THE TEMPLE NOT MADE WITH HANDS
by Walter C. Lanyon
Published by Union Life Ministries
PUBLISHER’S PREFACE
What we call the Union Life message of Oneness in Christ, Paul called, "the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations; but now has been manifested to His saints" (Col. 1:26). This mystery, of "Christ in us, our hope of glory", is available to all believers. Men need no longer die in a wilderness of separation, struggle and defeat. There is "a Sabbath rest for the people of God" (Heb. 4:9). Since Pentecost, the reality of full heirship---co-crucifixion, co-resurrection, and co-ascension in Christ-is readily available to all who will acknowledge that the Kingdom of God is within them. "The one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him" (1 Cor. 6:17).
No twentieth century author has proclaimed the truth of Oneness any more clearly and eloquently than Walter C. Lanyon. Yet the bulk of his books are no longer available. Therefore, UNION LIFE MINISTRIES is republishing a few of Lanyon's outof-print books to make his writings available once again.
However, a word of explanation is in order. Since Lanyon wrote primarily to mature Christians who have begun to see with a "single eye", he leaves "the elementary teachings about the Christ . . . not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and faith toward God" (Heb. 6:1). Instead of seeing some as little children and young men, he writes as if all readers are "fathers" (1 John 2:13).
Lanyon's writings make only passing reference to sin, to the Lord Jesus' unique Diety in His incarnation as "God manifest in the flesh", to our identification with Him in His substitutionary death, and to other such fundamental truths. His limited emphasis on the foundations of faith in Christ is his way of pressing readers on to further reaches of maturity, not a denial of any foundational truths.
We in UNION LIFE MINISTRIES most certainly believe that, "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father" (1 John 2:23); "and there is salvation in no one else; for there is no name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
But we also agree with Paul (and with Lanyon) when Paul says, "Therefore from now on we recognize no man according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer" (2 Cor. 5:16). In maturity, the day finally comes when the substance (the Spirit) swallows up the shadow and the symbol (the historical and the material). As spirit persons, we must not avoid the metaphysical (beyond the physical) dimension, which is the ultimate true reality. "Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow" (Aesop).
Few writers take us into this wonderful dimension of living which Paul labels as "the heavenly places" (Eph. 1:3,20). Lanyon is one of the few who writes of life in that dimension, where we "do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment" (John 7:24). We need not always be caught up in a two-power conflict, but with a single eye see the One "who works all things (good and evil) after the counsel of His will" (Eph. 1:11).
So do not look for typical, foundational Biblical truths in this book. Lanyon only seeks to be a confirming witness to ultimate truths, such as total adequacy and complete victory in the Eternal Now of our Oneness with the Father. Be prepared to see with a single eye, and your whole body will be marvelously flooded with inextinguishable light.
UNION LIFE MINISTRIES
P.O. Box 2877
Glen Ellyn, IL 60138
CONTENTS
Out of the East
Subjectivity
Olympian Dust
Illusion
Recognition
Cloven Tongue
The Poisonous Flower
The Chastening
The Extension of the Senses
Seeing
Hearing
Tasting
Touching
Smelling
Embodiment
I Come Not to Destroy
That Which Concerneth Me
From Walking Up and Down and To and Fro
The Friendly Enemy
In All Thy Ways
Thank You, Father
Ye Must Be Born Again
Setting the Captive Free
Resist Not
No Condemnation
Being Being
The Acts of God
The God-Spake Voice
Believest Thou This?
When Ye Pray
OUT OF THE EAST
Chapter One
As the wind bloweth, I go now,
And ye know not whither.
With a warm breath I have blown upon your seedlings,
I have blessed you as a warm rain.
Aye, and from the northeast, icy
And stern was the blast of my indignation
Against the weeds of treachery---
Against the waste of unclean furrows and broken barns,
Wherein mice ate the seed I gave you without stint.
