LECTURE
THE ONE REALITY
© The School of Truth
Source p. 261, Oct / Nov 2007 - The Path of Truth
(Lecture delivered in Johannesburg)
I realise how much tragedy comes the way of all humanity and how frail and weak we are in the face of problems, trouble and adversity; but if we genuinely believe in the Almighty Presence of God as Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnipresence, there is no reason in all the world for you, or me, to be afraid of personalities, conditions or circumstances. Yet, if we examine our inner thoughts and emotions closely, we shall see that we are so profoundly aware of antagonistic surroundings and hostile individuals that we are unable to rid ourselves of their influence, and end up by binding them to us with our every thought and action.
When you come to me (or to any other teacher of Truth) and tell me that you have no faith, you are making a great mistake for, actually, you have not only faith, but mastery, which you are using either to bring about the negations that are upsetting you, or to hold on to those you have already established in your lives. You cling to them with might and main so that they - and not God - become nearer to you than hands and feet, closer than your very breath.
What is God and where is He to be found? I am convinced that most of you think of Him as personality, not within you but outside, so that as a result of this mental and emotional separation, you see yourselves as the manifestations of some fragment of life over which you have no control, rather than as the vehicles of Omnipotence and Omniscience.
Christ taught that we have dominion and power over physical, emotional and material conditions, that this control is not something that we have to ask of God, but is the authority that we brought with us when we entered upon our present state of existence. And it is only because we have failed to exercise it that God has been unable to change our unhappy experiences for us.
When I have my meditations I let my thoughts dwell upon all that the Master - and others - taught concerning the Omnipresence of God. I quote these revelations to myself over and over again, not to convince myself of their truth, but because the very coming of them gives me a tremendous realisation of the might that is invested in man, and the mastery that he can bring into manifestation once he has the inner certainty of it as an essential quality within his own being. It thrills me to think that we all have the spiritual power necessary to resolve every problem and to dissolve all discordant conditions. We can change the most chronic disease into radiant health, bring a flood of happiness into the sad and empty heart; and by the application of spiritual ideas that, unbeknown to us, live, move and exist within us, we can bring forth our own prosperity in a measure to share and to spare.
Is it not tragic that man, who has within himself an abundance of all that is necessary for his complete well-being on every plane of consciousness, should, because of his ignorance, use this power to bind the lacks that he has created to him, and allowing it to flow from the centre to the circumference, from the spiritual through the physical and into the material to enrich his life?
Let me tell you of a woman I met a short time ago who had brought to bear on her own troubles this power which is inherent in every man.
She had had a malignant growth - an incurable cancer - for which she had had all the treatments known to science, and when she heard from her doctors that they could not effect a cure, she felt that she would rather die outright than suffer for weeks and months the gradual disintegration of her body. In her despair she prayed audibly, as a child would, not in faith but in fear, "Oh God, - help me - set me free!" That was all, yet she came to me to tell me that she had just been to a specialist with her latest X-ray plates and that he had pronounced her completely cured.
I asked her what he had actually said, thinking that he had probably treated the matter lightly under the impression that the original diagnosis had been a wrong one. She replied that he was a student of Truth and had assured her that only God could have brought such a healing, adding, "How lucky you are! How wonderful that you should have been able to contact the spiritual love of God and so be set free."
If others would appeal with the same depth of feeling to the spiritual Force within them, similar marvellous results would be brought to pass in countless thousands of lives.
It is, of course, stated in the Bible that 1,000 years are as a day in the sight of the Lord, in Whom there is no time at all, so perhaps it could be argued that the length of time it takes him to perfect Himself through any particular body is a matter of complete indifference to Him, and that an all-loving Father does not care how long His children suffer from disease or struggle against lack, poverty and misery.
Can you reconcile this with the teachings of Christ Who made it plain to us that God is Love and that the Spirit of mastery that was exercised through Him was one with the divine Spirit abiding in each one of us? He spoke of Himself as the Son of God and said that we too are children of the same spiritual Father Who is unmanifest and invisible until He is projected from the inner to the outer through the consciousness of His off-spring.
The spiritual Love that works in man, independent of his human brain, is like a wireless station ceaselessly broadcasting its power, beauty, knowledge and protection, refuting the lies conveyed to us about the reality of conditions and circumstances by our little finite intelligence that insists that we have no control over appearances and personalities, and so binds ever closer and closer to us that nothingness of our false belief.
What, think you, is disease? Is it not a state of separation from what we call "ease" or harmony, and are not poverty and misery due to our lack of alignment with peace and happiness? If the former are realities - part of God's creation - then His Life would, before this, have been contaminated by the outer manifestation and He must long since have died, because disease does spoil the so-called life of the individual, but Being - Omnipotence, Omniscience - is not acted upon as a bad apple in a bag acts upon the rest of the fruit, spreading decay among the lot. God-perfection can no more be affected by sickness than darkness can overcome light.
