "lets go,"
or "leaves all," he does not leave person, place or things, necessarily --- -but he releases his belief
of any power in them. When the closely clutched symbol of a thing is released, the real manifestation will appear.
In the FIRES OF SELF-RECOGNITION do you discover the Spiritual Priority of all things real, all law and power.
This Spiritual Priority is the LAST WORD --- -the WORD which becomes flesh and dwells among us. The accumulated
human thoughts of man are stuck to each other like a pack of wet labels. Man keeps going back to some other premise
which will substantiate evil. A Divine forgetfulness will obscure the thoughts and events of yesteryears completely.
Presently the interpretation of the LIGHT comes. We see the Divine interpretation of the FIRE. One time it is consuming --- -and another, illuminating. "Into the LIGHT --- into the FIRE,
To the innermost core of the DEATHLESS FLAME,
I ascend --- I aspire."
ILLUSION
Chapter Four
I ONCE saw a so-called famous person in a crowd where no one recognized her as anything other than what she was,
just a body dressed and painted in the custom of the day. She became a strange thing without her press agent and
her publicity, and began shrinking away from the obvious comparison of herself as she appeared without the acclaim.
Presently she became violently ill and had to be taken home. Anything, when not recognized, dies --- and the old
inflated ego needed the winds of acclaim and praise to keep the balloon afloat. When the inflation was not there,
the withered skin of the ego settled in against the form like the loose hide of an elephant. In reality there was
nothing there. And so with the personality --- if it is not recognized, it dies.
I can see her now --- looking with wild eyes for recognition. The only thing she lived on . . . was praise and acclaim. The fact that she could run through a whole book of poses meant nothing to anyone but herself, and it was nothing but illusion to her now. She was like a wandering Pleiad, looking for her sisters.
Eventually your old "darling" will be consumed-no one will save it from the ravages of the flames of time and ignorance. To ignore it is to see it die. The brightness Of YOUR coming will need no publicity agent or advertising campaign. You are self-announced, self-sustained, and self-expressed, because you have discovered that your body is the TEMPLE of the LIVING GOD-and you bear witness to just that and nothing more.
One is sometimes surprised in meeting a so-called celebrity. For some reason or another, we are always amazed that without the acclaim of the world they are just ordinary people, and sometimes not even that. We are disappointed that the character we have adored exists only in our minds. This imaginary thing which in reality is not there, comes to apparent life when the applause of the crowd is present and retires the moment it is not-like the dead grand-parents of the children in The Blue Bird they arose in their graves when the children were talking of them, and said, "We are never dead as long as you are thinking of us." And so we see the chimera of life continue, fed by thought.
When you recognize that you are the CHRIST of GOD, there is no putting on and off of a character. It is always there and can be recognized without the voice of publicity or press acclaim. "THIS is my beloved Son" was said of You. That is all you need to hear to make you famous and recognized by all who can SEE; and they are the only ones who matter. Remember "The fame of him went abroad"-the fame of an ego, however great, dies because it is nothing but outside acclaim. If you are seeking fame it is a futile job.
RECOGNITION
Chapter Five
SELF-recognition, Self-identification --- automatically produce the "SON of God" state of consciousness.
It is then not STRANGE "that he made himself as God." You experience the subtle change of it when mental
consciousness merges into the Spiritual consciousness. That which was "miracle" becomes "Natural."
Why should you stand aghast when you see the Power of God disintegrating the pictures of stagnant human thought? The thing that should make you wonder is the appearance of Evil in the Creation of God.
"No man hath taught me these things but my Father in Heaven," is a discovery of soul, a radical dependence upon the Inner Voice, and a complete getting away from the stupid ideas of man-made teaching. Through identification the union of man and God takes place; a blending of
consciousness in which man discovers "Substance" undefined, infinite. The inertia of matter is overcome; quickened into the Spirit substance --- one with God; --- with the all everywhere present. The action of the human thought, though it be called intelligence or wisdom, is foolishness in the eyes of God; and moreover is a liar and the father of it. Witness the thousand and one discoveries made by this mind and proclaimed the "Panacea" for all ills, which later are decried as utter folly. Everything which proceeds from the man whose breath is in his nostrils is untrue.
The Great Ignorance that went up and watered the face of the earth still wears a mask of Wisdom. If the Child has the native capacity to understand and do the works of God, because of his ability to accept a dimension entirely outside the capacities of the human brain, of what use then is the teaching of man? "Who by SEARCHING can find out God?" The great ignorance watered the whole face of the earth, and has brought forth a crop of poisonous weeds which are sustained by belief in them. Hence a disease is brought forth by this "watering" and is caused to flourish by the sheer force of human belief, called race consciousness. "Mental" consciousness which appears to be a creator finally makes its circle and dies together with its manifestation. All human manifestation begins its demise from the moment it appears. It will fall into the dust, or will last for "three score and ten" years according to the sustaining power back of it. The luminous lump of substance which sustains its own manifestation is the point of identification in you. It is the place where the invisible is stepped down to a point of visibility.
It is written "I must decrease-ye must increase"-the awakening of the True Identity causes decrease of the ego consciousness.
The Ego which left the Garden of Eden, is the Prodigal Son who by remembrance of his heritage, straightway moves toward it. The corruptible begins to put on the incorruptible. The decrease and increase begin to take place. He discovers and comes again into the state of being where All that I have is yours. He finds the substance he wasted in riotous living is suddenly restored to all its fair proportions. He discovers a ONE-ness to which nothing can be added or taken away.
When he dares to let go of the preconceived notion, ideas, and beliefs, then he will experience the works of Divine impulsion. From the depths of his BEING are thrown up gifts, talents, and capacities, to do and accomplish things he has not yet known. "My ways are not your ways," and they are not subject to any of the laws of thinking. The human knows nothing about the Ways of the Lord. He is busy seeking ways and means to slip up on the Lord, by systems of Truth, and thereby perform miracles to stimulate worship of his ego. He can do none of the things he is teaching others to do, and finally he, like the Green bay tree, takes the count.
Do you speak ONE-ness and straightway dramatize a state of Two-ness? Do you straightway have a problem to overcome or work out, after you have assumed ONE-ness? Or do you experience One-ness where there is no polarity, only completeness. This state of consciousness causes disease and evil to evaporate, like mist before noon-day sun. Are there two? healer and patient? if so, you are still far in the desert of human belief. The one who identifies himself with God is not in the process of becoming, he cannot grow, he cannot unfold, he can only experience the sudden discovery that he has already arrived. He bears witness, and evil which can make no agreement, falls automatically into oblivion. He does not cure, he reveals, and this revealing is not a mental effort, it is an established embodied fact. You do not have to affirm anything that is true. Repeated affirmation of a given thing only establishes the fact that it is not true. Affirmations always follow manifestation, if they be of God. By recognition we are transformed. Nothing is destroyed, only quickened into its proper capacity and fulfillment and the "decrease and the increase" proceed with the ease and naturalness of the coming Dawn. Evil goes nowhere even as darkness. It is only absorbed by the Light and even so is the mental energy of a disease suddenly quickened to the dimension of LIFE.
"And having done all stand and see." What? That which you have recognized as God. "The echo throws back at you only what you have given it."
CLOVEN TONGUE
Chapter Six
THE CLOVEN TONGUE is mentioned as a power which descended upon the disciples and caused them to understand all
languages by dividing asunder the human thought limitation and knowledge and revealing the Intelligence and wisdom
of ONE. That is what is called HEARING. Hearing is not something done through the organ of the senses --- but
something which goes beyond, and as the spirit "searches the joints and marrow" and elevates one to the
clear illumination of the Mind of Christ Jesus. Entering into this capacity is not the work of a "master"
or "Holy Man," it is the capacity of Everyman who dares to "Smite the rock" of belief and cause
it to give forth living waters. This is not a dramatic display of emotion --- it is a sudden realization that
Jesus Christ said it is a capacity of every man to HEAR. Man has been centuries with all the instrumentation of
hearing, and yet has not heard the WORD --- only the letter of it which is dead., Now comes the capacity of entering
into the ONE, and discovering the infinite capacities of LIFE. Then is he equipped to HEAR what a man is saying
even though he may submerge it in subtle, double talk, and diplomacy. The CLOVEN tongue shall split it asunder
and he will hear what he is SAYING, and not what he is "saying." He will see and understand the exact
opposite of the human words, and so shall be able to STAND in the LIGHT. So does a man discover the hidden capacities
of the Christ Mind within him. He can at will enter into the consciousness of that which has to do with him. He
can by the recognition of this enter into the actual nature of a man and discover that which his lips refuse to
say.
This is not a "stunt" of a Holy man --- but a capacity of the Mind of Christ Jesus within you --- and which becomes an unconscious action finally. It is wonderful! Will you "put the coal of fire on your lips"? No one is going to BELIEVE you, and many may hate you for having discovered such a capacity. "My Grace is sufficient for thee." Is sufficient enough or must you have more than sufficient? "MY Grace"-that substance which defies all definition because it is a quality of the LOVE of God which has been given you. "My Grace is sufficient" --- it says sufficient for thee ---
Every time you enter the PRESENCE you are filled with the HOLY GHOST, the action of Spirit, that which is going through into manifestation. And it is this which amazes the human mind. Suddenly the picture disintegrates and falls into dust. "We were hypnotized," says the man with breath in his nostrils. "None so blind as those who will not SEE." And now we have another sense coming up for releasement, even as the Cloven Tongues released the obscuring human words, and made plain the meaning of any so-called language, so does the cleaving power of the word "rend the veil" --- -and release the Vision of the almighty and cause a man to see visions and dream dreams of reality right in the midst of the hell of human belief and fury. So did Jesus SEE you under the fig tree --- he didn't just "see" you but he did SEE you under the fig tree. And it is this "sight," prostituted by man and sold as a form of fortune telling. You are admonished to "buy truth but SELL it not" --- and so it goes until a man learns that he does not "five by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" --- and that "he is clothed with the Spirit" --- and that both of these movements are not in the nature of so-called "demonstration," but a way of self-revelation a thing that is normal and natural. "If a man keep my sayings he shall never taste death."
