Superior Index Go to the next: Chapter 39
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We have been asked to define prophecy. Those who lack discrimination, torn between the desire to believe all things and plagued by honest doubt, yearn for clarification from heavenly places.
Remember that all of the sacred books that have ever been written, all of the knowledge that is esteemed by the many religions of the world, regardless of the claims of men to the contrary, have come into manifestation through individuals who were embodied upon the planet. In other words, they have all come forth through man.
There is and has always been a tendency on the part of mankind to judge the accuracy and quality of spiritual material by the lives of those through whom the material came. We have said that men should not spend as much time as they do in the examination by mortal mind's measures of the lives or persons of spiritual teachers. We have said that thirsty travelers ought not to spurn a cup of cold water simply because the tin cup in which it is delivered has an imperfection in it.
If the world of individuals is old, every individual on earth is old in the sense that myriad experiences have created encrusted concepts which it is difficult for men to relinquish. And thus, as in olden times even to the present hour, men do examine the sources of information rather than the teachings. And it is, blessed ones, the teaching, after all, that is everything.
That which bears the earmark of cosmic authenticity registers within the "chords" of the heart. But how shall this be manifest in those whose attunement with their own hearts is sadly lacking, where the brittleness of the mind can analyze only the worded structure of our releases?
Where, then, is the sounding board for authenticity? Men should understand that they themselves need perfectionment as well as attunement with the higher powers if they are to register the genuine perfection which they profess to seek. You see, frequently seekers for light maintain a very unprofessional attitude in their examination of the various teachings they encounter. But after all, they lack experience in that which they seek. Therefore, there is almost a blind struggle that occurs in the world of individuals on the path toward the light.
Is it any wonder, then, that they are easily victimized by those blind leaders of the blind1 who themselves have not attained what we could call one iota of God-realization? These are they who have studied all about the miraculous manifestations of the lives of the saints, yet who have permitted their brains to register - together with a more perfect admonishment - the fatuous ideas of mortal contempt for their compeers, for their brothers, and for one another.
Heaven is not disdainful of honest men's search for truth, but we know that people are prone to be overly critical of those whose simplest thoughts they cannot yet understand. Human sophistry and wit do not of themselves produce a passport that leads to higher dimensions and accurate perceptions. On the contrary, many have excommunicated themselves from a movement of definite spiritual progress before they could take root or refuge in an onward-moving company of spiritual devotees. Surely this must pinpoint for the perceptive how very vital it is that men shall be as little children, trusting in the Infinite One and in the wisdom of heaven itself to perform judgment upon men whose hypocrisy they eschew.
There is no need, blessed ones, for men to be constantly engaged in a witch-hunt, while they yet seek to find their way back home. Again and again individuals, steeped in tradition or in traditional concepts, attend one of our services only to turn away from the great opportunity which is given to them. For ere the door can be opened toward the light or valid explanations given, they have decided in their minds that the appearance of those who represent us or the expressions of their mouths are not pleasing to them. Arbiters of their own confusion are they, laying hold upon decaying substance and proclaiming it as real, while turning away from the real and the banner of freedom without ever knowing what its true value is.
If there is, then, any admonishment that I would give to humanity in these troubled times it is: Be not hasty of judgment. I admit that some things are self-evident and cast their shadows before them, but truth is often subtly concealed beneath a crude exterior or a manifestation that belies its great content.
The lives of the saints and the great men of old, as well as those of contemporary men of spiritual grandeur, are not always easily categorized. People come to our abode or they make contact with one or more of our chelas and they sometimes reject both the teacher and the teaching because these do not fit the stereotyped patterns of the seeker. Yet how many seekers for greater knowledge today are manifest tokens of the Father's love in the world of form? How many do openly raise the dead or perform miracles of healing? How many know the sacred initiatic mysteries and can without fail operate within the framework of magnificent cosmic law?
I have seen sophistry and human pride. I have witnessed arrogance in kingly places throughout Europe and the Far East. I aided George Washington in the early days of the American Revolution, and I have stood guard over America to the best of my ability since that day. I have amplified the flames and winds of freedom everywhere, seeking to sustain and establish order and rule by law, that men may experience the freedom that order and law bring. Yet again and again, pride and prejudice have won the field, and the escutcheon of honor has deflected the arrows of the unrighteous, only to see the leaders slain by the calumny and viciousness of sinful men.
In this day and age we have entrusted the teachings to no one man, but we have given finite portions of the Infinite, segments of reality to the planet, as cosmic cipher which the heart, when purified in any man, can readily decipher. In the Pearls of Wisdom, the Keepers of the Flame Lessons, and other expressions which comprise the teachings of The Summit Lighthouse, we have sought to integrate the wholeness of all genuine uplift movements that have ever existed upon the planet.
Ours is the intent, as God wills it - if man wills it, too, and serves with God - to elucidate through the Keepers of the Flame Lessons such standards of elder beauty as have never before been known and experienced upon this planet. The day will come when those souls who are privileged to receive these communications will esteem them as the golden illumined light of the hand of heaven, reaching into the individual heart and saying, "Know God, know thyself, know the law of thy being." As never before we hope to open the ancient books, even the books of the Ancient of Days, to reveal that which has been kept secret since the foundation of the world.
