Talks on Truth

by Charles Fillmore

First published in 1922

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Contents

Lesson 1. Reform Your God Thought

Lesson 2. Microorganisms

Lesson 3. The I Am In Its Kingdom

Lesson 4. How Shall The Dead Be Raised?

Lesson 5. The Development Of Divine Love

Lesson 6. The Ministry Of The Word

Lesson 7. Ye Must Be Born Again

Lesson 8. Obedience

Lesson 9. The Church Of Christ

Lesson 10. The Lord’s Body

Lesson 11. The Restoration Of God’s Kingdom

Lesson 12. The Holy Spirit

Lesson 13. Attaining Eternal Life

Lesson 14. Jesus Christ’s Atonement

Question Helps For Students Of Talks On Truth

Lesson 1. Reform Your God Thought

THIS IS distinctly the age of reforms. Never before have there been such widespread and persistent efforts by both men and women to right the wrongs of religion, society, and politics.

2. From the hearts and the souls of millions goes up the cry, “Set us free from our burdens!” Every imaginable scheme of release is proposed, and each advocate of a panacea for the people’s ills stoutly affirms his to be the only remedy that has virtue. It is observed that the majority of these reformers are clamorous that laws be enacted to force their theories upon the people. In this they are following the same methods to cure the ills of the body politic that they have followed in curing the body physical, and the results will surely be of like impotency.

3. Laws, whether natural or artificial, are but the evidence of an unseen power. They are simply effects, and effects have no power in themselves.

When man looks to them for help in any condition of inharmony, he is departing from a universally recognized principle of sequence. God, Spirit or Mind--whatever you choose to name it--is the supreme dictator, and thought is its only mode of manifestation. Mind generates thought perpetually; all the harmonious and permanent affairs of men, and the innumerable systems of the infinite cosmos, are moved in majestic measures by its steady flow.

4. All power has its birth in the silence. There is no exception to this rule in all the evidence of life. Noise is the dying vibration of a spent force. All the clatter of visibility, from the harangue of the ward politician to the thunder’s roar, is but evidence of exhausted power. As well try to control the lightning’s flash by wrapping the thunder about it, as attempt to regulate mind by statutory enactments.

5. All reforms must begin with their cause. Their cause is mind, and mind does all its work in the realm of silence, which in reality is the only realm where sound and power go hand in hand. The visible outer world, with all its social, religious, and political laws, customs, and ceremonies, is but the flimsy screen upon which mind throws its incongruous opinions. God’s thought is love, the inherent potentiality of the God man, which knows neither persons nor things, mine nor thine, but a universal brotherhood in which perfect equity and justice reign in joint supremacy. All philosophers and sages have recognized this silent cause, this perpetual outflow from center to circumference.

Emerson says of Plato: “He was born to behold the self-evolving power of Spirit, endless generator of new ends; a power which is the key at once to the centrality and the evanescence of things.” Jesus Christ said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” “Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Elijah found God, not in the whirlwind, or the earthquake, or the fire, but in the “still small voice.”

6. All men who have moved the world to better things have received their inspiration from the Spirit within and have always looked to it for instruction. God is not a person who has set creation in motion and gone away and left it to run down like a clock. God is Spirit, infinite Mind, the immanent force and intelligence everywhere manifest in nature. God is the silent voice that speaks into visibility all the life there is. This power builds with hands deft beyond the comprehension of man and keeps going, with all its intricate machinery, universe upon universe, one within another, yet never conflicting. All its building is from center to circumference. The evidence for this runs from the molecule and the atom of the physicist to the mighty swing of a universe of planets around their central sun.

7. Every act of man has its origin in thought, which is expressed into the phenomenal world from a mental center that is but a point of radiation for an energy that lies back of it. That point of radiation is the conscious I, which in its correct relation is one with Cause, and has at its command all the powers potential in Cause. The conscious I can look in two directions--to the outer world where the thoughts that rise within it give sensation and feeling, which ultimate in a moving panorama of visibility; or to the world within, whence all its life, power, and intelligence are derived. When the I looks wholly within, it loses all sense of the external; it is then as the Hindu yogi sitting under his banyan tree with his eyes riveted on the point of his nose, denying his very existence until his body is paralyzed. When it looks wholly without, upon sensation and feeling, it loses its bearings in the maze of its own thought creations. Then it builds up a belief of separateness from, and independence of, a causing power. Man sees only form, and makes his God a personal being located in a city of dimensions. This belief of separateness leads to ignorance, because all intelligence is derived from the one Divine Mind, and when the soul thinks itself something alone, it cuts itself off in consciousness from the fount of inspiration. Believing himself separate from his source, man loses sight of the divine harmony. He is like a musical note standing alone, looking upon other notes but having no definite place upon the great staff of nature, the grand symphony of life.

8. Life is a problem solvable by a principle whose essence is intelligence, which the wise man always consults. The ignorant and headstrong trusts to his intellect alone to carry him through, and he is always in a labyrinth of errors.

9. A belief prevails that God is somewhat inaccessible; that He can be approached only through certain religious ordinances; that is, a man must profess religion, pray in a formal way, and attend church in order to know God. But these are mere opinions that have been taught and accepted by those who perceive the letter instead of the spirit. For if God is Spirit, the principle of intelligence and life, everywhere present at all times, He must be just as accessible as a principle of mathematics and fully as free from formalism. When a mathematician finds that his answer to a problem is not correct, he consults the principle and works out the correct solution. He knows that all mathematical problems in here in mathematical principles and that only through them can they be worked correctly. If he persistently ignored principles and blundered around in a jungle of experiments, he would be attempting to get up “some other way,” and he would prove himself a “thief and a robber,” for there is but one way. Jehovah God, infinite Mind in expression, is the way, and this Mind is always within reach of every man, woman, and child.

10. It is not necessary to go in state to God. If you had a friend at your elbow at all times who could answer your every question and who loved to serve you, you certainly would not feel it necessary to go down on your knees to him or ask a favor with fear and trembling.

11. God is your higher self and is in constant waiting upon you. He loves to serve, and will attend faithfully to the most minute details of your daily life. If you are a man of the world, ask Him to help you to success in any line that you may choose, and He will show you what true success is. Use Him every hour of the day. If you are in doubt about a business move, no matter how trivial, close your eyes for an instant and ask the silent one within yourself what to do, just as you would send a mental message to one whom you know and who could catch your thought. The answer may not come instantly; it may come when you least think of it, and you will find yourself moved to do just the right thing. Never be formal with God. He cares no more for forms and ceremonies than do the principles of mathematics for fine figures or elaborate blackboards.

12. You cannot use God too often. He loves to be used, and the more you use Him the more easily you use Him and the more pleasant His help becomes. If you want a dress, a car, a house, or if you are thinking of driving a sharp bargain with your neighbor, going on a journey, giving a friend a present, running for office, or reforming a nation, ask God for guidance, in a moment of silent soul desire.

13. Nothing is too wicked or unholy to ask God about. In my early experience in the study of Christian metaphysics, I was told that through the power of Divine Mind I could have anything I desired. I had a lot I wanted to sell and I asked God to dispose of it to a certain man who I thought needed it. That night I dreamed that I was a bandit holding up my customer. The dream showed me that I was asking God to do what was not right and I thereby gained a lesson. A saloonkeeper came to me for health treatments and was helped. He said: “I also need treatments for prosperity, but of course you could not prosper a man in my business.” I replied: “Certainly. God will help you to prosper. ‘If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name’ does not exclude saloonkeepers.” So we treated the man for prosperity. He afterward reported that he was out of the saloon business, and had found prosperity in other lines of work.

14. If you are doing things that are considered wicked, you will find swift safety in asking God first, then acting or refraining, as you are moved. Some people act as if they thought that they could hide themselves from the one omnipresent intelligence, but this is the conclusion of thoughtlessness. God knows everything you do, and you might just as well have His advice. God does not want you to reverence Him with fear. God certainly never can get your confidence if you constantly stand in quaking fear of Him. He will do you a favor just as quickly if you ask in a jolly, laughing way as He would if you made your request in a long, melancholy prayer. God is natural, and He loves the freedom of the little child. When you find yourself in His kingdom it will be “as a little child.”

15. God’s kingdom of love and unity is now being set up in the earth. His hand will guide the only ship that will ever sail into the Arcadian port, and the contented, peaceful, and happy people that throng its decks will sing with one voice: “Glory to God in the highest.”

Lesson 2. Microorganisms

And out of the ground Jehovah God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them: and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof.--Gen. 2:19.

THE AUTHOR of Genesis was evidently a great metaphysician. He described Being as God, Jehovah God, and Adam. We would express the same truth in the terms Mind, idea, and manifestation. The manifestation is always the self-conscious, hence the limited; this is Adam. But Mind, idea, and manifestation are one. Manifestation rests upon and is sustained by the idea, and the idea is encompassed by the Mind that conceives it; therefore the real Adam is Jehovah God, and the omnipresent fount of Jehovah God is Elohim God. This being true, man has no permanent existence while he is wholly in the consciousness of the personal estate. The Adam condition is not all of his being; it is merely a part. His being is summed up in a consciousness of God, Jehovah God, and Adam. These three are not separated, but are present in everyone. The only walls of separation are those built by consciousness of separation. When wisdom is found and its conditions are complied with, the consciousness of the omnipresence of the three in one is proclaimed: “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works.”

2. Adam is perfectly legitimate in his right place, and that place is the consciousness of the omnipresence of the Father; here he is back again in the Garden of Eden. Adam has a very important place in creation, in that he is the factor in the manifestation of Being that names or gives character to its potentialities. Man is more than Adam; Adam is a part of man’s consciousness. Adam is your intellect, but you transcend the intellect. You form your intellect--Adam--from the “dust of the ground”; that is, from the omnipresent substance, and through it as a kind of reflecting lens, you give character to your surroundings.

3. Those familiar with the operations of the intellect, tell us that it is constantly making images of the ideas that float into its surroundings. It is when we know this that we are astonished at the metaphysical depth of Genesis. Jehovah God is described as bringing “every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens” to Adam “to see what he would call them.”

4. The beasts of the field are the ideas in Being pertaining to organized life, and the birds of the heavens are ideas of spiritual life. It is our intellect or Adam that gives character to both ideal conditions; it is through him that man makes his heaven or his hell. Among the disciples of Jesus, Peter represented one aspect of the I AM. He had been in a measure opened to the light of Spirit, and his power over ideas had been recognized. “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This is a repetition on a higher plane of the allegory of Jehovah God’s bringing to Adam the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heavens to see what he would call them.

5. He who studies Mind may know how to “discern the signs of the times.” He becomes familiar with certain underlying principles and he recognizes them in their different masks in “the whirligig of time.” Under the veil of historical symbology the Scriptures portray the movements of Mind in its different cycles of progress. These cycles repeat themselves over and over again, but each time on a higher plane. Thus the sphere or circle is a type of the complete Mind, but in manifestation the circles are piled one on top of another in an infinite spiral.

6. We today are repeating the mental circle of two thousand years ago. The descent of Spirit into the earth consciousness, as symbolized by the life and the death of Jesus, is being re-enacted in our age. The idea of a personal Messiah has been raised to include Messiahship for all who will drink of the waters of life that are now being poured out upon mankind; it includes all who will dwell in the fadeless, immanent light, the Christ of God.

7. But principles do not change; man makes his heaven or his hell, just as he did two thousand or two million years ago. In the days of Moses the Egyptians refused to give freedom to the Israelites (their spiritual ideas), and they saw frogs, lice, locusts, and blood in earth, air, and water. Today those who contend for the Egyptian darkness of the intellect see disease germs, death microbes, and destructive animalcules in the same earth, air, and water.

8. It is now almost universally accepted by physicians that the majority of diseases are caused by minute forms of life commonly called microorganisms. Each disease--cancer, consumption, diphtheria, croup, and so forth--has its specific microbe. These microbes may be seen with very strong microscopes, and the form and the character of the different varieties are described by such experts as Pasteur and Koch, whose antidotes for these destructive little germs have been widely advertised. Their remedy consists in destroying the microbe--they do not attempt to explain his origin. They find the little worker busy in the bodies of mankind, and they seek to put him out of action, not asking whence he came nor whither he may go.

9. The reflective mind is not satisfied with this superficial way of dealing with such destructive agents. It asks their cause, but no answer is vouch-safed on the part of those who study microbes. Only the students of mind can answer the question of the origin of disease germs, and only in terms of mind can there be given a rational explanation of these minute life forms.

10. The Adam man, the intellect, is responsible for all the microbes. He gives character to all the ideas that exist--he “names” them. This process is intricate, and it may be explained and understood in its details only by metaphysicians of the deepest mental insight, but it is summed up in what is commonly called thinking. Many factors enter into the process of thinking. The capacity of the thinker to form thoughts, to give them substance and force, is the great factor. The understanding of right and wrong, truth and error, substance and shadow, is also important. Many other significant conditions enter into that mental process loosely termed thinking.

11. But we should not be ignorant of the fact that every mental process is generative, that from thinking is evolved what is called living. Thinking is formative--every thought clothes itself in a life form according to the character given it by the thinker. This being true, it must follow that thoughts of health will produce microbes whose office is to build up healthy organisms, that thoughts of disease will produce microbes of disorder and destruction. Here we have the connecting link between materia medica and metaphysics. The physician observes the ravages of the disease microbe, but is at a loss to account for its source; the metaphysician stands in the factory of Mind and sees thoughts poured into visibility as microbes. This opens up a field of causes unlimited in extent. Every thought that flits through the mind of every man, woman, and child in the universe, produces a living organism, a microbe of a character like its producing thought. There is no escape from this conclusion, no escape from the mighty possibilities of good and ill that rest with the thinker.

12. Take an illustration by observing the various stages of the law in the case of diphtheria. A child is attacked, the doctor is called, and from symptoms he detects the disease. He communicates his fears to the family, and in addition to the diphtheria microbe, another of more deadly character begins its inroads upon the nerve centers of the whole family, including the weakened and therefore doubly susceptible patient; this is the microbe of fear, which paralyzes life throughout the body. When these microbes have done their work up to a certain point, still another is created to complete it--the microbe of death.

13. This may seem an exaggeration, but we have the authority of Dr. Parker, a physician of New York, who states that he has discovered the microbe of death and experimented with it. A newspaper article, describing his discovery, says:

Death is caused by a certain specific microbe that can be recognized and bred, just as the microbes of various diseases have been discovered and propagated by Koch, Pasteur, and other bacteriologists. The labors of these great men have made further discovery possible, and it was through the study of their achievements that Dr. Parker conceived the idea that, inasmuch as disease was caused by these infinitesimal derangers of the human system, the culmination of disease must have its own specific microbe to put the finish to the work of dissolution, without which the various organs of the body, distempered and degraded from their pristine purity and vital activity, would remain a purulent mass of living corruption, unable to resolve itself into its primal elements and to form other combinations, a process which we see taking place every day as defunct animal matter sinks into the earth, or vanishes into the air to afford food for new and active organisms.

14. This is not at all improbable, but the discovery might properly have been anticipated by the metaphysician. If thought is creative, it must cover every phase of life; every thought must form its microbe; every life expression must have originated in some thought. These propositions are axiomatic, and when one familiar with mind discovers a microbe he should know just what idea in the Adam consciousness, or intellect, gave it form and name.

15. Anger, jealousy, malice, avarice, lust, ambition, selfishness, and in fact all of the detestable ideas that mankind harbors, produce living organisms after their kind. If we had microscopes strong enough, we should find our body to be composed of living microbes, doing to the best of their ability the tasks which intellect has set before them.

16. If you have said, “I hate you,” there have been created in your atmosphere hate germs that will do the work for which you created them. If one’s enemies alone were attacked by these microbes of thought, the law would not be so severe, but they have no respect for anyone, and are likely to turn upon the body of their creator and tear it down. Doctors are especially industrious in suggesting microbes in their particular line. They make a new disease, or rename an old one; each is indued with its specific microbe that gives it standing among the people who believe in such things, and its inventor goes down in medical history as a benefactor of the race.

17. So the fears, the doubts, the poverty, the sin, the sickness, the thousand erroneous states of consciousness have their microbes. These organisms whose office it is to make men miserable do their work to the very best of their ability. They are not responsible for their existence; they are the formed vehicles of thought, and are the servants of those who gave them life. So it is not to the microbes that the wise regulator of affairs should look, but to those who are creating them and thereby bringing into existence discord and disease.

18. Remedies beyond number are advertised for microbes, but they are guaranteed to kill the germ only. What is needed is a medicine that will prevent its appearance. To apply the remedy to the poor little microbe is like trying to stop the manufacture of counterfeit money by destroying all that is found in circulation.

19. All counterfeit thought comes from the intellect, which alone originates the disease germ and the destructive microbe. We need go no farther than this disobedient Adam to find the cause of all the ills to which humanity has become slave. Wisdom is not an attribute of the intellect. The assumption that its observations are a source of wisdom is the one thing against which the Lord God especially warned Adam. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” This very clearly indicates the inability of the intellect, on its own account, to set up a standard of knowledge of good and evil; it also declares the end to which Adam will come if he disregards the prohibition specified.

20. That there is something wrong in the present standard of good is evidence by the variety of opinions in the world as to what is good and what is evil. There should be no question on such vitally important points, and there would not be if the intellect would relinquish its claim to a knowledge of good and evil, and would relegate to Spirit the offices of wisdom and understanding.

21. The intellect is the formative, character-giving mechanism in the man; it draws its substance and intelligence from Spirit. Like the prism through which the ray of white light is passed, it shows the potentialities of Spirit. If it looks within and seeks the guidance of Spirit, it reflects divine ideas upon the screen of visibility. This is the plan that the Lord has for it, and it is building according to that plan only when it admits that there is a higher source of wisdom than itself, when it submits to wisdom, for approval or disapproval, the ideas that it conceives.

22. The manifestation of life is through the Adam consciousness, which is, in a way, attached to and responsible for the forms thus made visible.

Hence the reform--the transformation--of existing conditions must be made from the standpoint of Adam as an important factor. To ignore Adam is to slight one of the established creations of Jehovah God. If Adam was not a part of the divine plan, why was he formed from the dust of the earth, the breath of life breathed into him, and a living soul capacity given to him?

23. No, we are not to erase Adam, but we are to transform him. He is not a safe guide in anything; his conclusions are derived from observation of conditions as he sees them in the external world. He judges according to appearance, which is but one side of the whole. Appearances say that microbes are dangerous and destructive, but one who is familiar with their origin is not alarmed, because he knows that there is a power and wisdom stronger and wiser than the ignorant intellect. It is to this power that we are compelled to go before we can right the wrongs that now dominate the minds of men. There is but one fount of wisdom, and that is Wisdom itself.

24. The belief that wisdom is attained through the study of things is an error prevalent in this age. They who wait upon the Lord shall be wise. That the wisdom of health can be evolved from the study of disease microbes is a concept of the intellect in its tendency to look without instead of within. The without, the universe of things formed, is not and never can be a source of wisdom. The things formed are the result of efforts to combine wisdom and love, and their character indicates the success or the failure of the undertaking. When wisdom and love have been invoked, and their harmony has been made manifest in the thing formed, God is manifest.

25. We love to name or give character to the ideas of Jehovah God, because it is our office in the grand plan of creation to do so. The glory of the Father is thus made manifest through the Son. In no other way can the ideas in Being be made manifest, and man should rise to the dignity of his office and formulate them according to the plans of Divine Mind.

26. Disease germs and microbes would quickly disappear from the earth if men would consult God before passing judgment upon His creations. It is not man’s province to give form to anything but what will be a pleasure in God’s eye. If he makes microbes, it is because he thinks microbe thoughts. When he thinks God thoughts he will form only the beauties of nature and mankind, and there will no longer be anything in all his world that will cause a fear or a moment of pain. God is not the author of this condition of so-called “progress from matter to mind”; God is the one source from which and of which man makes his existence.

27. There is a law of unfoldment in Being, a law as exact as the progressive steps in a mathematical problem in which no error is made, a law as harmonious as that which governs a musical production where discord has found no place. But microbes and disease germs are not a part of this divine law. They are as far removed from it as would be error in the steady, careful steps in the progressive unfoldment of numbers, or false notes in symphony or song.

28. It does not require labored arguments or hard thinking to see how easily the problems of life would be made orderly and divine if men would let the Lord into their mind. Jesus said that the yoke was easy and the burden light. He was victor over all the hard conditions to which men and women think themselves yoked, and He made light of sin, disease, and poverty, by annulling them and preaching boldly in the face of an adverse theology that it was the prerogative of the Son of man to blot these errors from the world of mankind.

29. There is a royal road for every man--a road in which he will be conscious of the dominion that is his by divine right. That road, Jesus said, leads out from the I AM. As Moses delivered the Children of Israel from the Egyptian darkness of their ignorance by affirming in their ears the power of the I AM, so Jesus gives us a series of affirmations that will deliver us from the wilderness of ignorance. His command is “Keep my word.” Then His words are set before us: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” “I am the resurrection, and the life.” “I am the light of the world.” “I am meek and lowly in heart.” “Before Abraham was born, I am.”

30. I AM is the polar star around which all the thoughts of man revolve. Even the little, narrow concept of the personal “I am” may be led out into the consciousness of the great and only I AM by filling its thought sphere with ideas of infinite wisdom, life, and love.

31. “Hitch your wagon to a star,” said Emerson. Your wagon is that which carries you along. Your I AM is that which carries you up or down, to heaven or to hell, according to the idea to which you have attached it. Then hitch it to a star and let it carry you to the broad expanse of heaven. There is room aplenty--you will not knock elbows with anyone if you get out of the surging crowd and hitch your I AM to the star of spiritual understanding.

32. Cease making disease microbes, and turn your attention to higher things. Make love alive by thinking love. Make wisdom the light of the world by affirming God’s omnipresent intelligence. See in mind the pure substance of God, and it will surely appear. This is the way to destroy microbes--that is the antidote for disease germs. The real, the enduring things of God are to be brought into visibility in just this simple way. This is the way in which the I AM makes itself manifest. The method is so easy that the man of great intellect passes it by; it is so plain that a simpleton may understand it; a college education is not necessary. One does not have to know about anything whatsoever except God. How easy it is, how light the burden! No long, tedious years of study; no delving into depths of intricate theories and speculations about molecules, atoms, and ethers, but just a simple, childlike attention directed to the everywhere present Spirit, and a heart filled with love and goodness for everything. “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes.”

33. “The soul of things is sweet, the heart of Being is celestial rest; stronger than woe is will; that which was good doth pass to better, best.

34. “Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels, none other holds you that ye live and die, and whirl upon the wheel, and hug and kiss its spokes of agony, its tire of tears, its nave of nothingness. Behold, I show you truth! Lower than hell, higher than heaven, outside the utmost stars, farther than Brahm doth dwell, before beginning and without an end, as space eternal and as surety sure, is fixed a power divine which moves to good. Only its laws endure.”

Lesson 3. The I Am In Its Kingdom

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates; The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. --Shakespeare

IDEAS ARE hinged; they swing in and they swing out. Not everyone has observed this. But everyone must observe it, and note also the swing of his particular ideas. An idea that swings in has a mission. It is of Spirit, and has power to do far beyond an idea that swings out and dissipates its forces in the whirl of the periphery. On the inner side, ideas behold the great wisdom and attach themselves to it; then they lose their identity as limited things and take on the unlimited.

2. A single idea born of wisdom is irresistible.

No one can estimate the power for good that is in an idea generated in the center of the home of ideas, the inner man. When an idea comes from that great galaxy of supreme ideas it goes forth in strength and harmony. It is a perfect sphere with no point liable to friction or collision.

3. A man once conceived the idea of building a ship, water-tight above and below. He put his idea into visibility and sent the ship forth on the waves. At first it rode the sea with comparative safety; but storms came, the waves dashed against it, and it went down. Why? Because he had not ballasted it. It was secure above and below from the elements, but it was not equalized in the rolling waves.

4. You are daily, hourly conceiving ideal ships and sending them out upon the waves of the angry sea of human thoughts. They are apparently water-tight; they carry your highest aspirations and desires. You look longingly for their return, but they do not come. Why is it? They were staunchly built according to human plans. But something was lacking. You failed to put your soul into them. They were shells, without depth or hold or cargo of love.

5. All the mental ships that you send out upon the turbulent seas of human thought must be ballasted with your heart’s love or they will eventually founder. They may float safely for a season, but the reefs wait for them in the distance, and you may watch in vain for their return.

6. I AM is expressed through I will; it is the business of I AM to know when the I will activities are ideally true. In its right relation in Being, I AM never possesses or owns anything. All things in the universe are its to use, but it must not claim them as personal property.

7. If the wheel that rests in the water and communicates energy to the machinery of the mill should suddenly become possessed with conscious volition and proceed to dip out a portion of the stream as its individual property, it would well represent the position of the I AM that attempts to separate its powers and capacities from universal Mind.

