LECTURE
THE LITTLE LEAVEN
Nicol C. Campbell
© The School of Truth
Lecture given 5th August 1984, Durban, South Africa
Source p. 261, Oct/Nov 2006 - The Path of Truth
So many people feel they do not have enough faith. They say they do have a certain measure of belief - they believe in God's immanence, that He constitutes them, that He is Omniscience and Omnipotence - but they feel they have no faith, and therefore that there can be no demonstration of God in their area of need.
But their apparent weakness is not real. Although there is a vast difference between belief and faith, belief remains the "little leaven" that is able to raise the whole. Although belief can quite easily be destroyed through non-attunement and is easily shattered through non-demonstration, although there are millions and millions of people who believe implicitly in goodness of God but live in poverty, sickness and unhappiness, it remains true that if I am a baker and I have a tiny measure of yeast, out of that measure of yeast I can make a large loaf of bread.
So how do I use this little leaven of belief in my relationship with God? God has given us the wonderful gift of vision, or visualisation, which enables us to picture the things we would like demonstrated. Those who have advanced from belief to faith know from their experience that the most important practice is to use this vision. If I truly desire something, of whatever nature, I must hold a picture or vision of it in my mind. It is my little leaven. It is the very substance of what I hope for. My need or true desire is fait accompli. My vision of anything true tells me that it is so. It takes me past the belief state. The thing is already manifest, is now in me, as me. The little belief I had at first was the beginning of information which has ultimately become knowledge, which is another word for faith.
Using pictures, I have taught people who were chronically ill, paralysed, to grow new nerves and become completely rehabilitated - people who had only vague beliefs in God. Some went to church on Sundays out of duty or habit, and it had little meaning for them. I play "games" with people of all ages. I have a "spiritual plan" drawn for them showing them walking, or running, or swimming, or cycling, doing all the things they would do if they were sound of body. For half an hour or so at a time they play this game, live in this picture with mind and heart. It is as though a photograph has been taken and now it has to be developed. To the onlooker, to those who do not understand the game, we may seem mad, but we are not just looking at a piece of paper, we are looking at the actual finished product in ourselves. It is already there.
Years ago two men with whom I had become very good friends brought me a magazine cutting of an expensive car. They said to me "We cannot afford to buy it for you, but this is our thought for you. We'd like you to have it." I said "I accept it." I put it in my dressing room and every morning when I went to get my clothes I would look at this car and thank God for the lovely thought. He, not I, had put this idea into the minds of these people, and my mind was His mind accepting it. I gave thanks, seeing it not in my dressing room but parked in my garage. One Saturday morning, four years later, a man arrived at my house with this type of car. I went out into the yard to meet him and he said "How do you like your car?" I thought he was pulling my leg so I said "I like it very much. Come in and have some tea. Where is your wife?" "She'll be along later" he replied. We went in and a little while later she arrived and asked me "How do you like your car?" I said "It's beautiful isn't it?" still thinking they were teasing me. They turned to my wife and said "He doesn't believe that it is his car. We bought it for him as a present." It was the very same model as in my photograph. Magic? Not at all. "Believe that you have received it and you shall have it."
Since the age of 23 I have believed that I have received, and I have lived in the consciousness that whatever I need is already fulfilled, not going-to-be created for me but already in being. Everything, be it mental, emotional, physical or material, is a spiritual idea. Every true desire, whether it is health, or happiness, or a thing like a car or home or trip overseas, is that event in incipiency, is its shadow already cast ahead of it, is guaranteed - provided you can accept it.
But man judges by appearances and asks "How can this come to me?" It does not come to you; it comes through you. The origin is God's infinite treasure house within you. The manifestation is seemingly without, but there is really no within and without in God's natural, spiritual world.
We are taught to be "pragmatic", that it is wise to stick to what we can see and touch. We bear our disappointments and unhappinesses. For thousands of years we have turned our backs on the message "Believe that you receive it and you will. If you receive the kingdom as a child you shall enter it." For well over fifty years I have play-acted, like a child, accepting good as already mine, enough to share and to spare. I live in the consciousness of it. If it is a car I drive it, if it is a home I live in it. If it is a trip overseas I am on a ship or a plane going there. I do not ask how or when it is going to come. It has already come - now, this day. "This is the day that God has made - today - and we shall rejoice and be glad because of it." So it is with my health, with happiness, with all that I need or my heart truly desires.
