The author of this book. WALTER C. LANYON, is an American-born Englishman. He was educated in this country, France and England and has spent more than half of his life traveling all over the world investigating and studying the various presentations of Truth.
For fifteen years, Mr. Lanyon has lectured on the personal revelation he has gained of the Principle of Life, in all countries of the globe.
Through years of proving the Word he has refined his presentation of it, eliminating the personal almost completely and leavings the pure revelation as simple and natural as possible. Thousands will testify to the tremendous Spiritual Force gotten through the mere reading of his works.
It has been the desire of Mr. Lanyon to keep the personal entirely out of the way, hence, no exploitation of himself or his books has taken place.
He is the author of some thirty-three books on Truth, a novel, two librettos for light operas and innumerable articles and write-ups on human interest.
The simple manner in which Mr. Lanyon has stated the truth enables the reader to grasp the principle for himself and put it into practice without the cloying sense of a personal teacher or organizational bondage.
The revelation of Truth comes as naturally as the dawn to the soul who is ready to let this happen. The kernel of his teaching is the "First Person and present tense" - the actual. usable, practical. revelation of the Jesus Christ teaching.
by
WALTER C. LANYON
CONTENTS
Page
The Immaculate Conception 9
Devitalizing Evil 22
Born Again 34
God Requires the Past 44
Except 69
The Gesture 79
Stir Up the Gift 91
Yon Sycamine Tree 104
The Presence 112
Wisdom 119
The Secret Power 125
The Well of Living Waters 144
God in Action 151
If I Be Lifted Up 162
At the Feet of the Master 172
Revelation 178
Assumption 188
The Mechanics 194
The Blaze of Life 203
Who Are You? 215
copyright 1941
"SEARCH the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have life eternal."
Until the Scriptures yield up their symbology, they remain a rather tedious history of a decadent civilization. Once you become the principal actor, as it were, in the moving pictures of the sacred book you begin to understand the revelations of Jesus the Christ; how it was that he constantly spoke in parables because of the ignorance of the people, and how necessary it was for the people -- even you and me -- to release the blessed revelation from these stories into the present-day, practical, everyday living.
Who then has not written the psalms of desolation and the Psalms of Praise? Who then has not found all of the incidents of Job's painful and triumphant existence shadowed forth in his own life? So also hidden in the various events is the actual power for those who have eyes to see -- what the Scriptures say unto the Churches -- unto your temples-bodies.
To the human thought the way of Jesus is the way of the Impossible, even the way of fantasy. Who believes in miracles as natural, normal things? They are classed in the unnatural and the impossible, and it is from this elevation we must approach them if we expect to understand their practical use in everyday life.
Everything that Jesus did is "impossible" to the human senses. The three-dimensional mind speaks from that mass of knowledge it gathers looking through the "glass darkly," but it speaks truly as far as its limited vision is concerned. We know that a heavier-than-water body will sink in water, and that gravity, cohesion, adhesion, attraction, have a definite power which cannot be set aside, even temporarily, except with great effort. Yet everything that Jesus did was outside of all of these laws.
Many people are still trying to work in the three-dimensional-thought world with this new Power, and find it utterly incompatible and impossible, and so it is.
If the Christ Power could do only the possible there would be little use to bother with it, since you are daily doing what is possible. We are only interested in the teaching of Jesus Christ because of its doing the impossible.
If you cannot readily take off from this level you are still looking for miracles, and verily after you have seen one, and keep looking for them, you will not even be able to find ME. "Ye seek ME after the loaves and fishes and cannot find ME" - not because I AM not there, but because through the glass darkly you have glimpsed the impossible happen and are still treating it as a magic power, a worker of tricks, and a doer of legerdemain. If you cannot conceive that the IMPOSSIBLE is the field in which the Christ Power operates you will still be swinging between something and nothing. And it will be mostly nothing.
Hence all the deeper lessons tucked away in stories and parables deal with the doing of the impossible. The problem is clearly stated and worked out; the way out of every difficulty is clearly given. No one of the present day can enter into a situation which has not been fully and amply covered, explained, and proved nothing by the Jesus Christ Power.
"Search the Scriptures." Do you hear?
Mary the Virgin was overshadowed by the Presence. The Annunciation was made. An impossible thing was to take place. She was to bring forth a Messiah, and this bringing forth had to be outside the offices of man. Instantly the whole proposition was put on the plane of the impossible -- it just could not happen. Anyone could see and understand that. And Mary asked: "How can this be, seeing I know no man?" In other words, it was an impossible situation, and could neither be understood nor manifested.
Is this situation any different from what you are trying to do? Have you not arrived at an incurable state of a diseased or worn-out body and mind, or a hopeless state of waiting, or a half dead state of no expression? And are you not trying to bring out the impossible when you try to get rid of the incurable disease? When the annunciation-desire-is made to you of perfect health or substance being possible in your life, what does your mind echo? Yet where did you get the desire for the perfected state of health or expression? Why doesn't everybody have the same desire; and, when you bring this state of perfect health or substance into manifestation (when you embody it), will it not be a Messiah to your world? Will it not save you from destruction by disease or limitation?
The Presence urging upon you constantly for expression stands at the door of consciousness - "Behold I stand at the door and knock, and if any man [that includes you] hear My voice and open unto Me, I will come into him and sup with him and he with Me." This constant annunciation of the Presence, over-shadowing your consciousness - urging you to give it a body and form -- results in the eternal immaculate conception taking place in you.
Instead of your desires being merely floating thoughts which have to be "worked" out, they become the annunciation of the Presence asking for permission to come in and sup with you. The Holiness of this eternal function puts a seal on the lips, and we find that as soon as Mary found that "nothing was impossible with God" she then "magnified the Lord within her."
The questioning and wondering, the guessing and worrying about it all, were entirely dropped out of the scheme of her thought. If all things were possible to God, then the impossible thing would find a way and means of expression. The annunciation or the desire carries with it all the necessary ways and means of bringing itself into manifestation, but it needs the perfect cooperation or integrity of Mary. She is found to be the perfect exemplar of bringing forth the invisible, impossible thing and giving it a body and a form. She "pondered these things in her heart." There seemed to be so little chance of the thing taking place through the thought of man. Also we see her in a very difficult situation as far as the actual affair was concerned.
Who was going to believe in the Immaculate Conception? Who would believe it today? Not many; and Mary would not have been more popular in her home town than she would be under like circumstances today. Hence the need for silence and the deep magnifying of the Power; the turning entirely away from the appearance, and the "letting" the Impossible become the Possible by is own way. "ii have a way ye know not of"; hence, I can and will handle the manifestation. It is wonderful when you liken your desire with this glorious Immaculate Conception from the standpoint of symbology.
When you tell your desire, what do you find happens? Does anyone believe you are capable of bringing it out? Not one. Everyone knows that it cannot happen; for what you are trying to do is outside of the laws of man. Who believes that you can prosper yourself through your understanding of this overshadowing Principle? It is impossible and it cannot happen. Yet the Spirit is over-shadowing you with an endless stream of desires, all of which should find a body and form and go forth into expression, if you but followed the law of Mary.
"And Mary magnified the Lord within her." She ceased to look to the ways and means, or to consider the almost hopeless situation that confronted her. "She pondered these things in her heart."
The holiness of Life ! when you see, even for a moment, this glorious idea of the Immaculate Conception. Your desires are dignified with the joy of being possible because they are impossible to the reasoning of man. This very recognition of the Impossible as possible shows the first faint streaks of wisdom and acceptance in a power which is not dependent upon the limited laws of man.
The Spirit is overshadowing you now, even as it is overshadowing every other temple, body, urging upon it to open the "door" of expression and "let" ME in. The thief, the crook, the harlot, and the saint are all overshadowed with this glorious Presence, flooding them with desires, every one of which is a holy thing seeking a body and a form, but, because of the impossible nature of the desires as viewed through the "glass darkly" of the human thought, only distorted and ugly manifestations can get through. Every desire is holy and from God, and in its purest form is true and good, but, by the time it is put through the thick fog of human belief, that which comes out into manifestation is so far removed from its original urge as to be unrecognizable.
Life circumscribed by the human mind is a series of blasted hopes and desires, and yet it should be just the opposite by reason of the revelation made by Jesus.
"With God nothing is impossible." WITH God? Or with God" Does it mean it is only true to a God separated from you or because you are with God? Do you recall that Jesus made Himself as God, and do you begin to see how the IMPOSSIBLE becomes the possible to the consciousness that is of the same substance or nature? "Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light." Jesus did not try to use a POWER to work things out on the plane of the Impossible; he found his true nature to be God, and to God all things were and are possible. The coming forth of this may have set aside or upset all the human beliefs regarding the situation, but that was of no consequence. So does an electrical storm many times set aside the best-laid plans of mice and men, and neither one nor the other can do anything about it, whether they like it or not. Jesus was not concerned with what the human thought would think or do about the situation. He made Himself as God, and from that Plane the Impossible became the Possible, and its coming into manifestation might be considered a miracle or a coincidence; it made no difference. Suffice to say, he knew that the human mind would dispose of it some way so as not to upset its own basis of life.
Presently the idea will be made clear to you. You will begin to see the plan of manifestation. The Overshadowing Presence announces that which is to take place in and through you. You have it as a desire, and the moment this is accepted in the clear Virgin mind (the mind which is not cluttered up with a lot of metaphysical teaching and beliefs) the silent announcing of its advent goes forth. The Wise Men from afar, seeing the star, come with their gifts. So with every desire that is immaculately conceived and brought forth according to the way of Jesus Christ - it draws everything to it that is necessary, instead of going out into the world seeking for its own. Every desire that you ever had, or ever will have, which is handled from this standpoint will be recognized and receive its gifts from the Wise Men. It is wonderful when the revelation of the Immaculate Conception takes place within you. You will feel the scales dropping from your eyes and the new day appearing. The old idea of getting an idea and then trying to remonstrate it, even in the face of the knowledge that it is absolutely impossible, falls by the board, and the Recognition of Presence shows forth definitely in results. "If I be lifted up [to the point of recognizing that my desire is the annunciation of the Overshadowing Spirit] I will draw all men unto me."
Once you are lifted up, once you experience the eternal rightness of the Presence of God in and through all things, you will understand how the impossible -- the Immaculate Conception, symbolically speaking -- is taking place through you, and you are bringing into manifestation the Messiah which will save you from the difficulties into which the conscious-thinking has brought you.
The judging from appearances will completely fall away from you. Appearances will be ignored, just as they were by Jesus when he was bringing forth the "desire" which the Overshadowing Presence was urging him to set free. The battling with appearances only establishes them. The more attention you give to negative things, the more they increase. The case of a man with a great fear of knives kept him constantly on the qui vive, and enlarged the possibilities of something dire happening from this source. Why? Because in his attempt to rid himself of them he endowed them with all sorts of power which they did not possess. Millions of people do not think of "knives" in negative terms, and yet to this man they were the symbol of all that was evil. Other people could live with them or without them. To thousands of people they were a necessity. You begin to understand how it is that you put a thing into the negative classification and work to get rid of it. You are only endowing it with the very thing you are working against. What is true of the knife is true of the man. Some person may work against another who is keeping him out of expression, or is dominating him. He holds him in the negative position, and at the same time tries to rid himself of this negative thing. It only increases. The knife and the man are the same thing. Putting things into the negative place of manifestation does not necessarily make them evil. "One man's meat is another man's poison" is proof of that.