8. The I AM is pure Spirit, without parts or passions. It is the prism through which the white light of Being is focused and refracted on the screen of visibility in many colors.

9. But the I AM is not inertia--it is ever spurred on by an original impulse to know. Knowing is not complete as long as a single factor of Being is left out by him who seeks to know.

10. The I AM has its being in heaven; its home is in the realm of perfect ideals, the Christ within, but it has its freedom. It loves to be. To be is to enjoy. To enjoy is for the time to be that which we enjoy. When you are absorbed in the recital of an interesting story, you are lost to all else. The I AM is for the moment identified with that which it enjoys. Here is the solution of a great mystery--how the I AM ever came to separate itself from its sphere of wisdom.

11. But it is wonderfully simple when you understand it. You are demonstrating the so-called fall of man every time you lose yourself in the whirl of sense pleasure. The mission of the I AM is happiness.

It seeks joy and bliss; they are set before it in unstinted measure, and it revels in their intoxicating draughts, but the mastery of the higher mind should ever be maintained.

12. But sensations of pleasure originate in and depend for their vitality upon the central I AM, and when man follows things and forgets the source, he eventually finds the pleasure waning. The impetus grows less and less until that which in the beginning was pleasure becomes so slow of action that its inertia leaves the impression of pain.

13. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are the inherent birthright of every one of us. We exist to that end, and by our constant effort to attain perpetual joy we recognize it as our natural state.

14. That our efforts are not always crowned with success should cause us to pause and consider. Have we not left out some factor necessary to happiness? If so, what is it?

15. We think of heaven as a place of unending happiness, and we have been taught that it is somewhere in the skies. But in the geography of the universe, heaven has not been authoritatively marked. Jesus Christ, of all those claiming intimate acquaintance with spiritual things, gave heaven definite location. He often referred to the Father dwelling in Him; He also told others that the Spirit of God dwelt in them. As a climax He definitely located heaven “within you.”

16. This statement has always been looked upon by the world’s people as a figure of speech, and even metaphysicians who have delved into the abstractions of mind have had vague ideas about there being such a place as heaven within them. They have said it was a state, a condition.

17. So it is, but it is also a place. It is not outside your body today, and inside it tomorrow, nor is it possible for heaven to exist anywhere but right at the center of what seems to you to be the physical. This insistence upon the location of heaven is a startling proposition to those who have postulated mind as universal, without bounds.

18. We are seeking to get into the kingdom of heaven where all things shall be added, and it is proper that we should know where that kingdom is. All that we really know about ourselves at present comes to us by comparison with the “things which appear.” We have a body, which we clearly perceive is moved by an invisible principle called mind. We have never seen this mind or felt it or sensed it in any way.

19. We know that certain combinations of thought produce effects upon the sense nature. The action takes place from the center of consciousness, the physical body. Then, so far as we are concerned, the mystery of Being is wrapped in and around that which we are wont to call clay. Do not mistake the proposition and assume that the physical man as he now appears to your comprehension is the summum bonum of existence. This is not the claim. The claim is that to your consciousness the corporeal man surrounds and gives definite place to that which you seek--”the kingdom of God . . . within you.”

20. The argument is frequently brought forward that the “lesser cannot contain the greater.” This is but a play upon words, so far as the relations of mind are concerned. We know that in Being there can be no greater and no lesser. Mind is not a thing; Mind is. It is that which, through orderly process, produces the thing. This orderly process, we have learned by observation, is from an invisible center to a visible circumstance. So if anywhere in the universe you behold a form, you may know that within that form there is a potential center from which spring all its qualities. That the invisible cause is or is not confined to that form is not essential to the proposition. So far as the sentient identity of the form itself is concerned, its source of intelligence and life is always within, and it can never know anything about its cause except from that center.

21. When an astronomer sees a system of planets describing geometric circles, he knows without looking that there is at the center of those circles a power which holds them in place. Every atom in the human body is like a miniature planet revolving about its own invisible center, and all the atoms revolve about a great center within. I have discovered this to be an absolute fact in my own experience. I have, by persistent practice, learned to drop my attention from the head to a point under the heart. This is separating the I AM from the personal, or limited consciousness, and connecting it with the universal, or spiritual consciousness, with which it forms a union at the point mentioned. When my I AM touches this inner center there springs into its consciousness a wonderful vibration, and to every part of the body strong currents of energy are transmitted. At this point I seem to be in touch with all creation; the barriers of form are as nothing; there is only a great sea of throbbing life.

22. I am but a novice in this inner exploration, but I have penetrated far enough to know that it is the undiscovered country for which all are seeking. I have not only found the invisible center of my consciousness, but many subcenters, and so many marvelous things in connection therewith that I could not, for lack of comparisons, describe them, even if I knew a language that would convey to the natural man a conception of their marvels and the joy and the satisfaction that they give to the soul.

23. I have proved to my own satisfaction that when Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you,” He meant it literally and not figuratively. There is within every one a place, a conscious sphere of mind, having all the attractions described or imagined as belonging to heaven. My most exalted ideas of the joys of heaven never anticipated the ecstatic thrill that suffuses my whole being while I rest in Spirit at this center within. In the redemption of man from sin, the outer thoughts are made to conform to the inner ideas. This is regeneration, in which man is saved from his evil thoughts--Satan--and permanently united with his good thoughts--Christ. This is my work and your work--to conform to the within.

24. It seems marvelous that we should be so totally unconscious of this undiscovered country right under our heart. When I drop down there and feel its sweetness and light, and the inner voice tells me that this heaven exists in everyone else, as it does in me, I cannot comprehend how we have been so long ignorant of it. Yet I know that before the discovery of the circulation of the blood, men knew nothing about the intricate canal system within their own bodies. Then why should it be improbable that still deeper within exists another realm on a different plane?

25. But this kingdom within is not material--it is spiritual. In it is the seat of the king, and when we become sufficiently acquainted with it, we shall be able to reign from the throne that was prepared for us from the beginning.

26. This inner country is the domain of that superior wisdom which we term the Christ. Jesus called this place of wisdom the Father within Him, and to it He ascribed all His power and wisdom.

27. It is not created for our especial benefit, nor do we evolve it through thinking! it is that Word which was in the beginning with God, which is with God, which is God; we simply recognize it, and through recognition we realize its presence.

28. The theory that we are progressing from a lower to a higher state is not tenable when viewed from this inner place of understanding. When we touch its shining shore, we suddenly seem to know that we are at home again; that there has somehow been a departure, a separation of the I AM from its rightful place in the bosom of the Father.

29. That man has wandered away from and lost consciousness of his wisdom sphere, is claimed by all ancient teachers of inner truths. The banishment of Adam from the Garden of Eden is an allegory based upon this truth, and the four Gospels reiterate again and again that the mission of Jesus of Nazareth was to find that which was lost; not that the real man is lost or in condemnation, but the I, the man identity, has gone “into another country” and is lost to his spiritual consciousness.

30. That this sphere of wisdom is present in what has come to be known as the subjective consciousness of man is demonstrated in a certain measure in hypnotic experiments. The I of the hypnotized subject is temporarily separated from the external and thrown onto the internal plane, where it functions in marvelous manner in matters pertaining to mental action. This has given rise to the theory of two egos, the subjective and the objective.

31. The fact is that there is but one ego, one I, and its domain of consciousness is not limited to the things of sense, but is meant to range all creation from the within to the without. Instead of considering these sporadic cases of a higher sense in man as abnormal, we should know that they are normal and that the limitations and ignorance of the five-sense man is the abnormal.

32. The regaining of this lost consciousness is a matter that rests between God and man. We cannot get into this “kingdom” through such artificial means as mesmerism, hypnotism, mediumship, or any other “short cut” to spirituality.

33. The I AM can never be coerced or robbed of its perfect freedom, and all attempts in that line will meet with final disaster. When we have once decided to return to the Father’s house, to regain this lost estate within, it is an easy road. It may seem hard at the start, because we have to throw away so much baggage, but it grows easier as we get closer and closer to the great heart of the loving Father. A Helper has been provided, the “Spirit of truth . . . shall guide you into all the truth”; all we have to do is to seek honestly and sincerely to enter in. “Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” This promise is to everyone.

Lesson 4. How Shall The Dead Be Raised?

AS DISCIPLES of Jesus Christ, we are commanded to “raise the dead.” To understand this part of our mission clearly, we should acquaint ourselves with the philosophy of death; we should know what it is and how it came about.

2. Death is defined by Webster as “cessation of all vital functions without capability of resuscitation.” This, like all definitions derived from sense observations, is quite incomplete. It gives us no idea of the relation that death bears to its polar opposite, life; and no idea of the process through which life passes in order to appear absent in that which has “cessation of all vital functions.” Following this to a final analysis, we find that we must understand life before we can apprehend that appearance of its absence in a form called death.

3. In this, as in all other investigations of Truth on the basis of the correct premise, we find that we can never get at any right relation by examining the negative side only. One could not correct the errors in a mathematical calculation without first understanding the rules governing numbers. Some people think they can learn how to be healthy by studying disease; but they get further and further into disease when they study it as an entity. The study of health as a real principle involved in the being of man leads to the discovery of its foundation--mental harmony.

4. In metaphysics the beginning students insist upon having evil explained to them--how it originated, and why it has place in existence--when good is the origin of all that is. They worry and they play their thoughts upon this question until in sheer desperation they, as a rule, give it up. The tangle of a good God and a bad Devil will not straighten itself out from their plane of perception. The trouble is that they do not know enough about the good. They want to know all about the evil without first being acquainted with the positive side of the question. They are like children who know nothing about the harmony of music, yet insist upon a full explanation of discords before they will go on with their lessons. To know about evil we must first become thoroughly familiar with good.

5. We find in our investigation of the character and the place of death that by studying death alone we can get no clue that will lead us to even a single fact. It has no foundation in itself. Every definition we can frame implies that death is the absence of something, and we are forced to inquire into that which is absent before we can know the meaning of the condition that the absence seems to cause.

6. When we have made ourselves familiar with life, we shall know all about death without studying it at all. We shall know it from its true standpoint--absolute negation--as that which might be if life were not all. Those who worry over the cause of evil always find, when they drop their investigations from the negative standpoint and go over to the positive and make themselves familiar with the good, that all their questions are answered by the good itself, because it and it only can explain all the vagaries that arise in the consciousness where good is not constantly recognized.

7. A study of life reveals it to be an expression of Being that gives rise to animation, vivacity, vigor, energy. We learn that life may appear in a form in superabundance, accompanied by but little intelligence. We perceive that the character of life is determined by the intelligence that it exercises. We find that the life expressed in and through our own body requires the husbanding, directing power of our intelligence. But life stimulates the lower as well as the higher faculties. Right here many people do not exercise wisdom in their living. They think that because life stimulates the faculties, each of these should be gratified as it desires. The desires of the animal man are thus permitted their full exercise; the share of life force that should go to the intellectual and spiritual man is wasted, and he is robbed of his sustenance because he does not understand the law of his being.

8. We find that life is a principle; that it is inherent in Being, everywhere present at all times; that it is manifest to consciousness through vehicles; that these vehicles are animated by life according to their capacity or power to express it; that that capacity or power of expression is governed by the idea of life that is infused into it by the generative energy of the I AM.

9. Electricity, for example, is everywhere as invisible potentiality. It may be brought into expression and use through a motor. Some people think that the size of an electric motor is the measure of its power. This is not true. It is the character of the coiled wires within that measures its capacity. Fine wire closely wound gives power to the motor. So a fine, intense, high perception of life, accompanied by a burning desire to express it in its purity, marks the highest form of the animated vehicle of God’s vitality.

10. Man is the highest expression of God; he manifests God’s life through his body. Physiologists long ago discovered that it is not the size of the body, nor its beauty, that determines its vitality, but the fineness of its texture.

11. Electricity is our best illustration of universal life. The greatest electrician in the world does not know the real character of electricity. He knows many ways to transform that universal energy into light, heat, power, and so on. Man’s body is the greatest of all transformers of life; in other words, what science has named electricity. The cell centers are the transformers and man, the I AM, is the directive agent. Infinite Mind expresses life in “waves and nothing but waves” according to Sir James Jeans. In the 1st chapter of Genesis it is written, “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Isaac Leeser, in his “Twenty-four Books of the Holy Scriptures,” translates it thus: “The spirit of God was waving over the face of the waters,” thus confirming the latest scientific conclusions. All the potentialities of Being are epitomized in this universal energy, the source of all existence. To the man who manipulates it outside of his body in mechanical devices it is electricity. To the metaphysician who concentrates it in the nerve and brain centers in his organism it is God-Mind, the “Father abiding in me” of Jesus.

12. Life in the body is governed by the hold that the I AM has on the idea of life. Its character is also tempered by the conservation that judgment and discretion exercise with respect to the other factors of expression. But let the idea of life be firmly grasped and put into practical use through thought and word, and the other factors fall into line.

13. The energy generated by a dynamo is expressed through action, and a suitable medium for its exercise must be provided. We find a parallel to this in our own life. Thinking and speaking are our methods of creating energy, and our body is the vehicle acted upon by the energy developed. We must think life into the living. Jesus at the raising of Lazarus first “lifted up his eyes.” He thus, through mental dynamics, connected His idea of the universality of life with universal life itself, and He was able to say, “I thank thee that thou heardest me. . . . And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.”

14. This event shows that we are to do more than merely perceive the omnipresence of life; to fulfill the whole law of manifestation we must speak life into visibility.

15. Yet again, we may perceive the truth that life is everywhere waiting to be spoken into all forms, and with a clear understanding of this truth we may speak the words of life and yet not get the anticipated results. What is the reason?

16. Going deeper into the factors constituting Being, we discover that life or energy must have substance through which to make itself manifest to consciousness. If we have wasted our substance in riotous living, our word is made fruitless because of lack of material upon which to work.

17. We should be as careful of the stored-up substance of the consciousness, of which the body is the lower stratum, as we are of the thoughts and words that we express. If our substance is being wasted in the lusts of the flesh, our word will lack in life-giving quality. Jesus cast out of His consciousness the limitations of matter; He mastered the appetites and the passions of the animal man and dissolved all fear of evil.

18. Jesus demonstrated the law of God, and His word was with power. He became the Word of God incarnate, because He fulfilled all the requirements of the law.

19. This fulfillment is the privilege of every man. Whoever dedicates his whole life to the supreme good and by devotion, right thinking, right doing, right acting, pure living, and pure speaking fulfills the law, may have all the power of Jesus. God is no respecter of persons, but He requires an exact observance of the law to the least jot and tittle.

20. So we say that we cannot explain death without first having an acquaintance with life, an acquaintance with life that carries with it an acquaintance with God. We must go back to the supreme cause before we can get a complete explanation of the origin of an effect.

21. In the matter of life, we discover by following the clues given us in our own experience that they point to intelligence as well as to force. In other words, life falls far short of its mission if it is not equalized by intelligence. Yet thousands who are seeking health, which means more life, have no especial desire to become acquainted with God. Many think that health and fullness of life may be had without God, and when asking the help of a metaphysician they often stipulate that they shall be given no religious doctrines with the treatments. They might with like consistency engage a locomotive without an engineer. All the ills and discords of humanity may be traced to one error--the indiscriminate and thoughtless use of life separated from intelligence.

22. What men need above all else in this day is more wisdom--more discretion in the use of the life that they have. More life with the same old destructive ignorance in using it would but add to their misery. Yet God does not dictate what shall be man’s choice in this or in any other act. If man finds the law through which life is made manifest in his consciousness, he may use it blindly and ignorantly if he so elects. But he must also abide by the results, and this is where man sets up his wail of sorrow; he does not like to reap his sowing.

23. Death came into our world through the ignorant use of life, and death can be put out only by a wise use of life. Death is the result of a wrong concept of life and its use. In the beginning of man’s experiments with the powers of Being, he had no concept of death. His consciousness was intact and his unfoldment in wisdom was gradual and orderly. But his desire to experiment predominated. Sensation was sweet and enticing; it absorbed so much of his attention that he forgot wisdom--he “hid” from his Lord--and the result is separation from his Eden, the divine harmony of the law.

24. When there is disorder in the working parts of a machine, it breaks down or flies to pieces. That is just what occurred in man’s body. When intelligence was no longer present in its full complement in his consciousness, there was lack of harmony, and this resulted in such disorder that the parts flew asunder--soul and body separated, and man named the dissolution death. Then in its train the fear caused by this dissolution was imaged in man’s mind, and he made it a secondary cause. So we find the mere belief in death in the world today slaying its thousands.

25. In raising the dead there are, then, two factors to deal with. The idea of the reality of death and the fear of death have both become destructive beliefs in the race consciousness, and they must be taken up and dissolved. The total unreality of death must be portrayed to the deluded consciousness. The omnipresence and the omnipotence of life are beyond dispute, and there can be no question that death is a condition set up in human consciousness alone. God is not dead; He does not recognize or countenance death; neither does man, when freed from its delusion. Jesus said, “Follow me; and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”

26. The first step in demonstrating over death is to get the belief entirely out of the mind that it is God-ordained, or that it is of force or effect anywhere in the realm of pure Being.

27. The next step is to live so harmoniously that the whole consciousness will be not only resurrected from its belief in death but so vivified and energized with the idea of undying life that it cannot dissolve or separate.

28. We regard the apostle’s words “dead through your trespasses and sins” as metaphorical. But an analysis of man, in the supermundane part of his being, reveals that sin or departure from divine law in the use of a faculty actually results in its death. That is, after violent exercise of a power there is such a reaction that it goes into a comatose state or “sleep of death.” Death is the failure on the part of man to sustain harmonious life in the body.

29. Death and sleep are brothers in a metaphysical sense. The life action is never wholly withdrawn from all parts of a form, but in the experience named death there is such cessation of vitality that dissolution of the outer shell takes place. Jesus pronounced death to be sleep, and said that the sleeper could be awakened when the vitality was restored in divine order. Jesus said that Lazarus was asleep, and added: “I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.”

30. But His disciples did not see deeply, and took it for granted that Lazarus had merely fallen into a trance or prolonged sleep, and said, “Lord, if he is fallen asleep, he will recover.” “Then Jesus therefore said unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.” Paul frequently referred to those who had dissolved the body as brethren who had “fallen asleep.” The Lord told Daniel, “But go thou thy way till the end be; for thou shalt rest, and shalt stand in thy lot, at the end of the days.”

31. Our poets in their inspired moments have caught this truth, and our literature is replete with references to the “sleep of death.” Hamlet, in his soliloquy, opens to us in a remarkable way the metaphysics of death:

To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.

32. We are not afraid to go to sleep at night, yet every time we lie down and fall into unconsciousness of the body, we are enacting in a small way the sleep of death. In one case the soul leaves the body for a few hours and again takes it up; in the other the soul leaves the body to mortal dissolution, yet it does not fail to return in due time and take up a body--so long as it believes in the limitation of sense. In the sleep of a single night, the one with a clear conscience rests peacefully and is strengthened for another day’s experience. But the guilty, anxious, worried sleeper is haunted by distressing dreams.

33. The experience of the death-sleeper is similar. If his life has been according to the Golden Rule, he “wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams”; his soul basks in the sunshine of a world Elysian and his hope of heaven is for a season fulfilled.

34. This, however, is but the rest that prepares him for another day’s experience in the workshop of Being. This process is repeated again and again, until man discovers that there is a law of living that obviates this repeated “sleep of death.” That law is revealed to all who seek to do the will of God and fulfill the law of life.

35. Here is where we find ourselves today. We know that this law of life is based on mind action and that through the mind we may resurrect ourselves from the dead.

36. As we explore the mental realm, which is our causative thought, we find it filled with a legion of narrow beliefs, foolish, ignorant beliefs, selfish beliefs, and discordant beliefs. These we have lumped together and denominated “mortal mind,” or “carnal mind.”

37. It is here that we first do our raising of the dead. Each of these beliefs of mortality is a sin. The meaning of “sin” is “missing the mark,” and these sense limitations miss the mark of divine Truth. The light of Truth must be turned into our consciousness and each of these sleepers must be awakened. Some of them may seem for a time to be beyond our power to resurrect; our most sanguine thoughts may lack faith at the prospect, and may cry out: “Lord, by this time the body decayeth.”

38. But the Christ power is with us. “Said I not unto thee, that, if thou believedst, thou shouldest see the glory of God?”

39. All things are possible to them that believe in the power of God within, waiting to be made manifest at their word. Then send forth that word and say to every sleeping belief of sense: “Lazarus, come forth.”

40. If you do not believe in the power of Spirit to resurrect your consciousness from its tomb of earthly superstitions, of course you may make no effort to do it. But if you have faith that it can be done, you can do it.

41. Beliefs of every kind take up their abode in the consciousness and make a home there. If you believe in old age and bodily decrepitude and decay, you will find that all the little cells throughout your organism are carrying in their depths just such pictures, as the clear waters of the lake reflect the trees and the clouds. If you want these obedient little cells of your soul and your body to reflect pictures of health and vigor undying, hold before them, in the heaven of your mind, clear images of these perfect states. Not only hold such images before them, but demand that they express those images perfectly. And do not forget to conserve your bodily energies by pure, careful thinking and living, in order that you may have the transparent substance in which your true thought images may be planted and, in their course, brought to fruitage.

42. Many who are faithful in holding right mental images do not get results, because they lack a receptacle; they let the lusts of the flesh dissipate all the clear water of life, and their good thoughts and their good words are returned to them void. Guard all the powers of your being if you would resurrect them from the dead. They do not stand alone, but are dependent on one another, and must all be brought into subjection to the Christ of God. Paul said, “Every man that striveth in the games exerciseth self-control in all things.”

43. The resurrection of the dead is the sure and certain work of the true Christian. We know that Jesus is the example that we are to follow, and we say with Paul:

If the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. . . . But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. . . . The last enemy that shall be abolished is death.

Lesson 5. The Development Of Divine Love

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! --Jesus.

Jesus weeping over Jerusalem is the picture of a great love welling up in the heart and flowing out to all the earth--the love of the good Father for His erring and willful children. Such is the love of Christ for His own; such is the love of God through Christ for all creation.

2. We may talk about the wisdom of God, but the love of God must be felt in the heart. It cannot be described, and one who has not felt it can have no concept of it from the descriptions of others. But the more we talk about love, the stronger it grows in the consciousness, and if we persist in thinking loving thoughts and speaking loving words, we are sure to bring into our experience the feeling of that great love that is beyond description--the very love of God.

3. It is popularly taught and believed that there is but one love; that God is love and that all love is from Him, hence that all love is God’s love.

4. Love is a divine principle and man can know it in its purity by touching it at its fountainhead. There it is not tinged in any way by man’s formative thought, but flows forth a pure, pellucid stream of infinite ecstasy. It has no consciousness of good or evil, pure or impure, but pours itself out in great oceans of living magnetic power, to be used by whosoever will.

5. Man has a faculty through which he receives love from Being; this faculty is commonly called the heart. The heart, however, is but the visible expression of an invisible center of consciousness. Sense discerns that man has a heart, but soul discerns an inner faculty in man through which he may express an attribute of Being. By his word, man calls his powers into activity, that through them he may manifest God.

6. Jesus was the orderly man of God, manifesting under divine law the attributes of Being. Jesus “called unto him his disciples”; that is, by His word He spiritually quickened and educated His twelve faculties. Peter, faith active in the thinking faculty, is the first disciple called. Peter is the rock foundation of that consciousness which is the church of Christ. You will find that the character of your whole consciousness depends upon how you think. You may have great love, but unless you guide it with right thoughts it will not build up a harmonious consciousness. Love poured through the heart of a mother who has fear in her thought, shatters the body of a delicate child. The thinker must be strong and sure in his grasp of right thoughts. The second disciple is Andrew, brother to Peter; he represents strength. James represents judgment, discrimination, the faculty that chooses the good and eschews the evil. This faculty must be brought out before love in its fullness is safe in the life of man. Love has not will and volition, except as they are infused into it by the other faculties. John is love, and he leaned on the Master’s bosom. This is to symbolize the innocence, tenderness, and dependence of love. Peter is bold, impetuous, executive--affirms his undying allegiance to the Master one moment and denies Him the next--but the loyalty and the constancy of love were dominant in the character of John.

7. We find that these four faculties, evenly balanced, will form the foundation of a harmonious body and mind.

8. You must think, and think with faith in both God and yourself--that is Peter.

9. You must think with strength and power--that is Andrew.

10. You must think with judgment and discretion--that is James.

11. You must center all your thought, your strength, and your judgment in love--that is John.

12. To Peter (the faithful thinker) is given the key to the kingdom of heaven, but he can never open the gate until he has reconciled all the other faculties. Many people in this day have found how much depends upon right thinking, and they are counting on getting into the kingdom of health and harmony by holding good thoughts only. They have not always taken into consideration the fact that the thinking faculty is merely the executive power in the consciousness, and that it depends upon many other faculties for the material out of which its thoughts are formed.