Now look ye to the harvest, for I go,
And neither tear nor bell nor burning sacrifice
Shall summons me again to teach anew
What I have taught so often that your ears are weary,
And ye are fat from hearing and not doing.
-Druid Taliesin*
* Taken, with permission, from writings of Talbot Mundy.
YES, "Ye are fat from hearing, and not doing." Hearing endless words of and about the truth and never really hearing the WORD within your soul. Afraid to listen to the voice within you, preferring to listen to another give his idea of what it all means. It probably does mean just what he says to him and for him---but that will not fit into the scheme of your things. "You have grown fat by not doing"---what an indictment. How can you do anything when you have only the words of another and not the power within them. When will you listen to the VOICE within you and stop discounting yourself---you too are my temple---remember this.
Cyrano asks this pertinent question:
"What would you have me do? Use the fire God gave me to burn incense all day long under the nose of wood and stone? No, thank you.”
Burning incense to personalities, organizations, false gods and more especially to the human egos, is the surest way to call down the wrath of God.
When you pray, will you dare to stand in the effulgent LIGHT of the Temple, unafraid---with the boldness that comes of pure recognition of God---and ask, simply and with assurance? Or will you seek for the praise and patronage of a great personal god-to climb to heights you could not reach alone? Will you in this golden Light try to demonstrate gold?
Organizations are but the shadows of the personalities who created them. When the energy of the personality is spent, the thing falls to pieces and becomes a memory. Without the Spirit, nothing lasts. That is why Jesus warned against the worship of personalities. "Call not me good." He saw the evil of following personalities, however lofty. Follow ME---follow the SPIRIT. When you do, you will see ME in a thousand, thousand masks-and eventually will be able to call ME into being by your recognition of ME. Yes, even in the mass of corruption and death, with all its indications of futility, you will call ME forth and I will come through joyously. Yes, I shall come, as surely as a reflection in the mirror laughs when you laugh.
When you pray, come joyously into the Temple. Put away your desires for the nonce---enter, and be still. Presently, you will see the "desires" in all their perfection which He has prepared for those who LOVE THE LORD. You will see things that eyes have not seen. The petty desires you left at the temple gates when you entered to pray will have faded into insignificance, for the "things that are prepared for those who love the Lord" are so much greater. And you will learn the reason for the deep secrecy---you will tell no man.
Ye accuse me of keeping secret knowledge
That I should share among you,
As if a she bear should show you her cubs
Or a thrush should tell you where her eggs are nested.
There is nothing---nay,
no knowledge hidden
Saving only
from him who seeketh
The wherewithal to fatten ignorance.
-Druid Taliesint*
If ye have ought against your brother or yourself, first lay your gift on the altar. Stop the useless trying to get something. Pray the prayer of recognition and rejoicing for once, and see what happens. Much will take place when you are ready---things more wonderful than you have planned or thought will happen.
If I AM to "give you the desires of your heart," you must be able to take them. How can you take them if you are only trying to believe in a God who transcends all thought patterns of your life? How can you possibly receive the desires of your heart unless you realize that something greater than your thought process will bring them to pass? How can you succeed unless you have discovered that victories are not won on a battlefield of mental effort and argument, but in the garden of your heart?
All belief in karmic debt will loosen and disappear the moment you enter the LIFE which is in Christ Jesus. The moment you cease looking to the ancestors and their evil history, by recognizing the FATHER, then the old karmic pictures become nil.
"Call no
man
(NOT
any man) your father."
The Divine
impulsion
which
brought you into your temple-body holds
your Destiny. You release all of
the qualities of the human
father the moment you cease identifying
yourself with him. You see a sudden
and miraculous change taking place when you call no man
your father-and appropriate the birthright
of
SPIRIT
and view your Golden Destiny stretching
before you.
Slay him? Shoot your arrows at the moon, ye impotently ignorant.
He who hath earned a destiny shall run his course,
Though earth, air, fire
and sea were all in league against him.