"Taste?"-Through the taste a man supplies himself with the foods proper for sustaining the physical body. There is a sense discrimination which is synonymous with taste.
A man must first "HEAR" the WORDS of Jesus Christ. How is he going to hear them if they are passed through the thick veils of ancestor teaching and beliefs? Coloured by a thousand religions how will he hear the WORD uttered once through the temple of Jesus Christ? The purity of the words of Jesus Christ convulse the human mind. Finally the rising waters will quench and drown at the same time. If he can HEAR what the Scriptures say --- then can he operate through his temple and dispel the darkened world of human thought. But he shall not force anything. He will cause it to be known that the command "consider the Lilies" is something more than looking at flowers. It goes deep into the heart of the bulb from which it came. He begins to discover the permanency of the perfect creation of God, and he renews the manifestation called body. He cleanses the temple. He lives in the world but not of its passing fury, which today is here, and tomorrow cast into the oven. The enemy in one war becomes the ally in another and this cat-and-mouse game goes on until a man discovers the "Battle is not yours but God's." Jesus went unto the Father, became one with the Father, and quite naturally discovered the dimension of the Father operating through the son; setting aside all the beliefs and limitations and so-called "truths" of the world of Maya. The Hindu in his Upanishads exclaims with joy on coming unto the One --- the Father --- "Thou art the SELF, and that thou art THAT I AM." It is a clear revelation that is without explanation for it proceeds from pure recognition of God, universal and infinite. Once this is RECOGNIZED the capacities of this GOD become self-evident, and little by little, or suddenly man approximates this eternal thing called LIFE, unchanging yet constantly changing the manifestation. He begins finally to look out upon the changing manifestation watching the transformation of himself take place, as he constantly throws off the effects of believing in two powers. The old body enclosure that threatened according to his ancestor teaching to destroy him, finally begins to slip away as the fresh manifestation of spirit pushes to the surface of visibility. He is transformed --- changed, born again daily and he remains eternally in the NOW of it all. All the hard fast beliefs of the ancestors are cast away "uncoffined, unknelled, and unsung." They are worthy of nothing-fit only for the discard. "Be ye then transformed by the re-newing of your mind" is not such a mystical process as would appear. It is something like the coming of dawn-gradually it has happened and continues its effulgence and light into the full noon-day. An English poem runs somewhat after this manner: "If thou couldst empty thyself of self Like to a shell disinhabited
Then would he fill it with himself instead But thou art all fulfilled with thou,
That when he comes he says `it is enow The place is full. There is no room for ME'."
We are so busy trying to fill everything with the self that little chance is left for the SELF to take over. There was no room at the INN when the greatest event in all history was to take place, and when the question is asked "What have ye in your house" the answer is a handful of meal and three drops of oil. There is nothing but self in the house until we make ready for the real Self, that which was created, to take over and release the new dimensions shown to us and told to us by Jesus Christ as perfectly natural and real and indigenous to every man.
THE POISONOUS FLOWER
Chapter Seven
THE Bee knows how to take the honey from the poisonous flower. By recognition you are able to see through by the
same divine instinct. The moment recognition is made the soul responds. Continued recognition will cause assumption
of its own strength. "I saw you under the fig tree," is a dimension of pure recognition. This is the
power of Soul which rises from decaying human flesh and comes forth, laughing.
No more do we "deny evil" after having once HEARD the command to "Deny not." What you deny from the human standpoint, you affirm, for you cannot deny "Nothing." It is this very denial that many times establishes it! All evil lives upon and is sustained by human thinking, and nothing else. The moment human thought is taken from a condition at that instant it begins to disintegrate. Many times the fearful human belief returns with such speed it re-assumes the picture or reanimates the picture of evil. "I never knew you," is enough instantly to destroy evil. An evil bird that rushes at the Light, bashes out its brains, and falls into oblivion. When you enter the consciousness you neither affirm nor deny with the idea of changing anything. When you affirm you are making a statement of something that already has happened and is coming into being. The acceptance of this unseen evidence is the final WORD which releases it. "All flesh shall see it together for the Mouth of the Lord hath spoken it," and what or who is to say you nay?
If God said it --- ten thousand years of human wisdom with a legion of manifestations cannot un-say it, or make it nil.
As the falling of the reflection on the surface of the clear water takes place automatically, so does the perpetual and continuous reflection of your consciousness take form and shape in the world of Maya --- the world of things. The moment it is released from consciousness, it begins to disintegrate and fall into its Divine Dust, to be reshapened. As easily as passing the hand through the water and destroying the picture on the surface so in reality is the picture of evil destroyed by the assumption of the Christ. Moses put his hand in his bosom and took it out white with leprosy and returned it again and took it out free from the picture. All idea of legerdemain --- magic or doing tricks, has nothing to do with the appearance of the Presence, and the disappearance of the illusion. There is no question in the "prove me and see" state of consciousness, any more than there is in the mind of a mathematician when he sets forth to prove his equation; not to see if it is true, but because it is true. The engineer who "proves" the law of mathematics spans a chasm with a perfect equation. He has completed the entire thing without touching any of the apparent necessary equipment to do the job, but when he has finished with his plan, it then becomes a reality in the flesh --- automatically. He does nothing with it himself but lets it come into manifestation through the bodies of hundreds of men. So the "Way" is always past finding out "I have a way ye know not of."
Yes, the Bee knows how to extract the honey from the poisonous flower, and you are beginning to see how you devitalize evil and the pictures thereof by taking power from it. The electric wire which was lying on the ground spilling away power, is picked up, and that which apparently was causing so much damage is now released into the one. Any time two become ONE you have the perfect solution.
THE CHASTENING
Chapter Eight
"Despise not the chastening of the Lord."
AT each new elevation comes the "chastening" --- the refining of the instrument and its way of expression.
This chastening carries none of the ugly implications of the scourge or punishment, but rather the re-orientation
and re-assigning of things to their rightful evaluation on the higher level. "Whereas before I was blind,
now I can see." I can see where I am. I can see and understand that which I have been blindly seeking ---
because my sight has been chastened --- focused to a finer point of perception --- extended, as it were. I can
see things which were formerly vague and nebulous.
"Whatever ye see or hear or know
Was eons old before ye heard it."
The chastening is gentle --- yet firm. "My son" --- it seems always to start with that salutation. What
a richness and love in the very imagined tone of any father saying just that. "My, son" --- there is
an implication of protection and a beautiful recognition of relationship --- a warmth of LOVE which enfolds like
soft wings. It is the MOTHER quality coming into embodiment in the FATHER. "MY SON!" Can you hear? It
is speaking of You. Your attention is turned from the picture of chaos. "MY SON --- if you will ..."
--- and then follows the magic revelation --- the magic formulae is given, and you surrender, not to punishment,
but to the revelation of the How. You enter a new tempo which carries you safely into a NEW DAY. "My father
taught me --- and I know
That manners are the cloak of dignity, And dignity is man's awareness of his own Soul."
-Early Greek
And now some of the grosser and more gauche movements must be replaced or resolved into perhaps lesser action with
more definite and surer results. Glancing at the "former things which are passing away," much of the
former success seems now to have been clumsy and laboured. A new tempo has entered in the space between, fore-shortened
to a vanishing point. At a single gesture now, months of human thought are approximated --- and that which Is,
actually is. The fields are literally white, even though it is impossible and cannot take place. A new technique
has entered --- a technique which cannot be set down in words, but which can be felt pressing upon the diaphragm
of consciousness --- a sudden feeling of the PRESENCE. The Father keeps refining and guiding His son-not as a punishment,
but to cause him to be capable of higher and more outstanding results. If it were not that greater revelations
were to be made to him and manifested through him, He would not bother to chasten. And so the word: "Whom
the Lord loveth, He chasteneth." He purifies and deletes the dross of human thought so that we might be fit
for the Kingdom.
"Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous.... Nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable
fruit of righteousness."
Yes, it is something to be chosen for this chastening. When the former pictures begin to break up, you do not care,
knowing that the atoms are to be re-assembled into a NEW picture --- for the chastening is transmuted into loving
revelation. There is no time to consider the consummation of Sodom and Gomorrah. "Let the filthy be filthy
still" --- what is that to thee? On the very next hilltop there is a NEW CITY whose maker is God. It is your
CITY, set upon the HILL-and can no longer be hid from you. You have to be LOVED to be chastened --- and when you
recognize this, there is rejoicing and calmness with the changing conditions. The breaking shell may seem like
dissolution --- but it frees the bird. As the Musician, who has already been acclaimed master of his instrument,
goes again and again to fundamentals, and practices the inner laws that he may better interpret that which he already
knows, so the Master disciplines His sons that they may find in the old, old, word forms, NEW fountains of LIVING
WATERS in the desert made dry by repetition of dead letters.
When the chastening is recognized as the wonderful GUIDING LIGHT it is, then in this effulgence the passing of things is seen as the dropping off of so much excess baggage. The NEW-old action as compared with the former as it passes away, is like the action of electricity as compared to the laboured movements of the untrained, unskilled muscular power of man.