13. To think without strength is to bring forth weakly--without effect. To think without judgment is to bring forth malformed mental creations, good and evil, spirit and matter, sickness and health, life and death, and the thousand other Babylonish conditions found in the world. To think without love is to bring forth hate, discord, and inharmony.

14. So it is not thought alone that opens the way into the kingdom, but a right use of all the powers of mind and body centered in thought.

15. Thinking gives color, tone, shape, character, to all creation, but the essences or materials of creation are drawn from the realm of Spirit.

16. In the world we find love so turned awry by wrong thinking that it does not represent God. In its beginning it came forth from God, but it has been taken into “another country” of error thought and there wasted in riotous living.

17. Error thought has put greed into love, and we find that the love of money is “a root of all kinds of evil.” Error thought has said to love, “We are flesh and blood; this is my child, this is my husband, my father, my mother, my sister, my brother. We are separate from others.” Thus error thought has made love to serve it in family selfishness.

18. “And he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, and said, Behold, my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.” This is the love of God in its purity, fresh from the fountainhead.

19. Wherever love is tainted with selfishness, we may know that error thought has made muddy its clear stream, so that it no longer represents the purity of its source.

20. Love is the drawing power of mind. It is the magnet of the universe, and about it may be clustered all the attributes of Being, by one who thinks in divine order.

21. Many who have found the law of true thinking and its effect wonder why supply does not come to them after months and years of holding thoughts of bounty. It is because they have not developed love. They have formed the right image in mind, but the magnet that draws the substance from the storehouse of Being has not been set into action.

22. To demonstrate supply, we must think supply, and thus form it in the consciousness. We must conserve all the ideas of substance in the mind--and also the fluids of the body, their representatives--because we must have a base for our form. We must vibrate the love center in thought, word, and act. Then there will come to us on the wings of invisibility that which will satisfy every need. This is the secret of demonstrating plenty from the ethers.

23. “Love . . . taketh not account of evil.” Love never sees anything wrong in that which it loves. If it did, it would not be pure love. Pure love is without discriminating power. It simply pours itself out upon the object of its affection, and takes no account of the result. By so doing, love sometimes casts its pearls before swine, but its power is so great that it transforms all that it touches.

24. Do not be afraid to pour out your love upon all the so-called evil in the world. Deny the appearance of evil, and affirm the omnipotence and the omnipresence of love and goodness. Take no account of the evil that appears in your life and your affairs. Refuse to see it as evil. Declare that what seems evil has somewhere a good side, which shall through your persistent affirmation of its presence be made visible. By using this creative power of your own thought you will change that which seemed evil into good, and divine love will pour its healing balm over all.

25. Sickness is not good, because it is not of God; but if, through past ignorance in thought or act, a person finds himself in its grasp, he can hasten his deliverance by affirming the experience to be a good lesson that he will take to heart and profit by.

If he bemoans his sad fate, he throws the shadow of gloom into the healing waters of love, thereby corrupting them and weakening their restorative action for him.

26. Always remember that love is the great magnet of God. It is, of itself, neither good nor evil. These are qualities given to it by the thinking faculty in man. Whatever you see for your love, that it will draw to you, because as a magnet it attracts whatever you set your desire upon. To focus your love about self and selfish aims will cause it to draw around you the limited things of personality and the hollow shams of sense life. To focus your love upon money and the possessions of the material world will make you the slave of mammon, and will make your life a failure and a disappointment. To focus your love upon anything less than All-Good will eventually cause you to fall short of your highest aspiration, and will keep you outside the kingdom of heaven.

27. “Love suffereth long, and is kind.” Love does not resent injuries. It does not take affront and insult into account. Pure love does not recognize personality; hence when a person is in the consciousness of love, he cannot be hurt at what may be said to him or about him. “A soft answer turneth away wrath” is ever on the lips of love, and whoever makes this his thought focus will be able to reduce to peace and harmony the tides of impatience and anger that may be surging about him.

28. One with strong love and the right focal idea may control turbulent multitudes by his silent thought alone.

29. When we speak of the power of love, it should be understood that we mean power exercised through love. Power is a faculty of mind. It associates itself with some other faculty and in conjunction with that faculty it is made manifest. In the relation of man’s faculties in Divine Mind, power and love are associated in action, but in man’s present concept of relations he has associated intellect and power. From this wrong relation arise the tyranny and oppression so evident in the world.

30. Power should never be exercised except through love. Whoever associates his power and his intellect and attempts in a blind way to force his desire to fulfillment will always bring about discord and unrighteous oppression.

31. Power cannot be used successfully through intellect, because intellect lacks wisdom. Wisdom associates itself with love, and can be found in its purity only at the heart center, hence we speak of the “still small voice” within. Elijah found that the voice of God was not in the wind, not in the earthquake or the fire--these being of the intellect--but in the “still small voice.”

32. Intellect is not wise. Wisdom is not its office. Intellect is the executive officer of wisdom, and can do right only when faithfully carrying out the instructions of its principle.

33. We see how dangerous to the welfare of man it is for intellect to assume knowledge and to call upon power to help it in carrying out its unsubstantial ideas. Power is the faculty in mind that propels outward, and it must necessarily have balance in some other faculty in order to hold its equilibrium. There is but one other faculty that has opposite action, and that is love, whose office is attraction. When power and love are associated, the centrifugal and the centripetal forces of Being are equalized; man unifies all the work that the Lord God has given him to do, and his dominion over the forces of Being is exercised in peace and harmony. Peace and harmony are the focalizing ideas that chord with the divine nature of love, and when they are associated in the mind there is no limit to man’s power. It is said by those who know the power of spiritual forces that one man developed large enough in love might dissolve this planet with his word. But one so developed would never do anything to interfere in any way with the life and the rights of another. Love does not offend or take offense.

34. Among a certain class of Hindu mystics are those called Bhakti, or Disciples of Love. They know the power of love to protect and to care for them, and they cultivate it until all nature is in love with and befriends them. Thousands of the common people of India are killed annually by serpents and wild animals, yet these mystics have so brought forth the power of love in themselves that serpents and savage animals do not injure them. They live in the wildest jungles; during periods of silent devotion, lasting sometimes weeks and even months, they make the open forest their home. It is recorded that birds have built their nests in the hair of such devotees during their period of silence. They respect the rights of the tiniest insect, and under no circumstances kill anything or interfere with it in any way. When put to practical test, love always proves its divine origin and power.

35. You may trust love to get you out of your difficulties. There is nothing too hard for it to accomplish for you, if you put your confidence in it and act without dissimulation. But do not talk love and in your heart feel resentment. This will bring discord to your members and rottenness to your bones. Love is candor and frankness. Deception is no part of love; he who tries to use it in that sort of company will prove himself a liar, and love will desert him in the end.

36. There is no envy in love. Love is satisfaction in itself, not that satisfaction with personal self, its possessions and its attractions, which is vanity, but an inner satisfaction that sees good everywhere and in everybody. It insists that all is good, and by refusing to see anything but good it causes that quality finally to appear uppermost in itself and in all things. When only good is seen and felt, how can there be anything but satisfaction?

37. The one who has made union with divine love through his inner consciousness, who lets it pour its healing currents into his soul and his body, is fortunate beyond all description. Instead of envying another, he desires to show others the great joy that may be theirs when they have opened the floodgates of their love nature. Truly, “love envieth not.”

38. Yet with all these glorious possessions, beyond the power of man to describe, “love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.” Love does not brag about its demonstrations. It simply lives the life, and lets its works speak for it.

39. Love does not seek its own. It does not make external effort to get anything, not even that which intellect claims belongs to it. It is here that love proves itself to be the invisible magnet that draws to man whatever he needs. But instead of leaving this department of the work to love, intellect sees what it wants and in its blundering way goes about getting it. Thus the real begetting power in man has been ignored until its true office has been forgotten and its power has been suppressed.

40. When love, the universal magnet, is brought into action in the consciousness of our race, it will change all our methods of supplying human wants. It will harmonize all the forces of nature and will dissolve the discords that now infest earth and air. It will control the elements until they obey man and bring forth that which will supply all his needs, without the labor that is called the sweat of his face. The earth shall yet be made paradise by the power of love. That condition will begin to set in for each one just as soon as he develops the love nature in himself.

41. When love has begun its silent pulsations at one’s solar center, no one can keep one in want or poverty. From the invisible currents of the inner ether, love will draw to man all that belongs to him; and all belongs to him that is required to make him happy and contented.

42. This mighty magnet is a quality of God that is expressed through man, and it cannot be suppressed by any outside force. No environment or external condition can keep back love, when once you have firmly decided in mind to give it expression. The present unloving condition of the world is no bar to your exercise of love; in fact, it is an incentive. You will know, as you begin to make love manifest, how great a sinner you have been, how far you have fallen short of making yourself the man or the woman of God. This will show you by comparison how greatly you have missed the mark of the high calling that is yours in Christ.

43. We have been taught the beauties of love and its great power in the world, but no one else has explained that it has a center of action in the body, a center that was designed by the Creator to do a specific work. The man or the woman who has not developed the love center is abnormal, is living in only partial exercise of consciousness.

The love center has its nerves and muscles in the body. Through neglect these have become atrophied in nearly the whole race, but they are just as necessary to the perfect man as are legs and arms.

In fact they are more necessary. With the love center active, one might live happily and successfully without legs and arms; one might even grow new legs and arms in an adherence to the completeness of life in which love proves to be the fulfillment of the law of perfection.

44. The body is the instrument of the mind; no one has even seen his real body as it is in the sight of God, except through the mind. The body of flesh, bones, and blood that the eye of sense beholds is not the true body any more than the heart of flesh is the true organ of love.

45. The true body is an ethereal body, an indestructible body; the body of flesh is the grosser vibration that the sense consciousness beholds. The Spirit body is not absent or dead, but is simply inactive. When, through purification of his ideas and acceleration of his mental energies, man comes into sight of the real forces of Being, his whole body is quickened into new life, and the body of flesh responds to its vibrations. He does this work through the mind--by thinking right thoughts and doing right things also, because man is, in the ultimate, a unit, and the thinking and the doing cannot be separated.

46. To develop the love center, begin by affirming: From this time forth and forevermore I shall know no man after the flesh. I shall not see men and women as body and mortal thought. I shall always behold them with the eye of love, which sees only perfection. Ask daily that love be made alive in you, that it take up its abode at your magnetic center, and make it alive with strong, steady pulsations of spiritual energy.

47. Let your attention rest for a few moments every day at the heart center in your body, the cardiac plexus, while you declare silently: You are the abode of love. You are filled and thrilled with the mighty magnetic forces that love uses in doing its work. You are powerful and active to do only good, and you see only goodness and purity everywhere.

48. Many people say that they cannot see love in others who are not manifesting it clearly--that they themselves do not feel loving and therefore cannot exercise love. But this development of one’s own love center will make one see it, just as the eye sees light. It is difficult to feel love with a dormant love organ, but exceedingly easy when that organ begins to exercise its true inherent potentialities.

49. Love is in the world in a diluted form as affection between husband and wife, parents and children, friend and friend, but it can be made manifest in its original strength and purity by each man and woman’s opening the fountainhead and letting its mighty currents stream forth.

50. Sex lust has diverted the vital forces in the body away from the love center, the cardiac plexus, which is almost inactive in many men. When a pure-minded woman sends forth her desire for love, such men interpret it sexually and are excited to lust. Love is disappointed, and loathing of the ignorant animal eventually follows. Love is not sex lust.

51. The love of God for His children is beyond description--a love so tender and so deep that it cannot be mentioned in the same breath with the ordinary love as known by the world. The great love of Being is deeper and wider than the thoughts and the words of man have compassed since the beginning of language. It can be known only on its own plane, and man must awaken within himself the capacity to feel a mighty love before he can comprehend how great is the love of God.

52. But only the meek and lowly in heart may know the depths of the Father’s love. It is not revealed to the self-sufficient, because they do not open the way through their own childlike, innocent hearts.

53. The Father yearns to have His love felt by every one of us. He has given us the capacity to feel it, and He waits until we develop the love faculty and open our lives to the flood of good that He pours out to us through His all-sufficient love.

54. Father almighty! We bow before Thy goodness, and invoke in prayer and supplication Thy silent presence as love. May its steady currents of power draw us into Thy mighty arms, where we shall rest secure from all the buffets of the world. We come as little children into the sacred precincts of Thy love, knowing full well that no hand of force even finds a welcome there. Open to us the inner peace and the inner harmony that are born of love. Let all fear depart from our mind as the shadows from the morning light. Let us bask forever in the sunshine of perpetual love, Thy love, Thy never-failing love!

Lesson 6. The Ministry Of The Word

THE QUESTION of the Word of God, its character and office, its relation to man, is one widely discussed by the theological world.

2. The statement made by John at the opening of his Gospel is of deep metaphysical import; it has always been a stumbling block to believers in a personal God. Only one who understands mind, its laws and its inherencies, can grasp the relation between God and His word, as here presented by John.

3. It is interpreted to mean Jesus of Nazareth; and so it does, in a free application of a universal consciousness manifesting itself through an individual. But this is a limited view of the question and does not touch the vital points of the Word and its relation to man and all other aspects of creation.

4. John says: “All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made.” But this does not cover the point; it omits to state that there is a vital connection still existing between the things made and their maker.

5. This is where theology has wandered away from the very present, sentient, and vitally active Spirit permeating all things, man not excepted. It is here also that the very essence of the pure metaphysical doctrine propounded and demonstrated by Jesus has its greatest virtue. It is not a doctrine of “has been,” not a statement of creation in post mortem terms. It lives with the life and vigor that is in no wise lost in the recital of what occurred in the misty past and that cannot be defeated by speculations of what may occur in the problematical future.

6. Jesus was imbued with a spirit purely His own. He did not borrow His mission, or His words, or His precepts from Egypt, Persia, or India. He was a genius that burned with His own wick and oil. He was not a child of tradition, nor did He allow the muggy thought of Jewry to befog His midday Mind. He was not a Son of God by proxy, but appeared in person and presented His heavenly credentials. There was not in His whole history and ministry a loophole for the belief in absence or apartness of God. Herein lies the appropriateness of our claim upon Him as a forerunner of the doctrine that we advocate. He is our Elder Brother, and to Him we are indebted for the clearest presentation of spiritual science that has ever been given to the world.

7. The presentation of a doctrine has a large influence upon its acceptance. Some persons think it is only necessary to talk religion in flowing words and heavenly tones. That is one way, but Jesus did not adopt it. His presentation is peculiar in that it carries with it, and illustrates by its works, a basis more enduring than mere metaphysical presumption.

8. The imagination will carry out any idea or set of ideas that the I AM reflects into it, hence theories are not to be trusted. There must be evidence in works. To produce works, there must be a working power. This is exactly what the Word is--the working power of God.

9. Every known process has its regular advancing steps from inception to conclusion, and these steps are taken according to recognized principles.

10. The student of languages must have intelligence as a base of operation; next he must have ideality; and next, expression. To leave out one of these factors is to thwart the end sought.

11. Who can learn a language without the ideal upon which to form his concepts? Then who can use that language without the word through which to convey to the listening ear the inner ideal?

12. Herein is the Word of God prototyped. It is that which conveys to the world the concepts of the Most High. It is not the Most High in His wholeness, but it carries with it the power behind the throne, because “these three are one”--the Father (Principle), the Son (the Ideal), and the Holy Ghost (the Formative Word).

13. These three are also minimized in each individual, and through every ego is being poured all the power of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost just to the extent that the ego recognizes, acknowledges and appropriates them. They are in the world as omnipresent Principle, having an abiding place everywhere, because they are as ubiquitous as the air. No man lives a moment without them, yet few men recognize them: “The light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”

14. “There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John.” This is a step from darkness to light. John is the illumined intellect turned toward the creative light. It is not that light itself, but bears witness of that light; recognizes it, and proceeds to clear the way; tears down the walls of darkness that shut that light from the view of the purblind ego, blinded not from choice, but by its own conceits. This is the darkness into which the light shines, and in which it is not comprehended.

15. But John bore witness of the light. Whosoever testifies in favor of Truth, though he be far removed from its brightness, is its friend and is making straight the way for its full blaze into his consciousness.

16. Light in the Scriptures always means intelligence; hence that which shines into the consciousness and is not comprehended by it is the clear revealing, on the plane of Spirit, of that higher Truth which Spirit alone comprehends.

17. To catch this light in his understanding, man must rise out of the sense state into the realm of free ideas. Here is where the Word does its work; here it is that “all things were made through him [the Word]; and without him was not anything made that hath been made.”

18. Outside of pure metaphysics (and by pure metaphysics is meant a clear understanding of the realm of ideas and their legitimate expression) there can be no correct interpretation of this peculiar statement: “Without him was not anything made that hath been made.” This implies that there is a making that is not legitimate--not in accordance with principle inherent in Being.

19. Those who have made a study of Mind from an independent standpoint, those who have opened themselves to the influx of original ideas from Spirit, have discovered, in a manner inexplicable to mortal sense, that there are apparent creations that are not creations at all, being but transitory formations that lose their cohesion and dissolve when their mental support is withdrawn.

20. These formations are produced by the mind working independently of its wisdom sphere. They are not permanent because they lack that which is essential to the permanent--harmony. There can be no creation without a creator; there being but one Creator, there can be but one creation.

21. God is the origin of all, and from him, in orderly steps through His perfect idea (Son) and His wise builder (Holy Ghost) all creation proceeds.

22. The Son (man) looks to the Father for all instruction, and the Father responds to the Son’s demands by sending forth the Holy Spirit equipped with the wisdom and power necessary to perform the work.

23. Man stands in the Godhead as the imaging faculty. He gives form, outline, condition, relation to the infinite possibilities of the formless; but the formless knows how it should be formed to be enduring, and this knowledge is communicated to man, along with the power to form, when he looks for it and acknowledges it. His failure to ask for this wisdom does not nullify his formative powers, however, because he is by nature the formative faculty of Being.

24. Hence, when man ignores the wisdom of Spirit and proceeds to build his world independently, he seems to make many states and conditions that are not made at all; they are merely malformations, and must of necessity fall to pieces of their own disproportion.

25. All states are mental states. There is nothing else in all the universe, visible or invisible. Whoever images anything else is throwing on the screen of his universe the crude pictures of an uninspired mentality. Such pictures last for a season, but their own discords are their final destruction.

26. So in the very nature of things a way must exist whereby man may form his consciousness in harmony and consequent permanency. That way is in and through his acknowledgment of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God.

27. Mind is that quality of Being that knows. It is pure knowing, and he who cultivates it becomes so filled with understanding that he intuitively perceives the right of every question or proposition submitted to him. He does not have to study books or have experience in the realm of things.

28. Jesus of Nazareth was an enigma to the worldly-wise of Judea. They wondered where He, never having studied letters, got His understanding. But He did not claim to have wisdom of Himself; He recognized its true source in the Father: “The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.”

29. Everyone coming into conscious recognition of the mind of Spirit knows that he knows, without having learned through any of the avenues recognized by the intellectual man as necessary. It is not a system of reasoning from premise to conclusion, but a direct summing up of the whole case in omnipresent knowing.

30. The why and wherefore of this may be explained to those who have, in even a small measure, disentangled the ego from the sense mind. It requires a degree of familiarity with principles. If you can comprehend a state where pure Mind exists free from the limitations of time, space, and condition, you can grasp in a degree the working field of pure knowing.

31. There is within every man such a place--the “secret place of the Most High.” When man finds this place and accepts its privileges as his, he is let into the realm of pure metaphysics, where Mind alone with all its transcendent powers holds free, untrammeled sway. This is the point in every man where God joins hands with him, and where the Word of God finds entrance into his consciousness. It is here that man understands what it is to be inspired by the Spirit to say and do things extraordinary in the sight of the world.

32. Simon Magus tried to buy the secret of this superior magic, but found that he could not. It is not for sale for a money consideration. It can be had only for love and obedience. He who would have fruit from the tree of life must reach up and get it. He must aspire to it first, and then in prayer and true word act as if he had already received it; he must go right ahead preaching the gospel, healing the sick, and doing the other commandments of the Master exactly as if he were already filled with the Holy Ghost.

33. When the disciples of Jesus wanted to restrain one from doing works in His name, He said, “Forbid him not.” So everyone who goes ahead and does the very best that he knows, in the name of the Most High Good, will by virtue of his works draw down upon himself the baptism of the Holy Ghost--the Word of God.

34. In the Scriptures the Word of God is usually personified, indicating self-consciousness. He who acknowledges the self-conscious character of the Word is led as by One who knows all the affairs of his life--aye, his most secret thoughts.

35. Thus this Word of God is the revelation to man of the powers and possibilities of his own being. It is the light that brings to his notice the inner mechanism of his soul and his body. Where he externally sees only flesh, blood, and bones, the searchlight of this Word discloses the presence of secret springs and living streams of energy and life. Man awakens from his dream of sense and begins to visit the different rooms in the temple in which he has lived but of which he knows so little. This he is permitted to do through the “light which lighteth every man, coming into the world.”

36. When man’s consciousness is lifted up by this wisdom Word, he finds himself master of the powers and privileges of infinity. He then says, with Jesus, “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.” These are the privileges of the sons of God, and every man is a son of God.

37. But to be or not to be rests upon the immutable law of the Word of God, for only by the light that it sheds can man see and appropriate the privileges that are his by original birth. Only those who receive Him become in fact the sons of God.

Lesson 7. Ye Must Be Born Again

And no one hath ascended into heaven, Save he that out of heaven descended--The Son of Man --John 3:13 (Rotherham translation)

JESUS SAID: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” “Except one be born of water and the Spirit. . .” Who and what is this that is subject to so many births?

2. This important invisibility that takes on these protean forms is man, according to Jesus. But what is man? Plato told his students that a good description of man was a “biped without feathers.” Diogenes learned of this definition, procured a chicken, and after plucking its feathers, turned it loose before Plato’s class with the words, “Behold Plato’s man!” This is a peculiarly fitting illustration of the ignoble end of all definitions that circumscribe man to form.

3. Jesus evidently referred to an invisible something that was first born of flesh, then born of Spirit.

The inference is that this something is capable of an infinite number of experiences in birth and rebirth.

4. What is this invisible something that says, “Before Abraham was born, I am”? Who are you, born into this round of experiences through which you are now passing, and whence came you? What is it that says “I am”?

5. When your voice says “I am,” does it do so on its own responsibility, or is it moved by an invisible One? Who is this invisible One, and what is His relation to the voice through which He speaks? These are the most important questions that were ever put to any school on earth. When we begin to consider them, in even the most primary way, we are entering the realm of the gods.

6. Over the entrance to the Greek temple was written, “Know thyself,” and it is always written over every door that opens from ignorance to wisdom. “Know thyself”; know who and what you are, where you came from, what you are doing here, and where you are going. If you want to know all this, meditate upon the I AM.

7. Your mind reverts to Moses and to Jehovah; you think of a mighty I AM away back in history. You do not connect that far-away I AM that inspired Moses with your own little everyday “I am” that struggles in the “brawl for bread.” Yet there is but one I AM. It cannot be cut into parts; it is Principle. That which says “I am” in all men, women, and children is identical. It is like the mathematical 1. All the combinations of figures that were ever conceived are but the repetitions of this digit. It is the son of the principle, mathematics. It is inspired by its principle and all the possibilities of that principle are open to it.

8. Your I AM is the Son of the God Idea, and all the possibilities of the Principle, through that Idea, are open to you. To “know thyself” is to know that you are I AM, and not flesh and blood.

9. It is this I AM that is born of flesh and born of Spirit. It is not flesh, neither is it Spirit, if by Spirit is meant a state of consciousness. It is just I AM, the center from which all states of consciousness are generated. Speaking definitely, it is never born into any state of consciousness, because it always transcends all conditions. It is the supreme Dictator that determines the state of consciousness in and through which it will function. “I will be what I will to be” is its dictum.

10. I AM may choose to be born into the flesh, and it may choose to be born into the Spirit. By its decision it sets in motion the machinery of the universe to carry out its will. “Legions of angels” hasten to obey its call when it knows who and what it is.

11. It is evident that we have, at some time, chosen to be born into the flesh or we should not be in it. If we have had enough of the flesh, it is our privilege to drop it out of our mind and to be born of Spirit. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The “flesh” is a state of consciousness, the “Spirit” is a state of consciousness.

12. The ego or I AM functions in these states of consciousness, according to its desire. The moving factor of the I AM is desire. It desires a certain experience; on the wings of that desire it carries itself to a place where it can be fulfilled. In the process of fulfillment the ego may forget that it has ever so desired, but the law never forgets.

13. If you are functioning in the flesh, you may be sure that you somewhere, sometime, desired an experience to which this answers.

