THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH
LECTURE

CHOOSE THIS DAY WHOM YOU WILL SERVE

Nicol C. Campbell
© The School of Truth
Lecture given in March, 1982, Johannesburg, South Africa
Source p. 5, Feb / Mar 2006 - The Path of Truth

Sometimes it is difficult to make a decision. Let me tell you the story of a young man who was the junior 440 yards running champion of the Western Province. He was riding to Cape Town on his motorbike when two cars got too close to him and crushed and fractured his right leg. It was hanging almost by a thread. He was taken to Volks Hospital in Cape Town, where they tried everything they could to find the parents, whose permission they needed to amputate the leg. But fortunately, not unfortunately, his parents were touring the country by car, so the hospital contacted his grandmother and asked for her permission. She refused.

It was, as you can imagine a tremendous decision to make. She phoned us and asked us to pray for the boy, which, of course, we did. That month I had to go down to Cape Town to lecture and went to visit him in the hospital. His leg had a pin in it. This boy subsequently recovered completely.

Now, I want you to think of the seriousness of his crisis. If you were the parent or the grandparent, what would your decision have been? The grandmother who phoned me was very anti-me at the beginning. She called me the anti-Christ and said she felt ashamed that she knew me, and yet in this crisis she turned to The School of Truth for help and succour.

Have you got to make a decision today? Do you feel torn between the "material" and the "spiritual" side of yourself? Would you, in that woman's place, have felt that you had to be pragmatic and take the practical steps to protect the boy's life? Is that the way you feel now in your own traumatic experience? These words come into my mind constantly: "Choose this day whom you will serve." Choose this day in whom you are going to trust. I have so often had to make this choice, not only for myself but in guiding so many of you when you have asked me to decide on the course you should take. It is a very personal thing, and no-one ultimately can decide for you. In my own experience I have found, if I am one-pointed, if I have clarity of vision, God is always available and always, not sometimes, sets me free.

When I was standing in the foyer earlier, a gentleman asked me to explain the meaning of "metaphysics", and I said it is a study of the science and intelligence of the mind - at least that is the way some philosophers put it. However, I would more accurately call it the study of the science and intelligence of the intellect, and qualify it with "The wisdom of this world (the intellect) is foolishness with God." No intellect can define infinite Mind.

All of us, without exception, have to go through certain experiences. God is not doing anything to us, nor is there a devil who is misleading us. It is rather that we are growing in our consciousness of God. I have to examine myself constantly and remember the saying "To thine own self be true," for if I am true to myself I cannot be untrue to others. If you believe implicitly in what you are doing, if you are persistent, if there are no qualifications or reservations, and if it is in terms of good alone, then you are right. Your heart is right with God.

I want to go back to when I was first asked to do this work. I refused, saying I was not competent, that I knew too little, that I had not had enough demonstrations to warrant my talking to other people, advising them on their problems. So they approached another man in East London, and he began to lecture them on metaphysics. A year later he died, and they again approached me. I responded as before, adding that I was far too self-conscious and felt inadequate. However, at their invitation, I attended a lecture on the hieroglyphics used by the early Christians when they took refuge from persecution in the Roman catacombs. It was most interesting and I was asked what I thought of it. I said "It was interesting, but the people came here for bread and are getting stone. They want to know how to live, how to resolve their problems, how to pay their debts, how to eliminate fear, to be unafraid of the future." "Well, will you help us?" they asked, and I agreed to help them.

So I wrote what was to become our first course of eight lessons. It started with "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." I went to the Rand Women's Club every Wednesday night and read my lectures to them. That soon seemed stupid to me so I suggested that I print my lectures at my own cost and simply give them the booklets, but they disagreed and insisted I continue reading. In those days the small hall was packed regardless of the weather, so we looked around and finally found a lovely auditorium in a building called Escom House. Then I asked myself "Don't you really believe that God, Who has demonstrated so many good things in you in the four years that you have been walking along the path of Truth, is capable, within you, of giving you the ideas of what to say and how to say it? Faith without works is dead."

So I decided, very anxiously, to prove it.

