whether you realize it or not bible quotes which you dearly loved were used in several.
"SEEK YE FIRST THE KINGDOM"
(Sermon on the Mount)
Matthew, 6:32, 33
"Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him."
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added
unto you."
If only we were able to read the words of the Sermon on the Mount in the state of consciousness
from which they were uttered! Only so could we realize the sublime meaning and the
tremendous power of this teaching of the Master's. But that is impossible--only a Christ can
understand a Christ. As we grow closer to the consciousness of the Master through the
expansion of our own consciousness in meditation upon his words, we shall grow in the power
of understanding; we know his mind just to the degree in which we realize the Light in our own
minds. Each individual is doing his best at his particular stage of development.
But however incomplete our understanding may be, the teaching of Jesus the Christ has some
lesson for us; and the purpose of this discourse is to indicate in what way these words from the
Sermon on the Mount may be used as a guide to our own advancement.
I believe that many of the people who have come out of the orthodox orders of thought into what
is called Truth are being led astray by their misunderstanding of the inner spiritual significance
of the Ancient Wisdom teachings. I refer to the messages given by the Masters of the Wisdom in
all ages, and especially emphasized by the great Master Jesus the Christ. I believe that this
misunderstanding gravely endangers the orderly expansion into the higher consciousness of the
individuals themselves, and, further, that it constitutes a serious menace to the development of
the entire social order.
For example, the two statements made by the Master Jesus and quoted at the beginning of this
lesson are used by truth students as authority for the use of spiritual power for the demonstration
of relative personal needs and desires. In my realization of Truth, this is the direct antithesis of
the Master's real meaning, for any form of demonstration is a violation of divine Law. For an
individual to attempt such a use of power is to bring devastating reactions upon himself and
upon the group with which he is affiliated.
I have been in public work in the ministry of Truth for many years, and during that time I have
known hundreds of teachers and students who gave promise of rising to spiritual heights and
becoming heralds of the Light, but very few have fulfilled that promise; nearly all have lost their
way and gone down through the misuse of what power they had gained. The misuse of power
was in applying it in a personal way, not only for the necessities of life, but in the acquisition of
temporal powers; in this way the path of true spiritual progress was lost sight of.
Until one has come to understand the operation of the inner spiritual laws, it is far better and
safer not to attempt healing work or any form of demonstration for objective purposes; thus he
will avoid incurring the karmic
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reaction to using spiritual power for personal ends. Everything in the physical, emotional, and
mental worlds, as well as in the spiritual realms, operates under the immutable law of being;
and until one understands the law so completely that he can consciously participate in and
co-operate with its functioning, he should not attempt to apply it.
The tendency toward the use of spiritual power for the accomplishment of personal aims shows
itself in many forms. It is being taught constantly by psychologists and pseudo-occultists. It
appears even under the guise of practical salesmanship, and in the many methods through which
it is promised that one will be able to fulfill all his desires, or acquire a more powerful
personality. These are obvious examples of the attempted misuse of power, but the same
tendency has other and more subtle disguises. One is the use of suggestive therapeutics (that is,
the employment of mental power for the healing of disease) with no understanding of the basic
and karmic laws under which the patient functions. Another great danger is that of striving to
reach spiritual heights and to acquire divine powers in order that one may seem great in the
sight of others. Even though the powers are used to alleviate suffering and for the help of
humanity, if the individual is attributing them to himself and thus building up his personal
egotism, he is in a most serious condition.
This ignorant defiance of spiritual laws constitutes a very grave problem, and all individuals
whose inner awareness enables them to perceive this truth must do all in their power to stem the
tide of danger which is setting in.
I am not making an extravagant statement--I am giving a sincere and deliberately arrived-at
opinion when I say that, unless this tendency is counteracted by teaching that points out the true
way of spiritual development, this humanity will incur a reaction as terrible as that which
caused the sinking of the continent of Atlantis. Using the spiritual powers of one's divine nature
for the accomplishment of purposes pertaining to his human nature will lead an individual into
psychic practices which are his own undoing and that of others who will come under his
influence. Mesmerism, hypnotism, mental domination--in or against the law of his being is a
step on the Lefthand Path, the path of black magic.