So the recommendation of Jesus, "Judge not from appearances," carries with it something deeper than "ignoring" evil as a realty. Ignoring the appearances as Jesus did was the result of an understanding of Power. He knew that the "thing" of itself had nothing to do with the reaction you were getting from it.
And so we find Mary, the symbol of that which brings forth what is most impossible of expression, and in a way entirely outside the laws of man, showing us by the Magnifying of the Lord within just how the desires are brought forth.
All the reports of the coming event given to the unbelieving world, will only raise up a Herod of disbelief and fear, and, though it may not touch you, it will cause you to do many things which would be entirely unnecessary had you bided the counsel of Jesus Christ: "See that ye tell no man," but "show John."
Beloved, you are overshadowed every minute of the day and night with this great Presence, and, as the Spirit moves on the "face of the deep," an annunciation is made, a desire is born, and this desire must come through outside the human laws. The moment you give it the recognition and the full power to express in a "way ye know not of, " at that instant it will find its means of expression. "Neither say Lo here! or, lo there ! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you" -- the state of the consciousness of this Presence is in you, and that is the only place it can ever be felt, known, or experienced. The moment you recognize it there, you see it in everything, and the impossible thing, which has to be born outside the offices of man, comes through in a normal and natural way without disturbing anything. It is wonderful. "Is anything hard to ME?" Answer me. Your little problem fades away. You begin to see that hitherto you approached your desires as problems to be worked out, instead of the urge of the Great Spirit overshadowing you with Love. It is wonderful.
When you come to understand this great overshadowing of the Presence you will understand the eternal coming of spring in all its symbology, and your body shall be like a garden planted by the banks of a river, bringing forth its fruit in due season. What are you worrying about? Align yourself with this glorious thing called Life and the fluttering, fitful sense of things will pass, absorbed into even and beautiful patterns of rhythm.
Your desires will no longer come under the heading of something to be "worked out"; they will be the eternal annunciation. Remembering that the sparrow is just as precious as the eagle, you do not have to worry about your desires being so trivial in the scheme of world events.
Mary did not run into the streets and tell the world that she was going to bring forth a Messiah by other than the offices of man, she "pondered these things in her heart." The heckling and arguing of ways and means, the pro-and-con standpoint, have nothing whatsoever to do with this revelation of Jesus Christ. It is, and therefore it Is. "Flee from that man whose breath is in his nostrils" is a good thing to remember always. "Agree with thine adversary quickly." What difference does it make to you what he "knows," thinks, or believes about the Truth? Let him have his way -- don't argue, don't expose, don't talk, don't tell the glorious annunciation which has been made unto you. "My sheep hear My voice." Do you?
Be still -- even at this holy moment you are over-shadowed by the PRESENCE -- it is urging upon you the new idea. Your desire is a holy thing, a thing of joy, a glorious inner revelation -- an Immaculate Conception. "Praise God from whom all (not some) blessings flow."
DEVITALIZING EVIL
"I CAME to fulfill, not to destroy" - there is nothing to be destroyed in all the Holy Mountain. Not even the devil; nor even the sickness, poverty, and hateful bondage of human life. Nothing is to be destroyed. It is to be fulfilled.
The egg is not destroyed when it becomes a bird, the caterpillar when it becomes a butterfly, and yet in a sense they are destroyed. The thing which is left when the egg becomes a bird is a thin shell it crumbles and drops into the dust, and even the place thereof is no more.
Jesus counseled the taking away of the attention from appearances and centering it upon this Power which fulfills -- by this very process of taking away the attention from the appearances we devitalize the problems of life, which are entirely dependent upon the thought-substance to keep them alive.
The reason your problems have not been met is due to the fact you have been trying to overcome them - you have been fighting against something and at the same time exclaiming there is nothing but God in the universe. When you awaken to the Presence you will see the process, "Ye must decrease -- I must increase," take place before your very eyes as the power is withdrawn from the problem and merged into the Presence for reshaping and re-embodiment. In other words, the devitalization of the manifestation of evil will take place.
It is very much like letting the air out of a balloon -- the moment you take your attention from the appearances and judge righteous judgment then the manifestation begins to fade out, just as a parasite begins to wither when the sap of the plant or tree is taken from it.
Once you see this simple method you will understand why it is that the Kingdom of Heaven is given to the child -- the attention can be taken from the appearances, the snapping of the thought which is feeding the evil manifestation takes place and the manifestation falls into the dust, not being able to support itself.
"Magnify the Lord within" and disregard the appearance of the problem and you will begin to experience the consciousness of it cracking up -- falling away for the new embodiment to take place; just as the egg cracks before the new embodiment of the eagle, which is leaving nothing behind it but the thing which formerly made it egg, but which is now only a broken shell falling into the dust of oblivion. So will you stop the effort to catch fish in the sea which is filled with fish and you will begin to "let down your nets." The moment the thought is taken away from the problem, at that instant the life-stream is cut from the manifestation and it begins to perish.
The old idea of fighting- against evil and calling on God to destroy something, which in the next breath you admit does not exist, is the densest kind of "metaphysics." The manifestation of disease, though it may have a history years long, is only as old as the last thought about it. Out of consciousness -- out of manifestation - the Walls of Jericho must and will crumble when you have taken your attention from them. At the precise instant the word shall be spoken and a crumbling of appearances will take place -- a strong breath of life will dispel the crumbling mass of manifestation into nothingness. It is wonderful - the power which is inherent in the Risen Lord.
"Working" against the condition -- or "working" to know there is no condition opposite a state of self hypnosis -- you are caught in the language of metaphysics. Dead words -- "Awake, thou that sleepest"; are you still under the hateful law, "Earn your living by the sweat of your brow"? Are you WORKING in this human sense of the word when you pray?
"Behold! I come not to destroy" -- do you hear? - I said, "I come not to destroy." Then what are you trying to destroy? An appearance" A belief? What for?
If God comes not to destroy, who are you to destroy? "I come to fulfill"; and, when the thing is fulfilled with the Spirit, when you recognize the Presence, you will burst the thin and narrow confines of the manifestation which is so ugly and untoward. Behold I make all things new. We are not seeking to recover something lost, something once used. "Behold I make all thing new," and when this idea comes to you, you Will perceive that immediately the new creation is a new consciousness with a new embodiment. So the egg becomes the bird -- so you are embodied in a consciousness which is more sensitive to the PRESENCE than you were formerly, and hence are capable of accomplishing things that were utterly impossible before.
"Behold, I make all things new." The moment you begin the devitalizing process of evil, even the devil and hell are made lifeless and must fall into nothingness -- the life is taken from them.
It is as a man who owned a magnificent library of rare first editions. When he died, the library immediately began to disintegrate and was eventually scattered to the four winds. Why? Because it had nothing to hold it up. The moment your attention is taken from the appearances, the appearances fall to pieces. That is why Jesus kept saying, "What is that to thee? Follow thou Me" - the moment you do this the new embodiment is taking place. "Whatsoever you ask in My nature" -- whatsoever you can conceive as possible to this nature -- that will be made manifest through the Law of Christ Jesus.
In a moment of forgetfulness, many an invalid has done things which were seemingly impossible to do. "At a moment ye think not, I come" - you will see what a little is accomplished by taking thought. "Who, by taking thought, can add one cubit?" Are you ready to hear this? - or would you like to debate the issue, simply because the density of your mind does not apprehend the height, breadth, length of the Presence?
It is glorious when you glimpse the simplicity of this Christ message. It is up and away from the old thinking process -- it is pure revelation, past the understanding of man. It is in the realm of the "peace" which passeth all understanding." I said all -- that includes your own and that of the greatest spiritual leader or teacher in the universe -- it simply is something which transcends the thing called human understanding.
"Leave all" -- do you hear? "Follow Me" does not mean that you let go of a thing, or that you go to any place. But you leave it all, as far as thought is concerned, and that is the quickest way to get rid of the manifestation.
As the wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God, so is the Wisdom of God foolishness in the eyes of man. To the human unenlightened man he is sure that if he thinks hard enough or prays hard enough he will accomplish the destruction of the appearances -- if he thinks money hard enough he will create it. He reckons with a human law which might, through some queer whim of fate, temporarily make a change. He cannot think it possible to attain these things and also to entertain the Presence the moment he stops the thought taking process and enters into the recognition of it all and begins to experience the deep and marvelous changes of the new embodiment being born.
"In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall bring it to pass." Do YOU hear? Answer me. Well, then, what is keeping "it" from coming to pass in your life? Is it the thought taking, the judging from appearances, the trying to adjust, straighten, or arrange things or thoughts?
Perhaps it is -- and perhaps you will "leave all" -- I said all and follow Me, and begin to experience the deep delight of the rest that comes to one when he senses that God knows more than any combination of manifestation ever can hope to glimpse. "I have a way ye know not of," slams the door shut tight in the face of the "man whose breath is in his nostrils" and who is trying to square the teaching of Christ by the yardstick of human intelligence.
"In all thy wars acknowledge him, and he shall give thee the desires of your heart." Can it be possible? Can you begin to see how you are gradually coming out of the desert of working into a place of service and expression -- into a place where man becomes a part of the gorgeous pattern of life, and can no more be kept from his expression than he can be sent into his expression by thought? There is a sudden doing away with the paraphernalia of the human thought.
Who told you to make the effort to express - who told you that a man held the power to keep you out of your place or to let you in? Who told you that you must get a man-made authority to express the substance of your mind? The world has told you, and it is true, as long as you are trying to sell yourself to the world -- but when you merge into Spirit, when you are one Nature, there will be no need of entering into the limitations of man. He has his success and his failure; both are but human degrees. They have nothing whatsoever to do with the Power. God is not successful -- that is a man-made limitation and is usually pictured out by dollars and cents.
God is not limited to the narrow confines of "success." That is the measure man holds to the universe, hoping to get it full, but when he "proves Me" he will begin to see that his measure is far too small.
God does not ask permission to perform. You are the word of God made flesh -- what about you? Why do you not accept My invitation, "Lean on Me"? -- literally, lean upon the consciousness of this Presence. If you have the human decency and honesty to fulfill that which you claim you have, you will see definitely, "I will sustain you" - not after the limited manner of your thinking -- "I have ways ye know not of." Do you believe it?
When is the fire of the burning bush going to burn out all the dead manifestations which you have been holding to yourself so long? When will you flame with the joy of sensing, "Heaven and earth are full of Thee" -- and mean it, and cast your burdens on the Lord and feel the Presence emanating through you? The hills shall be made low and the rough places smooth and the crooked places straight -- all this symbology to make you see how the problem is devitalized when you take your thought away from it.
"Judge not from appearances, but judge righteous judgment." The desire of your soul, which is the thing in its incipiency urging upon you for fulfillment, is possible of fulfillment, though it must have a new embodiment -- not necessarily a new shape, but a new height of consciousness which can accept the new revelation as natural instead of the old idea that it is something that must be demonstrated.
The literal interpretation of the Scriptures begins to take place the moment you have found the soul of it all. Without an embodiment the unseen is unexpressed and is worthless -- it must be embodied; and this power of embodiment in the face of such binding limitations as a shell, a prison wall, a fearful disease or reputation, can only take place when you turn your attention to me and magnify me within.
"What is that to thee?" is the password thereafter -- the attention has been taken away from the appearances. This does not necessarily mean that you are closing your eyes to it; just suddenly you have taken the thought from it, and the "What is that to thee?" stays with you as a guardian angel until the moment comes for you to blow the breath and see the walls crumble.