Look then to
your little evil,
Even that is fearsome because it is so
little.
Slay that,
lest it betray you
When the hour of His destiny
Sendeth him forth to test your manhood.
-Druid Taliesin*
Nothing can destroy the Christ within you, once you have
discovered its
reality. "Slay him?" It is like shooting arrows
at the moon. Nothing
shall stop the on-rush of his presence
within you, hurrying
in his unhurried way, to the fulfillment
of
YOUR
Divine
DESTINY.
You have released the
fate
of the
man born of woman, few of days and full of
trouble, and have entered into the
Divine Heritage of the Son of God. You have "earned a destiny" and shall
fulfill it with ease and beauty "Though
earth, air, fire and sea were all in league against
him." Nothing shall withstand the Brightness
of his coming.
SUBJECTIVITY
Chapter Two
IN Oriental teaching there is a degree in which man frees himself from "subjectivity." Subjectivity is that state of being under the power or authority of another or a system of ideas, or a code of action derived from the findings of the senses.
When man frees himself from this "subjectivity," he recognizes that "all mentation, viz., their appearance, presence, change or disappearance (in the field of consciousness) have no genuine reality. They are neither in a temporal nor in a spatial (having nature of space) relation with the ONE SOUL, for they are NOT self-existent."
In other words, when man enters into the ONE-ness he loses all the duality of life, which he now sees as the illusion he once called reality. He sees the rose within the rose and the substance within the symbol and knows where REALITY lies. Likewise, he sees the LIFE unchangeable and eternal in the manifestations of health, which is but a limited concept of LIFE put through the glass darkly of appearances which man has accepted and to which he has become subject.
To the savage, things which are natural to an engineer appear as magic and the workings of a tribal God. He does not understand them, so fears them-and hence can be hurt by them, as a child in its ignorance can be injured by electricity. When we recognize even in a small degree that all states of "mentation," every degree of the human thought or finding, that is, all appearances, presence, changes, and even their disappearances, have in actuality no reality, then we begin to experience freedom. Appearances are but shadows cast by spirit in the world of illusion. Hence man does walk through the shadows of belief, even as he is told he shall walk through fire, water, closed doors, and even death-not to work miracles, not to mystify or to induce worship, but because when he is "sealed" in the WORD of Jesus Christ, he discovers that all the "mentations" of the human mind are but illusions. And if it be necessary for him literally to set them aside, he will do so, as Jesus did in all his so-called miracles. The illusion of the mind, under subjectivity of the human, self-made laws, saw the healings of Jesus as something from on-high, or something from the realm of mystery-but Jesus was automatically operating the LAW OF GOD, and took no cognizance of the "mentation" of the human thought.
When you live in the recognition of the true values of LIFE, you rise above "subjectivity" of the human mind and are freed into the realm of pure Spirit. At this level, what you "tell the Father in secret" is declared from the housetops of manifestation as a natural sequence. Nothing else could happen. When Jesus went WITHIN and shut the door, he entered the degree beyond subjectivity of any and all human thinking and manifestation, and he then functioned from the place of GOD. Here he found the REALITY that does not pass away and is not subject to belief, nor space, nor time---but revealed the NOW-NESS of GOD.
Finally, the freeing of oneself from the "mentations" of the human belief causes man to take his rightful place in regard to the coming and going of things. Unto Caesar are the things of Caesar rendered, and unto God the things which are God's ---and the discovery of rendering unto God the POWER which is animating everything in the universe will cause a subtle change to take place in manifestation. It takes the power away from the inanimate thing and places it where it belongs. To discover God as LIFE in the temple---body, is to cause the manifestation of health to rise many degrees in the body. To contemplate God as LIFE is to cause the action of this LIFE in the temple-body to be equal to anything which it has to perform-even though this may seem beyond the accepted possibilities of the body. When this release from subjectivity takes place, many of the revelations of Jesus Christ will become natural and normal.