As I stood there, facing these 250 people, my knees were trembling, my stomach was sour, my mouth was dry and I was befuddled. I waited a moment or two, asking for guidance, and when I finished my talk I had a feeling of great relief and release. Here was another demonstration, an overcoming of my own sense of inadequacy. It was not that I was afraid of the people, but rather of the sound of my own voice. When I got home I said to my wife "Thank God that is over." But the worry did not stop immediately. This is how mostly we are constituted - governed by fear, which is faith in the wrong thing. Over all these years, whenever I have been faced with a challenge, a problem or a decision, I have remembered these words: "Choose this day whom you will serve."

In every department of life we all walk along the path of Truth. We all go through similar experiences because man has to realise himself. Whether or not he knows it he is a seeker after Truth, and how can he learn to understand Truth if he does not prove it? How can I know that God is my health unless I overcome some physical disability? How can I know that God is my happiness if I have not gone through agonising emotional experiences? How can I know that God is my security unless I have tested Him and proved Him?

I can buy wonderful books or tapes on the subject. I can buy all the theories in the world, but they are of no avail unless I can put them into action, see them physically unfolding in my life. We are not puppets. We are the extension of the Creator, and our receptivity to Good shows our faith in God or our faith in things, in appearances. And things and people, if you depend upon them, will always let you down.

God cannot be explained or defined. When you see me you are seeing a mask, but behind it is the Individual, the Presence that knows the answers to all the problems that have been presented to me. Within me is the consciousness of God. It knows the end from the beginning and is the solution to every difficulty that arises in my life. This Individual, which some call Jesus-Christ, is universal. It is not exclusive to Christians or, under another name, to any other group. My Jesus-Christ presence is in every man - white, black, brown or yellow, high or low, rich or poor, good, bad or indifferent, saint or prostitute. Inside me is the perfect pattern, the perfect plan, and I am trying to build on this plan by communion with this Presence. In every problem, in every traumatic experience, when we turn to It, It guides us. It might be through an intuitive thought, through meeting someone in the street, listening to a conversation, in the words in some book opened at random. This Presence talks to you and me in a way we will understand. Prayer is the raising of our consciousness from the level of the intellect to Mind within ourselves, to the Solution. We listen quietly to what this Presence inside is saying to us.

Every single thing that has been made, from a mechanical invention to the planets and the stars, are extensions of the Creator, are all ideas condensed, like water and ice are condensed from vapour. They are all the same Thing in different degrees of condensation. I can never leave this Presence and He can never leave me. Even when my body and all that goes with it passes away, I remain as consciousness.

Everything is governed by exact Law. If we fulfil Law it is like switching on the light, or the sound, or what have you. We must avail ourselves of the Law, Which is a harmonious relationship between the inner Presence and our emotional nature. The moment we turn away from It our eyes become reflectors of appearances, of lies, and as a result we experience constant limitation.

I say to God's presence in me "I need this particular thing." I do not become anxious or concerned about it. I do not try to canalise it or focus it. I let it be inconsequential whether I have yet got it or not. I simply know it will come in its own way, just as a seed germinates and grows into a plant. The spiritual Presence wants me to come up to this higher level, wants me to have a greater consciousness of Its goodness. The desire for something better started within myself, and this desire guarantees the promised event. My desire is the thing itself in incipiency. I recognise it and give thanks for what it has produced... and then, naturally, never unnaturally, it is produced. And so it goes on, good after good after good.

Always there comes a time when we reach winter, and harmony with Law seems to leave us. We could, if we allowed it, become desolate: "What is happening? Why should this happen?" But it is a resting time. The Presence is asking you to come in; your batteries are flat. "Come in and find greater awareness of Me. Be recharged by renewing Spirit within you." So you are not dismayed or frightened. You are unhurried and unworried: "The prince of this world comes, but has no power over me" - because it does not exist outside of your own fear-thought.

Will you remember this? Daunting experiences that come to you have not been sent by God. They are there because of your own spiritual desire to expand your awareness of Godness. Do not be afraid of them, even in the eleventh hour. Harken to the Voice saying to you "Be still (stop fidgeting, stop responding to one impulse after another) and know that I am Presence within you, the perfect pattern of the man (or woman) within you." Then bathe in the blessed assurance that there is nothing to fear.

The Master says: "Whatever you ask in prayer (that is with deep sincerity, involving no harm to anyone) believe that you receive it, and you will." - not according to your needs but according to His riches, heaped up, pressed down, shaken together and running over in a measure to share and to spare in terms of good and only good.

Ref. Johannesburg 820328)

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