Students take the false path ignorantly, lacking the teaching which would bring them into the
conscious co-operation with the divine laws of life. Therefore, I say that only through true
teaching can a terrible danger to humanity be averted. Those who understand the spiritual laws
can help others who seek the Light to avoid these pitfalls in the Path. Then the Way will be well
defined; those who want the Kingdom will seek it in the faith that, after it has been reached, the
Father will give to them all that they have need of. The Master's statement is clear: "Seek ye
first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness"--but the consciousness of the individual must
be cleared of selfish, personal considerations before he can have the inner realization of the
meaning of the words. The whole aspiration, thought, and desire--the whole content of the
consciousness--must be a one-pointed concentration on the attainment of the state known as the
kingdom of heaven. Such one-pointed concentration does not admit of any thought of personal
needs or powers; the only consideration of them which could be involved in it would be a
perfect confidence that whatever comes to us at any period of the Path comes in answer to a
need of our being, and comes by the Father's Will.
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Students who fall into the grievous error of misusing spiritual powers do so because they have
ignorantly attributed those powers to themselves as individuals. The power which activates us
is the Universal Power. Students, keep your minds focused upon that one thought until it
becomes an actual force in your consciousness; by so doing you will be able safely to follow
your Path into full realization of the spiritual laws underlying all the states of manifestation.
The power which makes possible your physical activity, which stirs you to feelings and desires,
which activates your thought processes, is the invisible power of God, just as truly as the forces
of your spiritual states are the invisible powers of God. We are merely the instruments through
which the Universal Forces flow.
You think, and you believe that the thought is yours; you have no way of knowing what current of
thought energy in the mental plane ethers registered upon the receiving apparatus of your brain
and produced that thought. Study the function of the radio in the medium of the physical plane
ethers; certain instruments can arrest and register the impulses conveyed through the ethers and
then reproduce them. These impulses are similar to the currents of energy on the mental plane,
and the comparison will help you to understand how thought is created in you. The analogy
breaks down at this point, however, for each individual is both a broadcasting and a receiving
apparatus. We can send out as well as receive, but what we send out is only what we receive;
we have not reached the plane of spiritual evolution in which we can create what we broadcast.
The state of consciousness in which we function determines the quality of the thought current to
which we are attuned. Study that last statement well--it is most important to you. You will often
hear it said that you can attain a higher plane of consciousness by holding the right thought; I say
that that statement is directly opposed to the truth of the matter. The state of your consciousness
determines the quality of your thought; the quality of your thought cannot determine the state of
your consciousness. In other words, you tune into the mental plane currents with which your rate
of vibration is naturally synchronized. However, the point that I wish to stress just now is that
the thoughts which seem to originate in your own brain are really the impulses of the mental
plane ethers with which you are in contact.
This same process is repeated in your emotional life. You have a receiving apparatus that can
arrest and register the impulses of the astral plane. This receiving set is not in your brain, but in
your sympathetic nervous system, or instinctive mind; in our work it is often called the animal
soul. Again it is the state of your consciousness that determines what quality of emotional forces
and vibrations you receive. Your emotional distresses and perturbations are due to the
registration of the vibrations of the lower astral levels. This is true, whether you are affected as
an individual, or share in a common disturbance in the race-mind. There is much to be learned
by a study of what is called mob-psychology. During war, or in times of great national calamity,
note how individuals accept their emotion of patriotism, of horror, of sympathy, etc., as
originating in themselves, though in reality they are a part of the emotional storm which is
sweeping through the whole race-consciousness.
There are many levels in the astral realm; the variety and intensity of the emotions you
experience--whether disturbance or happiness predominates--
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depend upon the state of your own consciousness.
Your emotional reactions govern your physical-plane actions. You desire a thing, and you act in
response to the desire. For instance, you are all here today because you desired to come, though
each of you may have been motivated by desire of a different quality. Some of you came
because you are weary of sorrow and suffering--you are looking desperately for relief. Some
came seeking understanding of the way to spiritual realization. In each case desire was the
impelling force.
That our mental, emotional, and physical activities are entirely the result of invisible forces is a
tremendous realization, for it helps us to perceive the unity of all things; it relates us to the
forces which hold the earth in its orbit around the sun--to the forces which hold matter itself in
cohesion.