All the while, from the moment the attention is taken away from the appearances, the leaven of the Presence has been devitalizing, undermining the solid appearances of belief, so that when the breath of Life is blown upon the thing, it goes up in a cloud of smoke and you enter in. The Jericho of your desire, walled away by impossibilities, becomes yours. You do not climb over, fight against, tear down, or in any way attack the walls -- you devitalize them by taking your thought away from the appearances.
It is wonderful what a little contemplation on this thing will do for you. Suddenly you will see why Jacob struggled all night with the Angel, and how finally he loosed it and let it go. So you will take the very light out of hell or the devil by this same process. When you stop regarding the flames of hell and recognize Me, you devitalize hell, and it becomes heaven. Even while you are momentarily in the flames you experience the holy command, "The flames shall not burn thee." It is glorious, this one Nature of the Jesus Christ consciousness.
The appearances may be solid and filled with terror, the roadway filled with armed charioteers and horsemen; destruction is near; but "look again" - and the devitalization takes place. We are not going to fight. "Put up your sword" is just as true today as it was two thousand years ago.
"Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light." Where is the Christ? When Jesus raised his eyes to Heaven, did he look up? And if so, where are you going to look? When he performed the gesture in his Consciousness he must have stayed on the Power and magnified that, if the embodiment necessary was to take place, and eventually before his eyes the spectre of appearances which manifested hunger and lack, fell to pieces, and the embodiment of plenty took place.
"Believest thou this?" Can you believe in the Divine nature to the point that the embodiment necessary to put the child on earth will take place, by a way ye know not of? Outside of the laws of mankind? If so , you can rejoice, for all flesh shall see it together.
In every instance of so-called miracle cited in the bible, we see Jesus practicing this devitalizing process. The attention is taken from the appearance, and the manifestation has the life-flow snapped instantly. It may wag about until sundown, but the "What is that to thee?" keeps you in perfect peace -- the walls crumble as you enter in. You enter in through the door which no man can shut -- I said no man, organization, person, place, or thing. By your yea, yea, "Believest thou this?"
"Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have life eternal." You see yourself moving through every character and every situation of the Bible, and yet you suddenly realize that you see yourself, and it is the you which is seeing yourself that has the power to accomplish that which changes the face of all nature.
"At his coming" -- what is this his? At his coming the earth melted. (Is your problem harder than the solid earth?) At his coming the hills skipped for joy and the trees sang, and so is the glorious pastoral poem of the symbolizing of the Presence.
So will the manifestations of evil suddenly lose their shape and form at his coming just as hell melts into heaven at his coming into manifestation, and the devil fades into oblivion. The running from appearances ceases; he can go or stay when you have taken the life out of him. He will be powerless, and will prove it over a thousand times.
Can you begin to see why you are sent into all the world? Naked, yet unafraid -- alive, awakened to your true nature. Shed with the preparation of the gospel, wearing the breast-plate of righteousness, etc., is but the symbology of becoming conscious of your nature. It is not a preparation for combating evil. No, not even by the old-fashioned method of begging, beseeching, and praying to a tribal Jehovah.
"In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall bring it to pass." Do you hear? What, then, is going to hinder the manifestation of it here and now?
BORN AGAIN
"MARVEL not ye must be born again."
The definite statement of what must take place before you can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven here and now made manifest, is little heeded by the average Truth student. He does not stop to see or realize that in order to do the works that Jesus said were possible for him to do, that he would have to be "born again" into a state of consciousness where those things which were formerly impossible, come under the head of the natural and possible.
He is admonished time after time, that it is useless to put new wine into old bottles, or to put a new patch on an old garment, and yet he will try with the limited physical senses to do those things which at the beginning are listed in the category of the impossible. Hence, he is merely trying to hypnotize himself into believing that some "miracle" will happen to him if he tries hard enough.
There is no possible way for the mind of the limited human senses to grasp the statements which set aside the laws of time, space, gravity, cohesion, and adhesion.
All the works of Jesus come under this head. Nothing he did was in any way subservient to the human findings. Everything that he showed forth set aside definitely a humanly accepted theory of law. How, then, is it possible for a man to attain these works working from a limited human sense capacity? "I can of myself do nothing" immediately states the position Jesus took to the limited faulty human senses.
"Having eyes, ye see not, and ears, ye hear not," was addressed to people who in the human sense of the word both saw and heard -- and yet they could not "see nor hear" that which belonged to the Power which he manifested.
"Marvel not ye must be born again" -- do not get excited about it, if you must be -- you can be, and the sooner you get over the idea that it is some strange and elaborate initiation, the sooner you will find you are "gradually merging into this new-born state.
"As you have borne the image of the earthly, so shall ye also bear the image of the heavenly." Is there anything so strange in that statement? No, there is nothing strange in any of the teaching of Jesus; it is sane, practical, and usable by the man in the street; the only strange thing about it all is the weird and difficult processes that have been thrown about it by the human mind.
If the child could get into the Kingdom of Heaven through the all-embracing capacity of accepting something which could not be reasoned out, then it does not seem so impossible for the adult to lay aside his adultery, his making the universe two instead of one.
The "peace which passeth all understanding" certainly is not going to be sounded or experienced by the understanding of you or your teacher, however famous you or your teacher may be. And yet that peace in which lie all things, is possible of attainment, but apparently not through the "understanding."
"Seek peace and pursue it, and all good shall come unto you." It is definite and direct -- all good shall come unto you. Do you hear? That is what you have been after, isn't it? You have wanted the all good, and there is no ambiguity as to how it will come if you follow the instructions of Jesus Christ -- if you come unto Me.
"Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man the things which are prepared for them that love the Law."
The eyes have grown dim trying to see that which has been prepared, and have finally decided that it is some invisible thing that will come after death. And yet, not satisfied with this, man keeps on trying to see it now -- or to experience some of the marvelous things which the heart has been unable to sense.
It is evident, if you cannot see and hear and experience by the human senses the things which are prepared for you, it is because of their limitation, and yet we know that through these very senses comes the verification of the Presence of the Lord. "Feel Me, and see that a spirit hath not flesh and blood."
Through these very senses man experiences the word made flesh and discovers that what he is seeking, and what Jesus was talking about, is not an imaginary kingdom where vaporous bodies float about singing all day long, but that the resurrected word made flesh functions in the world though not of it as a tangible and very much alive and real thing.
The command to transcend both time and space is too difficult for the human limitations. "You say it is four months until the harvest, but I say, 'Look again,' " carries with it a demand for the extended vision -- a something that telescopes the thing the human mind calls time and space and which says it is so necessary to produce the said harvest.
What are you going to do -- argue about the possibility of it being so? Then you are arguing with the Teaching of Jesus Christ and you are setting yourself up. Why? Because you are looking through your limited human senses, and what you cannot see with your eyes and handle with your hands you will not accept and, further than this, you insist that because you cannot see or understand it that it is not so -- yet in the same breath you will insist that you follow the Master.
"Follow Me" means precisely what it says -- "Follow Me." You have already admitted your defeat. You have already decided that you do not know where you are going nor what is going to happen.
"Anything might happen" is the uncertain shaky human reasoning and understanding -- but this could not possibly be so of a "Changeless God and a changeless perfect law"; the only thing that changes is your human belief regarding a thing -- all else remains in its eternal undisturbed harmony. It is wonderful to contemplate the extension of the senses, the capacities of the "new born" idea. These capacities start where the human capacities leave off. Without the proper grasp of the senses you will be bound to draw all your conclusions from the seeing of the eye and the hearing of the ear. These conclusions, then, naturally will be faulty, and your judgment will be from appearances, and meet with the stern, unrelenting law, "Judge not from appearances, but judge by righteous judgment."
"Marvel not ye must be born again," otherwise you are still working in the "four months until the harvest" of human reasoning, and you may perish if you have four months before the harvest can come. If your prayers are put through the same time and space proposition, you may fall by the way long before the answer has time to reach you -- and how will the limited human reason handle the statement, "Before they call I will answer; and while they are yet speaking I will hear."
This is an utter impossibility, and you easily can get a group together to prove that it is an utter falsity; but what you are proving only are the limits of your own enlightenment. Because you cannot prove a thing does not argue for or against its reality; it merely states a condition of your own progress. "There are many things I could not tell you because of your unbelief." There are many things that you cannot grasp through the limited human senses -- there is not sufficient capacity in them to grasp the new elevation. The "before you call I will answer" needs something higher than human reasoning to cause you to come in line -- and that "something" is pretty near to the power which dissolves the mirage of time and space and human limitations from you.
The "look again" seems to be merely an adjustment of the lenses of the eyes; the time element in it is so sudden and impossible. "Who by searching can find me?" What have you in the human mind which can "search out the deep and hidden things of Spirit"? Nothing but the quality of imagination, and of that you think little in the practical, workaday world.
Yet Jesus submitted to the baptism of John the Baptist -- inspiration permitted itself to be baptized by reasoning, but the moment this ceremony was over, the glorious balance of Life having been established, he was through forever with that idea. We see him moving with the glorious power of the inspiration.
"When the inspiration of the All Mighty (heed the word All) has come unto you, it shall lead you (yes, you) into all things" -- when you see the inspiration that is the quality of the newly born moving into place of expression through and against everything, since it recognizes no condition or limitation -- then you will know why it is necessary for the eyes to be opened and the ears unstopped, no matter how keen your physical hearing and seeing may be at this moment.
As the aggregate mass of evidence of the senses forms the life of the human kind, so does the evidence of the spiritual senses reveal the kingdom here and now -- and when the one is lost in the other, then the word becomes flesh. When the limited human sense is lost in its divine counterpart, then the new capacities of the sense so far transcend the human reasoning that it is impossible to understand. The blending of the life with the universal life causes the "glass darkly" to disappear from in front of the vision.
Little by little it dawns upon man that the purpose of God is not for demonstrating the power of Truth, and that the idea that he studies about God in order to be able to do something that his fellow man cannot do must fall by the way in favor of the conscious knowledge that he is merging into the nature of God, and this very merging causes that which the human kind call miracles to be the ever-present manifestation.
The end and ultimate of this search for God is not, then, as had been supposed by thousands, to find a way to make bread out of stones or do strange and curious things -- in short, to perform miracles - but it is for the releasing of the True Nature of God into manifestation. If the action that is about to take place through it is not natural, because it is God action, then it is a false human belief trying to make itself felt as something.
If the child can get into the Kingdom, so can you. Or can you? Perhaps your intellect is so great that you have to smile at the simplicity of the child and Jesus, and so you smile until you stop smiling and that is the end of that.
Neither is the end of this search for God self aggrandizement. He who seeks the Power so that he may be known by men to do many "good" works, mistakes the Divine Nature which could not possibly act in any other fashion. He is limiting God and attempting to place a personal trade mark on the Infinite.
We do not good works for any other reason than that we cannot do any other kind of works: the nature of a blackberry is to produce blackberries, and the nature of God is to be God. And that "being" God is what the human man calls supernatural and miraculous, yet it is but natural and true to God. No law of God is set aside when a miracle takes place, but the Nature has finally overshadowed a human consciousness with such a flood of light that it has got through the "glass darkly" and in a measure has neutralized the thing called problem, the problem only having been the product of the foreshortened senses of the reasoning man.