All the questing will go --- the "WHY?", the "How?", the "What have I done to deserve this?", and the comparing of patterns with another --- all of it, the moment you transfer the POWER from punishment to LOVE. A welling up of Joy within takes place your surrender, plus the integrity to follow through, causes the miracle to take place --- the miracle of LOVE. "What will you have me to do, Lord?" "HERE AM I --- send me." MY son --- my SON --- MY SON. Do you hear? Here am I, in the MIDST OF YOU. MY <http://YOU.MY> SON! This is the way --- walk ye in it --- and despise not the chastening of the Lord.
THE EXTENSION OF THE SENSES
Chapter Nine
SEEING
We have been accused of having eyes, and seeing not, and ears, and hearing not; and have been told that the wisdom
of man is foolishness in the eyes of God, indicating that nothing we are gaining from our present use of the senses
is aught but foolishness in the eyes of this Power called God. We are invited to be "absent from the body
and present with the Lord," and to listen to the "still small voice" instead of the audible voice
of man. We are told to "flee from man whose breath is in his nostrils," and yet, with these foreshortened
senses, man has attempted to "demonstrate" a truth which, apparently, is entirely outside of these limitations.
We have constant invitations to "come up higher," and references as to what takes place "if I be
lifted up," and we are told of the extension of vision when the eye becomes single. Seeing that all the works
of Jesus were not done in the supposed fashion of "metaphysics" (as used in its present-day interpretation
of the word, i.e., "using" a God power to change something which seemed impossible of change, and for
the purpose of producing miracles), we are only faintly beginning to see the necessity of the extension of the
senses. The Law of Jesus Christ is one of fulfillment and not of destruction, and so the use of the senses as we
know them today is not destroyed or put aside, but rather absorbed in the immensity of the whole. "You must
decrease; I must increase," carries with it the idea of breaking down a wall or limitation and thereby increasing
that which already is, or extending it, as, at the pushing out of the walls of a room, the air, which formerly
held the shape and limitations of the four walls called room, now finds itself lost in an infinity of its own self.
All that was true of the air contained in the room remains forever true, but the limitations of the room make it
impossible to judge by this small amount of air the true and infinite quality of the whole body of air. If, therefore,
a person were setting down, as a fact, what he found to be true of the air in the room, his judgment about air
as a whole would be faulty and absolutely untrue. So must the world we live in be, viewed through the foreshortened
senses.
Jesus apparently knew this as his true nature, for he asks with impunity those things which are entirely outside of the possibilities of the finding of the human senses. When he calls Peter, "Come to me," he is telling him to do something that cannot be done through the foreshortened senses and understanding of the ordinary man. When he says, "Look again," explaining that the fields are white with harvest and the labourers are few; he is speaking of something which is outside the sense of sight, as recognized by the average man. The reason such gross failures have come forth from the "Schools of Demonstrating the Truth" is because it all has been done on the plane of the impossible. Back of every one of them is the idea that, by taking thought or making affirmations or meditating on God, they can, or will eventually, cause God to do their bidding, and whatever takes place will be unnatural. Many will deny this, but, if it were not "unnatural," they would not make a practice of rehearsing it for the rest of their natural lives, and testimonies would not be told, enlarged upon, and finally printed about this "unnatural"-natural thing which had happened to them because they "treated." We find Jesus very naturally coming to the conclusion that Jesus could do nothing with the limited, false sense of life gathered through the foreshortened senses. "I can of myself do nothing, but I can do all things." Moving into the naturalness of the Presence immediately put him in the plane of the natural functioning of the Presence. The miracles, to man, were the natural functioning of the law to the man of extended senses, or one who had pushed out the walls of the personal into the impersonal. "You shall find your life when you lose it" is the paradoxical teaching of the Presence. Only when you begin to understand that the "Look again" is not a straining of the muscles of the eyes, or an exalted or emotional state of the consciousness, nor yet a vivid imagination, can you begin to see the fields are white, and that the harvest which you distinctly did not plant, is ripe. The command, "Thrust in the sickle," is one of the most futile, and yet it persists, and must finally be obeyed --- else you remain a lifelong gleaner to a miserly harvester. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light" - no light can come through the foreshortened senses. Sifting through the wisdom of man is like looking through the husks for the few grains of wheat that the "swine" have left.
"Ye have eyes and see not." Does the statement intrigue you? Does it hold you in its everlasting grasp? Do you ask, "See what"? "Eyes have not seen and ears have not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things that are prepared for those who love the Lord." The things that are to be seen and which we are not seeing "through the glass darkly" of the foreshortened senses are the things which already have been prepared. This takes us into an entirely different classification from those who think they can and do create things by "taking thought"-or that they make things happen because they "treat." The things that are to be seen with the blind eyes already are prepared.
It is an entirely different premise from which to work. We at no time are concerned with that angle of it. When you are told to "look again," that "look" does not in any way create the "fields white with harvest." The Sonship degree is constantly concerned with making things happen that would not otherwise happen, but the Son has his limitations and eventually must function into the Fatherhood degree where the finished mystery is revealed. The moment the prodigal rises to go to the Fatherhood degree, it-seeing him a long way off-comes toward him with the robe, ring, fatted calf, etc. So when man begins to leave the level of "making demonstrations" which come and go constantly, and very often leave embarrassing gaps between, the Fatherhood consciousness moves, figuratively, towards him. Jesus was not concerned with the creating of things. He constantly was seen touching the next dimension or the Presence where that which appeared to the three-dimensional mind a miracle, was a natural, ever-moving thing. At this height, he had but to give thanks or recognition, and the vacuum, caused by beliefs in the mind of an individual or a group as to the absence of God in one form or another, was instantly filled. It was not a running of unformed substance into a matrix or mould, but a becoming aware of the Presence which broke down the limitations of the thing called problem, or "room," and a joining of the one with the whole. The "room," then, was no more, and yet its invisible dimensions might still remain; or, for want of a better idea, we say the hard, solid walls of granite were suddenly made of the most open of screen wire. The individuality of it is still retained, but it is one with the universal whole. "I and my Father are one; my Father is greater than I" just as the air of the universe is greater than the air taking the shape of the screened-in room. Yet are the two one-the temperature, density, movement, etc., would be the same and the air in the room could take all of the qualities and powers of the air surrounding it. All illustrations are inadequate and stupid when it comes to bringing out the relation of God and man, soul and body, but they give us a faint inkling of the truth as taught by Jesus the Christ.
No wonder, then, that Jesus, realizing the limitations of the senses, first invited man to take his attention away from appearances, and asked him to judge "righteous judgment." Certainly he could not find the "righteous judgment" in the appearances of things created out of the limited concept of life.
Through the limited senses, man could see only what his consciousness was capable of seeing. Hence we realize that, although five thousand people saw the so-called miracle of the loaves and fishes, perhaps only a small percentage could see anything taking place, other than the most orderly passing out of bread and fishes.
It was not possible for them to see anything different, no more than a man looking through rose-coloured "specs" can actually see a horse white. The horse, no matter what its true colour, will appear eternally pink; so the most glorious revelation viewed through the foreshortened sense of sight would have to conform to that sense. "Through the glass darkly" --- through the beliefs and thoughts that you have accepted as real and true. Darker or lighter, according to your ability to perceive the reality of existence.
"If thine eye be single, thy whole body is full of light"
seems to give us an entering wedge to this new dimension. The whole body being full of light posits the fact that
all of the senses of the body would be freed into their new field of activity. Undoubtedly Jesus saw - literally
as well as symbolically --- the Kingdom of Heaven here and now, because he saw it in his own consciousness. "Look
not lo! here, nor there, for the Kingdom of Heaven is within you." It is marvelous to contemplate what the
slight change in the mental elevation may suddenly do for you.
If you are still working with a dual world, still working against evil, still finding evil as a reality which you are especially appointed to destroy, your whole body cannot be full of light, and your eye cannot be single.
The coming of the Power to fulfill, not to destroy, will teach you much, and the awareness of the Presence, even in hell, where you may have made your bed, will cause you to understand that Jesus was not in the business of fighting a supposed thing called evil. He constantly recognized the Presence; and the manifestation of evil, which in its final analysis is a belief that a place exists apart from the Presence, is filled full or discovered to be already full of the Presence. "Even the wrath of man shall bless you" is just another way of "seeing" with the single eye the Presence. It is so different from trying to force the Presence into the evil situation. Gradually, as you begin this calling on Me in the midst of every picture of so-called evil, you will understand the lack of sympathy in Jesus and his deep sense of compassion. The old Prophet, putting his hand in his bosom and bringing it out white with leprosy and then restoring it to normal health by doing the same thing, should open the eyes of the blind, who believe that disease is even a belief which has to be destroyed. It is not in any sense of the word "handled"; the awareness of the Presence is all that is necessary. "Call upon Me and I will answer you." Do you believe that? Answer me. Do you believe that the calling upon this Me will bring about the manifestation? You will when the dual standard of life passes away and you find that "I came not to destroy but to fulfill"-that the senses are extending into the real existence which pushes out the walls of the narrow concept of Life in which you have existed all these years. When this extended vision begins to be a reality to you, and you have stopped looking on an evil situation as something outside of God, then you will be able to look upon disease and produce ease; and upon poverty and produce wealth; and upon unhappiness and produce happiness. Your "gaze," extended into the reality of being, will not be concerned with the shells which drop from the eagle preening its wings for its divine destiny. It is wonderful that the old idea of turning the eyes away from what we called pictures of evil gives place to the Divine Glance which, to the three-dimensional mind, appears to heal. Healing by the glance? What a fantasy to the old human intellect, what a fantasy everything God-like is to the old human foreshortened senses, and yet it is amusing at least to see that the most hardened atheist, as he is gasping his last breath, usually calls on the God power. "No man shall see My face and live." The moment you begin to see this finished mystery you die a thousand deaths. One belief after another passes away, and with them the landmarks and the memory of them finally pass out too. If you see the Presence with the single eye, you see it, and, no matter what the appearances, your vision is extended just a little beyond the mystification of human beliefs.
