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FIRST PERSON, PRESENT TENSE
TALKING of and about truth, and speaking the TRUTH are radically different
things. The first is merely rehearsing the letter which is dead and not
effective. The latter is the "spake and it was done" state of
consciousness.
Jesus spoke the truth in the present tense and first person, and results or
manifestation immediately followed. "He made himself as God"---in
other
words He spoke as one having authority, because He spoke from the place of
authority. In spite of the fact that you profess to be a follower of Jesus
Christ, you are afraid to make any direct statement of good without first
"knocking on wood." Why is this? On the other hand, it is quite
common for
people who even profess a KNOWLEDGE of TRUTH to exclaim over evil, "Just
my
luck"---"It always happens to me"---"I never knew it to
fail," etc., etc. In
other words, you are unable to say anything good that is positive. For
instance you dare not say "I shall be perfectly well this time next
year"---"I shall be abundantly supplied this tine next year,"
etc., etc.,
because you are speaking always from the consciousness of John Smith which
knows "When I would do good, I do evil"--"As for man, his days
are few and
full of trouble"---etc.
This is all due to the fact that you are
talking "of and about" Truth
instead of speaking the Truth. When you speak the Truth because of your
liaison with the Christ within, you can say definitely, "I will come and
heal him," without any reservations, without any treatments, without any
series of mental mechanics, because you speak with authority. There is no
doubt about the results---you speak the word, and it is done, as far as you
are concerned. If the other person cannot accept the truth, that is his
loss. In order to practice the revelation as given to us by Jesus Christ,
you must act from the standpoint of absolute authority. Very often you hear
people "trying" to make a healing, using such terms as
"we" meaning of
course "God and I," or "I and God," according to the
importance of the
individual. The most one in this state of mind can get out of talking of and
about the truth is personal adulation, or an emotional thrill which soon
disappears.
Taking Jesus as an example, we see in every
instance of healing that
He made an assumption of His Fatherhood degree of understanding. Hence He
could make a clear statement of facts without equivocation, without fear of
contradiction, a straightforward speaking of the Word---"I will come and
heal him." It would be sheer folly or conceit in Jesus or any other man
to
say He could heal anything. Jesus knew .this when He said "I can of
myself
do nothing"---"BUT"---and then the thrilling thing happens,
when He merges
this helplessness of human thought with the Divine and can explain "But
with
God all things are possible."
It fairly makes you thrill with joy just to
sense such a thing--even
to read the Word. If you see, you are suddenly filled with inspiration.
Think of it! "BUT" ---Jesus saying He could do
nothing----helpless----hopeless-anti then suddenly
"BUT"--"'With God all
things are possible." are you beginning to hear, to sense---to sense
"All
things"---not some things, not a few things, but ALL THINGS. Do you hear?
All things. Is that enough? Now do you begin to see the necessity of being
still and knowing that I am God, rather than trying to make God demonstrate
a new car or a red hat? If you are consciously with the Presence, then ALL
things are possible and the Voice which speaks through you is One in
Authority, and He is always speaking in the present tense and the first
person. "For I also am a man in authority." This wonderful
self-recognition
of the Centurion is exactly what is necessary for you to accomplish the
works set for you to do, and to hear the wonderful recognition "I have
not
seen so great a thing---no, not in all Israel."
What authority could possibly be in a mind
which was filled with
quandary as to whether the Power would heal or would not. "I will come
and
heal him" leaves no, not any, doubt. Do you begin to see?
Who are you, anyway?
"This is life eternal to know
ME." Do you want to know ME, and
experience life eternal? When you know life, you suddenly forget the ideas
of "health and sickness," and "strength and weakness."
These, together with
all the other pairs of opposites, are merely parentheses on the circle of
life---a segment of the whole. These pairs of opposites are merely the
limitations placed on life by personality. They differ in every instance.
What is strength to one roan is positively weakness to another---what is
abundance to one man is limitation to another. Yet God is all
---"Whole---ONE. A personality such as your John Smith has a limitation
as
to the placement of these parentheses, beyond which he cannot go. Jesus also
had His great limitations, and to such an extent that He explained, "I
can
of Mine own self do nothing." As long as you are working with a
consciousness which believes in health and sickness, your range of activity
and expression is only between the parentheses, or your concept of life,
which you place on the whole. You begin to see therefore why it is necessary
to "Go unto the Father."