The unenlightened being has nothing but his subjectivity to follow---and this can be on any one of a thousand levels. Thus the savage, in following his pattern is doing the best he can, and until he becomes Christ-enlightened, he continues to function under the laws of his subjectivity. Thus, if he believes that sitting in a draught causes him to have a stiff neck or get pneumonia, he will come under the law of his accepted subjectivity and produce these effects---and will have to use other laws to relieve himself.
OLYMPIAN DUST
Chapter Three
Into the Light, into the fire---
To the innermost core of the deathless flame
I ascend-I aspire.
Under me rolls the whirling earth
With the noise of a
myriad wheels that run
Ever 'round and
about the sun.
Over me
circles the splendid heaven
Strewn with
stars and noon and even,
Soul serene, float with
my rainbow wings unfurled,
Alone with
Love, 'twixt God and the world.
-Marie Corelli
MANIFESTATION will only remain as long as it is held in consciousness. The moment a thing appears, it is on its way out. It begins a process of disintegration, going back into the Divine Dust from which it was shapened. The Greeks called it Olympian dust.
In the beginning God made man out of the "dust"-and breathed into him the breath (fire) of Life, and he became a LIVING SOUL. "Dust thou art, to dust returneth" is said of the manifestation, not the SOUL of man. By the consciousness of Life can man stay the manifestation indefinitely and can renew the garments and shoes that waxed old. The renewing fire of consciousness revivifies it. All the mysteries are revealed when you enter in and become ONE with the Christ. The blending of the Christ with the body causes the perfect Temple to appear.
The rock you smite will not give forth springs of living water to amuse the curious. If a miracle were necessary, it would be performed naturally and easily.
There were many things Jesus could not tell because of the unbelief---but now you believe in a power greater than human thought and are experiencing and feeling the new consciousness coming into being. In like manner, anything that is released from consciousness will depart, having had the life force drained from it.
"Yes," it is said, "I can pick it up or lay it down." The Jesus Christ consciousness has the POWER to self-resurrect the "dead" body, and to rehabilitate the disintegrating body.
Out of consciousness, out of your world;
IN consciousness, IN your world.
When the human thought is broken, the God thought flows and integrates itself through the Temple. Then it is that the IDEA or Cosmic Urge of God comes to man. As he gazes at this NEW idea, it becomes clearer and clearer, until he can say "It is done,"-and see it appear.
"In ALL (every one of them) thy Ways, ACKNOWLEDGE HIM---and HE shall direct thy paths." The hell of human pictures and beliefs in which you find yourself will suddenly change into the FLAME of Love. Where you stand, the ground is HOLY---when you recognize the ONE.
"It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye
Than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
The
Needle's Eye
was a gate through
which to enter Jerusalem. It was so low that in order to enter, a camel must be
completely
divested of its load. So man, in entering into the
Consciousness of Jesus
Christ, finds he cannot enter until he is
divested of all the
load of human belief. When he "unloads,"
or "lets go," or
"leaves all," he does not leave person, place or
things,
necessarily----but he releases his belief of any power in
them. When the
closely
clutched symbol
of a thing is released, the real
manifestation will appear.
In the FIRES OF SELF-RECOGNITION do you discover the Spiritual Priority of all things real, all law and power. This Spiritual Priority is the LAST WORD----the WORD which becomes flesh and dwells among us. The accumulated human thoughts of man are stuck to each other like a pack of wet labels. Man keeps going back to some other premise which will substantiate evil. A Divine forgetfulness will obscure the thoughts and events of yesteryears completely.
Presently the interpretation of the LIGHT comes. We see the Divine interpretation of the FIRE. One time it is consuming----and another, illuminating.
"Into the LIGHT---into the FIRE,
To
the innermost core
of
the DEATHLESS FLAME,
I
ascend---I aspire."