The Prophet and his servant, you and your body, had come along many a highway of life when, all of a sudden, the servant discovered that the way of life was infested with a thousand and one beliefs armed to the teeth and out-pictured as an army of horsemen and chariots. Debts, impossible situations, disease, fears-all of these things have come and blocked the only way-and the servant is afraid, even as you and I. "Look" the terror-filled voice of the one judging from the foreshortened senses. By every reason of man he has a right to be afraid. "Look again"-the prophet is speaking, and the sense reaches out into the state of "Look again," and now the mountains round about are filled with chariots and horsemen. "Those that are for us are more than those that are against us. And so the revelation of the Presence takes place through a thousand parables and stories. When you recognize the Presence in any place and stop trying to handle the mystifications of belief, you suddenly find the sight extended to the point of "Look again," and find there the God and Heaven rising into expression out of the hell of human beliefs.
We are gradually coming into alignment with the Oneness of Life, and can faintly understand how this understanding causes everything to fall into perfect agreement with everything else. "I AM of too pure eyes to behold iniquity" is not a moralistic statement of a tribal Jehovah. It is the actual uttering of that pure, unsullied state of consciousness wherein no evil exists. Recalling very definitely to mind that your problem is no problem to another, and likewise another's problem is nothing to you, you will begin to understand what it means to move into the place where the single vision exists.
"When thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light." When you begin to see the Oneness of life, and stop judging from appearances, you will find that you are not concerned with effects. They will automatically take care of themselves. Those, still working with demonstrating the Power, are more concerned with the manifestation than the Power. The rebuke is always the same: "Ye seek me for the loaves and fishes"-and not because of the miracle.
When you begin to understand, even in a little way, this Single Eye doctrine of Jesus, you will understand how it is that the manifestation flows constantly into place without any outside aid or assistance. Remaining on the point of Power --- magnifying the Lord within, merging into this Oneness of Mind --- suddenly frees you from a host of beliefs and reveals to you that the "Harvest is ripe."
The "getting" and "demonstrating" ceases at this point --- yet, in reality, it only begins. The Oneness of it all causes you to see that Jesus became the giver, and in giving he placed himself in such a position as to receive all. As it passed through him into expression there was nothing lacking in his life. Do you begin to understand the outpouring of the Substance, and how it sidesteps all of the laws of man?
It is recorded that Jesus "raised his eyes to Heaven"-and quite naturally most religious pictures portray Him standing gazing into the skies. But Jesus explained that Heaven was not a locality, but a point in consciousness. It is the place of recognition of the Presence, a point of awareness. Man can only know God in his own consciousness. Certainly he cannot know Him outside of his consciousness. He must meet Him in his own consciousness, and until he does he cannot perceive Him in the hell of human belief which has emanated through the wisdom of man. When once man recognizes God in his consciousness he can then see Him everywhere and in every situation. He does not have to bring Him from afar; he can call upon Me and I will answer him. It is wonderful the light that rushes in as your sight moves toward the single standpoint, as you begin to leave the old battlefields of belief and come out into the place of "If I be lifted up I will draw all manifestation unto me." It is wonderful that this being "lifted up" comes through the recognition of the Presence, here, there, and everywhere.
The drawing of all things unto you is quite a different thing from the "demonstrating" them of old. One quite naturally takes place, and brings with it no surprise or emotion; the other is as much surprised when the "demonstration" is actually made as if he did not expect it. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light." Do you hear? Are your ears beginning to be unstopped? Are the scales beginning to fall from your eyes? "Then shall the blind receive their sight." It is wonderful to contemplate this Oneness of Life, for it carries with it the possibility of all the dreams of yore. The "picture shown to you on the mount" cannot be seen through the glass darkly of human belief, because these beliefs have never even dreamed of anything so beautiful and glorious. So, steeped in the fearsome laws of life - "Work out your own salvation"; "As for man, his days are few and full of trouble"; "Earn your living by the sweat of your brow"; "When I would do good I do evil" - how can man see through this dense fog the "picture shown to him on the mount"? It is too good to be true, and it is not true if squared by the findings of the human senses. But the promise stands, "Thine eyes shall see the king in all his beauty." That promise that you shall see your soul in all its beauty is enough to carry any man on into the place of awareness. Are you curious about the things that have been prepared for you? And the things that have not been able to enter into the heart of man? Only through the extended senses is it possible of attainment. If you cannot see God in the devil who is disrupting your life, God in the disease, God in the thing lying in the gutter, you cannot find Him in the temple, for He is all or nothing. "Choose you this day whom ye will serve." And the choice is up to the individual. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the opinions and beliefs of another. The coal of fire is placed upon the lips of the initiated. He has ceased from "talking it over" with another. He knows and will "let" the light shine, but he does not try to "make" it shine. "By their works, not by their words, ye shall know them" --- you have the yardstick always at hand. "Ye shall see Him as He is" when the eye becomes single, and that will satisfy you. When you even glimpse Him, this Oneness, you will have answered the question, "Is this He that should come, or look we for another?" If you are still asking this question, you are still expecting another Messiah, and another will come and another will be found to have clay feet, because you will finally have to find Him within. Digging out the clay feet of Messiahs is the pastime of metaphysicians, not knowing that at each digging they are only showing forth their own lives and disbelief in the One Power. Spending time seeking into the personal lives of speakers and lecturers suffices for understanding of the Christ to many. "Follow Me"-"Follow Me"-do you hear?
Yes, it is true, the "fields are white with harvest and the labourers are few" because they have the double eye of lack and substance and coming and going of the Presence which is only possible to the "wisdom of man." When Jesus said, "Look again," it was an extension of the sense of sight into vision where the Presence was recognized as a manifested thing. The looking again, the Divine Glance that heals, does nothing but become aware of the Presence, and the flames of the hell of belief subside. Hence the Healing Glance-the looking past the glass darkly unto the Presence which shatters the belief manifested in death or disease. "Thrust in the sickle" becomes a present possibility as soon as the eye becomes single and the greediness has subsided into the recognition of the Presence.
"Yet in my flesh shall I see God" --- it is wonderful!
The universe in which you live is a mirror of your consciousness. It can only reflect what you discover within. It can only respond to you. It <http://you.it> can only answer to your conscious word, be it good, bad, indifferent.
HEARING
"HAVING ears, ye hear not." Again man is brought face to face with the fact that he is not properly hearing-that
he is missing the voice and hearing only the noise and the sound of things coming together in the outer world.
He can be so mistaken in the sense of hearing that if he were to close his eyes he could not tell whether a horse
was approaching on a paved street or a couple of coconut shells were being tapped on a board. If he cannot differentiate
between things as simple as these, how can he possibly rely on the sense of sound as he knows it? The fact that
we are constantly accused of having ears and eyes which we do not use also posits that something important is being
said.
I once watched a Chinaman in a Shanghai native theatre enjoy, and apparently hear, one of his classics when such a bedlam was going on in the house that it would seem utterly impossible to hear the person sitting next to you without intently listening. And yet the Chinaman was relaxed, making no conscious effort to hear through the din of crying babies, squeaky music, peanut and sweetmeat vendors. He was at a terrific point of attention, however, and all his power was pointed in one direction. It was like drawing the sun's rays through a magnifying glass. A deaf woman once told me she could always hear anything evil said about her in her presence. She did not know that if she could hear evil she could hear everything else by the same method, i.e., attention. She was at the point of attention when it came to evil. In fact, she admitted that she "knew" she could always hear anything evil that was being said about her-and so she did. "The still small voice" must be heard from this point of attention to the Presence and not to the noise on the outside, otherwise you miss the word which is to be made flesh. "There were many things I could not tell you because of your unbelief"-many things which Jesus wanted to reveal but the hearing was so heavy by accepting the noise of the world that it could not hear the "still small voice" of revelation.
A woman came rushing in one day, frightened almost into insensibility. "A fortune-teller told me I am going to be killed in four days." She had heard, as many people have heard, the death-sentence pronounced over them-"incurable, hopeless, helpless," and thousands of other things that can only be heard by the hearing of the ear. It is not possible to hear these things from the standpoint of spirit, for they are founded on the failing wisdom of man-which is foolishness in the eyes of God. "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God." If he asks of God within himself he will have to hear with the hearing ear. He will have to hear past the noise and confusion of the outside world. The Voice will be eternally saying "I will," but unless the hearing is at the point of attention it will hear the clanging noises of human belief. It is recorded that the "dead shall hear my voice and live," and this not only means the physically dead but the mentally dead as well. "Not that which goeth in, but that which cometh out, defileth or maketh a man" --- that which you hear determines what will come out. "Go unto this people and say, hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see and not perceive. For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and should be converted and I should heal them."
It is obvious from many scriptural references that there are two kinds of hearing-one that causes the heart to wax gross, heavy with misunderstanding, and the other which hears that which the ears dulled with false learning and judging from appearances cannot hear. To hear the "still small voice" of which so much is said the hearing must be of the heart and not of the ear from the human standpoint.
"My sheep hear my voice" has nothing to do with a shepherd calling on the hillside. It is the inner hearing just as a wise dog is not misled or attracted by an imitation of his master's voice, no matter how perfect the imitation. There is something in the "hearing" that detects the voice of 'the shepherd, and it is just this thing which opens the doors to the spirit of the words of Life, which are otherwise dead letter.
The eighty-eight notes on a piano do not represent the sum total of sound-it extends to a point of infinity on both ends. Yet, because the heavy human hearing does not detect it, he says it does not exist. The universe is filled with music which remains inaudible to most of us because we are hearing with the human ear.