"When you lose your life you shall find
it." When you lose your
parentheses you will find the universal LIFE and, inversely speaking, when
you hold on to your life (parentheses) you will lose it. It can run only the
length of your human belief. The same thing is true regarding
substance---until you lose your personal limitation you can have only that
limited substance included in your "parenthesis." A chicken that is
not
released from its shell dies the moment it has come to the limitation of the
shell. So do you die when you come to the limits of your parentheses. Do you
begin to understand why the apparently inane command is given to you,
"Enlarge the borders of your tent"--"Launch out into deeper
waters"---in
other words, break through these parentheses of human limitations which you
have imposed upon your life. "Come out from among them, and be ye
free."
There must be a casting away of all bondage of
former thought and a
stepping into the revelation where the pairs of opposites exist no more.
"When you lose your life you shall find it"---as a bucketful of
dirty water
thrown into the sea is instantly made clean---so your dirty life filled with
the history of every filthy thing, is suddenly made clean, by breaking down
the parentheses of limitation you have held about you. Jesus did this
immediately when He went unto His Father."
"Life is NOW." In reality it exists
only in the eternal Present, and
so if your manifestations are to be alive, they must be animated and
sustained by life NOW. The mental plane talks about tomorrow and
yesterday---things that have happened, or things that might happen, but it
never actually speaks of things taking place. All future, of course, is
fraught with fear---fear of the deadly possibility of unpredictable evil.
The slimy fear that "crawls on its belly," is always hiding in the
grass to
strike suddenly in this thought-taking state. You are not giving up-
anything when you release your life into the God Life.
"As for man his days are few and full of
trouble" ---If you believed
this, as true, and didn't sense the possibility of something higher, why
would you dare or wish to bring another being into existence? But then in
reality, you have never brought one into existence of your own volition or
will, no matter how much praying or cursing you have done---you have neither
created life nor kept it from manifestation. Eventually we begin to
understand that life expresses whenever it has the least opportunity to do
so, and not at the bidding of man. There cannot be therefore such a thing as
an illegitimate manifestation. It could be illegitimate only when it came
under the hypocritical parenthesis of man's thought.
"He made Himself as God" was one of
the causes for which they
crucified Jesus. Too late we found we had nailed nothing real to the
"tree,"
for we discovered "He" was suddenly on the other side of the lake,
that He
had "suddenly passed through the crowds," etc. We discovered that He
had
power to call upon His Father and instantly be surrounded by "twelve
legions
of angels"---why, that is one legion for every month in the year, and we
are
talking about "Angels," which are more powerful in their invisible
state
than a whole army of tanks and bomber planes, and---and you have the same
power. "Believest thou this?" Answer me. Yes, you, this funny little
thing
that has tried so hard to crucify life, suddenly discovers it also has power
at any time or place to call upon the Father, and literally, factually,
bring forth and surround itself with twelve legions of angels. Do you hear?
Do you believe?
"Awake thou that steepest and Christ shall
give thee life." That
Father within you---Permanent Identity---will give your poor little John
Smith life, and cause you to rise from a tomb of your own creation into the
very Presence of Life filled with the very joys of Heaven here and now. No
one may recognize you as a great soul---that is not important; but you may
do most glorious things and have most thrilling manifestations. What do you
care what the man "whose breath is in his nostrils" thinks, believes
or says
about anything? "What is that to thee? Follow thou Me." If he says
the moon
is made of green cheese, or that sickness is real, that poverty is true,
etc., what is that to dice? Answer me. When will you learn to put the coal
of fire on your lips and "let the filthy be filthy still." If you
believe in
death, war, pestilence and destruction as realities, you may get a chance to
prove this, though you are ten thousand miles from any battlefield---the
fury of a war could happen in a small room as far as you are concerned, as
well as it could on a battlefront. Do you begin to see? Do you begin to
hear? You may be one of the "ten thousand---at your right hand" or
you may
be the one---that depends.