"If you ask anything in my name [nature], that do I unto you." When you plant the blackberry bush and water it, you are asking it in the nature of the blackberry bush to produce blackberries -- what else can it do? and how naturally it is functioning when it does. It is the ultimate end or purpose of its existence.
And so, when you ask anything in the name or nature of Jesus Christ, the action that takes place before you ask is merely the expression of the nature, and it is going to be natural, simple, glorious; and only when you get into alignment with this idea can you ever hope to "Follow Me" into the heaven here and now made manifest. If it is not natural, then it cannot take place often, for it will be supernatural and will have to come under the heading of the supernatural.
The supernatural is that which happens once in a lifetime to the limited human reasoning, when for a moment it has relaxed the narrow confines of itself and let the power through. The rest of its life it is trying to make it happen again; but, as you cannot stand before a blackberry bush and demand that it give forth a measure of blackberries at your command, neither can you "make" the God nature act - in both instances the human mind first lays the wall of impossibility in front of the proposition.
"Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." We are beginning to understand why; the child can have his Father Christmas because he can transcend his human reasoning sufficiently to believe in that which he has never seen and which through every avenue of human reasoning is impossible.
"Except ye become as a little child ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." The ruling is strict and definitely outlined. "Except you become as a little child." All the human reasoning is set aside, and the Divine flow of inspiration carries us into the presence of the eternal Father Christmas and the everlasting Christmas Tree which stands in the midst of the Garden of Life.
It is all so wonderful, the new day that is even now breaking over the horizon of your day.
GOD REQUIRES the PAST
WHAT Of your past? Are you still carrying it along with you - the things you overcame and the demonstrations you made? If God requires the past, when are you going to walk through the waters of forgetfulness and let the dead past bury its past?
When you have sensed the ever out-picturing of the Jesus-Christ consciousness within you there are so many things to be revealed to you, that you have no time to set your little demonstrations in a row, and embroider them with details of evil to show how strong was the power which you "used" at that moment, or mayhap to "glorify" the little human understanding.
I have much to tell you -- yea ! even the things that could not be told to you in Jerusalem because of your unbelief -- but now this mysterious quality called "belief," which is not credulity and which is not human understanding but an awareness of the Inspired Presence, here, there, and everywhere, has come to you, and when you are ready, you will hear what the "Scriptures hath to say unto the Churches."
If, however, you are concerned with the past overcoming of evil, you are still believing in its reality -- the ever-flowing stream of manifestation will suddenly subside. God requires of you the past. "The former things have passed away; they shall not be remembered nor come into mind any more."
In the archives of memory lie the army of beliefs which strengthen evil admissions of the present. Remembering and going over all designs of evil will eventually cause them to retrace themselves in the present expression. Many a person is suffering, not from an accident, but the memory of it; not from a sin, but from the memory of it, with its army of condemnation.
"Loose it and let it go" -- free yourself from the memory of that which you passed through. It is the memory of evil, drilled into us from childhood, which causes us to react so suspiciously towards the world.
As you move into the new mansion (in my Father's house -- consciousness -- are many mansions) you come out from under the former laws, memories, and beliefs. You do not form your basis of judgment from the outgrown basis of evil.
"Behold I make all things new" - and so the basis of judgment is also new.
But where does evil come from -- if it is not real? A thousand times the question arises.
Recently, according to a news item, a man jumped into a taxi and ordered the driver to take him to an address a considerable distance away. He settled back for the long ride, when all of a sudden he realized the taximeter was not working. He noted this irregularity, and was about to call the driver's attention to it, when, gazing at the man, he noted the low overhanging brow and the hard, sharp features of a crook, and thought better of his action.
Not to be taken off guard, he thought out the best plan to handle the situation. Knowing that the driver had planned a little trick in order to extract an exorbitant fare from him, he thought out his line of conversation and defense, all the while regarding the "crook" driving the car. He jotted down the number of the driver's licence and the other information given on the ticket posted inside. He would show this thief that he could not put anything over on him.
By the time he reached his destination he was excited and all set to defend his rights as a citizen. He signaled the driver to stop and got out, at the same time demanding of the driver in very curt tones: "How much?"
The hard, sharp eyes of the driver looked at him, the tightly closed mouth slowly relaxed into a warm smile, and a laughing voice replied, "No charge, boss. I am getting married tonight, and am treating all my clients to free rides."
The honest (?) man walked away in silence, too stunned and surprised to say "Thanks."
Where was the crook he had been creating during the long ride? Where was the anger and hate that had caused his pulse to beat degrees faster than normal? Where was the fear that pictured itself in the kaleidoscopic fashion of a "horror film"?
You answer it. And the next time you are troubled with the origin of evil, if you will look to the proper place for the cause, you will see that it lies in "judging from appearances."
The driver had shut out all these evil thoughts, being filled with the only thing that never faileth - love.
"Judging from appearances" many times materializes the judgment. You actually endow it with the power of your own judgment, and cause it to react to you with all the force of your own fear and belief in it. It is like throwing a rubber ball against a smooth stone wall - it returns to you with all the force with which you throw it from you. Yet, at the same time, the same person or situation may be most kind and agreeable to another.
"Watch, watch, watch." You are standing in the midst of your own consciousness -- and the whole outside world is but a self-division of you.
When you begin to understand a little the "The Temple of God is with men" revelation, you will see that the "temples" (manifestations) are for the purpose of reflecting back to you the state of your own consciousness, as so many mirrors. The light need never be in the mirror, but on the object in front of the mirror, and so, with the return reflection, to any state of consciousness.
Whatever is in your state of consciousness when it is lighted by your conscious thinking will be picked up by one or a thousand mirrors the universe. A thousand "temples" will call from the housetop what you have found to be true in the "secret" of your heart -- whether this be good, bad or indifferent. Therefore, it is foolish to spend further time trying to change the mirrors, the temples, on the outside for they stand ready and willing to reflect or give back the exact reproduction of your own findings within.
Stage fright, fear, etc., is a multiplication of the idea of fear. Suddenly as you come before a thousand mirrors it is multiplied by a thousand, and you see an audience ready to destroy you. You are looking at the simple little thought of fear magnified and witnessed to by a thousand.
It is true, then, that the only place of correction is within, and when Jesus was asking you to "take the attention away from the appearances" he was not asking you to hide your eyes, but to see the uselessness of trying to change something on the outside which was sustained and kept into position by something on the inside.
We do not close our eyes to evil as formerly with the idea of getting rid of it, but we take our attention away from the supposed point of power or projection, and place it on the real place of power. "What thou seest, that thou beest," has been interpreted to mean if you imagine you are something you are not, it will come to pass. In reality it calls your attention to the fact that what you are seeing in your outward expression is the state of your consciousness made flesh. It should not be discouraging when you come face to face with this rather startling fact. It should stimulate you to know that at last you have found the place of attack.
"One man's meat is another man's poison" and "as a man thinketh" (thought being the emanation of a State of consciousness) "so is he" are true and just statements. When it is understood what is making the meat and poison, and what is causing the thinking, the whole process will be reversed.
My-thoughts will at no time change my state of consciousness; they proceed from, and issue out of, the truth or lack of truth I have in my mind regarding a certain object or situation.
I cannot change any man on the outside, except superficially, but I can completely make him over as far as his relations and reactions concern me. I cannot at any time control or cause another to do my bidding, neither can I meddle in any way with his private life, but I can control his reactions to me to the extent that they are harmonious and happy instead of filled with the false things claimed for him by the world or another.
When man begins to understand the Presence within him he is not looking for another -- he knows that this is he that should come. He knows definitely that the outside is merely the objectification of the inside, and that, no matter for the moment whether he can suddenly change it or not, he has at least reached the point of power.
The mass fear engendered by the memory and history of your life may seem so real and true that it is inescapable, but it is through this crystallization of conscious thinking that Jesus-Christ Nature brought Jesus and caused him to do the thing which he could not do.
Jesus knew he could of himself do nothing, and then he knew he could, through the Divine nature indigenous in every man, do all things. He did not try to escape Jesus, but knew that Jesus was the vehicle of expression for the Divine Nature -- the "he that should come."
Not long ago I saw a frail little woman, illiterate, ignorant, and with a thin soprano voice, rise quaking with fear and stage fright. She made a very badly worded announcement that "her guide or master" was going to lecture through her. With a few physical jerks and motions, suddenly she straightened 'herself up and, in the most cultured and beautiful voice, delivered an address which any scholar would have been pleased to give.
The audience sat in wonder. The speaker had escaped, through believing in another power, the limitations of herself. Jesus was faced with the same situation, and so are you faced with the same situation in one form or another -- you are not adequate to that task which confronts you, and there is plenty of evidence to the fact that you cannot do it.
Jesus immediately knew that he was not "looking for another"; he knew that "This is He that should come" was sufficient to speak all languages, all tongues, and with the wisdom which so far transcended man's feeble attempts as to put it into the plane of pure inspiration. He did not escape from himself, he found himself.
So long as you believe in the Power apart from yourself you will keep transferring the expression of your life to some being, or entity, or master. When you have found Me you will act in accordance with the law governing this Me. If your mind is stayed on Me, there is no question of the limitations of the little self standing in the way of the glorious expression of your God-self, and you will not have to believe in outside helps.
When you know there is nothing outside of you to help or harm you because the whole Power lies within, then you have come to the contact which Jesus made with God.
"I and my Father are one -- my Father [the Universal Presence] is greater than I"; and yet this must be expressed through the Personal I. "Call upon me and I will answer"; "I will walk in you and talk in you"; "You need but open your mouth and I will supply the words" -- all these and a thousand other truths are awaiting the recognition.
"Come close unto Me" -- begin to recognize the Deity within, and magnify the Lord, and see the limitations of the little self absorbed into the Godhead. Stop looking to something outside of yourself, and see what this glorious recognition of "This is He that should come" will do for you.
"He made himself as God" - the same substance, power, and spirit. If he discovered this lovely truth and put it into practice, what use would he have for a Master who was using his body like a megaphone? If the Master has so much to convey to the universe, would it not be just as well that he took on his own body instead of using another's? Answer me. If your body is to be eternally used as an instrument for some other power to speak through, when is your own glorious expression ever going to have an opportunity to bring out the hidden things, the gift that is within thee?
Rising above all this belief, and realizing the Presence, makes all things possible to you -- it does not take anything from that which is eternally true and does not in any way deprive you of the sweet communion with the Power of God in whatever form it comes to you - but it does awaken you to the present possibilities of being yourself.
"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings" runs the law. Why? Because they have no memory, no history, no comparison and judgment from appearances, but are actuated from the pure stream of consciousness of the God Self, not yet contaminated by the "wisdom of man." Hence the "child shall play on the hole of an asp" and the lion and the lamb shall lie down together.
The awakened soul who is not "looking for another," but has begun the recognition of his own Divinity, shall see the reward of this recognition instead of the bitter harvest of tears he has so long had through the denial of Me. "If you deny me I shall also deny you." If you keep transferring your power to another point, and recognizing powers outside of Me, I shall prove to you this denial is fruitful, and you shall bring forth the hellish crop of fears which you are constantly "treating against."
Not finding a plausible way to dispose of the evil, you will attribute it to other entities, either embodied or disembodied, or you will give it a name and run about excusing your failure to Life -- God -- by the fact that someone is "mal-practicing you," or that a person of another faith is praying against you.