The cause of so much failure in the field of Truth has been that most of us have been trying to hear the still small voice through the human ear, and, although it thunders down through the ages, the clamour of the human belief makes such a din with its unreality and false testimony that the "still small voice is inaudible," or else it is interpreted through such limited, dulled senses that it is impracticable. "Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand," showing how the ear can hear the word and yet not hear it. Hearing with the ear and not understanding, is hearing through the limited human sense. It is so far removed from the "God spake" that it cannot understand the "still small voice."
When you go within and shut your door you shall then know what the true sense of hearing is, for the "Father who heareth in secret shall reward thee openly." What is the hearing that the Father doeth? The shouting of the name of God has proven futile in the time of trouble. Loud speaking does not in any way attract the ear of the Divine. It only shows a gross lack of understanding of the Omnipresence of God as here, there, and everywhere, and makes of Him an enlarged auditory nerve at best. The Father hearing in secret, sensing, understanding, grasping that which is to be "established" on the earth-your earth, when you have gone within and shut the door. When you have shut the door of every human argument and every bit of human reasoning, and laid off the sandals of human understanding, and spoken to the Father with the same joyous abandon and freedom that you might speak to your human father-when you have done this the "Father who heareth in secret shall reward thee openly."
It does not say perhaps or maybe-it is definite and it is provable: "Shall reward thee openly." No matter what you were, did, or thought prior to the moment you went within and shut the door and spoke to the Father secretly.
"Leave all and follow Me" means just that. You leave all --- all evil, fear, lack, limitation, and human reasoning just as you leave all your ideas about success and possessions and everything else that you have listed on the side of assets. You leave all, everything, and by leaving all you find all.
It is glorious to contemplate that when the Father within says, "Leave all and follow Me," He is asking that you leave the bondage to everything and follow the Me. When I say "bondage," I mean just that. If a thing is binding you, if you cannot leave the bondage in it, you are still bound to it no matter whether you put it out of your immediate life or not. Many persons are controlled by things that they do not possess and which they feel they have put from their lives. To have an unsated longing for something that you have given up, and to imagine that because you have thrust it from you you are free from the bondage of that thing, is to mistake entirely the command, "Leave all and follow Me"-then you will find that you have left nothing except the bondage of it.
"The love of money is the root of all evil." It is the love (bondage to it) of money, and not money, that is the root of evil. Money in itself is not more evil than food, clothing or anything else, but the bondage to it, whether it be much or little, is evil, and causes you to do all sorts of things either to get or hold it. A miser holding to the symbol while he starves is at the same point of expression as a beggar who is ready to commit any sort of crime to possess it. All extremes are evil-too much food will result in the same thing that too little will, and so on. Being bound to things and the love of them puts the limitation on them. Coming out into the Presence with the new-born sense of hearing, the way lies perfectly before you. The guiding influence is as a voice from behind thee which says, "This is the way; walk thou in it." "This" is the way. There is that same note of definite direction, uncompromising instruction, contained in it, for, the Government being upon his shoulder, the instruction that is to come through the sense of hearing must be obeyed absolutely, and the human opinion must be put aside in order that the way may continue in peace. If you salute any man you pass on the highway of life you are going against the instructions, "Salute no man you pass on the highway." It is not an invitation to become unfriendly and unlivable-the saluting you are warned against is the exchange of opinions and beliefs and the "hearing" of some material information which changes your going on. Many a person would have been able to accomplish that thing set before him if he had not saluted some man on the way to his expression and heard something that spoiled his opportunity. An actress accustomed to giving a more than brilliant performance was one night told that a famous critic was in the audience, and had come with the express purpose of finding some flaw in her work. In the parlance of the street, she "went to pieces" - gave the worst performance of her career-and after the show she was taken home in a state of hysteria. She was informed that it had all been a mistake, and that the said critic had not been present that evening but the one before and had found nothing but praise for her work. What caused her to give such a terrible performance? Anything? Well, you answer it, and then you will see why we are to "salute no man as we pass along the way"-and more so is this true in regard to the revelations of the Christ teaching. If you have not arrived at a point where you are past the state of arguing, you have not actually heard the word, and will be busy comparing different systems to find out which one contains God. No system contains God, yet they may all be contained in Him. The coal of fire placed on your lips shall also be placed on your ears. "Salute no man you pass on the highway of life." He may be more interested in the personality of Jesus than in the Jesus-Christ. "Where does he live? Is he married? Any children-any money?" These are the eternal questions of the "man" you are warned against. He is eternally going out to see a person and not a principle, and he carries all filthiness that has accrued from the human hearing and the human "looking" at a person instead of "hearing a principle."
"I will hear what God will speak." What a glorious resolution, and how hopeless it is to hear through the human understanding with its laws and limitations. But then, "I will hear what God will speak," and if you are to do that it means that "your" speaking will have to cease and your human reasoning and understanding will have to give place to the new inspiration of the Almighty. You are sure to hear something that will delight you, for it will carry with it the possibility of establishing it on the earth. When you begin to "make yourself as God"-which is what Jesus did, and could not escape doing if he worked from the premise, "In the beginning God" - then you shall begin to "feel" your way with the new senses, then shall you understand how the deaf shall hear. "Then shall the deaf hear" --- at the instant of recognition of the Divine capacity of hearing the limitations of the human ear fall away and man hears, and hears things that the human ear is incapable of ever knowing.
"Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard . . . the things that are prepared." They are already prepared for you when you can hear with the hearing that so completely transcends the human limitations that it breaks through the gates of Heaven and comes to the throne of the Presence. The changing sense of hearing and sight can only be attributable to the human limitations, since it is impossible to conceive of God with impaired vision or hearing, and the changeless Power is not subject to degrees of sound or distances. The reason hearing and sight change in the human sense is because they are limited to the human organism and can be easily deceived. Shaking a sheet of steel on the stage produces an impression of thunder-and this on the sunniest June day-and so it goes. "Having ears, ye hear not." As long as your hearing is stopped down to the physical instrument of hearing it is bound to be limited and faulty. "Then shall the dead hear the voice of God and live" gives us some sense of hearing and its power. The true hearing pierces every belief of the human kind, even death, and so Lazarus heard-not with the human ear, but with the spiritual hearing, and picked up his body and brought it forth. The establishing of himself again on earth took place because of this hearing. "Then shall the dead hear the voice of God and live" shoots through the walls of human belief and brings out the establishment of the thing on earth. When you begin to hear the "God spake" you shall begin to experience also the "establishing of the thing" or the "and it was done" state which instantly follows the hearing of the "God spake." You cannot hear the "God spake" with the limited human senses, and God cannot hear the name, "Lord, Lord," that is called to Him because it is merely a sound and has no power to "establish" itself. "My sheep hear my voice"-and this My of the Father must come from the within that is cleansed of human reasoning, opinions, and beliefs. "He that is of God hearest God." And when you hear God you are hearing the directing and governing Power of the universe, and surely then you are to experience the sure and certain joy which comes from the knowledge that "all things work together for good"-not perhaps, but actually work together. The overturning power of the Voice which speaks to the hearing ear keeps setting aside one limitation after another, one human belief after another, and causes the Lazarus to be established on the earth-though, if Jesus had "listened" to either Martha or Mary of the human sense testimony, he would never have spoken the word and caused the agreement in Lazarus to take place. Everything was against it-even Mary and Martha said, "If you had been here, our brother would not have died." And when Jesus refused the opinion that Lazarus was dead, they still insisted that he was wrong and began to give all sorts of evidence to substantiate their human finding, hoping that Jesus would accept it as real and then perform a miracle. But Jesus would have none of it-he would not "hear it" because he was hearing with the inner power, and when he heard the word of Life Eternal he called it to Lazarus, and, the agreement being made, he was "established on the earth" again.
The invitation to "hear" is open to all-there is no monopoly of it. It is not given to those who have studied a certain system or followed a certain teacher or leader. It is given to any man who will throw off the cloak of human bondage sufficiently to be clad in the all-encircling Presence of God in His fullness. The promise stands: "If any man hear my words." That is all you have to do: to "hear" with the understanding of the inner hearing. Not nearly so difficult if you do not preface this hearing with the belief that unless you have made elaborate preparations you cannot "hear" God. How about the child who is given the Kingdom of Heaven? Eventually, through the extension of the senses into the infinite reaches of God, through losing the limited personal sense of life and finding it in the Universal, does man come to the place of understanding, the place of "hearing" the statement:
"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 sup with him and he with Me." The first step in the becoming one with the Christ voice is to hear it. Many have tried to do this through the human sense of hearing, and have opened the door and nothing has entered.
"To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne."
The beauty and love of Jesus, even at the last moment telling us of the human state that he also came through and making himself one with us showing that what was possible for him is possible for us, is the magnificent heritage that has to be accepted joyously. If you are to arrive at the stage which the human mind calls mastership, and come to that place where you are "set down with my Father in His throne," it will have to be accomplished through the use of the extended senses as revealed to us through the teaching of Jesus. The only overcoming that actually takes place is the overcoming of the limitations of the human senses which judge from appearances and give forth the imperfect results thereby, their findings being imperfect, as well as their premises. Finally, beloved, hear this:
"He that hath ears, let him hear what the Scriptures say unto the churches."
The voice and echo are one. Like prayer and answer.
TASTING
THE sense of taste is virtually limited to the flavour of foods and a recognition of temperature of such foods.