The human brain is fallible, it is constantly building up lies that proclaim man's separation from that which is good, but the Mind that is God still permeates all things, animate and inanimate, with Its own quality of Flawlessness and it is we who have to release It, either immediately or over any period of time that we may decide upon.
We learn by our mistakes, which bring forth pain, but this is not the only way in which we can acquaint ourselves with Truth, for it is not according to God's will that His children should suffer. We do not need to go through fires of affliction if we can learn to express the consciousness of God as Love in our daily affairs. Love brings with It divine Mastery, happiness, the elimination of fear (whether of conditions, personalities or circumstance) and an at-one-ment with the spiritual ideas necessary to success and prosperity. When we are living in tune with Love we are completely unified with God, but we find this too difficult of achievement. We cherish our impatience, resentment, self-pity and negative pride; we will not give up old habits; we will try to get our own back, and we do not realise that by so doing we but shut ourselves off from our good and it is idle to blame God for what it ensures.
The misery we see around us has nothing to do with Him. He did not bring it into manifestation; it springs from ignorance alone and those who suffer from it are they who are not yet aware of their own divinely bestowed mastery.
The other day a woman came to see me and complained that though she had approached us a week ago things had not yet changed for her. I asked her if, in the interval, she had tuned in with us at the times when we were praying for her and whether she had devoted certain periods to mediation as we had asked her to do, and her reply was to the effect that she was far too busy to go apart for fifteen minutes a day and pray to God. She added naively, "I expect you people to do that for me."
You have only to imagine what a school teacher would say to a pupil who adopted that attitude, to realise how completely untenable hers was. No one could expect to demonstrate good without making any effort at all, for nothing is ever achieved in life but at the cost of some outlay either of a spiritual, mental, emotional or physical nature.
The whole world - the universe - is ours when we have learned, with trust in God, to take it; when no longer giving power to conditions, appearances or individuals, and with no doubts in our minds and hearts, we finally understand and accept that there is but one Power of Good, Which is God, Whom we call Love.
Love is not afraid of people or of insecurity, and the man who is living in tune with It, even if his pockets are empty, is unconcerned because he knows that he is one with spiritual self-mastery, and that before he calls God has answered, while he is yet speaking God has heard and it is finished and done and manifest, so his needs are met even as they arise.
It is this consciousness after which we all are striving, the awareness of the reality of God as against the unreality of conditions, which are but lies of the intellect, the five senses and the narrowly rational outlook that says that this can or cannot be done. If we continue to judge by the seeming and to give individuals power over us we shall never succeed in providing an outlet for God's good. He is ever with us, ever seeking by way of our restlessness of spirit to press Himself into the consciousness of the human heart, to impress upon our understanding that there is something better in life for us than we are expedriencing and that, if we will listen, we shall hear the Voice of our Father speaking to His body temples, saying: "I am the Health That will displace disease, the Love That will remove discord, the Prosperity That will fill full your lack. Set Me free!"
If in the face of this we still believe that persons can control our lives or influence our fate, that is our lookout. Christ did not say, "It will be done unto you according to your faith if X, Y or Z will permit it." You and God are a majority and quite self-sufficient; none can thwart His purpose, none can obstruct His Good, for He is Omnipotence, the irresistible Force, and even in the adverse condition and discordant environment He is present for all the world to hear declaring, "I will overthrow and overthrow and overthrow until the good is fulfilled," and neither you nor I, nor any puny personality can stop His blessings from manifesting.
However, let us not forget that the Voice that speaks is One of Love and if we want Love fulfilled in us we must be in tune with It. Our hearts must beat with the Heart of God and we cannot be selective of those on whom we would bestow our good. We must be like God, giving to all and sundry without discrimination. Every man on earth is a temple of the living Father, every individual from the lowest to the highest has access to Him and none can say no, or stop the power of faith from manifesting through him. You cannot prevent health from filling my body or prosperity from flooding my affairs if I have faith in God, any more than I can circumvent these where you are concerned if you are to rely on Him.
It is this spiritual mastery, that recognises the one Source of all power, rather than the dictatorial king that tries to control the free will of the individual that we are seeking. It is the understanding that, in Love, we are all members one of another. Each and every individual must achieve this consciousness if he would recognise the truth that Love is the only in the world that can solve every problem and bring peace to all mankind. Love knows no barriers, no time, or place, or space. It speaks but one universal language and to everyone as long as God endures - which is forever - It will keep on repeating and repeating that Love ever gives, forgives, outlives, and ever stands with open hands, and while It lives, It gives, for this is Love's prerogative to give, and give and give.
The Soul takes flight to the realm of the invisible where it knows peace and rest. -- Plato.
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