We are moved by invisible powers in every state of our being, but how much conscious
understanding of those powers have we gained? You understand thoughts, but how much do you
know of the powers which create thoughts? How much of your consciousness functions--and
functions consciously--in the realm of the forces which create feelings and desires? You are
familiar with feeling and desire, but I am speaking now of the forces behind these. How far can
you differentiate between your actions and the invisible forces which prompt the actions?
The measure of your higher development is the degree in which you can transfer your awareness
from the effects--that is, from the thoughts, the desires and feelings, and the actions--to the
invisible forces which are the cause of these effects. As you gain in the ability to do this, you
mark your progress in what we call spiritual realization.
Now, as there are invisible forces of attraction, cohesion, and repulsion, which govern the
matter of the physical plane, and as our thoughts, our feelings and desires, and our actions, are
governed by invisible forces, so are there greater forces carrying us into the kingdom of God. If
students who are trying to follow the Light could distinguish between the forms of manifestation
and the Power which causes the manifestation, they would not make the grave error of trying to
demonstrate over relative matters through the control of invisible forces.
The three forms of manifestation in our relative life are our actions, our feelings and desires,
and our thoughts. If we could thoroughly understand that they are all the effects of the registry of
invisible forces over which we have no control--if we perceived the inner meaning of that
statement--we should understand also that the spiritual powers which govern our higher
unfoldment are likewise beyond our control, and that any attempt to appropriate them in a
personal, human sense is a defiance of the Law.
The ordinary forms of speech are developed out of this strong sense of personal possession: "I
decided to do this thing." "I felt this or that emotion." "I have an idea for an invention which will
be very valuable. I can patent the invention; it is mine." The very laws of the land are designed
to protect a man in appropriating the thoughts and ideas which come to him from the Universal,
and which should be used for the universal good. No man creates his inventions; he is a channel
through which they are given by more highly evolved beings, and he has no right to claim and
protect them as his own. All that comes through us as channels, or instruments, comes from the
Universal and
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should be given back to the Universal through its individualized focal points--our fellow human
beings. That would be living in the consciousness of unity, not in the sense of separateness.
Just as I say that your thoughts are not your own but are given to you for the universal good, so I
say that the higher manifestations of your nature are the effect of the grace of God seeking to
make itself manifest through you. For incarnations we focus consciousness in the emotional
realm, and live in the effort to fulfill our desires for pleasure and profit. After much experience
we find that the fulfillment of personal desires does not bring satisfaction. Yet the perception of
this truth does not come through outer observation, it comes through a change in the state of our
consciousness; it comes because we have reached the point in evolution at which we begin to
seek for the eternal instead of the temporal. This urge toward the things of the Spirit is not
generated within us; instead, it signifies that we are coming en rapport with higher strata of
creative Power. Turn your thoughts to that portion of the Scriptures which says: "Though I
bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not
love, it profiteth me nothing. Love is the power of the Spirit, the grace of God. And this other:
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not by yourselves; it is the gift of God."
But students carry over into the higher states of evolution many of the characteristics which
belong to one on the path of pursuit, and when they become somewhat conscious of the
activation of stronger forces than they have known before, they try to appropriate them to
themselves by using them to get the things they desire. They let their desires and their mental
values determine their way, and soon they find that they have lost the true Path to spiritual
realization.
Can you not learn that the Power brings with it all that is needful? It may not bring you what
your desires would choose along the way, but when your personal nature is purified and you
have entered the kingdom, you will know that your real needs have been fulfilled at every point.
The invisible Power has brought you through the long journey of evolution; it has lifted you out
of the animal state, and carried you through the human to the point you have now reached--do
you think it will abandon you now? Your own efforts to control it have resulted only in trouble
and interference.
That Power is the grace of God; if you can rest upon it, relaxed and trusting as a baby upon its
mother's breast, it will create you and direct your harmonious progress in the way that is
definitely ordained for you in the Father's eternal wisdom.
All manifestation is the divine activity of the Universal Life, the joy-song of creation. The Great
Ones in all times have exclaimed from the heights of spiritual realization: "Out of joy it all
comes, and into joy it all returns!" The human state of consciousness is the only one in all the
scheme of manifestation which creates disturbance by rebellion against the Father's Will.
When we come into only a little understanding of the truth, our one prayer is to go with the
Power--carefree, joyous, trusting, as we wait upon the Lord while his Grace is being made
manifest to us.
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THE LAW WHICH MUST BE FULFILLED |