ILLUSION
Chapter Four
I ONCE saw a so-called famous person in a crowd where no one recognized her as anything other than what she was, just a body dressed and painted in the custom of the day. She became a strange thing without her press agent and her publicity, and began shrinking away from the obvious comparison of herself as she appeared without the acclaim. Presently she became violently ill and had to be taken home. Anything, when not recognized, dies---and the old inflated ego needed the winds of acclaim and praise to keep the balloon afloat. When the inflation was not there, the withered skin of the ego settled in against the form like the loose hide of an elephant. In reality there was nothing there. And so with the personality---if it is not recognized, it dies.
I can see her now---looking with wild eyes for recognition. The only thing she lived on . . . was praise and acclaim. The fact that she could run through a whole book of poses meant nothing to anyone but herself, and it was nothing but illusion to her now. She was like a wandering Pleiad, looking for her sisters.
Eventually your old "darling" will be consumed-no one will save it from the ravages of the flames of time and ignorance. To ignore it is to see it die.
The brightness Of YOUR coming will need no publicity agent or advertising campaign. You are self-announced, self-sustained, and self-expressed, because you have discovered that your body is the TEMPLE of the LIVING GOD-and you bear witness to just that and nothing more.
One is sometimes surprised in meeting a so-called celebrity. For some reason or another, we are always amazed that without the acclaim of the world they are just ordinary people, and sometimes not even that. We are disappointed that the character we have adored exists only in our minds. This imaginary thing which in reality is not there, comes to apparent life when the applause of the crowd is present and retires the moment it is not-like the dead grand-parents of the children in The Blue Bird they arose in their graves when the children were talking of them, and said, "We are never dead as long as you are thinking of us." And so we see the chimera of life continue, fed by thought.
When you recognize that you are the CHRIST of GOD, there is no putting on and off of a character. It is always there and can be recognized without the voice of publicity or press acclaim. "THIS is my beloved Son" was said of You. That is all you need to hear to make you famous and recognized by all who can SEE; and they are the only ones who matter.
Remember "The fame of him went abroad"-the fame of an ego, however great, dies because it is nothing but outside acclaim. If you are seeking fame it is a futile job.
RECOGNITION
Chapter Five
SELF-recognition, Self-identification---automatically produce the "SON of God" state of consciousness. It is then not STRANGE "that he made himself as God." You experience the subtle change of it when mental consciousness merges into the Spiritual consciousness. That which was "miracle" becomes "Natural."
Why should you stand aghast when you see the Power of God disintegrating the pictures of stagnant human thought? The thing that should make you wonder is the appearance of Evil in the Creation of God.
"No man hath taught me these things but my Father in Heaven," is a discovery of soul, a radical dependence upon the Inner Voice, and a complete getting away from the stupid ideas of man-made teaching.
Through identification the union of man and God takes place; a blending of consciousness in which man discovers "Substance" undefined, infinite. The inertia of matter is overcome; quickened into the Spirit substance---one with God; ---with the all everywhere present.
The action of the human thought, though it be called intelligence or wisdom, is foolishness in the eyes of God; and moreover is a liar and the father of it. Witness the thousand and one discoveries made by this mind and proclaimed the "Panacea" for all ills, which later are decried as utter folly. Everything which proceeds from the man whose breath is in his nostrils is untrue.
The Great Ignorance that went up and watered the face of the earth still wears a mask of Wisdom. If the Child has the native capacity to understand and do the works of God, because of his ability to accept a dimension entirely outside the capacities of the human brain, of what use then is the teaching of man? "Who by SEARCHING can find out God?" The great ignorance watered the whole face of the earth, and has brought forth a crop of poisonous weeds which are sustained by belief in them. Hence a disease is brought forth by this "watering" and is caused to flourish by the sheer force of human belief, called race consciousness.
"Mental" consciousness which appears to be a creator finally makes its circle and dies together with its manifestation.
All human manifestation begins its demise from the moment it appears. It will fall into the dust, or will last for "three score and ten" years according to the sustaining power back of it. The luminous lump of substance which sustains its own manifestation is the point of identification in you. It is the place where the invisible is stepped down to a point of visibility.