14. There are no accidents in the laws of Being. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” is another way of saying that for every cause there is an adequate effect. This law of sequence is the balance wheel of the universe. Like all other laws that inhere in Being, it is good.

15. The ego can have any experience that it wills to have. If it wills to revel in sensation, a state where sensation holds high carnival is provided. If its appetite for sensation is satiated, other states are open to it; it may be “born of the Spirit.”

16. But before one can journey hence, the tangled ends of this experience must be straightened out. “Let all things be done decently and in order” is written over the door of all of God’s playhouses. If you choose to function in the realm of sensation, if through any cause you have brought about disorder, you cannot leave until harmony is restored.

17. If you lack wisdom, there is a way provided to get it--”The Spirit of truth . . . he shall guide you into all the truth.”

18. Your real self is that which says “I AM.” It cannot be described, because description is limitation, and your real self is unlimited in its capacity to be. It is the all-possibility, yet it is ignorant of the states of consciousness into which it is ushered until it has experienced them. In the flesh consciousness it is will. In the spiritual consciousness it is love. Both are blind unless will is married to intelligence and wisdom is married to love.

19. There are people who have had enough fleshly experience and now desire to be born into the Spirit. That desire will open the door into the Spirit. You have only to desire to be, and you will surely find the way to be that which you desire. There is no exception to this inherent principle of Being. You have sometime polarized your desire in the direction of the flesh, or you would not be having the experience of the flesh.

20. Do not condemn the flesh or bewail your lot. The flesh is an obedient servant, and it now expresses your idea of what form should be. In its virgin purity it is the immaculate substance of Being. If it appears corrupt or subject to corruption, humanity has made it so through ignorance, and humanity must again purify it by restoring it to the heaven of its consciousness, when it will cease to be flesh. That which the world conceives to be flesh has no existence whatever in Being. It is a malformation of the substance idea of Being, and must be transformed by right conception of divine perfection, before the mortal can put on the immortal.

21. Thus all things are right here, ready for our using, to function through, in the fulfillment of our desire to experience sensation. If we have failed to get satisfaction, the fault lies not in the substance but in our use of the substance. Now that we wish to transfer our experiences to the realm of Spirit, to light instead of to sensation, we have but to comply with the conditions of that realm in order to make the desired change.

22. There is a primal substance, and all states of consciousness are in it. We do not have to go anywhere to find it; it is here. We are basing our present experiences upon it and calling it flesh. If we desire to see it as Spirit, we must so call it, and must seek to know the mental attitude on our part that is necessary to make it show forth the conditions of Spirit.

23. “The kingdom of God is within you.” It is not afar, nor is it hard to find, if your desire has headed you in its direction.

24. Do you really want to be born into the Spirit? The majority of people would answer this query in the affirmative without a moment’s thought. But this is mere impulse, and does not involve a careful consideration of the most important matter ever presented to the I AM.

25. To be born into the Spirit is to come into an entirely new and different state of consciousness. This has a mighty meaning back of it. What makes up your present consciousness? Is it not largely the things of sense?

26. Analyze your surroundings and see whether they are not based upon the perception of the five senses. You swing in your little orbit of family ties. You believe that you were born into the world through a chain of fleshly ancestors to whom you are bound by a filial love that to your present understanding is inviolable. Yet He who passed from the flesh consciousness into the Spirit looked back and said: “Call no man your father on the earth: for one is your Father, even he who is in heaven.”

27. So the I AM that desires to function on the spiritual plane must drop all belief in fleshly parentage. It must count as rubbish all pride of ancestry and “blue blood.” It must forever cease to talk about the social prestige of “our family”; it must not bolster up the mortal man by considering ancestral reputation to be of any weight. This form of human pride must all be denied as a dream of the night, because it is one of the strong cords that bind the I AM to the flesh.

28. Every tie of earthly relationship must be recognized as the passing condition of a brief fleshly experience. Your children are not yours as you have looked upon them. They are egos like yourself; through some similarity of desire they have been attracted to your mental stratum. They may be older than you in experience and in wisdom. Do not let your affections throw both them and you into a little vortex of family selfishness. You will love them with a love that will help to lift them into the eternal heaven when you know that they are not yours alone, but that all men and women compose one great common family with God as the Father-Mother. “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

29. The I AM was born into the flesh through desire, and desire keeps it in the consciousness of the flesh. The five senses are simply avenues of one great central desire--sensation. The I AM desired experience in sensation, and the five senses are the five formulated avenues through which it enjoys that experience.

30. Sensation is not an evil except when you choose to let it crawl on its belly through the fleshly avenues. It is the serpent that beguiles man when he turns it outward into mere seeming--hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, and smelling. In the wilderness of sense, Moses lifted it up. Moses was the law that the I AM sent forth.

31. You must make a law for this serpent that is holding you in the sensations of the flesh. You desire to be born into the Spirit, but you cannot rise out of the flesh. Something binds you down. Like a captive balloon, you are tugging at the guy ropes that fasten you to earth.

32. Mind is the only causative power. By the power of the Word, it makes and unmakes all laws governing in personal life. The I AM floats in mind and formulates the words that set mind in motion.

33. If you are bound to the flesh, the cords that hold you are words. If you want to be unbound, it must be accomplished by words. The cords are states of consciousness that you must dissolve. This dissolving process is accomplished by words that express denial--negations.

34. The denial looses the bond. In your cutting yourself free from the chains of Egypt (ignorance), your I AM must go forth and make laws of denial, the dominant idea of which is negation--”Thou shalt not.”

35. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is a denial that regulates the animal consciousness and helps it along the path to higher things; but Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

36. He was laying down the law of the spiritual consciousness--instructing those who wanted to be born out of the flesh into the Spirit. In that realm the flesh man with his carnal sensations has no part. “And Jesus said unto them, The sons of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they that are accounted worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage.

37. Do not be deluded by those who cry, “All is good, therefore all the desires of the flesh are good and should be indulged.” Jesus plainly said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” definitely indicating two states of consciousness.

38. The I AM is always the same. Your identity is preserved wherever you are, in the flesh or in the Spirit; but the two states are as distinct as America and Europe. When you are in Europe, you come into relation with people and surroundings quite different from those in America. So the one who has let go of the bonds of the flesh and come into the things of Spirit finds himself in a new and different country.

39. In the flesh, his sensation was turned outward through feeling, and man was bound to the eternally rolling wheels of birth and death by physical generation. When he is born into the Spirit, he cuts off the indulgence of the external, and is delighted to learn that sensation finds an interior faculty through which it expresses itself in perpetual ecstasy. Had he continued to indulge the desires of the flesh in the external, he would never have discovered the enduring faculty of the internal.

40. Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions”; that is, there are many states of consciousness, Each state is good for him who enjoys it. Therefore we should not condemn the flesh consciousness, nor those who prefer to remain in it. Neither should we who are satiated with the flesh, continue to bow down and worship it, nor believe the subtle argument that it is Spirit because it came forth from mind.

41. In claiming your unity with Spirit, you must be willing to conform to the conditions of Spirit. If you are not sincere in your conformity, you will be torn in the conflict. You cannot worship two masters.

42. When you have renounced the fleshly consciousness and have resolved to live in the Spirit, you have made a covenant with the Most High to leave the domain of the flesh forever. You have entered into an agreement with your invisible self that is far more binding than any man-made contract could possibly be.

43. If you agreed to go to California and to remain there for a consideration to be paid by your employer, you would be in honor bound to carry out your contract. You would arrange to leave the things of this region behind you; you would faithfully seek to prepare yourself for the new requirements in that country. This is exactly the attitude that you should take when you have agreed with the Father to do His will and to be born into the Spirit.

44. You are going into a country entirely new to you, and your experiences will be strange and wonderful. The customs that prevail in the flesh consciousness will not fit the spiritual consciousness.

45. Paul says, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law. . . . If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk.”

46. Are you bringing forth this kind of fruit?

If not, you may know that you are not being born of the Spirit, for “by their fruits ye shall know them.”

47. A large number of students of Truth are at this time complaining because they are having trials. They say, “We have denied and affirmed for years. We have studied science and understand it.

We are faithful to the hours of meditation and are stanch defenders of the Truth, yet we do not demonstrate. Why is it?”

48. “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk.” Here is the key that will open the door of causes for you. Do you also walk by the Spirit?

How about the habits of the flesh consciousness? Do you still give them rein?

49. Remember that you cannot perform a single act without putting your consciousness into it. All things are sustained by your conscious thought projection. Every time you indulge in any of the sensations of the flesh, you are binding the I AM to the fleshly consciousness.

50. Spiritual thinking is the pioneer that opens the way into the new birth, but it must be followed by spiritual acting on the part of every faculty.

“Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.”

51. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus laid down the law for those who desire to follow Him into the regeneration--to be born again. If you seek this spiritual birth, examine your daily life and see whether you are conforming to its requirements.

52. If you are angry with your brother, you will be in danger of the judgment. “Agree with thine adversary quickly.” Does this allow the intervention of the courts to settle your disputes? Did you ever know a man who went to law, to agree with his adversary quickly?

53. Judicial courts are not known in the Spirit, and you can never be born again or expect the help of the Spirit in your affairs so long as you believe in securing your rights through such contentious channels. If you are sincere in your desire to be born into the Spirit, shun all the entanglements of the world’s legal machinery. It is a snare and a delusion. Your triumphs through its methods will in the end turn to dust and ashes. “If any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.” Trust the defense of your rights to the law of Spirit, and you will be victor in every instance. You may appear to lose both your coat and your cloak, but do not worry. Your judge is the almighty equilibrium of the universe, and all men and all things are obedient to it in its “day of judgment.”

54. Do you love your enemies? Do you bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you? This is required of one who seeks the new birth.

55. Are you laying up treasures for yourself upon earth, “where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal”? If so, remember the primal law of thought generation--the gluing of the ego to the things that it consciously seeks; “for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.” You cannot float out into the ethereal substance of the Spirit, with bags of gold in each hand.

56. Do you allow your mind to drift with the current criticism of the world, magnifying the error and minimizing the good? This mental habit of the ignorant flesh is carnal judgment--darkness and ignorance seeing themselves reflected in all the universe. Beware of this subtle adversary who goes forth ostensibly to reform the world.

57. According to Rotherham, Jesus said:

Why, moreover, beholdest thou the mote, in the eye of thy brother, While the beam in thine own eye thou dost not consider? Or how wilt thou say unto thy brother,

Let me cast the mote out of thine eye, When lo! a beam is in thine own eye? Hypocrite! cast first out of thine own eye the beam, And then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of the eye of thy brother.

58. O Son of God and Son of man! realize what and who you are. Know consciously what Jesus so succinctly stated: “No one hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man,” the one having his being in heaven.

59. Your being is in heaven--the spiritual consciousness. You descended from that high estate; you belong there now. You are there now if you will but realize it and will but comply with the laws of heaven. God is here now in our very midst. The Spirit is here, taking account of our every thought. The Father loves us with His infinite love. We are His in Truth, and must be His in consciousness.

Lesson 8. Obedience

BEFORE THE descent of the Holy Spirit upon us, we live in the intellect, and our little world is rounded by the thinking faculty. What our ancestors thought is the pattern after which we cut our thinking. To anyone who claims a higher fount of wisdom we say, “Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his sons, and his cattle?”

2. Thinking is a process in mind. All processes come to an end. Every thought has its premise, its stage of action as a reasonable proposition, and its conclusion. So the I AM that lets the sphere of its existence be encompassed by the limited thinking faculty, follows the process of the syllogism; it believes birth, life, and death to be the major, minor, and conclusion of existence. Instead of recognizing the power to think as simply a faculty of mind, it assumes it to be the whole of mind and all of itself. This identification of the free I AM with its creations brings about a world of illusion. Instead of accomplishment through an equilibrium of faith and works, it sees no way of reaching the goal except through violent and continued action. To such, existence is not the joyous dominion over many obedient powers, but the rebellious slave of one.

3. To be ushered into life, blindly to toil a few years through its fitful maze, and then to go out in darkness is surely not the method of wise design. Life must mean more than this, and it does mean more. Man is the builder, and to him are given all the materials out of which to construct the temple in which he dwells. He builds in wisdom or in ignorance, according to his obedience--his receptivity to the sphere of intelligence within him.

4. Simon, the first disciple of Jesus, represents a receptive attitude of mind. Simon means hearing--listening for the inner voice and obeying it, when it says, “Put out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” When the thinking faculty is obedient and does what it is told, it is always rewarded with “a great multitude of fishes,” or new ideas. It is then counted worthy to be a disciple of the Master and its name is changed to Peter. Faith, the substance of thought, then becomes the rock upon which the body temple is built. If you are living in your thinking faculty intellectually, if you believe in birth and death, you must come out of that belief; you are not exercising your rightful dominion, but are subject to error thought.

5. You are Spirit, the Son of God, and your place is at the right hand of the Father. To realize this is to call down upon yourself the baptism of the Holy Spirit, after which baptism you no longer labor as a carpenter, or as a fisher, but begin to gather together your disciples--powers of mind. This gathering together of your powers is an orderly process, and you will find that it proceeds right along the lines laid down in Jesus’ choosing of His disciples, as recorded in Matthew 4:18 and Mark 1:16. Your first power is the hearing faculty, Simon, and with him is strength, “Andrew his brother.” You discover that hearing gives direction to your thinking faculty and that obedience increases your power to control your thoughts and to make your world conform to your ideas. Then you disentangle the I AM from the thinking faculty; you take control of the thinking and direct its power according to your wisdom. But wisdom is of Spirit. “There is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding.”

6. After you have separated your I AM from the thinking faculty, you are no better off than before unless you recognize that all wisdom is from Spirit. You can get flashes of understanding at any time, but the clear light of the Supreme will shine steadily upon you only when you are obedient and receptive to its monitions. The record states that Jesus prayed often; that He sought in every way to do the Father’s will, even to suffering the utmost ignominy in order to carry out the message that He had for humanity. He always listened for the “inner voice,” and was obedient to it in His meek and lowly work among the humblest class of men. To do the will of the Father was His highest aim, because His success depended entirely upon knowing that will. “I can of myself do nothing” and “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth” seem to be contradictory statements, but when carefully analyzed they corroborate the premise that all wisdom and power come from Spirit--and Spirit is “given” to man. The highest development of spiritual discernment sees the I AM possessed of nothing as its own, but the user of all things that the Father has.

7. The relation between God and man is very similar to that existing between a co-operative colony and its members. All that the colony owns is for the use of each member to the full extent of his ability to use wisely, but he must not attempt to hoard the belongings of the colony nor claim them as his exclusive property. To know how to establish this relation between Father and Son is the object of every man, for only through its establishment can come happiness. After the I AM has come into an understanding that it is given charge of various powers, its first need is to know how properly to develop those powers. When this knowledge comes, the I AM must faithfully use all its resources in forwarding the grand scheme of creation.

8. Here comes up an extremely intricate and interesting point. Can it rightly be said that man possesses any powers? We say that we have judgment, love, and so forth, but is it not true that they belong to God, and are merely ours to use in the attainment of an object in the plan of creation, which is not yet revealed by the Father? This must be the conclusion of a logical consideration of the matter.

Man is given dominion over all things, but possession is not conveyed. Thus you do not possess even your body--it belongs to God. If it is sick or discordant in any way, the condition must be in your idea of the body and not in the real body itself. All of God’s creations are perfect; your body as it appears to Him must also be perfect, and if you will stand aside and let His Spirit shine through it, you will see that it is perfect in every part.

9. Some of the most miraculous cures ever made have been where the healer simply saw perfection in the patient. He saw with the eye of Spirit that which really exists, and the shadow conformed to his seeing just to the extent of his realization of that spiritual reality. The Father lets you use His substance and intelligence to build shadows about the real, but that they are shadows you learn by experience, when you might know by a shorter way. That shorter way is the way of obedience to Spirit. Obedience comes from a meek and lowly heart--a heart that is willing to serve all and sacrifice its mortal pride on the altar of Truth. Jesus washed His disciples’ feet, the most humble office. On another occasion He told them, “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted.” This erasing of the personal man is the short cut into the kingdom of heaven. It is not a denial of oneself as a “worm of the dust,” a sinner against God, and other misconceptions of the relation of the I AM to the Father. It is a letting go of pride, ignorance, selfishness, ambition, and the thousand and one dense ideas that make the soul opaque to the eye of Spirit.

10. A man’s burdens are always the things that he has laid claim to as his personal property, and they are thereby deprived of the sustaining ability of the All-Powerful. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Lay your burdens upon Spirit. Say unto them, “I let you go gladly.” You have no right whatever to take upon yourself any burden. To do so is to contradict squarely the universal law of good. There is no such thing as a burden in God’s scheme of creation, and if you are bearing one, it is because you do not understand who and what you are and your relation to the great whole.

11. When you carefully sift your burdens you will find that they arise from some idea of possession. You think, for instance, that you have dependents who must be provided with the necessities of life. Your idea of their claim upon you arises from your belief that they have no other protector. When you recognize an all-caring Father who heeds even the sparrow’s fall, you relinquish that idea of your responsibility, and you are relieved. Then through the mental freedom that your mind recognizes, there flows to you and to those in whom you are interested greater resources from unlooked-for directions. We do not abandon our friends and withdraw all interest in them, but we recognize their equality with ourselves in the supreme Mind, and by that recognition they are freed from a mental dependency with which we have unconsciously bound them. They begin to assert their inherent capacities; they step forth with the work that Spirit within them has chosen.

12. People who pose before the world as benefactors and dispensers of charity should rightly be counted enemies of mankind. He who dispenses charity tickles his own idea of benevolence, but he is not a friend of the race. Thousands are held in bondage to the belief that they must be helped, when the blessing would be to make them see that their salvation lies in helping themselves. The most prolific burden producer is the idea that provision must be made for the needs of the future. Childless persons scrimp and strive to provide a competency for old age; those with children pursue the same methods, providing for the future of their children. This fear of a future day of want has become a race belief so absorbing that the old, the young, and the middle-aged are its victims.

13. If you are obedient to Spirit you will not suffer these burdens to be loaded upon you; you will live in the present, do your highest duty every day, forget the past, and let the future take care of itself. To trust Spirit you must know of its guidance by experience. By those who have not learned the guidance of Spirit that experience must be acquired. God does not require you to follow His leading on blind trust always. You may look over all creation first and see the evidence of the invisible intelligence pervading everything, even your own body. Then from analogy you can arrive at a solution of the question: Does that same Spirit pervade man’s consciousness? If you decide that it does, and you have made up your mind to cultivate its acquaintance, you may rest in the assurance that the proof will be forthcoming. Spirit is modest; its voice is silent in a turmoil of argument about its existence. It is not found on the housetops proclaiming its presence. It is Spirit. Spirit is the omnipotent, silent principle pervading Being. You are Spirit, and must find yourself before you can communicate with universal Spirit.

14. The thinking faculty is the gate through which the I AM comes forth from the invisible to the visible, and it is through this gate that you must go to get into the presence of Spirit. Hence, we take words and go to God. We came out from His presence through that gate, and we must return by the same way. On the inner side is the Garden of Eden, but the cherubim stand there, and there is the flaming sword that turns “every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” That flaming sword is the inner motive that rules our thoughts and our acts. It turns every way to guard the tree of life, because that tree is the precious substance of the Father.

15. Disobedience to Spirit is refusal to do right at all hazards. We all know the right, but we do not always do it, because it seems to foil immediate attainment of the objective that we seek. We want quick returns, forgetting that “though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.” We want instantaneous healing of our diseases, but we are loath to sacrifice the mental habits that cause them. The mind of the flesh knows that its existence depends upon keeping the I AM in its bonds, and it begs that the discord that its ignorance has produced in the body may be quickly erased without disturbing its dominion. Hence the cry goes up from all over the land, “Heal me! heal me! as Jesus of Nazareth healed those who came to Him, but don’t ask me to change my ideas.”

16. Moses stands for the progressive law of the mind working out its salvation through obedience to Spirit. In the Egyptian darkness of its mortal state, the mind does not see its way out, nor indeed can it see, except through the eye of spiritual perception. Some people mistake spiritual perception for the reality, and refuse to take the second step of science, which is organic realization of the truths perceived in mind. This second step is one of intricate building, stone by stone, of a living temple in which Spirit resides forever. No one can undertake this structure of a spiritual body, until he has covenanted to follow the directions of Spirit as revealed to him from day to day. If he depends upon teachers, healers, books, or the experience of others, he is like the contractor who begins to build after the design furnished by his architect, and instead of consulting that design and its author of each step, looks here and there and everywhere for advice as to what to do.

17. The image and likeness of our spiritual body is as thoroughly defined in us as is the tree in the acorn. Does the acorn consult anything outside of itself as to how it should bring forth a tree? Certainly not. It simply rests in Spirit and unfolds from moment to moment as moved by the impulse within.

Exactly the same law is operative in bringing forth the God man. The external, striving, wandering will must stop its restless seeking without, and repose at the center. It must be obedient to that center, and learn the language of Spirit. Moses was forty years a tender of sheep before he was competent to lead his people out of servitude. He learned the language of the Father in his hours of solitude and he knew without doubting when he was called to go forth. So we all must find the Father consciously in our own inner temple. We must go there day after day and ask for guidance. Mere denials and affirmations will not do it. God is Spirit. Spirit is Mind, and Mind knows. It is not an abstraction that dwells in a vacuum to be invoked by some magic formula, but it must be cultivated and communed with as a child communes with his parents.

18. Thus the reality of living is to live as Jesus of Nazareth lived--one with the Father. Our ideas should be what we have realized in and of ourselves, not what we have learned from books. “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” We must know Him as nearer, dearer, and closer in consciousness than father, mother, wife, husband, or friend. He must be to us the indwelling love and intelligence that leaps forth at every word that we speak, every thought that we think. He is at our right hand and at our left. He is within us and without us. He dwells in a halo about our head. His thought vibrates upon the tympanum of our mind, and we speak the divine words of health and hope to all worlds.

19. God is our Father-Mother, the one inspiration of all that we do, of all that we are. Why for a moment ignore this one All-Power? Why look to the insipid without when the inspired within forever sparkles with the vintage of eternal youth, health, wisdom, life?

20. God is. Man is. We are now in the presence of that eternal Is-ness--Osiris and Isis are now our Father-Mother as fully as they were the Father-Mother of old Egypt. The mighty works of the men of antiquity are possible to us when we acquaint ourselves, as they did, with the power within. Let us not look abroad for power or for wisdom, but seek at home. There in the silent recesses of our own soul we shall find the pearl of great price. The well of living water must spring up within us. We are His beloved, and nothing short of His opulence will satisfy us. Let us no longer stay in a far country and tend swine, but let us come home to the Father’s house. We shall be thrice welcome. Our life will spring up with new vigor and the blush of youth will return to our cheeks, when we know that the eternal fount of life forever bubbles up within our soul.

21. It is your mission to express all that you can imagine God to be. Let this be your standard of achievement; never lower it, nor allow yourself to be belittled by the cry of sacrilege. You can attain to everything that you can imagine. If you imagine that it is possible to God, it is also possible to you. Whatever possibility your mind conceives, that is for you to attain. This is the law; let none belittle himself or dwarf the Supreme by trying to annul it. “All things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”

22. God is, and we are. Let us live in His world--not a world to be tomorrow, next month, next year, or next century, but here and now. God’s beautiful universe is all about us, only awaiting our acknowledgment of its presence. Let us know God and live--live with love and joy, health and peace, here evermore.

Thou art, O God, the life and light Of all this wondrous world we see; Its glow by day, its smile by night Are but reflections caught from Thee. Where’er we turn Thy glories shine, And all things fair and bright are Thine.

Lesson 9. The Church Of Christ

He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not.--John 1:11.

THE PURE doctrine of Jesus Christ has never been popular with those who like formality and rites in religion.

2. The disciples of Jesus were from the ranks of the common people, unlearned in the lore of the scribes and without reputation, religiously or otherwise. They, in their turn, became filled with the Holy Spirit, and did unusual works in healing and teaching, yet their converts were not largely from orthodox circles. It was the “common people” who gladly heard them and their Master. The aristocracy and the organized church opposed them at every turn. They were stoned, quartered, and burned, and their doctrines never became the popular religion. Pure Christianity was literally killed in less than three hundred years after the Crucifixion. What is called Christianity is a combination of paganism, Israelitism, and the letter of Jesus’ doctrine without the spirit.

3. This heterogeneous mass became acceptable because it was sanctioned by kings and enforced as the church of the state. As it had a little from all the religions, it offered balm to the forced worshipers from each sect, and thus quickly became popular. It is not the doctrine of Jesus Christ, however, and never has been, in any of its many forms and sects. Here and there a gleam of Truth has come to spiritually awakened devotees, and they have broken away from the institution and formed newer and higher standards of Truth; but all have been far short of the original doctrine set forth by Jesus and His disciples.