"Eyes have not seen"---no eyes, not
yours, nor the eyes of your
teacher or your Holy One, nor have their ears heard---nor has it yet entered
into their hearts the things that are (right now) prepared---I said
prepared---already prepared---right now. So you begin to see that we are
talking about a new state of consciousness. New capacities are released in
you. New ways and means to bring out manifestations which are not listed and
never have been listed in any book or course of instruction. Jesus merely
glanced at the lepers and they were clean. Can you understand this? It can't
be explained in three-dimensional words and yet it is so. When are you going
to "Leave off (all your filthy human thinking) and follow me?" A
glass of
water can be transmuted into the elixir of life when offered to a sick
man---that is, if it can be, and of course it cannot possibly be unless it
can---and then it can. Do you understand what I am saying to you? It is all
rather ridiculous, utter insanity in the eyes of man, since any chemist
could grab the glass of water from your hand and find it was still water.
The moment the human thought tries to put the
God Power under the
microscope of human belief, it finds nothing. Again this beautiful
revelation of Jesus Christ is not brought into manifestation to satisfy the
idle curiosity of disbelieves, it is a perfectly natural function of your
Christ consciousness, and you have full and absolute right to it, but quite
naturally you are beginning to see the need of secrecy and silence. Do not
TELL---SHOW.
Aren't you thrilled with this revelation of
your Divinity? Do you
begin to see how the speaking of the Word from this present-tense,
first-person state of consciousness brings about or reveals what before has
been concealed? What a lovely sense of authority and power! 'You pass along
life's highway and answer the call of the Divinity in another. Whoever
touches you or calls upon you will receive automatically the
agreement---virtue will proceed out of you---the healing will take place,
the beggar at the temple gates will arise, leap into the air and go on his
way shouting for joy. It is amazing! Though ten lepers are healed, only one
returns to give thanks, or to make complete recognition, and to establish
the manifestation as a reality. The other nine have gone on their way.
Undoubtedly, they will in their excitement "salute every man" they
pass on
the highway, who will begin to tell them of the "facts" of leprosy
as proven
by ten million wise heads, and at the end of the day the nine will have
leprosy again, and will charge it all off to a beautiful day dream. Do you
begin to see the necessity of recognition?
"I was hungry and you fed me. I was cold and you
clothed me." What for?
What else could I do, in the consciousness of
ALL? When you enter a
warm room you take on automatically the temperature of that room. When you
enter any degree of consciousness of God you take on everything that is in
that degree, and it is automatically embodied.
"God spake and it was done." We are
only begin nine to understand that
in the God consciousness when a thing is done, it is done. Do you
understand? There is no maybe or perhaps-it is done. Do you get the
connection between this and the words of Jesus Christ, "it is done"?
"I say go, and he goeth, and come and lie
cometh" ---why? Is there any
reason why a particle of steel in the proximity of a magnet instantly comes
by the shortest possible way to the magnet? Do not imagine we can speak a
word, or a stream of words and accomplish anything. There is "Peace,
Peace---and Lord, Lord," and yet nothing happens---still you are told to
"Only speak the Word." "Only"---it seems as if someone
were making light of
the situation. You have tried so hard, yet it says to you "Only speak the
Word." Do you hear?-Next time why don't you speak the word, without
knocking
on wood? Are you afraid? Jesus made himself as God---can You? He went
through all the necessary steps to show the nothingness in all human belief,
and to relieve you from it all, but if you wish to go through the passions
of Jesus, and emotionally suffer all that He proved to be unnecessary, you
may do so---you may even bring about a crucifixion. I shouldn't be surprised
that you have said many times that you have been crucified---I know I have.
"Only speak the word and my servant shall
be made alive." All right
then---"I will"---and the servant is healed the selfsame hour---at a
distance physically, but in the Presence all the while. No time to give a
treatment or argument or affirmation; no time to become spiritual or
emotional or to reel off a lot of mantras, but speak the Word---not the
words. Words are merely a human effort to express a state of consciousness
which already is. Signs follow. They do not precede. Do you understand? Or
do you? Who are you anyway, hiding behind a Mask of Personality? What do you
want?
"As He is, so are we in this present
world." Present World---mean
anything to you? I said Present World---not world to come. Do you believe
it? "He made himself as God"---a terrible thing to do. Better make
yourself
after some human God who is fast going into the dust. Copy some other human
manifestation. Get one that is rich, famous, grand, a success man, a
hero---make yourself, but don't, for heaven's sake, make yourself as God.