It is written "I must decrease-ye must increase"-the awakening of the True Identity causes decrease of the ego consciousness.
The Ego which left the Garden of Eden, is the Prodigal Son who by remembrance of his heritage, straightway moves toward it. The corruptible begins to put on the incorruptible. The decrease and increase begin to take place. He discovers and comes again into the state of being where All that I have is yours. He finds the substance he wasted in riotous living is suddenly restored to all its fair proportions. He discovers a ONE-ness to which nothing can be added or taken away.
When he dares to let go of the preconceived notion, ideas, and beliefs, then he will experience the works of Divine impulsion. From the depths of his BEING are thrown up gifts, talents, and capacities, to do and accomplish things he has not yet known. "My ways are not your ways," and they are not subject to any of the laws of thinking. The human knows nothing about the Ways of the Lord. He is busy seeking ways and means to slip up on the Lord, by systems of Truth, and thereby perform miracles to stimulate worship of his ego. He can do none of the things he is teaching others to do, and finally he, like the Green bay tree, takes the count.
Do you speak ONE-ness and straightway dramatize a state of Two-ness? Do you straightway have a problem to overcome or work out, after you have assumed ONE-ness? Or do you experience One-ness where there is no polarity, only completeness. This state of consciousness causes disease and evil to evaporate, like mist before noon-day sun. Are there two? healer and patient? if so, you are still far in the desert of human belief. The one who identifies himself with God is not in the process of becoming, he cannot grow, he cannot unfold, he can only experience the sudden discovery that he has already arrived. He bears witness, and evil which can make no agreement, falls automatically into oblivion. He does not cure, he reveals, and this revealing is not a mental effort, it is an established embodied fact. You do not have to affirm anything that is true. Repeated affirmation of a given thing only establishes the fact that it is not true. Affirmations always follow manifestation, if they be of God.
By recognition we are transformed. Nothing is destroyed, only quickened into its proper capacity and fulfillment and the "decrease and the increase" proceed with the ease and naturalness of the coming Dawn. Evil goes nowhere even as darkness. It is only absorbed by the Light and even so is the mental energy of a disease suddenly quickened to the dimension of LIFE.
"And having done all stand and see." What? That which you have recognized as God. "The echo throws back at you only what you have given it."
CLOVEN TONGUE
Chapter Six
THE CLOVEN TONGUE is mentioned as a power which descended upon the disciples and caused them to understand all languages by dividing asunder the human thought limitation and knowledge and revealing the Intelligence and wisdom of ONE. That is what is called HEARING. Hearing is not something done through the organ of the senses---but something which goes beyond, and as the spirit "searches the joints and marrow" and elevates one to the clear illumination of the Mind of Christ Jesus. Entering into this capacity is not the work of a "master" or "Holy Man," it is the capacity of Everyman who dares to "Smite the rock" of belief and cause it to give forth living waters. This is not a dramatic display of emotion---it is a sudden realization that Jesus Christ said it is a capacity of every man to HEAR. Man has been centuries with all the instrumentation of hearing, and yet has not heard the WORD ---only the letter of it which is dead., Now comes the capacity of entering into the ONE, and discovering the infinite capacities of LIFE. Then is he equipped to HEAR what a man is saying even though he may submerge it in subtle, double talk, and diplomacy. The CLOVEN tongue shall split it asunder and he will hear what he is SAYING, and not what he is "saying." He will see and understand the exact opposite of the human words, and so shall be able to STAND in the LIGHT.
So does a man discover the hidden capacities of the Christ Mind within him. He can at will enter into the consciousness of that which has to do with him. He can by the recognition of this enter into the actual nature of a man and discover that which his lips refuse to say.