4. Jesus never organized a church on earth, nor did He authorize anyone else to do so. He said to Peter, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” He did not tell Peter that He was to be the head of the church, with a line of popes to follow. He said, “I will build my church” (ecclesia, assembly, or called-out ones). Jesus Christ is still the head of His “assembly,” and its only organization is in Spirit. Whoever attempts to organize it on earth, with creeds, tenets, or textbooks of any kind or description as authority, is in direct opposition to His word and His example. He gave but one guide, one source from which His followers should receive their inspiration: “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.”

5. The puerile claim that this promise was for His immediate disciples only is hardly worth considering, because of so many texts in which He plainly states that His ministry and words are for the world. He further said, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him.”

6. It was this same Spirit of truth in Peter that perceived the Christ, and of which He said, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.” This revealment of Truth direct from Spirit is the rock upon which the one and only church of Jesus Christ is built. All other authorities are spurious.

7. That the one and only true Church of Christ is without authority or head on earth is evident from the accepted words of Jesus Himself. He never authorized the history of His life as recorded in the Gospels, so far as known; yet, accepting them as such history, on their face they bear out the claim of a spiritual church, with only the Holy Ghost as mediator between man and God. It is evident that Jesus saw the tendency among men to make idols of the Scriptures, and it was His aim to do away with that sort of idolatry. Instead of a command to “search the scriptures,” as given in the Authorized Version, the American Standard Version tells us that Jesus reprimanded the Pharisees (John 5:39) in these words: “Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me; and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life.”

8. It is the eternal binding of the thoughts to some external authority in book, creed, or tradition that keeps men in bondage to the lower world. When the mind is perfectly free to search out the higher truths of existence, there flow into the consciousness a vigor and a virility that set in motion all the crystallized thoughts, and fresh life stirs the whole man. Instead of confining the infinite God in the little being of parts and passions conceived by some good but ignorant church father of bygone ages, the open mind flows forth in its own native freedom, and its God is a whole universe, larger in every way than was his of the limited concept. So it is with all the questions of doctrine that form the stock in trade of hereditary religion. What our forefathers discussed for a lifetime, fought bitter battles over and left undecided, the free-minded man sees through in a moment’s consideration. He sees through it with unerring accuracy, because his point of view is far removed from the narrow bigotry engrafted by creeds and dogmas into the susceptible mind of the infant churchman.

9. The mind of man is like a clear stream that flows from some lofty mountain. It has nothing at its point of origin to corrupt or to distort it, but as it flows out into the plain of experience, it meets the obstruction of doubt and fear. It is here that dams are built and its course is turned in many ways.

10. Whoever formulates a creed or writes a book, claiming it to be an infallible guide for mankind; whoever organizes a church in which it is attempted, by rules and tenets, to save men from their evil ways; whoever attempts to offer, in any way, a substitute for the one omnipresent Spirit of God dwelling in each of us, is an obstructor of the soul’s progress.

11. But those very things are the first attempted by the mind that is not in constant openness to the influx from the Father. Man is by nature an organizer. It is his function in the God-head to formulate the potentialities of Principle. It is through man’s conscious ego that the Father makes Himself manifest to him as infinite externality. The within and the without are one only when man recognizes that he draws all his life, his substance, and his intelligence from infinite Spirit welling up within him.

12. Many have caught sight of the fact that the true church of Christ is a state of consciousness in man, but few have gone so far in the realization as to know that in the very body of each man and woman is a temple in which the Christ holds religious services at all times: “Ye are a temple of God.” The appellation was not symbolical, but a statement of architectural truth. Under the direction of the Christ, a new body is constructed by the thinking faculty in man; the materials entering into this superior structure are the spiritualized organic substances, and the new creation is the temple or body of Spirit. It breathes an atmosphere and is thrilled with a life energy more real than that of the external form. When one who has come into the church of Christ feels the stirring within him of this body of the Spirit, he knows what Paul meant when he said, “There is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.”

13. Most of the opposition to the church of Christ comes from those who have never felt within them the stirring of this spiritual body, who refuse to believe the experiences of those who have. They live in the intellectual-spiritual, and when the Holy Spirit proceeds to organize an abiding place within them, they refuse Him recognition and call Him “mortal mind,” “the Devil,” or “an unclean spirit.”

14. It is this blasphemy against the Holy Ghost that Jesus said could not be forgiven. Everything that a man does or has done, the Father freely forgives except the cursing of His Holy Spirit by calling it an unclean spirit. He who understands the law of mental action can easily see why this cannot be forgiven. Mind organizes its states of consciousness according to methods inherent in Being. First is the idea, the center in which the form is generated. This form is projected from that center to a circumference, and in its line of structure in the consciousness of man it proceeds to occupy the place of preexisting forms. The idea of perfection, held in the mind, will build a body having for its attributes all the harmony possible to the organism in which it is born. “God giveth it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own.” That “seed” is the true idea held in your mind, through which the Holy Spirit nourishes and grows in you the new body.

15. If you refuse to receive the sensible ministrations of this Holy Spirit, you, of course, cut off the builder of the eternal temple in which God makes His permanent dwelling place in you.

16. When you refuse to receive this baptism of the Holy Ghost, your flesh is not quickened, and it must eventually go back to dust. In that case you are again sent to school to learn the lesson in another earthly experience.

17. This is the law. Let him who has ears hear the law; let him not oppose the construction of the temple that Spirit builds in obedience to the thought held by the mind, and his body shall become an enduring, deathless habitation of the living God. Let us, each one of us, see to it that this opposition to Christ and His methods is not found within us.

18. If our teaching has been such as to disparage the entertainment of the new sensations in the body when in prayer or in the silence, let us cast those ideas out of our mind and throw ourselves wholly into the care of Spirit. The mind of the flesh vigorously opposes this newcomer in its domain, and if you side with it and ignorantly cast out Spirit, you eventually will find yourself without a body. Having sinned against the Holy Ghost, you become homeless in consequence.

19. Pronounce every experience good, and of God, and by that mental attitude you will call forth only the good. What seemed error will disappear, and only the good will remain. This is the law, and no one can break it. The Adversary always flees before the mind that is fixed on the pure, the just, and the upright. There is no error in all the universe that can stand for one moment in the presence of the innocent mind. Innocence is its own defense, and he who invokes the Father with pure motive and upright heart need not fear any experience. God has not forgotten His world nor the children of light. It is His will to build in you His eternal habitation, and He will do it in a manner so attractive that you will be delighted with the process after the first few moves have been made. It is not always pleasant to tear down old brick and mortar, but when the new structure begins to go up, there is rejoicing.

20. So you will find in your experience with the work of the Holy Spirit in reconstructing your organism that the present structure must be literally torn down atom by atom. It is in its present state temporary and without the conscious life of the indwelling Spirit. You, with the race, have separated yourself from God in consciousness; that separation extends to the body, the most remote plane of consciousness. In returning, the Father, the inner Spirit that is and ever has been pure, first recognizes its true estate. This recognition is on the plane of causes, the ideal, and may remain there for a long time. But the law of seedtime and harvest prevails here, as in the natural world, and the idea is the seed that will spring forth from its subjective realm. This, when watered by the Holy Spirit through your receptive thought, grows a new organism that will be a permanent battery from which you will radiate the transcendent powers of Spirit forever and forever.

21. When this is done, creation is a perfect, homogeneous symphony of life, light, and love. Discord is eliminated; sin, sorrow, and everything that in any way interferes with the highest ideal of existence are dissolved, and man realizes that his dominion is to be the obedient outlet of the inexhaustible inlet. Herein is God glorified and His inexhaustible resources are not limited by man, but allowed full and free flow into a universe without height or depth, without beginning or ending.

22. The true church of Christ is never organized upon the earth, because the minute that man organizes his religion, he ceases to be guided wholly by the free Spirit of truth, and to that extent he falls away from the true church.

23. Many of the Protestant sects were in their incipiency very close to the original church. Wesley was led by Spirit, and his ministry was characterized by a spiritual glow and power that was felt all over the religious world. He was free; he had the freedom of Jesus Christ back of him, yet he and his followers were despised by the organized church, and it was a stinging epithet to be called a Methodist.

24. The church of Jesus Christ still waits for a ministry that will represent it as it is--an organization in heaven without a head on earth, without a creed, without a line of written authority. This church exists, and must be set up in its rightful place--the minds and the hearts of men. It can never be confined to any external organization; whoever attempts such a movement, by that act ceases to represent the true church of Christ.

25. There is need of such a church, an imperative need that it be set up. Whoever advocates such a setting up, may for a season expect the opposition of the organized institutions on every hand, but the final outcome must be victory.

26. There can be but one leader for man in his search for God--the Spirit within him. When he unreservedly gives himself up to this Spirit he finds that the old world of forms and their limitations are no longer of interest. A new world is opened to his vision. What was the goal of his human life becomes a mere toy to his expanded concepts of God and the destiny of man.

27. He finds that the church of Jesus Christ is not a church at all, under the new definition. He has looked upon his religion as having to do with the salvation of his soul--a sort of school in which he is coached in catechism and creed, that he may be prepared to go to a place called “heaven” after death.

28. When the true church is revealed to his soul, all this illusion of the animal man is dissolved. He finds that the church of Jesus Christ has to do with the world right here and now; that it is not a religion, as he has been accustomed to regard religion; that it is an organic principle in nature working along definite lines of growth in the building up of a state of consciousness for the whole human race.

29. Thus the church of Jesus Christ is an exact science. It has its part in the economy of Being, as the organizer of the unorganized. It does not refer to things abstract, but to things concrete. Whoever looks upon it as an abstraction has wholly misconceived it.

30. God never performs miracles, if by miracle is meant a departure from universal law. Whatever the prophets did was done by the operation of laws inherent in Being and open to the discovery of every man.

31. Whatever Jesus of Nazareth did, it is likewise the privilege of every man to do. The ability to do such works as He did is simply a question of discernment. Discernment comes through the functioning of an orderly organic structure, which is in the soul of every man. It is first a state of consciousness, a perception of what is in the potential; this then formulates itself into a working structure that becomes in every man the permanent church of Christ.

32. The church of Christ covers every department of man’s existence and enters into every fiber of his being. He carries it with him day and night, seven days of the week. He lives in it as a fish lives in water; as he becomes conscious of its enveloping presence, he is transformed into a new creature. Life becomes an ecstasy, and his cup is full to overflowing.

33. The burdens of the human drop out of sight just as fast as the organic church is constructed. The construction of this church is orderly, definite, and exact. It is not done in a moment, but little by little the man is built from the within to the without, a new creature in consciousness and in body.

34. This means that your body will be so transformed within and even without that it will never go through the change called death. It will be a resurrected body, becoming more and more refined as you catch sight of the free truths of Being, until it will literally disappear from the sight of those who see with the eye of sense.

35. This is the way in which the last enemy, “death,” is to be overcome. The corruptible shall put on incorruption right here and now. Be careful not to defer this change to some future state, some day of judgment, some sound of a last trump, but recognize it in the light of an organic change occurring in and through your body, from day to day, until you literally shine with the glory of the noonday sun.

36. This is the promised New Jerusalem, a city in which neither the sun nor the moon is necessary. This is the city of God within you, and your body shall become so illuminated by the brilliancy of your mind that the light streaming forth will be brighter than that of the sun. This is not a fanciful sketch, but a statement of facts based upon spiritual dynamics of which the body is the dynamo.

37. Metaphysicians in this age have caught sight of the possibilities that are man’s when he consciously recognizes his relation to God and proceeds to carry out in thought, and to act right here, that which he perceives to be true in Spirit; but many of them are not wise in their methods of attaining the ultimate organic building. They have made connection with the realm of ideas, but are loath to comply with the requirements of organic growth from the generative idea to its concrete structure.

This growth is the construction of the church of Jesus Christ in each one of us, and it is a most delicate and intricate process. No external architect is here allowed; only Spirit can tell what is necessary from day to day, and Spirit can be heard only by the attentive ego.

38. If you have any ideas of your own as to how this new body is to be constructed, drop them immediately. If you have been before the public as a teacher of divine science, and have set up in consciousness abstract theories about the unreality of the body and its sensations, you will be willing to give them all up before you can be received into the regeneration. Although you may have served Truth long and faithfully, do not be rebellious if all your labors seem as dust and ashes. The rebellious Israelites never entered the Promised Land. You must be obedient. You must be willing to give up all your plans, your hopes, and your ambitions. Spirit wants all your attention. If you have done good, you will be rewarded, but you must not claim your good as a merit card that gives you any preference in the regeneration. You must be willing to become as nothing in the sight of men--virtually crucified for your good works. Then your personal mentality loses its center, the atoms of your being swiftly change their polarization from the material to the spiritual plane, and you come forth from the tomb of sense with a body of light.

Lesson 10. The Lord’s Body

THE TEACHING of Christianity is that the human race was originally in a beautiful garden, a state of consciousness described as Paradise. There were placed before the race two ways of attaining knowledge--one through experience, the other through the inspiration and guidance of God; and the race chose the diverse or hard way of experience. They followed Satan, thinking that through experience they would get wisdom and pleasure. In their ignorance they fell short of the law. They did not know how to take advantage of the forces of mind, and the result was the death of their bodies.

2. But there was promise of restoration; that men should come back into that paradise or place where eternal joy and satisfaction exist, that through Jesus the original life of man should be restored. Jesus understood the law of God, and came to show us the way to live our lives, to resurrect ourselves out of sin and death into immortality. He resurrected His body and promised that those who keep His sayings and follow His law shall likewise resurrect their bodies; yet nearly two thousand years have passed and no man has demonstrated the resurrection, so far as we know. The teaching has been sidetracked and misunderstood. The popular Christianity of the day tells us that resurrection is of the soul, that it is to take place after death, or at some future time, and that everybody must die.

3. Now a new consciousness, a new understanding of this great teaching of Jesus is needed. We are beginning to understand it scientifically. Our physical scientists are showing us in their laboratories that life should be continuous. They tell us that the functions of our body are self-perpetuating if rightly directed. There is no reason why it should be destroyed. All about us are the forces that enter into the body, and the elements that are found in chemistry are also in the body of flesh.

4. The inner intelligence is able to reconstruct the body; the elements for rebuilding are around us and in us. All conditions join to make possible the development of an immortal structure that shall express man in his true nature. The intuitions of the soul emphasize the point that deathless life here and now is the life that God has appointed us to recall and to develop. Not until we have done this can it be said that we have availed ourselves of the Jesus Christ redemption or that we have our abiding place in the Lord’s body.

5. Why have we failed for these two thousand years? Because we have not understood and applied the divine law. The early disciples evidently caught sight of the great fact that man has within himself this resurrecting power to overcome disease and sickness, but they did not fasten it strongly enough in the race experience, and man has slipped back into the old adverse thought.

6. We must first reduce our religion to facts. What do we know about it? Verily, “by their fruits ye shall know them.” The fruit of your thought is your body, and you can judge your thought by the character of your body. So also you can change your body by changing your thoughts. Then here is the key to the situation: To resurrect the body we must change our thoughts. Every thought must be in accordance with absolute Truth; there must be no adverse thought. We must separate ourselves from all thought of sickness, weakness, and death. They must have no part in the consciousness of the one who would follow Jesus. “And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins.”

7. Divine metaphysicians take special care that they are logical in their reasoning. They hold that all truth has its origin in Divine Mind. Whatever we can conceive as being true must work itself out in creation, and if the creation seems to fall short of the divine perfection in any way, that is our fault; either we are not seeing the whole or we are lacking in understanding. If we hold to our logic that the good can create nothing but good, it will bring us to the right conclusion, and the manifestation will always prove itself. Holding to this logic of the mind and the conclusions of the mind, we find that there are two creations; Divine Mind idealizes that which it afterward brings forth, just as a man works out his invention in his mind before he makes the model. God is the all-potential mind. God creates first in idea; His idea of creation is perfect, and that idea exists as a perfect model upon which all manifestation rests. The body of man must rest upon a divine body idea in Divine Mind, and it logically follows that the inner life, substance, and intelligence of all flesh are perfect. But you say, “I have not a perfect body; my body is not the perfect idea, because I can see that it is material.” It may be that you do not understand; that you do not discern the Lord’s body, which lack, Paul said, is the cause of weakness and sickness and death.

8. Every person has a perfect body in mind, and that perfect mind body is expressing itself through his I AM or the Lord God in him; it is bringing itself into manifestation just as fast as he will let it, just as fast as he perceives God in the flesh. Do you not see how closely you must follow and hold yourself in the true logic? Plato said, “Pure reason is the highest faculty of the mind.” Many people wander away from pure reason because it does not seem to agree with the sight of sense. They say that there is evil and error everywhere; that it cannot be, then, that good is the reality of God, of man, and of the universe. The creative law makes man responsible for the bringing forth of the divine perfection. God finished His work--in the ideal, and we are making it manifest. If your body is not perfect, it is because you have not let into your consciousness all the perfections that exist for you in Divine Mind, perfections that would be fully expressed in you, as they were in Jesus, if you would discern the truth of the ideal real body called the Lord’s body.

9. Then if I want to see the real expression of Divine Mind in my body, all I have to do is to image it mentally. I must put my I AM identity into it and affirm that the perfect body, as idealized by God, is now manifest in my hands, in my feet, in my heart, and in every part of my organism. Is that good logic? Of course it is. Will it work? Of course it will. This is the real secret of metaphysical healing. In the beginning the Word was God, but the Word became flesh and dwelt among men and they saw His body, His glory, and His perfection. Then Jesus Christ was the Word or idea of Divine Mind made manifest in form. Jesus saved His body from dissolution and raised it up to the heavenly estate, which is substance so pure that no disintegrating force can be found in it. This gives an importance to the body beyond the usual estimate. People think that soul salvation is the object of the Christian life, but Jesus, in speaking of the body, mentioned His ability to “lay it down, and . . . take it again,” even this “temple of God”; and on another occasion He said, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also: and greater works than these shall he do.”

10. Can we save our body from death? Yes; by seeing it as the very temple of God; and that means more than looking at it as if we were looking through telescopes. We must see our body with our mind; see it with something more than the intellectual mind; see it with Jehovah, the Lord God within us.

11. When the perfect man is conceived in pure reason, the reason of Spirit, and man sees himself as he is in God’s mind, the Lord’s body begins at once to appear. We all can see our body with the single eye of which Jesus spoke, and through this faith in the reality of the invisible body we can regenerate the flesh. The body is wonderfully obedient to the I AM mind, hastens to do its bidding, and is renewed and transformed by a thought. But so many of us see the body as it appears to mortal sense, and by thus seeing it, we put it under the laws governing the sense body. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

12. The real continues; the seeming passes away. We know that we are healed by right thought, that we can and do raise these sick bodies and restore them to health. Where is the limit to that healing? There is none. We can go right on and perfect the manifestation of the body idea as it is conceived in Divine Mind. That is where pure reason and logic sustain us. No matter how many people have died or how many are going to die, the logic is good if it proves the healing of even one ill. It is a real pleasure to know that there is a power behind this universe; that there is a real God; that life is something more than the mere piling up of material things; that we can become the real man and that all pure ideals can be fulfilled here and now.

13. The real body of God is a live body. It knows. It is a living body. Above all, it is a beautiful body. God Himself is to be in that temple, and it will not be necessary to have any external light, for the light celestial will illuminate the redeemed body in which God takes up an eternal habitation. It is wonderful how quickly the body responds to thoughts of life and health, and how you can get a flow of health instantly if you hold the right thoughts. Just closing the outer sense and holding the thought that you are the perfect manifestation of Divine Mind will often heal the body of its ills. Sense mind sees the disease and clings to it, when it is trying to get away. Disease is not natural, and it knows it. Then relax the will of the flesh and let Spirit carry on its perfect work in you, and evil or sick conditions will disappear and you will be whole. All good healers will tell you that their best work is done by simply letting go of sense appearances and realizing that there is but one universal Mind, and that that Mind makes a perfect body for every man.

14. We see this law proved again and again in the healing power of nature. Virtually all doctors admit that the body is naturally restored to health; that neither they nor their drugs do the healing. What causes this restoration? The divine idea of perfection. So our body really is the temple of the living God. This so-called material body has within it and about it the divine perfection. Do not make any separation. Hold that your body is spiritual, and hold nothing less, no matter how much your flesh cries out. It may be that flesh and blood and bones can be expressed in a larger and better way; that is for you to determine--but insist upon the truth. Carry out that living, true Word which every one of us knows to be the offspring of Divine Mind. “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we behold his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.”

Lesson 11. The Restoration Of God’s Kingdom

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light. --Lowell

THE PROMISE that the Garden of Eden will be restored on earth is older than the Bible. Other bibles of other peoples far antedating the Hebrews prophesy a time when man shall possess the earth in peace and plenty; a time when the elements shall be subdued, disease and death eliminated, and immortal life in the body again set up. It should be observed that all prophecies to this end that come through mystical channels say that this is a state to be regained. They do not hint at evolution, as understood in modern thought. But the students of physical science arrive through their deductions at virtually the same conclusions concerning the ultimate condition of humanity.

2. They also agree that this condition of peace and happiness will be brought about through causes originating largely with man and his acts. In other words, its consummation will depend upon the wisdom and the energy with which men act at certain crises in history. These prophets, both ancient and modern, say that we are now at one of the most vital turning points in our experience. They get at it in a variety of ways, and they differ widely in minor points, but they are unanimous in their conclusions that now is the time foretold by prophets of old, and reiterated by prophets now.

3. But it does not require a prophet’s perception to discern the signs of these times. The dissolution of the old and the birth of the new are manifest in every walk of life. For instance, the thought that has been held inviolate for thousands of years about the opaqueness of matter has been shattered. The materialist and his world are no more. This, however, is only a minor example of the astounding swiftness with which the material sense of things has been dissolved in recent years. The past half century has witnessed more of this than the history of all the world records before. The past few years have accelerated this dissolution at a tremendous pace, and a prominent scientist says that the changes have been so many that the textbooks of nearly every science will have to be rewritten. Yet those who are watching the mental realm know that still greater changes are going on there. The religious world of a few years ago does not exist today. There is but one sect in all Christendom that stands by its creed and carries forward its work on the old lines. All the others are shaken to their foundations. Their creeds and dogmas are skeletons in their closets, which they do not care to talk about.

4. In politics and in government the same upheavals are at work. The rights of men are no longer theories; they are about to become real conditions in the world of affairs. So from any plane of observation that may be chosen, we can assert with conviction that a crisis is here. Something is happening. All along the line are evidences of the birth of the Prince of Peace. A higher state of consciousness is bursting full-blown upon the whole race. It is everywhere, and those who are most open to its influx are being rewarded. The power is abroad in the earth, and it calls to men and to nations, “Come up higher.”

5. All this presages a new state of consciousness for the whole race. It is the beginning of the visible reign of the Christ, whose seed man was Jesus of Nazareth. Every state of consciousness is first planted as a seed idea by some individual. So Jesus of Nazareth planted the seed thoughts that are now springing up in so many forms and shapes. He it was who went into all the domains of thought and formulated ideas that have waited for a people who could comprehend and utilize them. We are that people. The dawn of the millennium is in our keeping. We possess the keys that open the gates of the New Jerusalem.

6. It should not be assumed that this refers to any sect or class; it refers to all the people of this great time who are open to spiritual understanding. The keys are presented to those who come into a perception that all is mind and that all things and conditions represent states of consciousness, produced through the free action of the I AM in every man and woman. This is the key that is being intrusted to many in this great day of the Lord.

7. But the possession of this key is not all. A key is for use. We may know all about the way in which mind formulates states of consciousness and all about our relation to God, but unless we have made a change in our consciousness and realized, in a measure at least, the presence of God in our mind, we are not using the key. Theory is one thing; practice is another.

8. The balanced mind no longer seeks to do evil, and the factor of evil no longer enters into its problem; but a proper discrimination between the enduring, permanent things of existence and the transient and evanescent is not so common. To choose wisely in this respect requires wisdom and spiritual perception. Those who are unconsciously building on the shifting sands of the material world are many. They try to perpetuate the existing state of things by calling it spiritual, and their ideals are but little removed from the materialistic. The new heavens and the new earth are not to lie darkened or cumbered by any conditions that exist today. All things are to be made new. This is the promise of all the prophets of all the ages. There is to be no more war, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain, nor poverty; hence, all conditions that cause these must be destroyed.

9. Our ideal world must first be formed in mind on a very high plane. We may choose to build it from the standpoint of the most transcendent dreams of humanity’s perfection. Nothing less will answer, and all attempts to bring forth the new civilization in conformity to any lower ideal will mean failure to the true metaphysician of the Jesus Christ school. Jesus Christ has a distinct school. He has His ideals; they have been sown in the minds of men, and will surely come to fruitage. He saw a people here on earth with all the powers of the gods, but He did not look to governments, or churches, or industrial movements to bring about the civilization that He planned.