It is confined almost wholly with that which goes into the mouth, and yet every man knows that synthetic flavourings
are so common as to fool very often the most exacting connoisseur. In view of this limitation it would not be very
safe to found anything very definitely on the results of this sense; any wisdom gained from this limited and uncertain
sense would surely come under the "foolishness" mentioned in the quotation referring to the wisdom of
man. In view of this limitation man is asked to "taste and see that the Lord is good." How are you going
to taste and see an invisible thing at the same time? The "Wisdom" of man immediately charges the whole
idea off to an impossible abstraction. Not realizing the extensive possibilities of the sense of taste, he only
uses it in its lowest and most uncertain capacity. As this "taste" is extended into the place of understanding,
man begins to learn that he "shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the
Mouth of God," and that "Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead, but you have manna
they knew not of" --- i.e., the manna that cometh down from Heaven. We have treated all this wonderful wisdom
for ages as nothing but abstract poetry, but gradually we see that the "years" have not produced through
the "wisdom" of man anything more than the same old helpless and hopeless pattern of "birth, growth,
maturity, and decay," and so the "eyes" are beginning to seek out something beyond this "foolish
wisdom." The mouth is beginning to "try" the words, and gradually is feeling its way into a new
dimension.
"Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead, but" --- are you going to do the same thing or begin to partake of the "bread that cometh down from Heaven" and live? Certainly if you are going to eat the bread from Heaven it will not be something put into the mouth which will be sour or sweet, hot or cold, solid or soft. "Not that which goeth into a man, but that which cometh out, defileth," or maketh him. A thousand and one food faddists have convinced you that health does not always come out, even though you eat only the foods which are guaranteed to produce it. The moment you depend on anything for that which is a natural expression of God, at that moment the "thing" which comes out becomes unnatural and uncertain. There is such tremendous power in the sense of taste, when it is extended into its full capacity, that it transmutes that which is set before it. "Eating` that which is set before it in the name of Jesus Christ" is one of the capacities of "taste" which frees itself entirely from any power in food. At the same time this very taste excludes nothing. The automatic sense of selectivity which is in this awakened sense of taste will gauge, regulate, and choose without any confusion or outside help that which will perfectly sustain and manifest the necessary condition of body. Is it too far a reach to imagine that you may glimpse this glorious extension of the sense of taste, which, like all the other senses, does, in the twinkling of an eye, what a thousand years of the "Wisdom" of man cannot possibly do? "One man's meat is another man's poison" is enough to know that no reliance whatsoever can be placed in anything outside of God. There be those who know that food is more powerful than God, and so it is to them. It is poison to many, and meat to many; why?
Yes, "Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and they are dead, but ---" Does it not thrill you to contemplate that remark of Jesus-and more especially the inference that "death is not necessary to you," whether you can sense it or prove it? It is definitely inferred, and it definitely has to do with the sense of taste. The foreshortened sense of taste which did eat the manna in the "wilderness" of human belief caused the death, apparently. At least, this very taste finds that food, or the lack of food, can kill a man. "But ye have bread they know not of-the manna which cometh down from Heaven." Where is Heaven? Do not ask any man; ask Me. The Heaven to which Jesus referred was a State of Consciousness, and so the "Bread" which cometh down from Heaven and is eaten by you is to proceed out of the Consciousness of the Presence, and must be eaten and tasted by something more extensive than the limited sense of taste as known by the average man. When Jesus came to the woman at the well in Samaria, he asked her for a drink, which she gave him. Then he said to her, "If you had asked me I would have given you living waters to drink, which if a man tasteth thereof he shall never die." "What? Why, you haven't a rope, or bucket, or any dipper, and the well is deep" --- and so she missed the great chance to use the sense of taste, and to be watered with the "Living Waters." Immediately her human wisdom came into play. She drew water from the well daily, and knew just how deep the well was, and how impossible it would be for Jesus to "give her to drink," and that settled that (just as you know how impossible it is for you to taste the Lord and see that He is good). So she rushed back to the village and said, "Come and see a man who told me all things"-in other words, "Come out and see the fortune-teller by the well." What do you want to know? "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God" --- that is just as impossible to most people as it was to the woman who explained, "But you have no rope, or bucket and the well is deep." "Have you no sense, man? Can you not see how impossible it all is? It is nothing but talk."
"I sees what I sees and hears what I hears and I draws my own delusions," said the old man who knew all about it, and so, "How can you give me to drink?" But yet it remains, "If you had asked me 1 would have given you living waters which if a man drink thereof he shall never die." "Eat my body and drink my blood." The capacities of the sense of taste widen at each moment. It is so far removed from the limitations of tasting with the tongue as to be almost unrecognizable to the unenlightened, who for the most part will consider it pure mysticism, wholly impracticable. And yet it is the most practicable thing in the world, and when a man begins the use of the true sense of taste he shall never thirst again. Whatsoever things he does in Spirit shall immediately be done in the physical. If he can drink deep of spirit or of the living waters when the physical body is parched and thirsty, he will find "wells of living waters in deserts" of human belief, and food in abundance to assuage the physical hunger. When he learns the pure mysticism of "eat my body, drink my blood" he has solved once and for always the problem of food and drink. It is bound to manifest in the flesh. "That which is told in secret is called from the housetops" --- that which you perform in secret is made manifest in the flesh. A woman once proved this rather miraculous thing of partaking of the living waters. Finding herself incarcerated in an institution of questionable character, and suddenly perceiving that the purpose of this place was to torment her until her reason had completely fled, she realized that no amount of struggle or railing would avail her anything. The thirst brought on by salty foods had been allowed no water for forty-eight hours, and the manifestations of this enforced fast from water were rapidly appearing. The adjoining bathroom was shut away only by a screen door, which was kept locked, but all the faucets remained wide open and gallons of water poured away. It was at the point of being almost too much to stand longer when the revelation of the true "taste" came into being. "If you had asked Me I would have given you living waters, which if a man drink thereof he shall never thirst again." And suddenly she asked, and quite as suddenly she received, and a fountain gushed up within her and watered her whole being and body. So beautifully was this mystical thing accomplished that every desire for liquid of any sort ceased and the relaxation of the body took place. At the instant the "living waters" were "tasted" the attendant came rushing in with a large pitcher of water, almost as if some power had suddenly propelled her in against her wishes or understanding. She did not then drink, for there was no need of it, but it was there to drink, and so will it be with you when you begin the "eating of my body and the drinking of my blood." These abstractions take on a more real quality than the human mind can imagine or dream of. "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good" is the universal substance feeding you eternally; and this "manna from Heaven" has to be tasted by something more comprehensive than the sense in the consciousness which consistently argues, "But the well is deep and you have no rope." "He that hath ears, let him hear what the Scriptures say unto the churches"-bodies, temples. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light." Do you hear? Do you begin to see what Jesus was bringing to the world when he told us so definitely to "eat my body and drink my blood"? It is wonderful to contemplate the magnificent reaches of life as viewed or experienced through the extended senses. "Come see a man" --- and so the metaphysician rushes about from one "man" to another, finding out more about the life and history of the man than the principle he brings. "Come see a man" persists as the cry until the light comes, and then it is, "Come, see a principle." There is nothing impossible to God, and presently this will be more than an affirmation; and, when questions of physical distance or inability come into the pictures, they will be disregarded, and the distance will be bridged by performance in Spirit. Jesus never tried to "fix" or "figure out" the appearances of things, but he did span the seeming gaps in the realm of the Presence, and then discovered these gaps or empty measures all filled to overflowing. You --- yes, you --- have "manna" they know not of-but what about it? What does it amount to if you cannot taste it? Can you begin to see what hopeless things words become without the Spirit, and how the dead letter offers nothing worth while to live on? Philosophy, Christian or pagan, is all right for the open forum, but it is a poor meal ticket.
Do you believe that the Lord is God? Answer me. "Taste and see." Whatsoever you perform through the extended senses comes into manifestation, and so the problem of eating and drinking is for ever settled. No wonder, then, that Jesus advised the journey without thought of the purse, scrip, robe, etc. What need to be burdened with all this if you have the power within you to "eat my body and drink my blood" --- if you have the power to "hear my voice" and to "look again" and to "touch me in the crowd" and to "feel after me" and find me? The Lord in the midst of you is strong and mighty, but you must find
Him there before you can find the manifestation of this strength in your temple --- body. The "searching" of the joints and marrows becomes more than a Bible quotation when the senses are awakened to their true capacity. The Lord circulating through the Temple. Nothing can separate you from this revelation --- neither height, breadth, length, powers of darkness, not even the gates of hell. Do you begin to grasp what Jesus was giving to the dull ears? The River of Life flowing through the midst of the "Garden" shall water the seeds of desire and hope, long since abandoned, and cause them to bloom in all their glory. Yes, the desert shall blossom as a rose, and the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places shall be made smooth, as this River of Living Waters flows on and on through the Garden of your body --- embodiment.