I have seen people rushing about pronouncing the cursings and telling of evil things that would happen to people who did not subscribe to their personal teachings, and sometimes engendering fears in others, when they themselves could not bring out enough substance to pay a subway-fare to their destination.
Awake, thou that sleepest ! The next time the messenger of Light, who has a fear thought of cursing and evil in the background, approaches you with a sweet morsel of Truth, put him in the strait-jacket of proof. Look him over carefully, deliberately; I think you will find plenty of signs which indicate his utter lack of ability to bring out even the most necessary things of life.
Awake -- Arise from this dead belief. "Not that which goeth in defileth a man, or maketh him, but that which cometh out," It is not anything that is said to you, but what you do with it. It may go in one thing and come out another. Watch !
Poised in the Christ consciousness -- the recognition of your true self -- you are not "looking for another" -- he is come into expression when you recognize your own Divinity.
"The temple of God is with man"; you will begin to see how the embodiment of God -- called man - in millions of forms and shapes, stands ready and willing to co-operate when you recognize the Divinity within. Like a million receiving stations the "temple" of God stands. When the operation is entirely within, and handled with ah the integrity of the Jesus Christ consciousness, the "temple" at the right place and point will pick up the word and transmute it into substance.
The radio operator cannot reach out in the distance and "feel" about for a temple to receive his message; he is concerned with the integrity of performing the thing perfectly within. So man begins to see that the thing must be perfectly performed within -- the manifestation must and will take care of itself. It makes no difference about he manifestation as long as the integrity of the sending has been held to.
"Go within; ask the Father"; "that which you tell the Father in secret" -- with no judging, seeking, expecting, observation as to what the manifestation will be -- "shall be called from the house top." This is such a beautiful literal thing when once learned that it makes life a never-ending joy, full of surprises and revelations.
All the lovely sense of integrity is applied to the within, having passed the place of "wondering" whether the manifestation will be able to find you or not. By the Automatic Power nothing can escape its proper place. The fear and speculation about the results are entirely dissipated by the integrity placed upon the work within.
Statements of Truth become definite laws. "That which is told in secret shall be called from the housetop" is no more speculative of something to be proven; it is a statement of something that definitely takes place, entirely outside the ken of man's wisdom or knowledge or anything he may think pro or con regarding the subject. It is wonderful.
"The temple of God is with man" - the temple is already into manifestation, and hence you need not worry about not getting through into expression. "I go before you and prepare the way" is like the inaudible wireless message going out into the night, through the hurricane of appearances, and finding the temple of reception ready to pick up and bring into manifestation the substance of your "secret." It is wonderful.
"Fear not, God is not mocked," used to be held as the sword of Damocles over the head of a trembling, shrinking sinner. Suddenly it is taken out of this dark, fearsome teaching and thrust into glorious expression. Man's puny intellect cannot understand the eternal Justice of the Power and the manifestation of the same.
"I have a way ye know not of" settles once and for always any argument about "how," "why," "when," and "where." The Automatic Power will take care of that. Contrary to all outside appearances, this power suddenly expresses itself because "God is not mocked" and you have lost nothing for that which you have done in the secret place - either good, bad or indifferent. It is wonderful.
An interesting incident recently came to me. A woman confided in me that she practically had been the ghost writer for a series of books which have long been recognized in the metaphysical world as successful, and that the so-called author had literally taken this writing and given her no remuneration nor acknowledged it in any way. From the outside appearances the said author was now enjoying a great reputation and fame gained from these books, while the ghost writer remained entirely unknown and unrecognized. The finance which came from the books would have been much appreciated by her. The books being copyrighted, she, having no outside recourse to the matter, was indeed hopeless.
Now, then, if she judges from appearances, she has a hopeless situation. There is nothing she can do. The more she talks about it the more she sets in opposition a certain thought which does not and will not believe anything of the kind, and she receives nothing but the bitter tears of failure. When she returns to the center of her being she finds the glorious revelation that the automatic power of justice -- the God is not mocked element -- operative in the Temple of Man, can and does find out the rightful one -- and, though ten thousand fall, or though the way be filled with armed horsemen and chariots and infernal war machines, a new and lovely sense of confidence hovers over.
"God is mindful of His own" when the integrity of the work is kept; when the operator at the sending key releases it and lets it go out into the confusion and intellect of man, he will see it return freighted with substance. It is wonderful.
"God is not mocked" -- nothing that you do within is dependent on the outside situation. You are no more under the Law; you are in the Spirit, and hence you come by the way of Spirit, instead of the way of man. In coming by the way of God or Spirit man, manifestation automatically pulls itself together to form the picture necessary to give Spirit a body and a form.
"If I be lifted up I will draw all men unto me." It is wonderful. "God is not mocked." Nothing that belongs to you can by any possible manner of means escape you. Your disconcern with the manifestation is the Divine carelessness, the Divine indifference of Spirit moving after its own way and constantly breaking every pattern of the human thought.
"Behold, I AM the Lord, the God of ALL flesh; is anything too hard for me?"
You answer it. You reading this line. Answer Me. I said "Behold!" It transcends the limited, puny human thinking; it is standing in a radiant light of revelation; it is "beholding" the glorious presence of God beside which there is no power -- not any.
"I AM the Lord, the God of ALL flesh" -- of all manifestation. (All flesh shall see it together.) I did not say "some," but all flesh -- all manifestation. That means the "flesh" -- situation, problem, or what you will - that has been troubling you.
Have you been able to answer "Yes" to all this? You reading this line. Am I the God of all, or have you another god of evil hidden away in your universe which causes you to say, "Yes, I know, but, if, and, and maybe?" Answer me -- what are you hiding from? Are you naked' Who told you you were naked? Answer me -- come out from among those ghost forms of ancient history and be free. "Am I the God of all flesh?" or have you another? Answer me.
"Is there anything too hard for Me?" Is your situation or condition or crystallized belief too difficult to melt like wax in a blast-furnace before the coming of Me? Answer me. Put your "too hard" problem before Me and see it run down into oblivion before the Presence of the One. No matter how frozen or ossified it may be, it shall melt away before this recognition of the Presence.
Beloved! your problem, no matter what it is, how long it has been standing, what an avalanche of testimony has solidified about it, comes under this glorious Presence. Nothing is hard to this Presence, because it does not work from the "Curse of the Law of matter"; it is working through the Spirit which is free from the heavy laws of the belief in duality.
All of this wonderful releasement comes through following the revelation of Jesus. When he brought to you the Jesus-Christ Nature he gave you the Open Sesame to the King's treasures. It is wonderful.
"Is this he that should come, or look we for another?" Are you looking for a Master to come along and do your work for you, or use your body as a megaphone, or do you want the Voice of Jesus-Christ Nature to express through you - to "talk in you and walk in you" and free its own glorious and golden expression into the universe? Answer me. "Is this he that should come, or look we for another?" Answer me. Are you beginning to recognize the Divinity of your Christ-Jesus Nature and getting busy about the Father's works, or are you still in a maze of wonderment as to whether he has arrived yet?
You cannot be about the "Father's work" if you are not sure where and what the Power is -- you do not even know what the Father's work is, and think your expression depends on something or other on the outside instead of the integrity within. It is true that when this integrity is kept on the inside anyone or anything may be used as the temple to aid and assist in bringing out the Secret -- but never is a favor asked to perform the business of God.
If you are about your Father's business, there is no question about being allowed to express, no matter whether this be digging a ditch or writing a book - nothing can or will block the way that you know not of, for it cannot find it or handle it either mentally or physically. Instantly I am on the other side of the lake, or I am through the crowd, or I am where you cannot find Me. It is wonderful when you see what it is to go by the way of God and stop worrying about the manifestation
When you know that "this is He that should come" - that the Jesus-Christ Nature is the nature which carries the government upon its shoulders, then all the little "prittle-prattle" about evil powers, cursings, malicious mal-practice, or any other little buzzing of the gnats of human wisdom are of no interest whatsoever. They are not to be handled -- they are not even given the dignity of anything that needs "handling." This Divine indifference is not the laxity of the lazy, sluggish human mind, but the balanced point of attention to the Mind Stayed on Thee. It is wonderful, this living in your consciousness - this sudden discovery of the Kingdom of Heaven here and now, right in the midst of the hell of yester-years.
"God requires the past"; you are leaving the Sodom and Gomorrah of human teaching, beliefs, and intellect, and coming out on to the high ground of expression. The Gift hidden within you is beginning to "start" from his prison of disbelief and is pushing into manifestation. Its progress is unencumbered by the fears of the past.
It is said that the mysteries shall pass away like the waters under a bridge. They begin this passing before your very eyes when you have made the discovery of the Divinity of Jesus-Christ Nature within you and begin the self-resurrection.
Your former capacity to create the chimera out of the cloth of belief has been absorbed into the "Judge not from appearances," and is releasing itself as the Heaven, here and now, which Jesus so often spoke of. Eternally referring to the within state for the Heaven on the without, it is curious that we have tried just the reverse process for bringing it into being. The look again, which is so important to all manifestation, can be done only when the look without has been taken away long enough to let the new picture take form and shape.
You are voyaging through Heaven, but through the glass darkly of the human conscious thinking it can be such a burning hell that the little pleasure of the occasional moments of surcease from its flames are hardly worthwhile. You can, and eventually will, discover Me in the midst of this inferno of conscious thinking, and that will be the end of all this ugly manifestation. When the flames have subsided, you will find nothing destroyed in all my Holy Mountain.
You cannot behold that which you do not recognize within yourself, either good, bad, or indifferent, and so you know pretty well what is going on in your own consciousness by the pictures you are seeing on the outside. If you know, this is a bitter pill to swallow, because you may be so worthy, so holy, and so true, but it cannot come from any other source. It should be encouraging to have located at last the point of attack.
"What think ye of Christ?" Honestly, what do you think of the Christ-Jesus Divinity within you? Answer me. "Come, let us reason together." Where do you stand? Is there something called your personal problem over which you have no control which is stronger and more powerful than the lovely Christ? "What think ye of Christ?" It doesn't make any difference what another thinks -- what do you think of it all?
Are you beginning to realize that the manifest universe is a self-division of your own consciousness, and that it gives back to you only what you find there. Is it not natural for a doctor to see sick people, and a musician to see musicians and music and so on and cannot these also be twined with a thousand other thoughts, so that, though the doctor sees sickness, he can also see failure of a personal nature, and have no patients while he is in the midst of a sick world, and the musician be utterly swamped with music and yet starve for the want to personal expression?
All of these central beliefs may be hung about with thousands of parasitic beliefs of lesser power. The consciousness gives off in the form of recognition that which causes the manifestation to take on certain reactions to it.
There is said to be a upas-tree in the tropics which exhales a poison vapor of such strength that small birds and insects are destroyed by smelling it. Whether this be true err not, the illustration will do to show how it is that when the inspirations do come near the consciousness that believes in evil, or to the consciousness hypnotized by belief, they fail or cease to manifest.
Have you ever met the mentality which was absolutely sterile to every offer, suggestion, prayer, or move to help? Its enormous success on a negative side should be a glorious and thrilling revelation to you and to the person using it. Think what such a mentality could do if awakened to the fact that the Power of this whole thing lies within, and that the universe is a self-division, so to speak.
Man is symbolically stepping before a universe of mirrors in which is caught and reflected the state of his acceptance of life. He sees himself in everybody he meets, and presently he begins to know what kind of a man he is consciously. Either the thing he eats is poison -- the meat he partakes of kills him -- or else "if they drink any deadly thing it shall not harm them." Man cannot be under both of these influences at once.
