Bible lesson continued:
"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. |