10. His kingdom is now ready to be set up. The conditions are ripe for it. It is open to all, but only those may come in who are willing to give up for it all their ideas of earthly possessions. “Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” This admonition still holds good, and its fulfillment is capable of visible realization by those who are willing to accept the conditions. But it is not to be attained in the Ananias and Sapphira way. There can be no reservation. Every earthly link must be broken, every mortal love crucified. This was the way by which Jesus of Nazareth got into this kingdom, and His way is the way that we must employ.

11. It is not for us to quarrel with the conditions of the world, nor to take upon ourselves the burden of righting them. That is a long, circuitous route into the kingdom, and those who are choosing it face many weary years of waiting. We are to accept that which is now prepared for us. The feast is ready and the invitations are out. This is no longer a parable, but an exact statement of that which really exists in the very atmosphere of this planet. There is a state of consciousness that can be attained and is being attained by men, where all things are provided to fulfill the desires of the regenerated souls. It is not removed to some problematical heaven, nor is it on some distant planet; but right here in our midst are the form and the substance of the condition promised by Jesus Christ.

12. The day is not distant when this kingdom will have its place in the geography of this people, and those who have chosen it will be known to exist under laws and through means beyond the ken of the Adam man. The way into this kingdom is through the mind, and its doors all open in response to words.

13. If the “kingdom of heaven,” to which Jesus so often referred, is a city with golden streets, in the skies, He could easily have located it; but He did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, He again and again gave illustrations to show His listeners that it is a desirable condition which can be brought about among them by the power of Spirit. He did not speak of it as situated anywhere in particular, or say that it could be attained quickly. For instance, in Luke 13: “Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I liken it? It is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his own garden; and it grew, and became a tree; and the birds of the heaven lodged in the branches thereof.” And again: “It is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened.”

14. It is a great mystery how these comparisons of heaven ever came to be construed to refer in any way to a locality in the skies. What relation to a city with streets of gold has a mustard seed planted in the earth and springing forth into a tree? or a little cake of yeast fermenting a baking of bread? A remarkably strange lot of comparisons this wise one used, if He had in mind a place where the good were to go after death!

15. But He never pretended to represent any such thing. His command to His disciples fully carries out His idea of the kingdom of heaven. It was a condition to be brought about in the affairs of men. It was to grow from small beginnings, like the mustard seed or the yeast cake. His disciples were sent forth to sow this seed in a definite way, by carrying into the midst of men the signs that evidence the power of Spirit through which the kingdom of heaven is to be established right here on this planet. There is no basis for any other view. All the visionary theories about a place called heaven are founded on John’s symbolical description of the New Jerusalem, which was a picture, an imagination, of the fulfillment on earth of the very movement inaugurated by Jesus and by Him described as having such small beginnings. The city that John saw was among men. “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God: and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away.” This all describes what is to take place here among us. No reference is made to its being among angels, nor is it stated that it was established at the time that John saw the vision. It means that heaven is to be consummated in new conditions on earth.

16. If the kingdom taught by Jesus is in the skies, why did He direct His disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth”?

17. The fact that the kingdom of heaven is at hand and “within you,” the sense man totally ignores. He does not see beyond the range of the three limitations of space, hence cannot cognize that which lies within and is interlaced with phenomena on another plane. The kingdom of heaven is not only an ideal realm in which all possibility is freely transformed into externality, but it also has its externality, as tangible to the higher faculties as are the aspects of nature to the sense man. It has its working plans, and it executes them with a fidelity and an accuracy not comprehended by the lax methods of the lower plane. So you who have looked upon the kingdom of heaven as a potentiality to be realized by the power of your word should change your base and see it as it is--a real place already formed, and waiting for you, as a bride adorned for her husband.

18. It is here all about you; the knowledge of its presence only awaits the opening of your interior eye, the single eye, as Jesus taught. When you look with this eye your whole body is made full of the light that is neither of the sun nor of the moon, but of the Father.

19. As a disciple, it is not necessary that anyone should know all the intricacies of the metaphysical law; he has simply to act on his inspiration. He need only preach the kingdom of heaven as being at hand, and it will manifest itself.

Electricians do not know what electricity is; they have merely utilized some of its laws. They have found that an unknown principle in nature is made manifest when they observe certain conditions. They simply make the mechanical apparatus, set it in motion, and the invisible unknown becomes visible as light, heat, power.

20. In the world of ideas the metaphysician has discovered that there is a realm having potentialities whose depths he has not sounded. This realm is to him the greatest storehouse of wisdom and of life, and he finds that his own center of consciousness is like it. He is essentially one with it. His thinking faculty represents the mechanical device through which this all-Principle is made manifest.

His word sets the machinery in motion, and results follow in the realm of ideas that parallel those in the realm of dynamics. When you know this, you have the working plan upon which is based discipleship. Then go forth and preach, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” As to defining what that kingdom is like, you must be guided by the Spirit of truth alone.

21. The Master could not describe it to men on the sense plane except in symbols. He said that it was like a pearl of great price, to possess which the discoverer sold all that he had. He compared its growth in the mind to a small seed or a little leaven. He summed it all up in the words “The kingdom of God is within you.”

22. You cannot understand mathematics until you have studied mathematics; neither can you understand what the kingdom of heaven is like until you have studied that kingdom on its own spiritual plane.

23. “Awake! thou that sleepest” in the sense mind! Rouse yourself, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. You are a king! Bestir yourself; the Christ of God is born in you, and the hour of your reign is at hand!

Lesson 12. The Holy Spirit

GOSPEL is an Anglo-Saxon word derived from God (good) and spell (story, tidings). It is now universally identified with Jesus Christ’s mission and the doctrine that has grown out of it. So when we speak of the gospel it is understood that we refer to that system of religious beliefs that has centered about the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

2. But as to what that gospel is in detail, there are many opinions. Many believe that it is the plan of salvation for men outlined in the dogmas and creeds of the churches. But those doctrines, creeds, and dogmas were formulated three hundred years after Jesus taught and demonstrated. There is no authority from Him or from His immediate disciples attesting the genuineness of many of these later enunciations interpreting the original teachings. They are the work of men who had to sustain an industry known as the church, who had to provide for a privileged class called the clergy. These had become an important part of the body politic, and it was thought best to organize them according to human ideas; hence, church creed and church government. Thus originated the Catholic Church; the Protestant churches are its offspring. All that the Protestants count dear as doctrine they borrowed from the Catholics, who had patched it together from early Christianity and from paganism. These teachings are not the pure Christianity of Jesus Christ, and He did not authorize the ecclesiastical structure called the Christian church.

3. It is safe to assert that no one can know the doctrine of Jesus Christ without going direct to Him for information. The writings of the New Testament known as the four Gospels are the most reliable external guide. When these are studied with unbiased mind, it is perceived that Jesus delegated no ecclesiastical power to anybody; that He did not formulate His doctrine or authorize any other human being to do so. Jesus appointed one teacher: “The Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.”

4. The Holy Spirit is the only authorized interpreter of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and no man can know what His doctrine is unless he gets it direct from this one and only custodian. It is not to come secondhand, but each for himself must receive it from the Holy Spirit, who is sent by the Father in the name of the Son.

5. The question is frequently asked: “Who is the Holy Spirit, and what relation does He bear to God and to Christ?”

6. The early disciples knew the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity. The Father is always first, the Son second, and the Spirit third. The terms Father and Son express an eternal, reciprocal relation. The Spirit is the infinite “breath” of God, as the Son is His infinite “Word.”

7. We may understand the relation and office of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit by analyzing our own mind and its apparent subdivisions during thought action, because each one of us is a perfect copy in miniature, an image and likeness, of the great universal first cause--Being.

8. The source of all my manifestations is my mind. This source is exactly like the Father--is the Father in degree. An idea arises in my mind of something that I want to do; this idea is the Son. I express that idea in definite thought; that is Spirit going forth to accomplish that whereto I have sent it.

9. The Father is Principle. The Son is Principle revealed in a creative plan. The Holy Spirit is the executive power of both Father and Son, carrying out the creative plan.

10. Thus we might also say that Father is Being in the absolute, the unlimited, the unrelated. Son is the I AM identity of Being. Holy Spirit is the personality of Being. In its last analysis, Holy Spirit is the personality of God. The Holy Spirit is neither the all of Being nor the fullness of Christ, but is an emanation, or breath, sent forth to do a definite work. Thus circumscribed, He may be said to take on, in a sense, the characteristics of personality, a personality transcending in its capacity the concept of the intellectual man.

11. The Holy Spirit is designated in Scripture as personality and as not always existing for the consciousness of humanity in uniform degree. The mission of Jesus was to open the way for the Holy Spirit to enter into the minds of men. “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of me.”

12. “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you. And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”

13. The function of the Holy Ghost, or Spirit of truth, implies distinct personal subsistence: He speaks, searches, selects, reveals, reproves, testifies, leads, comforts, distributes to every man, “searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”

14. What writers of the old Testament ascribe to Jehovah, the writers of the New Testament ascribe to the Holy Spirit. (Compare Isa. 6:9 with Acts 28:25, and Jer. 31:31-34 with Heb. 10:15; see Acts 5:3, 4.)

15. The Holy Spirit is the law of God in action; in that action He appears as having individuality. From this fact the Hebrews got their concept of the personal, tribal God, Jehovah. Their prophets and mystics came into conscious mental touch with this executive lawgiver of God, and He used them as the mouthpieces through which He guided and directed His people. Adam talked to Him as Jehovah God. In this we understand that by means of the harmony and perfectness of the sinless man’s mind, he was always conscious of the omnipresent Holy Spirit. Discord had not entered his innocent world--he was in the Eden of infancy. The desire for independent experience entered his mind; he began to get knowledge from experimenting blindly with the powers of Being, and in so doing severed the connection between his mind and the mind of the Holy Spirit.

16. Then the Holy Spirit found other means of communicating with men, the most common being the visions of the night, or dreams. “And he said, Hear now my words: if there be a prophet among you, I Jehovah will make myself known unto him in a vision, I will speak with him in a dream.”

17. The Bible records a long line of prophets, mystics, and dreamers, who for thousand of years communicated the word of the Holy Spirit to the people. Jacob “dreamed,” and “behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven . . . And, behold, Jehovah stood above it, and said, I am Jehovah, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac . . . And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land.”

18. Joseph dreamed, and he interpreted the dreams of others. Solomon was instructed by the Lord in dreams. Daniel prophesied through instruction received from the Lord in dreams. Joseph the husband of Mary, was instructed in dreams, and he saved the life of the young child Jesus by following the warnings given him in this way. Peter had visions of the night. “And the Lord said unto Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace.” “And the night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer: for as thou hast testified concerning me at Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.”

19. The Children of Israel depended upon the Holy Spirit to guide and direct them, and from Genesis to Revelation the Bible is filled with incidents bearing testimony to the direct and personal interest of the Holy Spirit in the affairs of men.

20. Jesus Christ, the resurrected Adam, reconnected man with the Lord, opening the way by which man might at any time enjoy that communion with his Creator which he had had in the Edenic state, before his season of experimenting had begun.

21. Jesus prayed much by Himself and spent long hours in silent communion with God. Those who have even in a slight degree opened the Christ consciousness in themselves, so that it flows forth and recognizes the universal Mind, can readily understand that Jesus was in the silence with God, getting the power and wisdom necessary to do His work. The normal condition of man is one of opened inner communion, such as was enjoyed by Jesus, a condition in which he can say of every thought and word: “The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.”

22. It is the mission of the Holy Spirit to bring all men and all women into this open communion; but it is a difficult attainment. “And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.” He who is buried in sense limitations must find the way out of them into the place where the light shines in the light and man perceives it clearly. It is the mission of the Holy Spirit so to guide man in order that man will not mistake the way into that light or wander off into the darkness of the many delusive bypaths of mortal sense.

23. The Holy Spirit comes to men in this day, as in the past, and reveals to them in various ways how to overcome the erroneous states of consciousness that they have evolved, or in which they are cast through association. A higher and more farseeing guide than mere intellect is necessary, and that guide has been provided in the Holy Spirit.

24. The Holy Spirit is the one factor that His disciples and immediate followers counted absolutely necessary to their success in preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. They looked to Him for power and guidance in all their work. They announced Him as the special gift promised by Jesus Christ, an endowment that could be given by them to those who believed on His name. By the laying on of hands they transferred Holy Spirit power to others, who upon receiving it went about preaching, teaching, prophesying, and healing. Even to this day many in the orthodox Christian church believe that only those are fitted to preach who are inspired of the Holy Spirit. But in some cases the inspirations of Spirit are so turned away by minds filled with scholastic dogma and creed learned in ecclesiastical colleges, that when given forth it is not recognized by the soul seeking the pure bread of life.

25. But the Holy Spirit is in the world today with great power and wisdom, ready to be poured out upon all those who look to Him for guidance. The Holy Spirit is authority on the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the only authority ever recognized by Jesus Christ, and whoever attempts to set forth the Christ gospel from any other standpoint is in the letter and not in the Spirit.

26. Jesus gave His words into the keeping of this universal receptive agency, the Spirit of truth, whose mission it is to carry those words directly into the understanding of everyone who accepts the Christ way into the kingdom of heaven. The Holy Spirit gave His words to the writers of the New Testament, and they wrote them out for the comprehension of the intellectual man. But this does not signify that the mission of the Holy Spirit ended there--that after giving this message He then withdrew from the world. On the contrary, it was just the beginning, the primary step of that larger, more comprehensive teaching that Spirit is ever ready to impart to every soul. The soul needs instruction, and the Father has provided a perfect way for us to get it. That way is the Jesus Christ way; whoever follows the steps outlined in Christ’s gospel, now brought to each of us by the Holy Spirit, will finally reach the same place that Jesus reached.

27. The fact is that everybody has a soul to save, not from the hypothetical hell after death, but from the sins and the delusions of the sense consciousness that make hell here and now. There is a way to bring that salvation about, and it is the mission of the Holy Spirit to reveal that way to every one of us. The revelation begins the moment we turn from the letter of the gospel and seek for its spirit. To know that every word and sentence of Scripture veils a spiritual truth is the first step in unraveling the gospel. Spiritual truths cannot be expressed in language that will carry correct concepts to the mind. No attempt to describe the Holy Spirit is made in Scripture, because language might be expanded indefinitely, description and illustration fill volumes, yet the Holy Spirit would not be compassed or apprehended on the intellectual plane where human language passes current. The Holy Spirit is the whole Spirit of God; He can be known by man only through his spiritual nature. When he tries to bring Spirit down to the plane of things, he always falls short.

28. So those who attempt to learn of the Holy Spirit by reading about Him, or from the teachings of others, will fail. The Holy Spirit comes only to those who earnestly seek Him. If you are depending for spiritual enlightenment on some book or on church ritual and doctrine or on some teacher or leader, you need not expect to have the Holy Spirit fall upon you. It is the prayer and supplication of the soul alone in its upper room (state of high spiritual aspiration) that brings the Holy Ghost.

29. The doctrine of Jesus Christ is so intimately associated with the Holy Spirit that they are inseparable. The Holy Spirit is the interpreter of the Christ, and the Christ is the thing interpreted. They are omnipresent and cannot be separated in spirit or in works. Hence, to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ is to set forth that the Holy Spirit of God is ready and willing to bring all men and all women into the kingdom. It is the proclamation to everybody: “The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.”

30. All down the ages, ministers of the gospel have assumed that the requirements are met when men have been persuaded to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Saviour of their souls, and to keep on believing this until they pass out of their bodies; then, the teaching runs, believers are received into the arms of the Lord. But the Holy Spirit does not indorse this assumption, neither does the letter of the Scriptures.

31. In the 17th chapter of John are these words of Jesus: “Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one.” Here Jesus opens the door of unity with the Father to all who believe on Him. It is thought by nearly everybody that Jesus was the only Son of God, but here He prays that we all may be in God as He is in Him and may realize our sonship.

32. Jesus wants companions in power, dominion, and glory, that it may be demonstrated to the world, this world, that what He claimed about man and his relation to God is true. Jesus was one with the Father--was the Father incarnate, and His prayer was “that they may be one, even as we are,” that the world may believe.

33. The gospel of Jesus Christ is that all men shall become God incarnate. It is not alone a gospel of right living; it shows the way into dominion and power equal to, aye, surpassing that of Jesus of Nazareth.

34. Paul also saw it in this light. In the 2d Chapter of Philippians, he says: “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped.”

35. “But,” we are asked, “do you mean to say that living upright, moral lives in the sight of God will not fulfill the requirement of the gospel of Jesus Christ; that believing on Him as our Saviour will not bring us into the kingdom of heaven?”

36. Jesus answered this question when He said that if our righteousness did not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees we could in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.

37. How can one be in the Father, where Jesus Christ is, without being right with Him in consciousness? That is, to be one with the Father, as He is one, and thereby fulfill His prayer, we must be equal with Jesus Christ. If we have a sense of inferiority, if we believe that He has greater wisdom, or power, or love, then we are not fulfilling the requirements. So long as we feel any difference between ourselves in the Father and Jesus in the Father, we have fallen short of that “mind . . . which was . . . in Christ Jesus.”

38. The cry goes up: “This is foolish, sacrilegious, to put man beside Jesus Christ and claim that they are equals.” The claim is not that mortals, in their present consciousness, are equal with Jesus, but that they must be equal with Him before they will emerge from the sense of delusion in which they now wander.

39. We know that health is the normal condition of man and that it is a condition true to his real being; we claim and declare this truth, right in the face of appearances to the contrary. We have proved by experience many times repeated that our words in this way reveal that health is potential in Being.

40. If man is the son of God, he must be that son right now; sonship must be just as real, just as omnipresent, as the health that God has revealed through His Word. How shall man reveal his sonship to himself and to others except by claiming it; by declaring that he is not a son of mortality, but a son of God; that the Spirit of God dwells in him and is now shining through him; that this Spirit is Christ, who said through Jesus: “Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word”?

41. Your word is the power through which you make your belief manifest. Simple belief in or assent to the truth of a proposition never gave understanding to anyone. There must be mental action; organic changes in the mind are necessary before the new state of consciousness takes up its abode in you.

42. If you can convince yourself that you are a son of God, your next step is to declare it in word and to carry it out in the acts of your daily life. After declaring this, if you fall short in demonstrating yourself to be a son of God, you are to find out why. “Ask, and it shall be given you . . . knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” You have neglected some of your spiritual powers. You may be dissipating in the lusts of the flesh some transcendent energy given you by the Father.

43. Here comes the mission of the Holy Spirit. When you ask in the silence of Spirit to be shown why you do not manifest the powers that Jesus of Nazareth manifested, the Holy Spirit will in some way reveal to you the lack. How that revealment will come about no one can tell you. But if you are patient and trustful you will be guided and directed so that all the links in the chain of your being will be brought together and harmoniously joined, and the Son of God will be revealed in you.

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee. For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples; but Jehovah will arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. . . . Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man passed through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations. . . . For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron. I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, desolation nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise. The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but Jehovah will be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for Jehovah will be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.

Lesson 13. Attaining Eternal Life

THESE QUERIES often come to us: “What do you teach about death?” “Where do people go when they die?” A succinct answer to these questions is found in a statement made by Paul: “The mind of the flesh is death.” According to the Bible, all men are “dead through . . . trespasses and sins.”

2. Adam, as originally created, was in illumination. Spirit continually breathed into him the inspiration and knowledge that gave him superior understanding. But he began eating (or appropriating) ideas of two powers--God and not-God, good and evil. The result, so the allegory relates, was a falling away from life and all that it involves. This was the first death.

3. Men do not think of the first death in its relation to the second death. The latter enters when the soul loses control of the body, when the functional activities cease and the physical organism dissolves. If the scriptural statements given above express facts, sinners (men who believe in two powers, good and evil) are already dead. They do not have to wait until the body stops acting, to know the conditions that prevail in death. Why should we worry about the condition of men who go through the second death? The first death is death of the light and the life of Spirit in our consciousness, and the result is a withdrawal of the soul from the organism. The soul of the carnal-minded does not live in the body, but outside of it. Because of his sins, man has been driven out of the body Eden.

4. What is death? Briefly stated, it is cessation of vital force and action in the body. Jesus referred to the dead as having “fallen asleep,” as also did Paul. There are various degrees of this sleepy condition into which the body falls. Students of physiology find that the body has unused resources that can be temporarily awakened. Through deep breathing they bring into action certain centers in the lungs that give additional purity to the blood; by the quickening of other centers in the body, weak persons can be made strong. This is not the regeneration taught by Jesus, but it demonstrates that the body is not living up to its capacity in even a material way. Some physiologists say that in our thinking exercises we use only a small part of the brain. Nearly the whole nervous system of man is in a sleepy, inactive state. These investigators tell us that if some substance could be poured in through our nervous systems that would wake us up all over, we should be transformed into new beings.

5. That is exactly what the new life in Christ does for us. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” We are to be transformed not by deep breathing, or by muscular exercise, or by having our nerves shocked by electricity; but by a new process of thought and spiritual energy we are to awaken our sleepy body, we are to get back to the original state in which we consciously receive the inspiration of Spirit and charge our body with the life of the Infinite.

6. This is the teaching of pure Christianity, and it is borne out by the discoveries of modern science. Both agree that men must have more life and greater vitality in order to carry forward the demands of mind and its aspirations. Jesus went so far as to claim that men who do not lay hold of the larger consciousness of life which He brought to the race, have no life in them.

7. What shall we do to escape the second death? We must take the life of the Christ man, which is potentially here in every one of us, and concentrate it into our brain and body. This is accomplished by the power of the word. We can take the first step, that of quickening the circulation, by directing living thoughts and words into the blood channels of the body.

8. This quickening was taught by Jesus. He said, “I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” What is the nature and the work of these little canals that carry the blood through all parts of the body? They are the rivers of life, flowing from the one head, divine life.

They carry the blood corpuscles, which physiology tells us are little batteries, each with a positive and a negative pole. If these little batteries of your body have the life element in them, they constantly electrify your organism; but if through the power of your thought and word you affirm the opposite of life and talk about the absence of life, what are you doing? You are robbing the batteries of their natural life element; you are slowing down their vitality by giving them an element of negation. This treatment will produce death in the corpuscles, and eventually will bring death to the organism, which they ought to supply with life. By such a process of denial as this the body becomes separated from its sustaining life principle. To hold negation in the mind is to stamp negation on the body. There is no duality in God. We intuitively know that God is good and that God is all. We intuitively know that life is the one real expression of God. To demonstrate the God life, we must plant the knowledge of that life in the flesh. To keep on living, we must supply the God substance, out of which the body will be renewed.

9. There is no need of any state or condition called death. The word “death” is a denial of God’s idea of life. If we would accept life as God offers it to us, we are obliged to refuse the conditions that man has attached to it.

10. If we would realize the larger life, we must believe in it; we must begin to affirm it as ours here and now. And what kind of life do you conceive this eternal life to be? A life that goes and comes? Affirming eternal life, would you say, “I feel tired and weak; I wish I had a little stimulant to tone me up”? Certainly not. You would meet the feeling of weakness with an affirmation of strength; you would meet every evil suggestion with a denial of its reality and a strong word of Truth. Sound words quickly tone up the mind and body, and there is never a reaction of weakness following their use.

11. It does not make any difference to the loyal Christian how many people “fall asleep.” We know that the sleepers awaken again, that what men call the sleep of death is just a long dream. Some people have more vivid dreams than others, so some who fall asleep in the second death may dream of returning life until they quickly take up again the construction of an organism. The early Christians considered it a great advantage to have a knowledge of Jesus before falling asleep.

12. It is possible to think about the absence of life until death seems real and lasting. This makes the dream dense and dark, and the awakening slow. Christianity shows how to come right back into life, and that is the only salvation for man. If you believe faithfully in the Christ life, you will never die. That is the promise of Jesus, and our understanding of the laws of mind substantiates His assurance in this respect. The mind can be so filled with thoughts of life that there will be no room for a thought of death. Death can never take possession of the body of one whose mind is thoroughly charged with ideas of life.

13. This will answer the question “If a man die, shall he live again?” Eternal life means continuous conscious existence in the body. Every man lives just to the extent of his appreciation of eternal life. Not only must we live, but we must live wisely. In the Genesis allegory it is written that, for fear that man would eat of the tree of life and live forever in his sinful mind, the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden. This means that man does not consciously live in his organism, which is the real Garden of Eden. In his unregenerated state, man reflects his mind into his body. But when the baptism of fire, the descent of the Holy Spirit, takes place, there is a reunion of mind and body, and the thrill of divine life is again felt by Adam. The return of the soul to the interior of the organism is part of the symbology portrayed in the history of Jesus of Nazareth. Man must seek and know the law of life before he can live forever. Living without conforming to the law is tragedy.