This is how we run The School of Truth. We believe that we have received, and we are stewards releasing it fearlessly. Our open hand is the measure of our consciousness.
People have been taught to "carry your cross". But the Master says "Whatever you ask in my name (in acceptance of God's presence in you) I (God in you) will do it." No matter how educated I might be, how many degrees I have after my name, I still have to become as a little child if I wish fully to experience the health resident in my body, the happiness in my heart, the wholeness of my very being.
You are now living and moving and having your existence in God's presence - in all of His presence. You are not a mite; you are the microcosm of the great Macrocosm, containing all that It has. It constitutes you. In order to bring It forth into fulfilment - as your health, your happiness, your prosperity - there must be a merging of intellect and heart. Your head grasps these qualities and your heart is the power that overcomes fear and unfolds them in your life. There must be the two, just as there are two strands in the electrical flex to this light and this tape recorder. I have been working with tape recorders for years but I do not know how they work - I simply put on the switch. I do not know how God works, but I know He constitutes everything real in the universe and, when I am attuned to Him, He unfolds what I need, even if it seems to be on the other side of the world. I do not know how, but I know there is no separation between myself and someone living thousands of miles away. We are one Presence and one Power.
I have the little leaven of belief. Here is my picture; I am going to pretend. I am going to involve myself with it emotionally. "This is now mine. We are now one." And, as day follows night, always naturally, never unnaturally, it outpictures as the thing which I need, - always, not sometimes.
How can I doubt God's immanence after all these years? How can I question the teachings of the Master when I have seen so many demonstrations, when I have seen the paralysed grow new nerves? I cannot tell you how it happens, but the Presence That made me continues to make me and knows what It is doing. It is All-knowledge and All-power. It is my very being. All I can do is attune myself to It. I can live in the consciousness, this child-like consciousness that it is so, make-believing, and so it is done - far beyond what I think I need or what I desire.
Take for example a tumour in the brain of a little boy. The x-ray showed an incurable condition but they had to operate to remove it. The parents were followers of Truth and believed God would heal their child. They did not know how, but they knew God would do His works. So they took the practical steps; they took him to the hospital, and the surgeons made a hole in his skull - and do you know what they found? They found a little hollow cap, like the cap taken off an acorn, but the growth had completely disappeared. How? In the Reality of God it did not exist. Darkness cannot exist in the presence of light. Another example is of a woman who had an abdominal growth. She too was on our prayer list. Later, after the operation, a theatre sister told me, when the surgeons had made an opening and looked inside, one of them said in the casual way of a surgeon "We have made a couple of Charlies of ourselves, haven't we?" There was nothing there. Do you believe this is possible? Well, according to what you believe it is done unto you.
We can look for disease and find it or we can look for health, for Truth, and find it. Remember the words of the Master: "If it offends you, pluck it out and cast it from you." If you do not have the necessary belief do not leave it there, seek God's hand in the form of the surgeon, or the attorney, or whatever. Truth is not anti-doctor or anti any human skill. I served on the board of a hospital for sixteen years. Every hand is the hand of God on this plane of consciousness and every other plane of consciousness.
Your little leaven is within you. When you leave here today, if there is something you truly feel you need or want, perhaps an urge to be something, have something or achieve something, accept it as Divine discontent in you. Say to yourself "This is God impinging on my awareness. It is what God wants to be through me and for me. I will live with it as already realised, accept it, know it to be true." Throughout your day say "God is here constituting me. I am this quality, fulfilled today."
You will discover, as countless others before you, that belief, faith, is not a hit-and-miss affair. It is working with Principle, and Principle obeys Its own terms. It must - must - be fulfilled. Therefore I can go in peace, knowing that God, the Good, the Ideal which I have pictured on paper or in my imagination, is fulfilled in me and through me and as me - not next week, not next month or next year, but today. And today I give thanks for His permeating my whole being and life, and I rejoice because of it.
(Ref. Durban 840805)
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