"Come eat and drink without price" can be understood. The extended sense of taste causes man to see the great "free" gift of Life. "My grace is sufficient for you" --- and now you are beginning to know that this "grace" is not a sort of sorrowful bearing up in the miseries of the human destiny, but a wide, sweeping sense of the Presence, nurturing and caring for you. "If your mother and father know how to bestow good gifts, how much more do I, the Father of All, understand these offices" --- or words to that effect --- are said unto the listening ear. "He careth for you." "Consider the lilies, they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet --- -" The Blood of Jesus is the Wine of Inspiration, which lights every man unto salvation. When the sense of taste is extended beyond the narrow confines of the human mind it can "taste" this Wine of Life and receive the
"inspiration" which leads into all things. Until that time man tastes the "wines" of his own making, and for the moment he may ascend into a place of inspiration only to fall back into a hell of despondency later on. You cannot take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence. The drunkard is trying in his desire to get away from the limitations of the human taste. He "feels" while he is in his "cups" as if he were a millionaire, or he feels generous, magnanimous, and free, but this false entering into the Kingdom always ends in being cast out as a robber and a thief. When the sense of taste is extended to the mystical "eating of the body and drinking of the blood," man enters at will into the place of inspiration. He begins to understand what it is to live and move and breathe and have his being in the Inspired Presence. Revelation after revelation passes over him, and whatsoever he performs in the Secret Place takes on a body and a form in the realm of the physical. If you ever "hear My voice and open unto Me, I will come in to you and sup with you and ye with me." The thin shell of belief which is holding all these lovely things away from you suddenly bursts, and the disbeliefs and fears of a lifetime are washed away by the torrents of the Presence coming into expression through the extended senses. As you begin to understand the glorious possibilities of the extended senses, you see how they widen out and include much that has not been even dreamed of before. It is stated that the "power of life and death are in the tongue," and this very sense of taste extends out until it includes the spoken word --- -The Word which is made flesh and the "yea, yea," and "nay, nay" which instantly puts to flight the manifestation or brings it into being with the Authority of the Christ Jesus nature. "Only speak the word and my servant shall live" and the word "I will" which the servant tastes restores him to life. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God." You cannot live on the manifestation alone, else you will manifest the living --- -dead state of the unawakened. You have to live on the word of God if you are to experience Life instead of a limited sense of it. "The Power of Life and death are in the tongue" --- the dying of a belief, as the cracking of a shell releases the flower or bird, with you releases the desires of your heart. "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is Good."
TOUCHING
"Two shall agree as touching anything and it shall be established on the earth."
"I WAS glad when they said unto me, let us go into the House [consciousness] of the Lord." It is impossible to get into this consciousness of the Lord through the human foreshortened senses, since we are told that we are not using any of the sense organs correctly, and that all the wisdom gathered therefrom is foolishness in the eyes of God. The consciousness of the Lord is not a place of demonstration. God is not concerned with making impossible things come into manifestation. The action of Spirit is natural to Spirit; it is only unnatural to the three-dimensional mind which sees miracles happening, if it sees at all, being separated from this consciousness-self --- separated, it is true, but nevertheless separated. "Oh, that I might find him," is the wail of man looking among the husks of human wisdom for a power which will offset evil. It is stated that "Ye shall find Me when ye feel after Me." We "feel" with the sense of touch. Until this sense is extended it is merely concerned with surfaces. We touch a thing which is soft, hard, wet, dry, hot, cold, etc., etc.; but who is going to "touch" spirit on the surface? Thousands of people are busy trying to "feel" after Me with their human hands; and with their limited sense of touch they run into statues, shrines, charms, glorified leaders, organizations, places, things. A modicum of help may come from their belief in any of these, but finally it fails, and finally the hopelessness of any definite "touching" Me in any of these makes them all worthless.
Yet it is certainly stated, "Ye shall find Me when ye feel after Me." Of all the crowds that milled up and down the narrow streets of Jerusalem it is recorded that but one woman "touched" Jesus. Strange, since owing to their narrowness practically everybody who passed him came into physical contact with him. Yet it is recorded that this woman "touched" him. It is interesting to see the attention being so definitely called to the true sense of "touch." The Master asked, "Who touched me? For I perceive that virtue has gone out of me." It is to be recognized, then, that whenever you touch Me something takes place. "Virtue" goes out and an embodiment takes place, and the woman is healed. "If I could but `touch' the hem of his garment I should be healed." There is an important healing factor in the sense of touch. It is worthy of a little consideration.
The hem of the garment has no more healing power than the statue, and vice versa; but the quality of "feel" or "touch" that accompanies the gesture causes "virtue" to come forth --- causes that something which is necessary to imbue the form with life and activity. "What went ye out for to see," a person or a principle? What went ye out to "touch," and where did you go, and why? The "touching" of the Presence in which you live, move, breathe, and have your being gives you the ability to "feel" your way about in the Kingdom. Every one of the senses as they are extended gives you a new method of moving about in the God Atmosphere. It is wonderful to contemplate the infinite avenues of expression which open to you when this great oneness of the Presence takes place in you. You begin to feel the Presence, here, there, and everywhere. "I will never leave you"; yet, "It is expedient that I go" is understood when the "touch" is understood. The going of any manifestation takes nothing from you as the spirit, which you can always feel, cannot depart. The symbol of money may depart (in fact, unless you let go of the symbol it has no power), but the "feel" of the substance is always with you in this awakened consciousness, and can and will come forth in whatsoever manifestation necessary. "You shall find Me (the all) when you feel after Me" does not mean a feeling after things on the outside. Many a bank clerk feels or touches money all day long, and in the course of his career may "touch" millions of dollars, yet he may experience a distinct "feeling" of lack during his life. To be associated with symbols does not indicate the possession of them. The banker may rarely come in contact with great masses of gold or silver pieces, yet he can "touch" the money at any time. The richer he is the less contact he will have with the actual symbol and yet the more use of it. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light." Back in the dark ages of metaphysics, people were very often taught that the possession of symbols made for riches. Visualizing courses by the hundred told you to see yourself handling vast sums of money. Others recommended that you move in atmospheres where the so-called wealthy lived, and to assume the pose of riches. But all of these have produced nothing but more acute poverty, and it was because of the trying to "feel" after Me in the symbol. It is perfectly true that I AM in the symbol, but unless you "eat my body and drink my blood," and throw away the skeleton of demonstration, you do not experience the "touch" of substance --- you have only the "feel" of hard, cold metal, none of which may belong to you. The sense of "touch" when freed from its surface limitations extends right into the idea of Agreement, one of the great words which every man must take and return with to Jehovah.
"Two shall agree as touching on any point, and it shall be established on the earth," shows the importance of the sense of touch.
The Agreement which is made with words may be broken, distorted by the inability of the human mind to carry out; but when it is "touched" in the Atmosphere of Spirit, then it is as impossible to change, set aside, or misdirect as is the arrow which has sped from the bow. Once this "touch" or "feel" is made, the whole process moves on into the place of "establishing" itself on the earth. It begins to draw from the unseen the "substance of the thing hoped for and the evidence of the thing not (yet) seen" by the human limited senses. There is something interesting about the word "established." It has a fine sense of solidity and realness about it. "God does not bring to birth and not bring forth." The Power of Agreement when this touch is made does not fail to establish.
The development of the sense of touch or feeling does not produce the super-sensitiveness which some people attribute to Spirituality. You can easily determine the amount of Spirituality developed or recognized by the sense of ease, poise, and balance present. Hyper- or super-sensitiveness may be a glorified emotionalism, but it has nothing to do with the harmonious, rhythmic movement of the Presence. Hence the penchant for "taking on" conditions (and more especially "evil' ones) which some people imagine is Spiritual development, but which is nothing more or less than a renewed belief in evil. Hiding behind the mask of mental tricks, the "feel" becomes so degenerated as to sense the perpetual coming of evil. This has nothing to do with the "touch" of which Jesus asked, "Who touched me?" You are invited to be "absent from the body and present with the Lord" and at the same time told to "live in the world and be not of it." You begin to see that all manifestation is the Presence in its most transitory state. When you are absent from the body and present with the Lord you are exactly as the banker who is absent from the symbols but present with the power back of them, and hence in immediate control of them. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust and thieves," etc., does not mean that you shall not have possessions, but it does mean that you are absent from the "body" and present with the Lord. It means that you are not to be possessed by things, but rather are to possess them for your expression of the Power. A miser grows, to all intents and purposes, poorer and poorer, as he hoards more and more of the symbols. So with the Spirit; if you are feeling after it in a human way, you are not finding it. If you are watching the demonstration, and not the Power back of it, you will suddenly discover that you cannot find Me, and that you are in the desert without bread. "And He laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thy iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged." The importance of "touching" the Presence through the agreement cannot be over-estimated. In the quiet place of understanding, though the body be moving through the crowded streets of Jerusalem, you will touch Me and virtue shall go out of Me and you shall be healed. It is wonderful to contemplate the functioning of man in the temple embodiment. Whatsoever you touch within the temple shall be established on the earth, regardless of the enchantment of human belief.
"Then touched he their eyes" --- the sense of "touch" extended into its new and divine dimension may open new vistas to you in all the other senses. "You shall find Me when you feel after Me." There is no question about that; and when you have found Me you have entered into the Kingdom here and now. It is wonderful! The sense of touch and the agreement of life are revealed through the "Feel after Me."
When agreement is made the touching takes place and conception is. From that moment the idea gathers its body for manifestation.
SMELLING
"There is the odour of sanctity."
"HE BREATHED into him the Breath of Life and he became a Living Soul" --- something alive, not something
that had to be kept alive. Once he becomes a "living" soul he has no beginning or ending, for it is Life
Eternal to be inbreathed with the Breath of Life; living and functioning on all planes, instead of existing with
a bit of "breath" in the nostrils. The sense of smell which man has been using is stopped down to a matter
of odours. A thing may be sweet, sour, pleasant, or unpleasant. Outside of this the sense of smell has no function.
Since the limited sense of smell can be easily fooled and made to believe that a synthetic odour is the real one,
what reliance could one put on any information or wisdom gathered from this source? Do you begin to see why Jesus
stressed the fact that "the wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God"? All the wisdom of man is
founded on this very uncertain basis of the foreshortened senses. The sense of smell has directly to do with the
"Breath of Life," and is one of the avenues through which man feels his indissoluble connection with
the Presence. When the sense of smell is extended beyond the limiting shell of conscious thinking, then it reaches
out into the universal Breath of God. All this symbology is to better acquaint man with the Oneness of all things,
and presently all this scaffolding of words, parables, books, lecturers, teachers, and organizations will fall
away from the revealed Presence in which you live, move, breathe, and have your being. It is wonderful to contemplate.