14. The law of life is revealed to the mind of man through conscious thinking. Give attention to the omnipresent intelligence and it will make you wise. The “light which lighteth every man, coming into the world” is here, as the atmosphere is here. “The light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.” Why? Because men do not realize the truth about Spirit and its laws. Spirit is like mind--in fact it is the highest realm of mind. There is an ever-present, all-knowing One. Put yourself into conscious unity with this presence through the power of your thought and your word, and you will gradually become mentally open to a world of causes of which you never before dreamed.

15. Physiology says that the body has two sets of cells, live cells and dead cells. The live cells have a little electric light at their center and the dead ones are dark. In good health there is a preponderance of the light cells; in ill health the dark cells predominate. Metaphysicians have found that man can light up the body cells by affirming life and intelligence for them. Metaphysicians tell their patients to make affirmations such as this:

16. I am alive with the life of Christ. I am intelligent with the intelligence of Christ.

17. Take these words and use them, day after day, night after night. Affirm them when you go to bed, and affirm them when you awake in the morning; make them part of your consciousness, and you will take a very important step in demonstrating eternal life.

18. The body is shocked to death by the violent thought voltage of the unwise mind. Selfishness leads to strife, which is followed by anger and hate. These emotions generate currents of thought whose volts burn up the body cells in the same way that a live wire sears the flesh. Hate currents burn out the connections in the glands, exactly as an excessively high current burns out a fuse in your house lighting system. Then the lights go out and death of the body sets in. Love, peace, and harmony are the only remedies that count. “God is love,” and to live in God-Mind, man must cultivate love until it becomes the keynote of his life. We must love everybody and everything, ourselves included. Some people hate themselves. Self-hate is destructive. You must love yourself. Affirm the infinite love as your love, and you will find that there will be generated in your mind and body an entirely new element. Love is the cementing element of all things. You could not have an organism without the help of the cementing power of love. Love is the magnet. You must have love. You cannot live without it. Then begin to live in the thought of love. Personal love is part of the law, but divine love fulfills the law. Center your love thoughts upon God, and you will find love for your fellow man growing marvelously.

19. We must have substance in its purity in our body. All about us are elements, out of which, if we knew how to use them, we could make any form that we desire. We have not cultivated faith in the invisible substance idea, and it therefore has not been incorporated into our flesh. But now that we know that it exists and that through our affirmations we bring it into expression, we begin at once to affirm divine substance. By this practice we put our body under a refining process that we may continue until we are transfigured into the likeness of the divine man that John saw on Patmos.

20. The pure substance of Being is a universal solvent. Man can take the substance idea into his mind and, by the presence of its native purity, cleanse everything upon which he concentrates his thought. Do you know what makes an impure cell in your organism? Simply the thought of impurity. That is the point of origin. Impurity is not altogether the result of the impure food that you eat. That has something to do with it, but the desire for impure food begins in the mind, a hungering of the impure thought for that whereon to feed and grow. Coughing and expectorating are ways by which the body forces out the corrupt cells which unclean thinking has formed. When you find yourself trying in this manner to eliminate impurities, stop and affirm the one, infinite, pure substance, as the only substance in existence.

21. Jesus said that His body was living substance, and He told His followers to eat it. You eat the purified substance of the body of Christ by affirming it to be the real substance of your body. You can send the thought of pure substance to every part of your body, and it will affect the mucous membrane until the catarrhal condition, the cold, and all other diseases resulting from inactive cells, will be purified or eliminated. This process will stop the coughing and the wheezing, if you hold steadily to the one proposition that there is a universally pure substance and that that substance is the one element out of which the Christ body is formed in you.

22. In the regeneration we thus daily put on the body of Christ, until finally every cell becomes so related to its neighbor that each reflects the other, as diamond reflects diamond, and the redeemed body literally shines. “They that are wise shall shine.” The wisdom that shines is the wisdom of Spirit, the knowledge that life is spiritual Being, complete here and now.

23. The whole secret of the demonstration of Christ is that we shall come to realize our original sinlessness. Sin and the consciousness of sin are the cause of all darkness and death. No amount of physical health can overcome the sins of the carnal mind. Unless he is regenerated under the Jesus Christ teaching, man is a whited sepulcher, “full of dead men’s bones.” So you are not really alive, wholly alive, safely alive, eternally alive, until you get right where Jesus Christ was and is. He cultivated and demonstrated these thoughts which are the foundation of mental harmony, and if we study His life we shall see just how we must follow Him into His life, become part of it, and live in eternal life, here and now.

24. If we are not spiritually alive, if we have not the Christ Mind, we are not alive at all. That is the teaching of Christianity. If we believe in the Bible we must believe these propositions. In order to be alive, really alive, we must be sanctified, purified, and regenerated. We must be perfect, even as Jesus was perfect. There is no other way. We may as well face this proposition, because we cannot get away from it. It is true. If I am in any degree a sinner, I have in that degree a corruptible, dead body. I must then be guilty of the carnal mind. And what is the remedy? I must get rid of carnality; that is all. The quicker I do that, the quicker I shall become alive. I should not expect that through my further dying the good Lord will make me alive. I can find in the Scriptures no hint of a promise that warrants such a presumption. “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

25. In a parable (Luke 16:19-31) Jesus describes the states of consciousness of one who passes through the change called death. The rich man and Lazarus represent the outer and inner consciousness of the average worldly-minded man and woman. The outer consciousness appropriates the attributes of soul and body and expresses them through sense avenues. “He was clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day.” This condition typifies material riches.

26. Material selfishness starves the soul and devitalizes the psychical body. This body is described thus: “A certain beggar named Lazarus was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table.” The soul life is put out of the consciousness and fed with the dogs.

27. When death overtakes such a one, the inner as well as the outer life changes environment. The material avenues are lost to the outer, and the soul finds self in a hell of desires without the flesh sensations through which to express itself. “And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments.”

28. Lazarus, the beggar, was “carried away by the angels into Abraham’s bosom.” The inner spiritual ego, drawn by its innate spiritual ideas, finds a haven of rest in the bosom of the Father, represented by Abraham.

29. When man loses the material avenues of expression and has not developed the spiritual, he is in torment. Appetite longs for satisfaction, and in its anguish for a cooling draught calls to its spiritual counterpart (Lazarus). But the body consciousness, the place of union for all the attributes of man, has been removed, producing in the life consciousness a great gulf or chasm that cannot be crossed, except by incarnation in another body.

30. Then the sense man is contrite, and would have his five brothers warned of the danger of sense life. These five brothers are the five senses. Abraham says, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them”; that is, they understand the law (Moses) and they know what will follow its transgression (prophets). The rich man rejoins: “Nay, father Abraham: but if one go to them from the dead, they will repent.” “And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if one rise from the dead.” The personal consciousness, which has been formed through material attachments, cannot be reached except through its own plane of consciousness. The phenomenal manifestations of spiritualism do not cause people to repent of their sins.

31. When one understands the disintegration that death produces in man, this parable is perceived to be rich in its description of the process and of the new relation of the segregated parts of the complete man.

32. Man is spirit, soul, and body. The spirit is I AM, and I AM is the ego of Deity. Jehovah told Moses that His name was I AM. Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Every time that man says “I am,” he is speaking the name of Being.

33. Soul is the sum total of man’s experiences gathered throughout the ages. Soul has its inner and its outer avenues of expression. In this parable Lazarus represents the inner, and the rich man the outer, first united in the body, then separated through body dissolution.

34. The body is the meeting place of the life and substance attributes of Being, consequently body is an important factor in consciousness. Body is not matter; it is substance and life in expression. Expression takes the character of the presiding ego. When the ego attaches itself to life and substance alone and ignores the higher attributes of Being, it becomes gross and material in thought and in manifestation. This condition is typified by the man rich in sense consciousness with a beggar soul.

35. Every form in the universe has within it a thought picture or pattern. The form may be destroyed, but the picture endures. Man’s body is first a mental picture imprinted upon the ether or universal substance. When the body goes into dissolution, the picture remains and stimulates the consciousness of the five senses (five brothers), if it has had no higher activity.

It is this sense-body shade that appears to the average psychic. These shades often float about like empty shells, without animation or intelligence. However, if intense interest or intense feeling has been projected into the body at the time of dissolution, it will be reflected in the shade or ghost. The moving picture of a tragedy may be repeated in the astral until the film is broken up. These are the “demons” of Bible times and the “evil spirits” of today. The Christ Mind has supreme dominion over them and can cast them out at will.

36. To the oft-repeated question “Where is my loved one who is dead?” there can be no comprehensive answer until there is a broader and deeper understanding of man. If all of man were the physical, then the question could easily be answered. But man is very much more than body, even more than intellect. The central reality of man is spirit, then comes soul, then come intellect and sense consciousness, out of which body is formed.

When the body is destroyed, the house of these various component parts of man is no more, and they are left homeless. Then they separate, each going to its own state of consciousness. The spiritual ego reverts to its original essence in the bosom of the Father; soul falls asleep until the next incarnation. Body and sense consciousness are earth-bound, and in due season they disintegrate. Those who have lived honestly and purely find peace and happiness for a time in the rest which follows sincere observance of the divine law.

37. But the goal of man is eternal life, and in each incarnation that goal is brought nearer if Spirit is given an opportunity to express itself. When this is done, the true spiritual body will replace the physical body and all men will become like Jesus Christ. This is to be accomplished here in the earth. With the eye of a prophet, John saw the redeemed earth, as described in Revelation, chapter 21:

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God: and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away. And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.”

Lesson 14. Jesus Christ’s Atonement

THERE MAY be found, in the traditions of nearly all peoples, reference to a time when man was in a state of consciousness very much superior to that which he now manifests. In the Hebrew Scriptures that superior plane is symbolically described as the Edenic state, and the departure from that place in the divine economy is called the “fall of man.” Of late years we have been taught in the new metaphysics that there never was a “fall of man”; that man never fell; that his creation was spiritual, and that he is just as spiritual today as he ever was, or ever will be. Of man as an idea in Divine Mind, this is true; but that there is not a harmonious manifestation of that idea clearly indicates that there has somewhere been a lapse in man’s evolution.

2. When by study of himself as “mind” and finding his place in Being man gets away from the sense consciousness, he rises into a mental atmosphere where he sees the relation of ideas in divine order. This perception can be attained by anyone who will detach his thinking ego from the world of phenomena and let his free ego float out into the universe of causes. It has been attained by thousands in every age, and their testimony is worthy of careful consideration.

3. When man touches in mind this plane of causes, he sees that the discords of humanity, in body and affairs, are the direct result of disorder in his relation to creation. He sees that there has been, through man’s power of free thought, a most vital and far-reaching departure from the divine idea of his being.

4. Man cannot thwart the divine plan, but by virtue of his own creative or formative power he can turn his part of the work in that plan of its true course and impede the consummation of it. This has been done, and we exist today in a state of lapse, so far as our relation to God and the orderly movement of His idea of creation are concerned. So we have to admit that the “fall of man” is in a measure true. When we understand this “fall” we shall perceive more fully why certain conditions that prevail are so incongruous in a world where a good and perfect God is supposed to rule.

5. Material science says that evolution is the order of nature and that all the silent records of earth, as left by departed races, testify to a steady rise of man from lower to higher conditions.

6. A large number of metaphysical writers and teachers have fallen into this line of thought and have assumed that the records of man’s evolution, as found in archaeological and geological research, bear testimony to his mind evolution, and that the experiences through which he has passed are in the divine order of creation. We must accept this, reconcile it, or expunge it.

7. We accept the testimony, but we say that it is but the evolution of man out of a lapse from divine order in creation, and that it is no part of the original divine plan, any more than a fall into a muddy swamp would be a necessary part of a journey to a beautiful city. Man is the son of a God whose methods are harmonious in bringing forth His ideas. Man is His idea--a self-conscious entity, having in embryo all the faculties and powers of that from which it came forth. In following the orderly path of its unfoldment this man idea is in conscious mental communication with its source, and knows what to do and what not to do in bringing forth creation. “And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

8. The Garden of Eden or Paradise of God is in the ether, and we see that the “fall of man” antedated the formation of this planet as we behold it geologically. Jesus recognized this when He said: “And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”

9. We are by birth a spiritual race, and we should never have known matter of material conditions if we had followed the leadings of our higher consciousness.

10. It is the recognition of this higher consciousness and the reorganization of our place in Being that we are seeking. We are emerging from the darkness of Egyptian bondage--we see the Promised Land, and we want to know the shortest way to it. That way is the Jesus Christ way. The demonstration of Jesus relates Him to us in a metaphysical sense, because it is only by a study of states of consciousness formed by thought that it can be understood.

11. We have been taught by the church that Jesus died for us--as an atonement for our sins. By human sense this belief has been materialized into a flesh-and-blood process, in which the death of the body on the cross played the important port. Herein has the sense consciousness led the church astray. That spiritual things must be spiritually discerned seems to have escaped the notice of the church in forming its scheme of atonement. At the root of the church’s teaching is Truth; Jesus of Nazareth played an important part in opening the way for every one of us into the Father’s kingdom. However, that way was not through His death on the cross, but through His overcoming death. “I am the resurrection, and the life.”

12. To comprehend the atonement requires a deeper insight into creative processes than the average man and the average woman have attained; not because they lack the ability to understand, but because they have submerged their thinking power in a grosser thought stratum. So only those who study Being from the standpoint of pure mind can ever understand the atonement and the part that Jesus played in opening the way for humanity into the glory that was potentially theirs before the world was formed.

13. We who have studied these creative processes through thought action know how states of consciousness are formed and how persistent a certain mental state is after it has once crystallized. The man ego seems to lose its identity in its own formations, and forgets for the time all its past experiences and powers. We see this in certain social states among the people. No matter how miserable and degraded their state, people get so accustomed to it that they do not aspire to anything higher. Reformers of the criminal classes in our large cities tell us that their most difficult problem is to awaken in these people a desire for better things. They are attached to their habits of thought and living, and they do not want to be reformed. The same is true in the history of efforts to civilize the savage races. Just when they are about to reach the place where they will see the desirability of a better way of living, they suddenly fall back into the old life, and are satisfied. The tendency of thought emanation is to crystallize about the form that it has made and, in spite of the struggles of the man ego, to hold to it.

14. We can readily see how a whole race might be caught in the meshes of its own thought emanations and, through this drowsy ignorance of the man ego, remain there throughout eternity, unless a break were made in the structure and the light of a higher way let in. This is exactly what has happened to our race. In our journey back to the Father’s house we became lost in our own thought emanations, and Jesus Christ broke through the crystallized thought strata and opened the way for all those who will follow Him.

15. By so doing He made a connection between our state of consciousness and the more interior one of the Father--He united them--made them a unit--one, hence the at-one-ment or atonement through Him. He became the way by which all who accept Him may “pass over” to the new consciousness. That which died upon the cross was the consciousness of all mortal beliefs that hold us in bondage--such as sin, evil, sickness, fleshly lusts, and death--which He overcame. “I have overcome the world.” Jesus, “overcoming” made a great rent in the sense consciousness, and opened a way by which all who desire may demonstrate easily and quickly.

16. But in order to receive the benefit of Jesus’ work it is necessary for everyone to go to the place where He made the rent in the race beliefs. If you were held in the meshes of a great spider web, and someone made a hole through which you could pass, you would go where the hole was and would pass out that way. The same rule holds good of this breach that Jesus made in the limitations of sense that hold the race in bondage--we have to go where He is, mentally and spiritually. “I go to prepare a place for you.” So we see that the church is not so far wrong in its call to “follow Jesus.” The error lies in the belief that He was the only begotten Son of God, and that He overcame for us, and that by simply believing on Him we are saved.

17. In believing Him to be the only begotten Son of God, we have confounded His higher consciousness or Christ consciousness, which is the only begotten Son of God, with His lower or Jesus consciousness. He recognized His identity in God as the Christ, the Son of God; He also recognized His consciousness of self, the son of man. So each of us is a son of God. We shall come into conscious recognition of the Christ mind, effecting the junction between our mind and God’s mind just as soon as we let go of the limitations of mortal sense. God has but one Son, the Christ, the one ideal man. This divine conjunction was accomplished by Jesus, and the Christ shone out through His mortal self and illumined it, until it lost its personality and disappeared into divine individuality.

18. By believing that Jesus was more divine than other men, the church has assumed that He had certain privileges that the Father does not extend to all; that in a superhuman way He made good all our shortcomings; that we are saved from suffering for our acts by simply believing on Him and accepting Him, in a perfunctory way, as our Saviour. Paul is responsible for a good share of this throwing of the whole burden upon the blood of Jesus--doubtless the result of an old mental tendency carried over from his Hebrew idea of the blood sacrifices of the priesthood. In order to show the parallel in the life of Jesus, Paul preached to the Jews that He was the great once-for-all blood sacrifice and that no other blood sacrifice would ever become necessary.

19. But Jesus went further than this. He said: “Come, follow me.” “Keep my sayings.” He meant: Do as I do. I have overcome; now by following in my footsteps you shall overcome.

20. We all recognize the advantage of thought co-operation. It is much easier to hold ourselves in the true consciousness when we are associated with those who think as we do. It was the work of Jesus to establish in our race consciousness a spiritual center with which everyone might become associated mentally, regardless of geographical location. He said to His disciples, “I go to prepare a place for you. . . . that where I am, there ye may be also.” That place is a state of consciousness right here in our midst, and we can at any time connect ourselves with it by centering our mind on Jesus and silently asking His help in our demonstrations. It is not the prayer of a “worm of the dust” to a god, but of one who is on the way asking the guidance of one who has passed over the same road, and who knows all the hard places and how to get through them.

21. This in one sense is the relation of Jesus to each of us, and so far as our present demonstration is concerned, it is the most important relation. The road that we are traveling from the mortal plane of consciousness to the spiritual plane is beset with many obstructions, and we need the assistance of one stronger than any of those who now dwell in flesh bodies. He who is still in the perception of the earthly is not always a safe guide, because he sees in a limited way. We want one who sees wholly in Spirit, and such a one we find in Jesus Christ.

22. He has not left us or gone to some faraway heaven, but He may be reached by the humblest of us in a moment’s time, if we really aspire in soul for His companionship and help.

23. This is a simple statement of the relation that Jesus of Nazareth bears to us. Yet He was more than Jesus of Nazareth, more than any other man who ever lived on the earth. He was more than man, as we understand the appellation in its everyday use, because there came into His manhood a factor to which most men are strangers. This factor was the Christ consciousness. The unfoldment of this consciousness by Jesus made Him God incarnate, because Christ is the mind of God individualized, and whoever so loses his personality as to be swallowed up in God becomes Christ Jesus, or God man.

24. We cannot separate Jesus Christ from God, or tell where man leaves off and God begins in Him. To say that Jesus Christ was a man as we are men is not true, because He had dropped that personal consciousness by which we separate ourselves into men and women. He was consciously one with the absolute principle of Being. He had no consciousness separate from that Being, He was that Being to all intents and purposes.

25. Yet He attained no more than is expected of every one of us. “That they may be one, even as we are” was His prayer.

26. It is all accomplished through the externalization of the Christ consciousness, which is omnipresent and ever ready to manifest itself through us as it did through Jesus.

27. This principle has been perceived by the spiritually wise in every age, but they have not known how to externalize it and to make it an abiding state of consciousness. Jesus accomplished this and His method is worthy of our adoption, because, so far as we know, it is the only method that has been successful. It is set forth in the New Testament and whoever adopts the life of purity and love and power there exemplified in the experiences of Jesus of Nazareth will in due course attain the place that He attained.

28. The way to do this is the way Jesus did it. He acknowledged Himself to be the Son of God. The attainment of the Christ consciousness calls for nothing less on our part than a definite recognition of ourselves as sons of God right here and now, regardless of appearances to the contrary. We know that we are sons of God--then why not acknowledge it and proceed to take possession of our God right? That is what Jesus did in the face of most adverse conditions. Conditions today are not so stolidly material as they were in Jesus’ time. People now know more about themselves and their relation to God. They are familiar with thought processes and how an idea held in mind will make itself manifest in the body and in affairs; hence they take up this problem of spiritual realization under favorable conditions. It must work out just as surely as a mathematical problem, because it is under immutable law. The factors are all in our possession and the rule that was demonstrated in one striking instance is before us. By following that rule and doing day by day the work that comes to us, we shall surely put on Christ as fully and completely as did Jesus of Nazareth.

29. The process of Jesus’ evolving from sense to soul was first a recognition of His spiritual selfhood and a constant affirmation of its supremacy and power. Jesus loved to make the highest statements: “I and the Father are one.” “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.” He made these statements before the resurrection, so we know that He was not fully conscious of their reality. But by the power of His word He brought about the realization.

30. Next in the process was that constant cleansing of the consciousness through denial, or fasting. He prayed much alone, and fasted. He was being tempted on every side, within and without, and was always overcoming. He daily put out of His mind all the ideas that bind men to the world. He recognized that the kingdom of the spiritual man is not of this world--that it is a world that transcends this and controls it; therefore He was not attached in any way to the things of sense. Personal self, the Devil, told Him to turn stones into bread, but He did not yield to this temptation to use His God-given power for material gain. Personal sense took Him upon ambition’s high place and showed Him what He might have in the fame of the world if He would worship personal sense, but He refused to lower His standard. He was using spiritual power and He was true to its character; He did not mix it with matter or with material ways.

31. When Jesus said, “The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life,” He touched the inner Christ word which created all things, and we know that His words were vivified from that center with a life essence and moving power that will demonstrate the truth of His statement.

32. These words have rung through the souls of men and set them afire with God’s Spirit, throughout the ages. This is because they are spiritual words. Within them are the seeds of a divine life and they grow in the minds of all who give them place, just as a beautiful flower or a great tree grows from the seed germ planted in the ground.

33. Jesus recognized that the consciousness of man was submerged in the things of sense; that it could not perceive Truth in the abstract, and that it must, under these conditions, be stirred into activity by some stimulating force dropped into it from without. Hence He sent forth His powerful words of Truth to the thirsty souls, and said to them, “Keep my saying.”

34. To keep a saying is to revolve it in mind--to go over it in all its aspects, to believe it as a truth, to treasure it as a saving balm in time of need, and above all to obey the law that it sets forth.

35. People in all ages have known about the saving power of words and have used them to the best of their understanding. The Hebrews bound upon their foreheads and wrists parchments with words of Scripture written upon them. The Hindus, Japanese, Chinese, and the people of nearly all other known nations have their various ways of applying the sacred words to the modification of their ills, and the invocation of the invisible powers to aid them in both their material and spiritual needs.

36. Although these methods are faulty in that they use the letter of the word, instead of its spirit, they are useful to us as indicators of the universal belief in the power of the sacred word.

37. We know that words express ideas, and to get at their substantial part we must move into the realm of ideas. Ideas are in the mind and we must go there if we want to get the force of our words. The Hebrews’ phylacteries and the lamas’ prayer wheels are suggestive of the wordy prayers of the Christian; but their use is not keeping the sayings of Jesus, nor reaping the inner substance of the mystical word. This can be done only by those who believe in the omnipresent Spirit of God and in faith keep in mind the words that express His goodness, wisdom, and power.

38. Jesus more fully voiced this nearness of God to man than any of the prophets, and His words are correspondingly vivified with inner fire and life. He said that those who kept His sayings should even escape death, so potent was the life energy attached to them.

39. This is a startling promise, but when we understand that it was not the personal man, Jesus, making it, but the Father speaking through Him, we know that it was not an idle one; for He said, speaking to His disciples, “The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.”

40. This is the reason why these words of Jesus endure, and why more and more they are attracting the attention of men.

41. Whoever takes these words into his mind should consecrate himself to the truth that they represent. That truth is not the doctrine of any church, nor the creed of any sect--not even Christianity. That truth is written in the inner sanctuary of every soul, and all know it without external formulas. It is the intuitive perception of what is right in the sight of God. It is the truth and justice that every man recognizes as the foundation of true living.

42. Whoever consecrates himself to follow this inner monitor and live up to its promptings, regardless of social or commercial customs, consecrates himself to do God’s will. He is fitted to take the words of Jesus and make them his own.

43. It is no idle experiment, this keeping in the mind the words of Jesus. It is a very momentous undertaking, and may mark the most important period in the life of an individual. There must be sincerity and earnestness and right motive, and withal a determination to understand the spiritual import.

44. This requires attention, time, and patience in the application of the mind to solving the deeper meanings of the sayings that we are urged to keep.

45. People deal with sacred words in a way that is too superficial to bring results. They juggle with words. They toss them into the air with a heavenly tone or an oratorical ring and count it as compliance with divine requirements. This is but another form of the prayer wheel and the phylactery. It is the lip service that Jesus condemned because its object is to be “seen of men.”