The "choose you this day whom ye will serve" calls for a radical choice. Either you choose the Oneness of God or the duality of matter, and the mirrors of your universe immediately begin their casting back of the reflections of yourself.
When you come to recognize the literal doctrine of Jesus that "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light," you will understand such radical promises as "Behold I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you." This beautiful symbology places your problems in the path of your Divine Revelation, and they, these beliefs, shall be trampled into the dust of oblivion. Coming by the way of God -- asking for wisdom of God, following the voice within -- is the sure path of light and joy and Heaven here and now.
Yes, it is written, "A little child shall lead them" - a consciousness that can accept God as a reality and has done away with a thousand and one other powers, any one of which seems to you more powerful than God, and any one of which you name your problem.
"Go not back to your former bondage." The way is straight and narrow, and does not indicate that it is a hateful strait-jacket of human invention. The way of mathematics is straight and narrow; there is no deviation from it if you expect the results; so is the Law of the Presence. Every time you divide the power and place it in anything else it weakens the manifestation in you, no matter how unselfish and lofty your ideas may be.
You must recognize, "I am He that should come," and know that once and for always you are not looking for another, and, strange as it may be, the moment you find this within your own consciousness you find it everywhere and in everybody, and in every thing and place, yet confined to none -- yet containing them all. This is One-ness, Wholeness, and God.
The glorious thrill of "Arise and shine, for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee," comes only when you have recognized this Power within as the point of communion with God, and have begun at last the Jesus instruction of making yourself as God, of the same nature and substance. Then will you call in all your lesser beliefs in power, take them out of the so-called entities, embodied or disembodied, and magnify the One God in the midst of you.
If there be but One, then there is but One -- One only and nothing else -- and if He is walking in you and talking in you he speaks and moves in terms of light, and the physical limitations and fears are not to be considered. "The former things have passed away" -- they have gone out as far as "he" walking in you and talking in you with the universal consciousness is concerned. Then it is possible for this One not to be as well equipped to express as any little man or woman who may strut the boards of materiality in gaudy robes, personal teachings, copyrighted or otherwise, bearing a brand of personal teaching? Answer me.
Are you still dealing with a little teacher, lecturer, leader, organization, group, book? Or are you "leaving all" and following the simple teachings of Jesus, and discovering the Jesus-Christ Principle within you? If so, you are going no more out to see a man and yet at this point of revelation you can see Me in any man. I can speak to you through any temple.
The wireless operator does not know that his message will only be received by the great and lordly passenger boats, things of beauty and loveliness; his help and succor may come through the little dirty coal-steamer chugging along at a slow pace with its most unlovely cargo.
When did we see Thee? "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these ye have done it unto Me"; and likewise one of these might be the temple that momentarily gave forth the light necessary to you. I am not visible always in purple and fine linen, and of course I am not necessarily always visible in the thing lying in the gutter of life, but I am wherever I am necessary for you to receive the word, even though it be in the desert, in the bush, by the wayside.
Do you begin to understand the absolutivity of the teaching as given to us by Jesus? There is nothing but the One; everything else must go in order that you can possess everything else. Nothing that you look up to and endow with power will be able to stand up to this worship. You will eventually dig out its clay feet and have it crash on your head.
You will be hurt by your own self, but you will blame another, and so it will go until every stone has been overturned and he comes whose place it is to rule. I shall be satisfied with nothing but this absolute recognition of the Divinity of the Christ Jesus within.
It is wonderful-wonderful wonderful. Heaven and earth are filled with it. Do you hear? There is no place you can go to escape this glorious presence of God - you are moving into oneness, wholeness, and the manifestation will take care of itself.
"I beheld Satan as lightning falls from Heaven." You shall see the Satanic beliefs which have held sway so long in your life fall from this inner heaven which is presently to embody itself in the outer. In the twinkling of an eye the disease and the patterns of disease which have been standing so long - in your life are wiped out and the Satan falls from your consciousness never to rise again.
"What think ye of the Christ?" Answer me.
EXCEPT ...
"EXCEPT ye become as a little child ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven." The statement is exact, uninvolved, and leaves no loophole of personal interpretation through which you could edge your way. Except ye become as a little child -- and by no other means -- can you enter.
Adulterers are barred from the Kingdom -- only the adult can commit adultery. Throwing up a camouflage of misinterpretation, man tries to believe that the word adultery has solely to do with sex, but in reality this is the least adultery he can commit. His constant adulterating. the word of life, and placing before others a thousand and one fears, lies, and beliefs founded on the false senses, is the wholesale adultery which keeps him out, and which made Jesus sweep the whole thing into the hell of purification to be burned up.
The old adulterous intellect raises its great, erudite, many-headed mind and explains that it cannot become a child; it is physically and mentally impossible. Yet, at another moment, this same one is quoting glibly, "Nothing is impossible to God."
"Which things are an allegory," put near the close of the Bible, speaks volumes for those who have ears and eyes to hear and see what the Scriptures have to say unto the temple - the Churches - your bodies.
When you are "clean" you have become as a child, as far as the illustration has any benefit to you. Becoming as a child and becoming a child are two different things. Becoming as a child is to suddenly possess yourself of the most powerful weapons against the relative world. Weapons -- invisible, inaudible, having capacities undreamed or unmeasured by the adulterous world of fear, limitation, greed, and evil.
The adulterous breath of the "man whose breath is in his nostrils" breathes his fear, disease, and belief in evil over the whole of creation. "Too good to be true" "as for man, his days are full of trouble" "when I would do good I do evil" -- "something might happen," and in a thousand other ways he adulterates life. He has been wandering up and down in the universe of belief and founded all his false teaching upon these false premises, which have now become such a giant of strength that he is threatened and finally overcome by this terrible self-created thing. No wonder he cannot inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.
When he becomes as a child, he is unconsciously working from the basis of Christ mind. He does not have to see to believe. He can accept his good without question. He will stretch forth his hand and make the gesture when the opportunity is presented to him. He will not try to figure it out by the limitations of the sense mind. "Nothing is too good to happen or to be true." "Yesterday is done with at sundown" - a new day, full of joys and possibilities, is ever with him.
Jesus, trying every way to make a complete differentiation between the adulterous thinking of the conscious mind and the pure Christ mind as represented by the child, used these simple illustrations for those who had eyes. The child having the capacity to accept its good, does not find it necessary to construct out of thinking, its good. The Father Christmas idea is accepted, and is, as far as the conscious thinking is concerned, suspended in mid-air on a thread of imagination, but it works for the child up to the moment that reason enters.
The old adulterous mind immediately marshals its intellect and comes forward with the trite words, "Who wants to believe in such tosh? And who wants to be a child?"
There is nothing said about your becoming a child -- it says as a child. This becoming as a child is leagues away from the coy, Pollyanna sense of sweetness that many people associate with it. "He that hath eyes, let him see" -- let him take from the plethora of words and symbols the grain of Truth which will help him enter into his own, which will help him to go in and possess the land (state of consciousness).
"Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light." It is wonderful how the simple things of Jesus are shedding the light on the new cycle of spirituality, which is even now descending upon the earth and is showing, by its radiance, the nothingness of the adultery of he intellect and reason.
"Except ye become as a little child ye shall in nowise enter the Kingdom of Heaven" is stated again in the simple words of Jesus when he asked, each time before he rent the veils of human belief, "Believest thou this?" -- "Believest thou that I am able to do this?" And if you cannot answer yea to this, you can no more see the power of the Presence communicating its manifestation to you and through you than the child can materialize his Father Christmas. It is one and the same thing. It is no more fantastic for prayer to produce a well body, than it is for the child to produce a rotund man whose chief role in life is to supply the wants of childhood freely. Both of them have to emanate from the same source -- they must be "believed in." Note that the "belief" required is not credulity, it is not faith, in the generally accepted sense of the word; it is a pure acceptance of the whole finished thing and a permitting the manifestation or embodiment to take place in its own good time.
The Power does not come forth at a moment you are thinking about it; on the contrary, "I come at a moment you think not"; "I come as a thief in the night," etc. He who has ears, let him hear. Let him awake to the simplicity of the Christ teaching so uninvolved by the trappings of man. Throw all the interpretations of the word of God to the wind and go again to the fountain of Life and drink of the living waters and it will water you with revelation undreamed of.
"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God." Do you hear? Do you believe? Can you stand on the instructions of Jesus Christ instead of the words of a man who has followed" "Wilt thou be made clean" from the adulterous thought which causes you to follow a man, or organized collection of by-laws trying to see what you should do or not do in regard to your approach to God? "Come out from among them and be ye separate." Running to a little person, no matter however swollen with human success, to find out what God can and will do for you is the committing of the adultery which makes it impossible for you to enter.
"Ye shall in no wise" is a pretty hard law -- there is no leniency in it; it requires just that and it must be fulfilled. Why wait longer on the leprous thought which tries to make you pay tribute to a person? If Jesus could not be called "good," why will you rush about calling another good? Awake and arise from the dead thoughts, and Christ shall give thee light - illumination and the child-like qualities which will cause Heaven to appear here and now.
It is wonderful the many new and marvelous laws that come into play when you become as a little child. There is the law of trust -- such a dangerous thing to the adult, having proven such a broken reed. There is the law of confidence, even in the face of no prospects. There is superhuman action of the Automatic Power which the child can accept. He can believe that "a day will come" or a thing will or can happen in some perfectly mysterious way, and then let it rest without trying to destroy it by dissecting it with the human doubt and curiosity.
This is a stubborn problem. This is a hard thing to meet. This has never been met before, etc. The adultery of conscious thinking denying the Christ constantly and then complaining when its prayers are not answered.
"Come unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved." Do you hear" That means you, even though you are so holy now that you just glisten with your knowledge of truth and truth movements, and though you are recommended, and all that. You have a chance to be saved from the awful adultery of your spiritual pride, just the same as the thing lying in the gutter all covered with the mud of mistakes and the flowers, ineffective mantle of your holiness. You have a chance, no matter where you stand - the invitation is for you if you have come to that child-like quality that can take that which is offered it. Remember that a thousand years is as yesterday in My sight. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." You have a good Chance to "come unto Me."
Yes, beloved! A thousand years is as yesterday, so, in reality, it is just two days ago that Jesus spoke in Jerusalem. Pretty close, isn't it? Yes, it is even closer than that. That which spoke through Jesus is even at this instant speaking through you. Yes, aren't you glad it is speaking through you in the inner recesses of your being? Telling you things - live things, pulsating things, with the spirit intact, instead of dead, tired repetitions of another. "Come unto Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved."
"What ! Know ye not that ye are the Temple of the Living God?" The surprise in that one word "What!" is enough to make the whole temple quake with the coming of the Lord. The sudden recognition of this fact does away, once and for always, with the stupid notion that you are a reflection which has nothing in itself but shadow and light. You are the Temple of the living God. Do you note the word living? What do you suppose it means -- living? Think about it for the moment and then will you understand what it means to "search the joints and marrow," and all the "quickening" power of the Spirit within which is so sharp and quick and so able to divide asunder.
"What!" Haven't you found it out yet that your body is the Temple of the living God, and that He is in the midst of you and is strong and mighty" "What?" Are you going to let some adulterer take the possibility of this Presence away from you to put it through a lot of human teaching and learning?