"And he came near, and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him and said, See the smell of my son is as the smell of a field [state of consciousness] which the Lord hath blessed: "Therefore God give thee of the dew of Heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine."
The Aroma of Spirit comes from the Breath of Life inbreathed into man. Man is inbreathed by the Breath of Life and he becomes a "living" soul, and the Aroma of Spirit is exhaled from him. He is surrounded by a halo of the Presence. He has the "smell of a field blessed of the Lord"-a fertile field full of seed and ready to bring forth its abundant harvest. "Thrust in the sickle." The dews of Heaven, the blessings of manifestation, follow the recognition of the "fatness of the earth"; the unlimited expression of the Presence comes forth. There shall be plenty of corn and wine. The deep inspiration of the Almighty has taken place, and the smell of "a field that the Lord bath blessed" comes from you. The blessings of the Lord have no sorrow added. The blessings of the Lord are not after the limited measure of man, neither is their capacity nor quantity discernible by the man "whose breath is in his nostrils," who is dependent upon a series of events in order to bring forth, and whose best efforts may be crowned by the worst kind of failure. He is alone with his breath in his nostrils, and hence at the mercy of any human belief that may come along.
"And he breathed into him the Breath of Life and he became a living soul." "The inspiration of the
Almighty shall, when it has come, lead you into all things."
At the very thought of Inspiration the breathing becomes deep, profound, and tingling with life.
"Flee from that man whose breath is in his nostrils." There is no inspiration to the breath that is only in the nostrils, and hence no life. It must be the deep breathing that fills the entire temple body that accomplishes Life. The symbolic man whose breath is only in his nostrils has not yet experienced the "Breath of Life," and hence he has not yet become the living soul. He is in the strictest sense of the word unenlightened, and has to do with all sorts of beliefs and theories concerning God. He is still at the point of comparison and argument regarding the unchanging principle, or Breath of Life, hence you are warned to "flee" from that man, for all that he knows is gathered from his foreshortened senses.
What a glorious "feel" to know that you are inbreathed with the Breath of Life. Not a temporary sense of life, but Life Eternal, unchanging and vibrating with power. The Breath of Life, the true sense of smell rushing through the temple of your being, permeating the joints and marrow, taking life out of the narrow confines of conscious-thinking, i.e., health and sickness, and freeing it into the Universal, where the beliefs of frailty are non-existent. Nothing is expended because you make a physical movement when you are inbreathed with the Breath of Life, when the sense of smell has broken the bonds of its former limitation. One moment's contemplation of this oneness with the Breath of Life dissipates the sense of fatigue as you "smell" the Presence. No one can imagine God as becoming tired, or fatigued, and likewise when you are one with this Divine Breath you cannot experience what Life cannot experience. "You shall find your life when you lose it" indicates that we have not yet experienced the thing called Life. Certainly we have tried hard enough to find it through the foreshortened senses, and have been sharply rebuked for having all the capacities of these senses and yet not experiencing any of them.
"The Lord is in His Holy Temple, let all the earth rejoice." The Breath of Life is moving in and through the holy temple, and every manifestation (earth) shall rejoice because of this thrilling, moving Presence. Suddenly you become alive; you are "smelling" out the Presence, just as you taste and see and hear and feel the Presence. You are aware of the freshness and eternal newness of life which is not under the ban of the limited conscious-thinking. You have become a living soul, alive in all ways, mentally, physically, financially, morally. Alive, awakened, transmuted into the substance which is permeated with the Divine Breath. It is wonderful. You are a Living Soul --- you are alive mentally. Do you know what it means to be alive mentally? It does not mean the gushing forth of facts and data regarding everything in the universe. It does not mean the development of a colossal brain or a quality attributed to what the world calls a "prodigy" or "genius." It does not mean an abnormal memory nor a "lightning calculator." All of these states immediately introduce the thought of "brain-fag." You have the feel that these states of mind would have a brief moment and then have to retire utterly worn out. When you become a Living Soul mentally you begin to sense that you are endowed with the Divine Memory, the inspired memory which says, "I shall recall unto you whatsoever I have said unto you." Everything that is in the Universal Consciousness is at the disposal of the one who has become "alive mentally" --- he does not have to go through the ordinary processes. The consciousness that has ever been established on the earth of anything mental is ready to be tapped by the Living Mentality. It has broken down the limits of the excessive or limited capacities of conscious thinking and moves out into the new dimension. It knows and can call and can dispose of, and yet it does not have to bother with the accumulation of material. "When I say go, he goeth, is the law of the mentally alive one. It is wonderful when your mentality is awake, when you see it is for the purpose of releasing wisdom and not for the limitations of human intellect. It is true it may absorb all of this intellect, just as the egg is absorbed into the eagle, but in doing this it instantly breaks the shell of limitation and frees itself into a new realm of manifestation. This being alive mentally gives you the power to know whatsoever concerneth Me --- there is "nothing hidden that shall not be revealed" which concerns you. So far is this faculty removed from the curious mind that would meddle with the lives of others that the gulf dividing them is greater than that which separated Dives and Lazarus. At the same time this alive mentality can, if recognized, give you anything and all information concerning you and your ongoing. "Call upon Me and I will answer you." Do you begin to see what Jesus was working with? Call it out on this Divine Breath; nothing shall be hidden from this searching Breath which scents out all things. It is said that the savages can scent the coming of a stranger miles before he arrives in camp. This capacity has been lost to most people, but even this quality is a limitation to the Divine sense of smell. You are alive mentally, and if you need the name, place, or word it is always there in the Universal Consciousness awaiting the simple "letting" which takes place when you are once alive mentally. You are a living soul --- you are alive morally. The idea of morality has been so mistakenly narrowed down to mean sex with most people that its grand mission has been completely submerged. Hardly anyone will deny that a great deal too much importance has been placed on sex. Gradually the beliefs of man, who was only recently in the throes of believing that everything he did, said, heard, or saw was traceable to the all-important thing, sex, are being somewhat released.
To be alive morally is to experience the Natural Integrity of Life which is so necessary. It enables you to "judge not from appearances." It causes you to see the necessity of fulfilling your own contracts. It causes you to be as good as your word. It brings a sort of human decency, which is fearfully lacking in most people, to the surface. It enables you to live in the world and be not of it; and yet keeps you from the fearful, self-righteous habit of condemning everything that does not fit in with your own ideas of life. You are inbreathed with the Breath of Life. You begin to employ the sense of smell and are conscious of the aroma of the Presence. There is no separation between you and this Presence any more than there is a separation of the air in the great out-of-doors. You are a soul alive. Alive for the first time and conscious of the substance of the resurrected body of Jesus Christ. You are the Word of God made manifest, nothing more or less. When will you begin to claim this heritage and see it through into manifestation? When the senses unfold into their true function, when they extend to the capacity which has so long been unrecognized, then will you begin to "sense" the Presence. When the sense of smell is awakened to the place of the inbreathing of the Breath of Life, it is as if the heavy, limp canvas of a balloon were suddenly to be inflated with gas. Suddenly it expands into new dimensions and possibilities. The impossible takes place; the heavy canvas, with its ballast-loaded basket, rises through the air. This illustration is inadequate --- the coming of this Divine Breath to you permeates every cell and segment of your being.
You are a living soul, inbreathed with the Breath of Life. The old subconscious ruts and patterns are suddenly straightened out-the "rough places are made smooth and the crooked places straight." There is no offsetting of one habit by introducing another, but a releasing of the heavy creases and crevices which stored up the memory of evil. "The former things shall pass away; they shall not be remembered nor come into mind any more"; because when the suggestion is made the former place for the reception of this evil is not there-the old subconscious pattern has not only been broken up, it has been completely obliterated. It is not a state of overcoming evil but an arising and following Me out of the Sodom and Gomorrah of the subconscious mind. It is wonderful. The sense of smell extended into the Divine Breath opens the door of Inspiration. When the breath stops in a man he is pronounced dead. When he is separated from the great Spirit, or Presence, he dies. The little breath (a human lifetime) which man has in his nostrils must be extended into the great Universal Breath or else it is soon snuffed out. Its very limitations bring upon it all sorts of evils from which there is no escape. The more the breath is stopped down to the human organism the more affectation of the throat and nose are visible. It is impossible for you to go out of the presence of God. You are living, moving, breathing, and having your being in this Presence, in this Atmosphere, now, and presently you will recognize that at the same time you are performing this it is also "living, moving, breathing, and having Its being" in you. Then in the great Oneness of this recognition do you experience the sense of Life Eternal.
You are inbreathed with the Breath of Life and you are a living soul financially. To be alive financially does not necessarily mean the handling of the symbol, but it does mean the consciousness of substance which out-pictures itself in five thousand loaves of bread or a simple meal. It puts one consciously in touch with the "substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." When Jesus raised his eyes to Heaven and gave thanks, he was recognizing this substance, and the symbol had to take place. He was alive financially, and produced the loaves and fishes by a telescoping of the ways of man into the instant manifestation of that which was needed. Instead of demonstrating the money, sending for the baker, etc., the "way that ye know not of" was able to bring forth what was necessary at that particular instant. Yes, it must be true that we have eyes and have not seen. "He careth for you" is only true from the height of the understanding of what it means to be "alive financially." It is written in the Law:
"They have ears but they hear not; noses have they, but they smell not."
When this sense of smell is extended to the Breath of Life, the Inspiration of the Almighty fills you, and it is this very quality which is to lead you into all things. Beloved, you are inbreathed with the Breath of Life and you have become a living soul. Do you hear? It is wonderful.
The Breath of God is not mechanical. It is as a cloud of sweet smelling incense enfolding all, and revealing its radiant creation-in breathed forever.
A living soul is immortal.
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