Just as long as you will stay down on the human plane with misery and
suffering it is all right. "Let me go on with my silly beliefs in
truth." As
the lady who "successfully" prayed for her little ailing chickens
not to
die, was proud to say three months later, "Now they are big enough to
eat."
A lovely understanding of spiritual law has been invoked to avert the death
of her chickens at one time, in order that she might inflict it at her
pleasure later on. This story was told me in perfect sincerity as a proof of
spiritual understanding' It made me ask myself, "What kind of praying are
you doing anyway?"---and so I in turn ask you, what kind of praying are
you
doing? Is it begging, beseeching, is it an emotional outburst, is it telling
God how wonderful He is---something He probably already knows---or is it in
accordance with the law of Jesus Christ, "Be still and know that I am
nigh."
Signs follow---Do you hear? It says very
definitely they follow---they
do not precede. Surely then a sign must follow every prayer, and possibly so
quickly that it is manifested before it is yet spoken. "Before they call
I
will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will give it unto them."
This
is what is known as direct action, and it is in the present tense, and it is
the I, the first person, who is doing it. When your Eye or "I"
becomes
single, then your whole embodiment and universe are filled with light.
This all seems to make one appear rather
useless and dumb---as "Dumb
as an ox for the slaughter." You begin to know nothing. You listen and
listen, until the time comes to speak and the Word is to be made manifest
and then---why then, all is changed in the twinkling of an eye. Yes, even
the glance can do it, and the touch can do it, and the physical absence can
do it, because it is already done. It all happens automatically. No one is
blamed or praised for the healing, and no system of metaphysics or teacher
or organization is lauded to the sky. "But this isn't fair, he was my
patient, I belong to a certain group, they must have the credit---I worked
for hint for 3o days." Imagine praying or speaking the Word and then
telling
the poor, benighted patient, "Come back tomorrow, and I will pray
again."
What a wretched state in which to send anyone away---what little faith in
the powers of your words. Imagine Jesus taking patients by the week or
month. Funny, isn't it?
Present Tense and First Person: "Behold I
come quickly and my reward
is with Me." It is not with somebody else, and it is not with tomorrow or
the next day, it is with Me. You understand? My body accompanies Me. Can you
take it? Yes, I know, BUT...
When are you going to smash that prison door?
That strange state of
human thought which will go to the heights of revelation in words at least,
and in arguments for spirituality, then will suddenly do a nose-dive into
the valley of despair with these words, "Yes I know, BUT." It would
even go
on recounting all sorts of things, acknowledging truth on the one hand, but
always finishing up with "yes, BUT."
The signs follow. Naturally, normally, or else
they upset your whole
life with excitement. Many times people have told so often of the terrible
things they overcame with their understanding that those things returned to
them with accelerated force, because whatever you magnify in your heart is
going to come into manifestation, and if you magnify a past evil, it finally
becomes stronger than your belief in God ---hence it apparently overcomes
God, and you are back where you started. Have you ever imagined Jesus giving
a Testimonial Meeting, which for the most part is planned after the
testimonial addenda in the back of a medicine almanac---"After taking 3
bottles, etc"---"After taking 3 treatments from Mrs. Blank,
etc."? Jesus had
plenty to tell, but it was all so natural to Him that He never thought of
explaining it into a "box-office" value.
"The works that I do you shall do also,
and even greater." Well! There
you are, why don't you try it? Because you have tried and have failed
ignominiously. You even felt a little hurt about it because God didn't hear,
and so you tried again, and again, and again, and then perhaps you said,
"Well, it's too hard for me to understand." But a child can do it,
because
he does it, instead of trying to do it, and therein lies the secret. A
recognition of this simple thing will bring about a housecleaning---all
condemnation will be thrown out, all wondering about the past defeats and
successes---the past is suddenly closed. You are entering into tile
dimension of "Thank you Father" where the Cosmic Power urges a
manifestation
into being: It is this consciousness of the finished thing which causes you
to say "Thank you Father," and is the power which steps down the
unseen into
visibility-as steam condensing into water and freezing into ice, so will
your Word be made manifest.
Everything---happens in the Now. "Now is
the day of salvation."
Now---now---now.
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