"What!" Know ye not? You do not know that the Temple of God is with man? It already is with man, and that is the reason for man. Man-I-festation is the body of God. Without this manifestation He would be unexpressed, unknown, unusable, unreal just as electricity remained an unknown quantity until it was embodied. But it had to be recognized as existing first before it could be brought forth.
Do you begin to understand, then, why such a command, "Go into a certain city and a man will show YOU to an upper chamber" is possible? The Temple is all over the universe, and when you begin to understand the "Body" of God is not a fleeting reflection, but a reality which instantly responds when you call upon the Power within, you can see how it is possible to "go into all the world," for you will find the Temple, and when you call upon the Power within, you will suddenly see its darkness flash forth the light and show you the way. It is wonderful how the dark crannies and hidden passages flood a light abroad and reveal hidden talents and possibilities.
Every man is the Temple of the Living God -- and when you begin to sense this you will see how God can speak to you through anything. It is only when you break down the silly personal idea that just "some" men are the temple and that just "some" men have the word that you begin to find out that the "earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." And also the glorious statement, "Heaven and earth are full of thee," comes to life. What does it matter what the opinion of this or that "wise head" may be? You are hidden with Christ, in God -- where that teaching, with its noisy words and systems of ideas, fades out into nothingness.
No wonder, then, that you can go -- you will find the embodiment everywhere, even in the bush by the wayside, and so the fear of life flees away and you are wayfaring into Heaven here and now.
"Even if you slay me, yet will I say that you are God" is an intense dramatic moment in the life of one who is finding God to be something that was not invented in the last hundred years, with all the nineteenth-century wrappings of personal teachings.
"What!" Know ye not that your body is the Temple of the Living God?
You are not a hard, cold channel or avenue for the Truth -- you are permeated by the word of God, and it can no more be separated from you than the yeast can be taken out of bread. The two have become one. "I and my father are one." Not maybe nor perhaps or because you have prayed, but because that is the nature of God and His manifestation.
"Now ye are the Body of Christ"; "For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." What plainer statement do you want? "Destroy this body -- temple -- and in three days I will raise it up." Gradually we are beginning to understand the word and the surprise in the statement, "What! Know ye not that ye are the Temple of the Living God?" - and by the child-like understanding of the Wisdom of God do you enter in and possess the land -- consciousness -- which is sworn unto you as your birthright.
THE GESTURE
"RISE up and walk." It is related that a helpless mass of flesh and bones, having lain at the temple gates for almost half a century, suddenly arose, sprang into the air, and ran off, praising God and leaping for joy as he sped on his way.
"Rise up and walk" has been said many times since that memorable occasion, sometimes with instant results, but many times with nothing taking place but a volley of questions, "But how can I rise up and walk?"
The moment the thought enters in upon the occasion it is impossible for the one addressed to escape from the weights of his belief. Pause for a moment and check what the beggar at the temple gate had in his thought. Not only was his body a wreck, but think for a moment of the general physical condition of the blood-stream, the tissues, the muscles and nerves after sitting hunched over in the dirt and filth for years. Imagine the condition of his mind, filled with resentment and envy of the rich lords and merchants who passed daily into the temple, many of whom, no doubt, drew their robes aside, lest they should come in contact with the filth of the beggar, and then try to escape from under that mountain of belief. Yet in spite of all this we see in the narrative that he "arose," and we have seen many times since that memorable occasion that other beggars In differing degrees of filth and sickness have "heard" the Voice and have risen and found themselves possessed of a glorious sense of Life.
What, then, takes place?
"Open your eyes," was said to a man born blind, and he opened his eyes and beheld. A man born blind in reality has such imperfectly formed eyeballs that they are hardly entitled to the name eyes. You are asking a lot when you ask such a one to "Open your eyes." In the common sense of man "it cannot be done." There is no sight in the unformed eyes even if he could open his eyelids. An intricate set of muscles and nerves are necessary to sight, and these have to be trained and educated through years of careful attention. No, it is no use to ask a man to "open his eyes" when he has no eyes to open.
What, then, takes place? Because, in spite of all your findings, all of which are relatively true, the man, who could not possibly open his eyes (because he had no eyes), not only complies with the command, but also sees.
What, then, takes place?
"Come to Me?" What, across the waters? A heavy material body which weighs fourteen stone asked to step out on that which will not bear the weight of his hand? Well, it cannot be done. I would like to try it, but what do I do first, and how is it done, and what thought, if any, do I hold, or what affirmation, do I make? Of course, I know it is done in the realm of imagination, but actually the physical body is left behind and so the human reasoning arrives at its usual conclusion that it cannot be done. And yet it is done.
What, then, takes place anyway?
What takes place the moment Peter begins the thinking process while he is actually walking on the water? He goes down. Why?
What takes place in the case of the beggar at the temple gate when he rises and walks? He obeys the command, and then he must make the gesture. The gesture is the part of the miracle which the recipient must perform. When the Voice said, "I will come," it is up to Peter to make the gesture - a gesture which is as unconscious of the thought-taking process as the instant return of a rubber ball thrown with violence against a stone wall. It reacts instantly, and without consideration of the laws back of the reaction. The moment thought enters in, the testimony of the human mind makes it impossible for the laws and limitations which it has imposed upon itself to be broken.
"Arise and shine, for thy light is come," is something that must be done. When one begins to consider the best way to "arise" and the best way to"shine," he finds that he is not equal to either. Perhaps he is too filled with sin, or sickness, or evil of some sort or another. Years of self-immolation are necessary. Perhaps the hypocrisy of false modesty holds him back. But, while he is debating the best way to arise and shine, Mary Magdalene arises and drops the dirty garments of her own making into the oblivion of yesterday. "Where are thy accusers'" Mary cannot find any outside of herself and suddenly she cannot find anything within to accuse her, for in the new state of consciousness at which she has arrived there is nothing there of the former thing. She has, however, to arise. She has to make the gesture.
"Stretch forth thy hand" - yes, I know that it is withered and old and incapacitated and crippled through an accident, etc., etc.; but I said, "Stretch forth thy hand," and the hand is either stretched forth or you are going to tell me why you cannot do it, or ask me how it is done. You will have to make the gesture, the instant response to the Voice of the Power which is within you, waiting and ready to fulfill all your desires as soon as you come to the place of accepting the Power as here and now operative.
"Cast your burden on me and I will sustain you." Do you hear? Are you going to reason it out? I did not say perhaps, or maybe, or if Mr. and Mrs. Blank thought or did not think it would be done. I said, "Cast your burden on me and I will sustain you." Do you hear? Can you make the gesture, or is your burden too big for me? But yet you are able to sustain it yourself, however wretchedly. What kind of a god are you praying to, and where is he? "Am I a God afar off?" Answer me. Can I sustain you or are you able to do that which I am incapable of doing? Answer me. "I am the Voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord." I am the Voice in the midst of thee constantly saying "I will; come to me," but you must make the gesture. "Arise and shine, for thy Light is come" - yes, this great spiritual light which you have been expecting to come slowly and by degrees, or which you hoped to some day get from a Master or a strange teacher, is come - now. Do you hear? Do you feel the thrill of the secret doctrine which is even now speaking to you between the lines of this book, conveying to you the inspirational interpretation of the gesture, which it is necessary to make in order to receive the manifestation?
The ways of Spirit are not the ways of man; why check them against the findings of man? There is no law of man which can explain in any way the manifestation of Spirit. In the truest sense of the word healing is merely revelation of that which eternally is.
The making of the gesture in response to the Voice of Spirit is the purest unconscious-conscious recognition of the Presence.
"You say it is four months until the harvest?" Why, it is a long story and a true one, isn't it? The seed must be planted after the ground is ready to receive it, and then watered, cultivated, garnered, harvested, etc., etc. That is why it takes four months; anyone can figure it out. But I say unto you "look again; the fields are white." You have evidently been looking and seeing through the eyes of relativity, human thought-taking, knowing, reasoning, and then suddenly you hear, and, standing in the same place, you make the gesture, and this time the "Look again" reveals to you that which does not have to come by the way of man. "Look again!" Why don't you begin to look again and see that the heavy bondage of the human mind does not have to be set aside?
The thrilling revelation of Spirit comes to you as a flood of light in the darkness of night. The Voice crying in the wilderness is making itself heard through the tangled mass of thinking, and making the way for the expression of the Lord here and now. But not by slow degrees does the harvest become visible before the eyes, but as if a veil were torn asunder and the finished thing appears. The revelation of the Presence does not "grow": it reveals the finished mystery. From the extreme of the human limitations to the fullness of the Christ in the twinkling of an eye, or at the instant man is able to make the gesture. The moment he is able to look again. The moment he makes the gesture which in one fell swoop disregards the teachings of centuries of evolution.
On and on the glorious revelation sweeps; it does not stop with the fertile fields which have been for years cultivated and planted with grain - no, it rushes you into a still greater proof of the Power when it says: "The desert shall blossom as a rose."
Yes, the desert whereon nothing has ever grown, where the lizard scurries about amid the dry sage brush and sun-soaked sand, and over which the brazen dome of heaven looks down daily - this very impossible place shall blossom as a rose. The contrast is too great and it comes definitely under the heading of the impossible.
But there in the great Book of Life which is opening before you, you are beginning to see why Jesus said, "Having eyes, ye see not, and ears, ye hear not," for when you realize for a moment the capacity back of the sight and the hearing you will obey the command and "Look again," and your eyes will behold the glory of the Lord in this very hell of evil and despair. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light." Awake, awake and arise from the dead thoughts.
The ears hear the words "Arise and walk." It would be wonderful if I could do it; but how is it done? There is no way for it to be done because you are an incurable; you have something that cannot be eliminated or destroyed; you have something that is stronger than God - or so you say. Perhaps not in those words, but you definitely say it is hopeless, which is virtually the same thing. You only hear the sound, "Arise and walk," and it has no more power to heal or help than any other three words would have, until you hear, and, when you HEAR, you make the gesture and find the action of God is a perfect stream of manifestation. You find that the dumb speak - yea, sing and shout for the joy. They do not lisp for a season of convalescence. What though the muscles and structure of the throat and mouth be absolutely impossible of producing speech, they not only speak, 'but they shout and sing for the joy of the new day revealed to them through making the gesture.
What is back of all this gesture idea? Why is it that the making of the gesture is necessary? Why shouldn't the Power come into full manifestation without a single movement on your part? Perhaps it does. Making a gesture is not confined to the physical movement. It goes so far beyond that that perhaps you remain in a perfect ecstasy of stillness - the deepest emotion is stillness, both physically and mentally, because it comes under the command, "Be still and know that I AM GOD." The deep emotion of the gesture of stillness causes you to hear the inaudible-audible Voice which is described as "still and small." The voice commanding you to "rise and walk" in stentorian tones or in velvety resonance is not the voice which brings about the change or the revelation. It is the still small voice, wrapped in the word, hidden under the command, which carries the authority with it, and when heard and understood, causes man to make the gesture, because it immediately frees him from a lifetime of thinking, wondering, guessing, or trying to reason how it is done.
"I come as a thief in the night," at a moment ye think not; when you are not trying to make the Power work; when you are not trying to heal yourself; when you are not trying to prosper yourself or make your organization a paying proposition. "I come as a thief in the night." I come with the revelation of the deep hidden meaning which causes you, in an unthinking moment, to "rise and walk" - which causes you to make the gesture.