This is not a "stunt" of a Holy man---but a capacity of the Mind of Christ Jesus within you---and which becomes an unconscious action finally. It is wonderful! Will you "put the coal of fire on your lips"? No one is going to BELIEVE you, and many may hate you for having discovered such a capacity. "My Grace is sufficient for thee." Is sufficient enough or must you have more than sufficient? "MY Grace"-that substance which defies all definition because it is a quality of the LOVE of God which has been given you. "My Grace is sufficient"---it says sufficient for thee-----
Every time you enter the PRESENCE you are filled with the HOLY GHOST, the action of Spirit, that which is going through into manifestation. And it is this which amazes the human mind. Suddenly the picture disintegrates and falls into dust. "We were hypnotized," says the man with breath in his nostrils. "None so blind as those who will not SEE." And now we have another sense coming up for releasement, even as the Cloven Tongues released the obscuring human words, and made plain the meaning of any so-called language, so does the cleaving power of the word "rend the veil"----and release the Vision of the almighty and cause a man to see visions and dream dreams of reality right in the midst of the hell of human belief and fury. So did Jesus SEE you under the fig tree---he didn't just "see" you but he did SEE you under the fig tree. And it is this "sight," prostituted by man and sold as a form of fortune telling. You are admonished to "buy truth but SELL it not"---and so it goes until a man learns that he does not "five by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"---and that "he is clothed with the Spirit" ---and that both of these movements are not in the nature of so-called "demonstration," but a way of self-revelation a thing that is normal and natural.
"If a man keep my sayings he shall never taste death." "Taste?"-Through the taste a man supplies himself with the foods proper for sustaining the physical body. There is a sense discrimination which is synonymous with taste.
A man must first "HEAR" the WORDS of Jesus Christ. How is he going to hear them if they are passed through the thick veils of ancestor teaching and beliefs? Coloured by a thousand religions how will he hear the WORD uttered once through the temple of Jesus Christ? The purity of the words of Jesus Christ convulse the human mind. Finally the rising waters will quench and drown at the same time. If he can HEAR what the Scriptures say---then can he operate through his temple and dispel the darkened world of human thought. But he shall not force anything. He will cause it to be known that the command "consider the Lilies" is something more than looking at flowers. It goes deep into the heart of the bulb from which it came.
He begins to discover the permanency of the perfect creation of God, and he renews the manifestation called body. He cleanses the temple. He lives in the world but not of its passing fury, which today is here, and tomorrow cast into the oven.
The enemy in one war becomes the ally in another and this cat-and-mouse game goes on until a man discovers the "Battle is not yours but God's."
Jesus went unto the Father, became one with the Father, and quite naturally discovered the dimension of the Father operating through the son; setting aside all the beliefs and limitations and so-called "truths" of the world of Maya. The Hindu in his Upanishads exclaims with joy on coming unto the One---the Father---"Thou art the SELF, and that thou art THAT I AM." It is a clear revelation that is without explanation for it proceeds from pure recognition of God, universal and infinite. Once this is RECOGNIZED the capacities of this GOD become self-evident, and little by little, or suddenly man approximates this eternal thing called LIFE, unchanging yet constantly changing the manifestation. He begins finally to look out upon the changing manifestation watching the transformation of himself take place, as he constantly throws off the effects of believing in two powers. The old body enclosure that threatened according to his ancestor teaching to destroy him, finally begins to slip away as the fresh manifestation of spirit pushes to the surface of visibility. He is transformed---changed, born again daily and he remains eternally in the NOW of it all. All the hard fast beliefs of the ancestors are cast away "uncoffined, unknelled, and unsung." They are worthy of nothing-fit only for the discard.
"Be ye then transformed by the re-newing of your mind" is not such a mystical process as would appear. It is something like the coming of dawn-gradually it has happened and continues its effulgence and light into the full noon-day. An English poem runs somewhat after this manner:
"If thou couldst
empty thyself of self
Like to a shell
disinhabited
Then would he fill it with himself instead
But thou art all
fulfilled with thou,
That when he
comes he says `it is enow
The place is full. There is no room for ME'."