46. To keep the sayings of Jesus means much more than this. It has peculiar significance for the inner life. Only after the inner life is awakened is the true sense of the spiritual word understood. But the sincere keeper of Jesus’ sayings will by his devotions awaken the inner spirit, and the Lord will come to him and minister to his call, as lovingly as a father to a beloved son.

47. Jesus tells us that His words are Spirit, and then tells us to keep them. How can one keep a thing of which he knows nothing? How can one keep the words and sayings of Jesus unless he gets them into his consciousness and grasps them with his mind, his spirit?

48. Surely there is no other way to keep His sayings. Those who are doing so from any other standpoint are missing the mark. They may be honest, and they may be good, sincere people, living what the world calls pure Christian lives, but they will not get the fruits of Jesus’ words unless they comply with His requirements.

49. Unless you perceive that there is something more in the doctrine of Jesus than keeping up a worldly moral standard as preparation for salvation after death, you will fall far short of being a real Christian.

50. Jesus did not depreciate moral living, but neither did He promise that it fulfilled the law of God. Very negative people are frequently trusty and moral. But that does not make them Christians after the Jesus Christ plan. His Christianity had a living God in it--a God that lived in Him and spoke through Him. It was a religion of fire and water--life as well as purity. Men are to be alive--not merely exist half dead for a few years and then go out with a splutter, like a tallow dip. Jesus Christ’s men are to be electric lights that glow with a perpetual current from the one omnipresent Energy. The connection with that current is to be made through the mind by setting up sympathetic vibrations.

51. The mind moves upon ideas; ideas are made visible through words. Hence holding right words in the mind will set the mind going at a rate proportioned to the dynamic power of the idea back of those words. A word with a lazy idea back of it will not stimulate the mind. The word must represent swift, strong, spiritual ideas in order to infuse the white energy of God into the mind. This is the kind of word in which Jesus reveled. He delighted in making great and mighty claims for His God, Himself, His words, and for all men: “I and the Father are one.” “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.” “The Father is greater than I.” “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” “The works that I do shall ye do also; and greater.” These were some of the claims with which He stimulated His mind. And He produced the results--His words were fulfilled.

52. Many who for years have been students of the science of Christ and have a clear, intelligent perception of its truths are yet outside the kingdom of Spirit. They anxiously ask: “Why do I not realize the presence of Spirit?”

53. Have you kept the sayings of Jesus? Have you said to yourself in silence and aloud until the very ethers vibrated with its truth, “I and the Father are one”?

54. Have you opened the pores of your mind, by mentally repeating the one solvent of crystallized conditions, “I in them, and thou in me”?

55. This means mental discipline day after day and night after night, until the inertia of the mind is overcome and the way is opened for the descent of Spirit.

56. The personal consciousness is like a house with all the doors and windows barred. The doors and the windows of the mind are concrete ideas, and they swing open when the right word is spoken to them. Jesus voiced a whole volume of right words. If you will take up His sayings and make them yours, they will open all the doors of your mind, the light will come in, and you will in due time be able to step forth.

57. Another cannot do this for you. You really do not want him to do it, though you may think it would be nice if some master of spiritual ideas would help you to his understanding.

58. But this is a childish dream of the moment. You want to be yourself, and you can be yourself only by living your own life and finding its issues at the Fountainhead. If it were possible for one to reveal Truth to another, we should find heaven cornered by cunning manipulators of mind and its glories stored up in warehouses awaiting a higher market.

59. Let us be thankful that God is no respecter of persons, that Truth cannot be revealed by one mortal to another. God is a special, personal Father to every one of His children, and from no other source can they get Truth.

60. Jesus, who has clearly revealed the Father in His consciousness, may tell all men how it came about. He may point the way. He may say, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” but there is always a condition attached to its realization: One must exercise faith, keep His sayings, and follow Him. Summed up, it means that by adopting His methods one will find the same place in the Father that He found.

61. “If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”

Question Helps For Students Of Talks On Truth

Lesson I--Reform Your God Thought

1. Why is this the age of reforms?

2. Upon what do the majority of reformers insist?

3. What is a natural law?

4. What is the supreme dictator?

5. How is thought generated?

6. Why is silence important?

7. How do reforms begin?

8. What is love?

9. Great men received their inspiration from what source?

10. Explain the origin of every act of man.

11. In what two directions can the conscious I look?

12. What does a belief in separateness lead to?

13. Explain why God is accessible.

14. What is your higher self?

15. Explain God’s willingness to help solve all our problems.

16. Can one go to the Father with trivial problems as well as larger ones?

17. Is it possible to hide oneself from omnipresent intelligence?

18. How does God want you to reverence Him?

19. What will you be in His kingdom?

20. Describe God’s kingdom of love and unity.

Lesson II--Microorganisms

1. What is Being? Explain.

2. What place has Adam in creation? Are Adam and man identical?

3. What gives character to one’s conditions and surroundings?

4. What does the historical symbology of the Bible teach us?

5. Who gives character to all the ideas that exist? How is it done?

6. Explain some of the factors that enter into the process termed “thinking.”

7. What is the origin of disease microbes? of health microbes? How are they formed?

8. What is the remedy for disease germs and for all destructive microbes?

9. Is the intellect of itself able to set up a standard of good and evil? To whom should this office be relegated?

10. What is the intellect, and whence does it draw its substance and intelligence?

11. Is Adam a part of the divine plan? What must we do with him?

12. What is the fount of wisdom? Where and how shall we attain true wisdom? Explain.

13. Why do we love to name or give character to the ideas of Jehovah God? How can the ideas in Being be made manifest?

14. If men would consult God before passing judgment upon His creations, and would think only God thoughts, what would be the result?

15. Are microbes and disease germs a part of the law of unfoldment in Being?

16. How can the problems of life easily be made orderly and divine?

17. How may man become conscious of the dominion that is his by divine right? How may he be delivered from the wilderness of ignorance?

18. How can one’s personal I be led up into the consciousness of the I AM? What is the star to which one’s I AM should be hitched?

19. How are the real and enduring things of God brought into visibility?

20. Does anyone outside of ourselves make us suffer? What is the one and only enduring power?

Lesson III--The I AM In Its Kingdom

1. What kind of ideas has the greatest power? How do ideas lose their identity as limited things and take on the unlimited?

2. When does an idea go forth in strength and harmony?

3. With what must we ballast our mental ships if they are to return to us laden with good?

4. Explain the I AM in its relation to the I Will.

5. Is the I AM in itself power, wisdom, and love? Explain.

6. In its right relation to Being, does the I AM ever own anything? Explain.

7. What is the I AM? Where is its home?

8. What is the mission of the I AM? How did it ever become separated from its sphere of wisdom?

9. Where is heaven?

10. Should we think of heaven as a condition only, or should we in our thoughts give it a definite place?

11. What produces forms or things?

12. Where is the source of the intelligence and life of every form?

13. How may the human body be compared to a system of planets?

14. What and where is the undiscovered country that we all are seeking?

15. What takes place in regeneration, the redemption of man from sin?

16. Is the “inner kingdom” material? What did Jesus call this place of wisdom?

17. Do we evolve this inner kingdom through thinking? How do we realize its presence?

18. Can the real man be lost or held in condemnation? What is it in man that has wandered away from God and needs to return to the Father’s house?

19. Can we get into the kingdom through such means as mesmerism, hypnotism, and mediumship? Has man more than one ego or I?

20. Why may the road back to the Father’s house within seem hard at the start?

Lesson IV--How Shall The Dead Be Raised?

1. Is Webster’s definition of death complete? Explain.

2. Can we learn to be healthy by studying disease? Explain.

3. Is it well to study about evil in order to know good?

4. How can we know all that we need to know about death?

5. That life may express itself wisely, what is needed besides life? Why do many people fail to exercise wisdom in their living?

6. What is life?

7. What governs the life in man’s body?

8. What are our methods of creating energy? Is it necessary to do more than merely perceive the omnipresence of life in order to manifest fullness of life?

9. In order to get desired results, what factor must be considered in addition to perceiving Truth and speaking words of life?

10. How does man waste the substance of his organism? Why should he not do it?

11. How did Jesus become the Word of God incarnate? Has anyone else this privilege?

12. Where must we always go in order to know the origin of an effect?

13. Can we have fullness of life and health apart from an acquaintance with God? Explain.

14. What above all else do men need in this day? What would more life without wisdom do for man?

15. How did death come into our world? How can it be put out?

16. Explain the process of demonstrating over death.

17. Explain sleep in its relation to death.

18. What is the “carnal mind”? What is sin?

19. Where do we first do our “raising of the dead”?

20. By what power is our consciousness resurrected from all error and death thoughts?

21. How do beliefs affect our organisms?

22. Besides holding right mental images, what must one do that one’s whole being may be resurrected from the dead?

Lesson V--The Development Of Divine Love

1. How may we feel and know the love of God?

2. Is there more than one love? Explain something of the faculty through which man receives love from Being.

3. Will love apart from right thoughts build up a harmonious consciousness? Explain the Peter faculty in connection with thinking.

4. Can love in its fullness be safe in the life of man apart from judgment, discrimination-the disciple James?

5. What four faculties, evenly balanced, form the foundation of a harmonious consciousness?

6. What, besides right thinking, must help to open the way for one into the kingdom of health and harmony?

7. What has error thought done to love in its expression in and through man?

8. What is the secret of demonstrating supply?

9. Explain the sentence “Love . . . taketh not account of evil.” Has love of itself the power to discriminate?

10. How can we change into good that which seems evil?

11. Explain love as the great magnet of God. What is the result of focusing one’s love upon anything less than the All-Good?

12. Explain the sentence “Love suffereth long, and is kind.” How may one control turbulent multitudes, and bring about peace and harmony?

13. What is meant by “the power of love”?

14. What is the result of associating power with intellect? Why cannot power be used successfully through intellect?

15. Why should power in its expression always be associated with love?

16. Is anything too hard for love when it is put to practical test? Explain some of the things that love will do for one.

17. Explain the sentences “Love . . . envieth not” and “Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.”

18. Does love ever seek its own? Explain.

19. What will be the result when love is brought into action in the consciousness of the race? When will this condition begin to be manifest for each one of us?

20. Is the present seemingly unloving condition of the world a bar to our individual expression of love?

21. Explain the true body in its relation to the body of flesh.

22. How may we develop the love center and become able to exercise love toward everybody?

23. Can the great love of Being be known truly on any plane except its own? Who only may know the depths of the Father’s love?

24. Has man really the capacity to feel and express the Father’s love? Explain.

Lesson VI--The Ministry Of The Word

1. To whom has the statement made by John at the opening of his Gospel always been a stumbling block? How can this statement be understood?

2. Wherein has theology wandered away from the Truth of omnipresent Spirit, and wherein lies the greatest virtue of pure metaphysical doctrine?

3. To whom are we indebted for the clearest presentation of spiritual science that has ever been given to the world? Explain how this is true.

4. Are theories always to be trusted? What evidence is needed to prove a theory?

5. Explain the Word of God in its relation to the three steps necessary in the working out of any process.

6. Explain the statement “The light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.”

7. Explain the sentence “There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John.”

8. What does “light” always mean in the Scriptures?

9. What is meant by “pure metaphysics”?

10. What is implied in the sentence “Without him was not anything made that hath been made”?

11. Is there more than one creation? Explain.

12. How does creation proceed? What part has man in bringing forth the formless into visibility?

13. How does man make states and conditions that are transitory? How may man form his consciousness in harmony and consequently in permanency?

14. What is Mind? What is the result of cultivating pure knowing?

15. Where is the working field of pure knowing? How may man be inspired by Spirit to say and do things that are extraordinary in the sight of the world?

16. Can the secret of this superior magic be bought with money? How can it be obtained?

17. Should we forbid anyone to do works in the name of Jesus? Give reasons for your answer.

18. What is indicated by the fact that in the Scriptures the Word of God is usually personified?

19. What is the Word of God to man?

20. What are the privileges of the sons of God? Who become in fact the sons of God?

Lesson VII--Ye Must Be Born Again

1. To whom and what was Jesus referring when He said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”? What is man?

2. What is meant by the statement “Know thyself”? How may one know oneself? What does one know when one knows oneself?

3. What is your I AM? Is there more than one I AM?

4. What is it that is born of flesh and born of Spirit? Explain.

5. Why were we born into the flesh? What is the “flesh,” and what is the “Spirit”?

6. What is the moving factor of the I AM?

7. Can the ego have any experience that it chooses? What must take place before one can leave the realm of sensation and its experiences and enter into the spiritual birth?

8. What is it in us that says “I AM”? Why can it not be described? What is it in the flesh consciousness? What is it in the spiritual consciousness?

9. What will open the door in Spirit?

10. What is the flesh and what does it express? How can we cause it to show forth the conditions of Spirit?

11. What is it to be born into the Spirit?

12. Explain some things that must be dropped by the I AM that desires to function on the spiritual plane.

13. Of what are the five senses avenues of expression? When is sensation an evil?

14. How can we gain freedom from bondage to the flesh?

15. What is the difference between sensation expressed in the flesh, and sensation expressed in Spirit?

16. Why must a person be sincere in his conformity to the conditions of Spirit after claiming his unity with Spirit?

17. What attitude should one take after having agreed with the Father to do His will and to be born of Spirit?

18. How may we know that we are being to be born of Spirit?

19. Why is it that many Truth students fall short in their demonstrations even though they are faithful to their hours of meditation, have denied and affirmed for years, and so forth?

20. In the new birth, what must follow spiritual thinking?

21. Can a man be born again and expect the help of Spirit in his affairs as long as he believes in securing his rights through the courts? Who is our judge?

22. What is required of one who seeks the new birth?

23. Can any real reformation of the world be brought about by magnifying error? What is it in one that sees evil?

24. How is it possible to obey the injunction to “see clearly to cast the mote out of the eye of thy brother”?

25. Who is the “Son of God and Son of man” referred to in the next to the last paragraph of this lesson? Where does man belong?

Lesson VIII--Obedience

1. What is thinking?

2. What is the power to think? What is it that brings about a world of illusion?

3. How may man build his body temple in wisdom? What is the meaning of the name “Simon”? Explain the symbology of his name’s being changed to Peter.

4. When do we begin to gather our disciples (faculties of mind) and how do we proceed?

5. What was Jesus’ highest aim? Explain His seemingly contradictory attitudes of mind that are suggested by His statements: “I can of myself do nothing” and “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.”

6. Explain how the relation between God and man is similar to that existing between a co-operative colony and its members.

7. Does man really possess any powers, or even his body? Explain.

8. How have some of the most miraculous cures been made?

9. What is the short cut into the kingdom of heaven and wholeness?

10. What are man’s burdens? Have we ever a right to take any burdens upon ourselves?

11. How do burdens arise? How may we relinquish them? What should be our attitude toward persons who seem to be dependent upon us?

12. Are dispensers of charity really friends to the race? Give reasons for your answer.

13. What is one of the most prolific burden producers of man?

14. What is necessary in order that we may really trust Spirit? Should this always be a blind trust? Explain.

15. What is Spirit? Explain something about its character.

16. How do we get into the presence of Spirit? What is the flaming sword that turns every way to guard the tree of life?

17. What is disobedience to Spirit? Why do people seek healing and help in outer miraculous ways apart from any real change of mind on their own part?

18. What is the second step in the working out of one’s salvation? What is essential to one’s building a spiritual body?

19. What law is operative in bringing forth the God man? Explain something of this law.

20. How may we live as Jesus of Nazareth lived-one with the Father? What does this oneness with God mean?

21. Where must we look for power and wisdom? Where shall we find the well of living water, and what will be the result?

22. What is our mission? What should be our standard of achievement?

Lesson IX--The Church Of Christ

1. Is what is called Christianity the doctrine of Jesus Christ? Has it ever been? How did it come about?

2. Who is the builder and head of the Christ church? Did Jesus give any authority for organizing this church with creeds and dogmas? Explain.

3. What is the one guide and source of inspiration? How do we know that “this promise” was not restricted to Jesus’ immediate disciples?

4. What is the rock upon which the one and only church of Jesus Christ is built? Give reasons for your answers.

5. Are Jesus’ words in John 5:39 a command to search the Scriptures in order to find the saving Truth? Explain.

6. What keeps men in bondage to the “lower world”? What occurs when one’s mind becomes open and free to search out the higher truths for oneself?

7. Where and how does the mind of man become corrupted or distorted?

8. When does a person become an obstruction to his soul’s progress? Why does man make such mistakes?

9. What is the true church of Christ? Where and what is its temple? Explain.

10. Whence comes most of the opposition to the church of Christ? Explain.

11. Explain the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, and why it cannot be forgiven. What is its result?

12. Should we pronounce every experience good? Why?

13. Explain something of the process of reconstructing your organism. How is the new organism grown?

14. What is the result of this reconstruction of man’s organism?

15. What is the result of man’s organizing his religion?

16. Can the church of Jesus Christ be confined to any external organization? Where must it be set up?

17. In his search for God, what does man find when he unreservedly gives himself up to the Spirit that is his one leader?

18. Does the church of Christ refer to things abstract, or does it refer to things concrete? Explain.

19. Does God perform miracles? Explain.

20. How may we do the works that Jesus did?

21. What is meant by the “organic church”? What is the result of its construction?

22. What is the promised city, the New Jerusalem? Explain.

23. Wherein are many metaphysicians “not wise in their methods of attaining the ultimate organic building”?

24. What does Spirit want in us above all things else?

25. Can we claim our good conduct as a merit card to give us any preference in the regeneration? When does the personal mentality lose its center? What is the result?

Lesson X--The Lord’s Body

1. Explain the teaching of Christianity regarding the human race.

2. What did Jesus come to show us? Why have not all His promises been fulfilled?

3. Is there any reason why our body should be destroyed? Explain.

4. When can it be said that we have availed ourselves of the Jesus Christ redemption and have our abiding place in the Lord’s body?

5. Why have men seemingly failed for two thousand years to avail themselves of the Jesus Christ redemption?

6. Of what is our body the fruit? What is the key to the resurrecting of our body?

7. If creation seems to fall short of the divine perfection in any way, what is the cause?

8. What is the truth about the body of man?

9. How can one discern the “Lord’s body,” and what is the result of not discerning it?

10. What is “pure reason”? Why do many people wander away from it?

11. Who is responsible for bringing forth the divine perfection? Explain.

12. What is the real secret of metaphysical healing?

13. What gives importance to the body beyond the usual estimate?

14. Can we save our body from death? How?

15. When does “the Lord’s body” begin to appear?

16. Is there any limit to healing? Then where does the continued thought and demonstration of health naturally lead?

17. Can “the real body of God” be weak, sick, or imperfect? Give reasons for your answer.

18. Is disease natural? Why do people experience disease? How can they let go of it?

19. Do drugs ever heal the body? By what means may the body be restored to health?

20. How can our seemingly material body be the temple of the living God? How may the Word become flesh in us?

Lesson XI--The Restoration Of God’s Kingdom

1. What is the prophecy of our Bible and of the bibles of other peoples concerning the earth? Name a special point of difference between these prophecies and the teaching of modern science.

2. How and when will this condition of peace and happiness be brought about?

3. Explain something of the great change that has taken place in late years in the scientific world.

4. Are changes also going on in the mental realm and in the religious world? Explain.

5. What is the beginning of every state of consciousness? Who planted the seed thoughts that are now springing up in so many forms and shapes? Explain.

6. To whom are the keys that open the gates of the New Jerusalem presented?

7. What more than mere possession of this key is necessary?

8. Can we perpetuate present conditions, in God’s kingdom upon earth? Should we seek to do so? Explain.

9. What is needed that we may choose wisely between that which is transient and that which is enduring?

10. What is the standpoint from which our ideal world must be formed and built?

11. When will the Christ kingdom be ready? Who may enter into it?

12. Does this kingdom already exist, or do we have to prepare it by righting the conditions of the world?

13. What is the way into this kingdom? What opens its doors?

14. Did Jesus give the location of the “kingdom of heaven”? What do His parables about it teach?

15. Upon what are founded man’s theories about a place called “heaven”? Where was this city that John saw? What does his vision really mean?

16. Why has the sense man ignored the fact that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and is within man?

17. Is the kingdom an ideal realm only, or has it an external side? Explain.

18. What must we do in order to make the kingdom manifest? Must one understand the law thoroughly in order to do this? Explain.

19. What in man represents the mechanical device through which the All-principle is made manifest? What sets the machinery in motion?

20. How can we understand what the kingdom of heaven is like? By what must we be guided in defining it?

Lesson XII--The Holy Spirit

1. What is meant by the “gospel”?

2. What was the origin of the creeds and dogmas of the churches and their teaching concerning salvation?

3. Did Jesus Christ establish, or authorize the establishment of, the “Christian church” as we know it today?

4. How can we know the doctrine of Jesus Christ? Who is its only authorized interpreter?

5. How may we understand the relation and office of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Why is this true?

6. What is the Holy Spirit? What is His relation to the Father and to the Son?

7. What was the mission of Jesus?

8. What does the function of the Holy Spirit imply? What does the Holy Spirit do for man?

9. How did the Hebrews get their concept of the personal, tribal God, Jehovah?

10. According to the Bible, how was the word of the Holy Spirit communicated to the people after man had severed the conscious connection between his mind and the Spirit?

11. What is the normal condition of man?

12. What is the Holy Spirit’s mission to man?

13. What is the one factor that the disciples and immediate followers of Jesus Christ counted absolutely necessary to their success? Explain.

14. Did the mission of the Holy Spirit end with the inspiration imparted to the writers of the New Testament? Is the Spirit in the world today with the same power and wisdom that He had in Bible times?

15. From what is the soul of man to be saved? How and when do we learn the way to bring this salvation about?

16. What is the first step in unraveling the gospel? Why is there no attempt made in the Scriptures to describe the Holy Spirit?

17. By what means may man come to know the Holy Ghost?

18. Can we separate the doctrine of Jesus Christ from the Holy Spirit? How are they related?

19. Does one meet the requirements of salvation by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Saviour of one’s soul, and by believing this until one passes out of the body? Explain.

20. Was Jesus the only Son of God? What is His teaching in regard to all who believe on Him?

21. What is the true and full import of the gospel of Jesus Christ?

22. Can one fulfill the requirements of the gospel by living uprightly and believing on Jesus Christ as one’s Saviour? Explain.

23. Should we claim our sonship now, when we are not fully expressing it, just as we claim health when appearances belie it? Explain.

24. What is the power through which we make our belief manifest?

25. When you have convinced yourself that you are a son of God, what is your next step?

26. If we do not manifest our spiritual powers as we should, how can we be guided to the needed revelation?

Lesson XIII--Attaining Eternal Life

1. Describe Adam as originally created.

2. How does man get away from sense consciousness?

3. How are we transformed?

4. What must we do to escape the second death?

5. How do we realize eternal life?

6. What is man’s salvation?

7. Explain the law of life and how it is revealed to man.

8. Explain the effect of the cells of the body on health.

9. What is a universal solvent?

10. How can man cleanse his thought?

11. What is the wisdom of Spirit?

12. What is the secret of the demonstration of Christ?

13. How do we become really alive?

14. How does Jesus describe the states of consciousness of one who passes through the change called death?

15. What is the effect of material selfishness?

16. How is man affected when he loses the material avenues of expression?

17. Define man; Spirit.

18. What is the soul? the body?

19. What is the goal of man?

20. What replaces the physical body?

Lesson XIV--Jesus Christ’s Atonement

1. What is symbolically described as the Edenic stage?

2. How does man get away from sense consciousness?

3. Describe the results of disorder in man’s relation to creation.

4. Can man thwart the divine plan?

5. Explain God’s idea of man.

6. What are we seeking?

7. What is the root of the church’s teaching? What part does Jesus play?

8. How can we understand the atonement?

9. Explain Jesus’ opening the way for all who will follow Him.

10. How do we receive the benefits of Jesus’ work?

11. Explain the higher and the lower consciousness of Jesus Christ.

12. Why is thought co-operation advantageous?

13. What factor made Jesus God incarnate?

14. Why can’t we separate Jesus Christ from God?

15. What was the process of Jesus’ evolving?

16. What words of Jesus have rung through the ages?

17. Explain universal belief in the power of the sacred word.

18. What does Jesus tell us to do?

19. Define personal consciousness.

20. How can you be yourself?

THE END

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Table of Contents

Lesson 1. Reform Your God Thought

Lesson 2. Microorganisms

Lesson 3. The I Am In Its Kingdom

Lesson 4. How Shall The Dead Be Raised?

Lesson 5. The Development Of Divine Love

Lesson 6. The Ministry Of The Word

Lesson 7. Ye Must Be Born Again

Lesson 8. Obedience

Lesson 9. The Church Of Christ

Lesson 10. The Lord’s Body

Lesson 11. The Restoration Of God’s Kingdom

Lesson 12. The Holy Spirit

Lesson 13. Attaining Eternal Life

Lesson 14. Jesus Christ’s Atonement

Question Helps For Students Of Talks On Truth