"Come eat and drink without price." You will have to come; no one can come for you. Either you "come" or you sit and try to reason it all out. Many have "come" to the feast and spent their time trying to see if they could find out how the law worked, trying to pry into the "birthing out" process of nature - peeping under the veil that hides the Ark of the Covenant to see if they might learn the law of increase, so that they may go their way and "show" to a crowd of personal followers how the trick is done. But when they "come" in this manner to the feast, they see nothing but a very ordinary banquet taking place, and as they watch they begin to see more and more discrepancies about it all, and go away "telling" the world there is nothing to it. Having dismissed the whole glorious revelation with such ease, they return and try to find therein some affirmation which can 'be polished up again and set into action.
"Come, eat and drink without price." Either you can COME or you cannot come. Either you have too many dead fathers to bury or too many weddings to attend to "come, eat and drink" of the living Waters of Life which bring eternity to you. But one day you will "leave all - follow me," and this gesture will have to be made by the individual. I said, "Leave all." All what? All of the human thinking and reasoning, all of the limitations interposed by the false education of the Presence and the Power. "Leave all; follow me." I am taking you by a way ye know not. If you already knew the way you would not need me, but, since you have found the way so difficult and hard, and have admitted your defeat, why not "leave all - follow me"?
With your human reasoning you will attempt to tear the delicate membranes away from the gestation of the egg in order that the curious unbelieving eyes can "peep" upon the processes of birth. So will you make a sharp incision with the all-knowing human mind into what you suppose to be the veil of Life, hoping to find out how to make money out of the ethers or increase out of the nothing. But all that you shall find is the nothingness which you knew was there all the time.
"Arise and shine, for thy light is come." You hear it over and over. Again you wait for the light to come. One day you hear it for the first time, and find the place flooded with the light of revelation. You remember that which you had forgotten - that "your Father hath enough and to spare" - not that He will have nor that He should have, but that He has. Nothing you can do will make this so nor help to make it so. It is already so or else it was never so. Nothing you can do can ever make any Truth so. It is already so, or else it would never be so. What you can do is make the gesture and let the great Power find its own glorious expression here and now.
You can arise and walk into the new day of expression now. You can open the eyes born blind. You can raise the dead when you begin to make the gesture following the command of Jesus, "Go thou and do likewise" - exactly the same as he did.
You are, with Jesus, not ashamed to assume this glorious Power. Your God-given heritage awaits you, because you have long since realized that you as a personality are helpless and can do nothing. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Jesus knew that he could do nothing, and suddenly you come to the same honest place of expression.
It is hard for the old man, the old personality swollen with pride at what it has thought it has accomplished, to give up and admit that it can do nothing. Why, didn't I build a church, no matter how small, and didn't I heal a certain person, or give generously of my money, and have I not been recognized as a great healer and helper and a doer of good deeds? As long as all this remains it is impossible for you to follow the Christ teaching. If Jesus found he could do nothing, and asked his followers not to call him good, let the brazen personality who can stand in this revealing light come forth, and claim his or her temporal power, and glorify his temple filled with the dead men's bones of little things that have happened in the past. But if you find with the Master the deep secret thing which we are designating as making the gesture, you will leave all and follow me. You will automatically rise when the Voice speaks, and will carry on from the heights of the Secret Place.
The Secret Place is not visible to those seeking place and power, neither is the place of the Host. "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." What do you feel? Can you come? Can you rise? Can you open your eyes? And can you "Go thou and do likewise"? ;Can you? Can you make the gesture?
STIR UP the GIFT
JESUS has not commanded you to do anything that you cannot accomplish. The gift of God which you are asked to "stir up" is already there. If it were not, there is no power on this earth which could put it there. When we speak of the Christ, it is not something that is to be created, evolved, or demonstrated. It is something that is, whether you recognize it, or, for that matter, whether anyone in the whole world recognizes it. It is just this point of recognition that makes it possible to follow out the program laid down for you by the Master. "Go thou and do likewise" does not seem so utterly impossible when you realize that the Power which enables you to "do" the likewise already exists within you.
When Jesus went to the tomb of Lazarus, it was not to overcome death in the general accepted sense of the word, but it was to call forth this "gift" which Lazarus had apparently forgotten. If it had not been there, it would never have brought him forth from the tomb. Recognition that you are in no way a creator will assist you in awakening the "gift" which is within you. It is the hope of the race, and the hope for you. Nothing is hopeless in this glorious light, for, no matter how wretched the outside may be, the "gift" within is able to lift you up into the perfect manifestation of the "picture shown to you on the mount."
There is no person with sufficient power to heal you if the "gift" within is not recognized.
Without this recognition of the Father within, or the "gift" of God, it is impossible to accomplish anything.
With this "gift" recognized as resident within every individual, the sick man, the poor man, the criminal, yea, even the murderer, has his opportunity. We all have the same opportunity, no matter what the pictures that are exposed or unexposed in our conscious-thinking may be. That something that was in Lazarus, in the servant of the centurion, in the cripple, and in the harlot, is likewise in you. Until you recognize it you are stoned to death by condemnation or futility.
When you realize this truth, you materialize it. When you know "Our Father, which art in Heaven," you also begin to experience the result of the recognition, "Thy kingdom come," or the word begins to appear. Just as soon as you recognize this glorious "gift," then you begin the materialization.
"Believest thou this?"
Upon the answer to this question depend the results. That which you accept comes to reality and that which you reject passes into oblivion. The highest form of rejection is not resistance; it is Divine indifference.
When the Prodigal remembered the Father, he was able to arise and go there, no matter how far he had gone into prodigality. You are able to call a name you remember, to recite a poem, to describe a thing, and so on. When you remember the Presence of the Father, you stir up this "gift," and it brings into manifestation "whatsoever" you can ask for in that Nature. The proposition is a personal one. It does not make any difference what another can or cannot ask for. It is up to you. What can you ask for? You can only ask for that which you definitely believe is possible. The other asking is merely ranging about in the quagmire of imagination If you are dissatisfied with what you are able to ask for, there's only one way to change that, and that is by contemplation and prayer. If you can forget yourself and the ceaseless "Give me -- give me -- give me" long enough to look into the Nature of the Presence, and see of what it is composed, there will be no more "give me's." They will suddenly turn into "Thank you, Father." They will become the recognition of the Presence in manifestation.
"Believest thou that I am able to do this?" cannot be answered through the conscious-thinking, for at the very outset you do not believe it is possible or you would have performed it long ago. Something higher has to be recognized. A confirmed cripple cannot "believe" that he will be healed from the human thinking standpoint. Jesus could not feed the five thousand people from that level of consciousness. He had to withdraw into the Presence, and whatsoever he found there, that could he materialize. When you realize the Truth you materialize it.
"I will stand upon my watch and see what the Lord hath to say to me." Standing upon this "watch" is not a constant deluge of words, telling what has to be done, and what should happen, and how much you used a certain thing. It is "seeing" what the Inner Power, the Father hath to say unto you. Rest assured it will so far surpass the limited cravings of the human mind that they will be beyond comparison. Remember, beloved, that "my ways are not your ways." To remember this is to relieve the tension as to the how, why, when, where.
"When ye pray, believe that ye receive." What a statement! Can you do it? Jesus could do nothing of himself, neither can you, but with the Christ within (the "gift" which you recognize) "all things are possible." It is wonderful! It is glorious and radiant, the light that is breaking over you now.
As you "acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace," your whole disposition changes and consequently your whole surrounding changes. "The former things have passed away" - the things which belonged to the former disposition. The lack, sickness, unhappiness, and all other untoward conditions which were a part of you, have been automatically released by coming into alignment with this Divine "gift." What was formerly true has become untrue to the present state of consciousness. "Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace." It is wonderful when "Jesus" is acquainted with the "Christ within." The first sign of this acquaintance is Peace. Excitement, meaningless motion, and restlessness subside. Yet the coming of Peace from this very glorious acquaintance is not drifting aimlessly along through life, nor folding the hands waiting for something to happen. It may bring greater and more continued activity than you have ever known before.
It is said that as a last resort, in ancient Hebrew customs, the name of a person (who was found to be dying in spite of the best efforts) was changed. He was called by a new name, thus bringing into force the idea of a new disposition. Saul and Paul illustrate the changed dispositions. That which was the disposition of Saul was not the disposition of Paul. He was changed, and manifested a completely new background to work against. The former things had passed away and the new day had dawned.
The mere changing of a name means nothing without the consciousness back of it. Because they have heard of the wonders worked by this change on others, many people have tried such tactics without results. Unless the consciousness is changed, the name means nothing. Many say, "Lord, Lord," and "Peace, Peace," without any visible change taking place. The doing of anything on the "outside" is futile. The changing of names is as empty of results as the changing of clothing. Dieting according to the findings of others is not always successful. More often than not it is a failure. Yet all of these very things may be dictated from the inner depths and be hugely successful. It is wonderful! When you can stand upon your watch - I said your watch; not the watch of another, but your watch - alone, unafraid, and in the glorified state of "believing," then will you "see" what the Voice has to say to you. It may call you by the unuttered name, which will snap the cord holding the veil of conscious-thinking between you and Heaven. It is wonderful!
All through the long years of "study" of the how and why of Power, you have been so busy telling "me" what to do that you have not had time to follow the wonderful inspiration, "I will stand upon my watch and see what the Lord hath to say unto me." But now, somehow or other, you are feeling for the first time the Presence enfolding you, and the urge of Spirit tells you of things which the world knoweth not. The startled human thought immediately "tries" to stand upon its watch, and this very "trying" prevents it from doing so. The effortless giving-up which Jesus experienced when he went unto his Father is the state best adapted for you to "see what the Lord has to say unto you."
When you are through seeking Me for things, then all things shall be added unto you. Why seek further the outside manifestation instead of the Power behind things? Before you I place an open door of attainment which no man, organization, or combination of human thought can close. Enter! No amount of trying to get in by the way of personality will accomplish anything. If you think for a moment that the finding of Christ is for the purpose of glorifying you, to set you up among men, to be known of your good works from a personal standpoint; then you are mistaken in the Word, and when you seek Me thus you cannot find Me. This may seem strange in view of the fact that at that instant I Am in the midst of you, telling you to "seek and find Me there." The dust of human cunning gets in your eyes and you cannot find Me, when you are seeking after the things of Me and not Me. But when you seek the Me, then the things shall be added.
When you have experienced the Voice you will know why Jesus said, "None of these things move me." None of the appearances moved him, although he walked in and among them constantly. He was said to be moving always with the wine-bibbers and sinners, and yet he was not moved by them.
"I will stand upon my watch and see what the Lord hath to say unto me." Until you begin to sense the Spirit of Life you will imagine that this command is merely an idealistic utterance. But when you realize that the Word is being made flesh you will receive definite instructions as to what is to be done. The instructions given when you are "standing upon your watch" are so radical that your whole manifestation is changed - yes, in the "twinkling of an eye."
A woman with a cleft palate, who was unable to make herself understood without great effort, stood upon her "watch" and is today a successful lecturer. It is marvellous to behold in what an extreme manner the expression of the Power comes through when you "stand upon your watch." Probably the least expected thing or the least possible comes to pass - thus are My ways.
Yes, I would advise, "Acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace." At peace with all the conflicting opinions and beliefs, systems, and methods of knowing the Truth. Acquaint now thyself and be at peace - "thereby all