We are so busy trying to fill everything with the self that little chance is left for the SELF to take over. There was no room at the INN when the greatest event in all history was to take place, and when the question is asked "What have ye in your house" the answer is a handful of meal and three drops of oil. There is nothing but self in the house until we make ready for the real Self, that which was created, to take over and release the new dimensions shown to us and told to us by Jesus Christ as perfectly natural and real and indigenous to every man.
THE POISONOUS FLOWER
Chapter Seven
THE Bee knows how to take the honey from the poisonous flower. By recognition you are able to see through by the same divine instinct. The moment recognition is made the soul responds. Continued recognition will cause assumption of its own strength. "I saw you under the fig tree," is a dimension of pure recognition. This is the power of Soul which rises from decaying human flesh and comes forth, laughing.
No more do we "deny evil" after having once HEARD the command to "Deny not." What you deny from the human standpoint, you affirm, for you cannot deny "Nothing." It is this very denial that many times establishes it! All evil lives upon and is sustained by human thinking, and nothing else. The moment human thought is taken from a condition at that instant it begins to disintegrate. Many times the fearful human belief returns with such speed it re-assumes the picture or reanimates the picture of evil. "I never knew you," is enough instantly to destroy evil. An evil bird that rushes at the Light, bashes out its brains, and falls into oblivion. When you enter the consciousness you neither affirm nor deny with the idea of changing anything. When you affirm you are making a statement of something that already has happened and is coming into being. The acceptance of this unseen evidence is the final WORD which releases it. "All flesh shall see it together for the Mouth of the Lord hath spoken it," and what or who is to say you nay?
If God said it---ten thousand years of human wisdom with a legion of manifestations cannot un-say it, or make it nil.
As the falling of the reflection on the surface of the clear water takes place automatically, so does the perpetual and continuous reflection of your consciousness take form and shape in the world of Maya---the world of things. The moment it is released from consciousness, it begins to disintegrate and fall into its Divine Dust, to be reshapened. As easily as passing the hand through the water and destroying the picture on the surface so in reality is the picture of evil destroyed by the assumption of the Christ. Moses put his hand in his bosom and took it out white with leprosy and returned it again and took it out free from the picture. All idea of legerdemain---magic or doing tricks, has nothing to do with the appearance of the Presence, and the disappearance of the illusion. There is no question in the "prove me and see" state of consciousness, any more than there is in the mind of a mathematician when he sets forth to prove his equation; not to see if it is true, but because it is true. The engineer who "proves" the law of mathematics spans a chasm with a perfect equation. He has completed the entire thing without touching any of the apparent necessary equipment to do the job, but when he has finished with his plan, it then becomes a reality in the flesh---automatically. He does nothing with it himself but lets it come into manifestation through the bodies of hundreds of men. So the "Way" is always past finding out "I have a way ye know not of."
Yes, the Bee knows how to extract the honey from the poisonous flower, and you are beginning to see how you devitalize evil and the pictures thereof by taking power from it. The electric wire which was lying on the ground spilling away power, is picked up, and that which apparently was causing so much damage is now released into the one. Any time two become ONE you have the perfect solution.
THE CHASTENING
Chapter Eight
"Despise not
the chastening of the Lord."
AT each new elevation comes the "chastening"---the refining of the instrument and its way of expression. This chastening carries none of the ugly implications of the scourge or punishment, but rather the re-orientation and re-assigning of things to their rightful evaluation on the higher level. "Whereas before I was blind, now I can see." I can see where I am. I can see and understand that which I have been blindly seeking--- because my sight has been chastened---focused to a finer point of perception---extended, as it were. I can see things which were formerly vague and nebulous.
"Whatever ye see or
hear or know
Was eons old
before ye
heard it."
The chastening is gentle---yet firm.
"My son"---it
seems
always to start with
that
salutation. What a
richness and love