Even in the present we have made what amounts to preparatory revelations. We have revealed by our glyphs of form-expression blessed keys for the freedom of man. But no amount of revelation of truth can bring to the heart of heaven the assurance that the hearer will accept, heed, or do the work of the teacher. Each noble cosmic effort made on behalf of mankind is always energy fraught with the possibility of mortal rejection.
The unpredictability of man's character through his continual immersion in a sense of sin and the sinful, as was the nefarious plan of the hordes of darkness, does not make him a conscious candidate for heaven's ministrations. Rather is he often chided and chiding. Again and again, he is adrift upon the restless sea of his own uncontrolled energies.
These energies rage as the blind instincts of struggle. While the search for the crown of heaven goes on within the soul, he continually resists his own good by the weight of his criticism, condemnation, and judgment. The very hands that seek to feed him the heavenly manna are examined with distrust, and the fruit of wrong striving is always the ashes of his error.
How many times we have sought some pathway into the soul, into the heart, into the person of a man, that we might restore the boundaries of the old temple of the Son of God. The Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth,2 the magnificence of the Cosmic Christ, is God's gift to every man. Culminating in the life of Jesus two thousand years ago, this manifest example of divine grace, by the power of holy law, sought to give mankind the fullness of grace as an adjunct to the law that would supersede, in part, the ancient Mosaic codes. He sought to expand greater light in the world through the kingdom of Christendom in order to make the world safe for the manifestation of God.
But the Communist hordes came and the fertile brain of Karl Marx expounded the philosophy of the damned that would ignore karmic law, the law of recompense that justly conveys to each lifestream the fruit of his own labors. Thus men sought to legislate against heaven and to provide in the world a form of social salvation - housing for bodies, food for bodies, dialectical materialism for minds, side by side with invective, maldesign, and social unrest which were intended to destroy the matrix of the invisible world, to destroy man's rights to spiritual freedom, to force him into a smothering state wherein the social order would take complete dominion over his life.
Instead of being rid of this blight, the world today is even more steeped in it. The dogmas of Communism have invaded the Church as the powers of darkness have sought to spread a web of confusion over the minds of men, thus, in the name of brotherhood, to deprive them of their freedom.
The cooperation of individuals in high places with the forces of darkness has imposed upon mankind today in the bookstalls of the world, in the theater, in the places of learning, through communication media of television and radio, the strange semantics of those who seek the control of the minds of men for whatever parcel of reality they deem worthy of their energies. Thus the voices of the damned proclaim a false freedom, and the innocent together with the guilty become carrion abominators - denying the Christ, denying the Light of the world, denying peace and goodwill to men.
The warlords of the world, united with the financial interests, have made merchandise of true culture. The teachings of the great men of letters, of prophets, of minstrels of the Spirit, of the great musicians of old, of great painters and sculptors is in a state of decay; for the world has entered the madness of the spoilers and the sensuality of the purveyors of enervating and senseless thrill to the hurt of men.
In the Book of Revelation allusion is made to the fact that the stingers are in their tails,3 and veritably in the tails of men, in the lower order of their consciousness, have the forces sought to bring down this nation as fallen Pompeii. Freedom and democracy are less enshrined as the days pass, and the high-court decisions of the United States have defrauded men of the necessary protection of law and order in a land where men are not yet trained withal to understand the laws of karma and that they are indeed their brothers' keepers.
Now, then, with all of this destructive manifestation and the resultant decisions made by the Lords of Karma, we say to every son of heaven, to everyone who loves freedom, who desires to see it sustained either in his own personal world or in the worlds of men: now is not the time to loll indolently and to say, "So what?" or "What can I do about it?" Now is the hour of reckoning when men must continue to plight their faith in the purposes of Almighty God, regardless of the world's madness.
Take no example from the decadent. Pursue not with them the same "riots to destruction." Set your course by the stars, by the light of your Presence, by the compassion of the Christ, by recognition of the seamless garment of universality, by the sinless state that holds to the proclamation of God that life is good and beautiful.
Be a Rock of Ages, be immovable in Christ, abound with the joie de vivre that always rests in faith in Godly ideals. Lot joyed not in the doings of the men of Sodom.4 Therefore, you need not rejoice in the doings of men, nor should you be moved by them; but remain steadfast, immovable to the perfection of your Presence.
These tests that we have said would come, have come; and even if they worsen, the power of heaven is able to summon the invincible, God-victorious cosmic honor flame that precedes the manifestation of cosmic purpose because it sustains cosmic purpose in mind and heart. The light of God never fails, and therefore the Great White Brotherhood will continue to espouse those ideals for mankind which in moments of weakness they cannot express for themselves.
The tendency on the part of humanity to mimic one another has lowered standards of conduct as the infection of sensual disorder and carelessness in dress reduces the hopes of men for heaven in this age. What need have they for heaven? Are they not in communion with the sensuality which they crave, which reeks of a depravity they know not of, but in which they are content as unperceived error? When it is too late they will glimpse it. But we are concerned for those who are able to see it and shun it today, who are reaching out and up for the energy that can yet save the age - that can yet deliver the world.
Not by an individual Messianic concept do we seek to heal the breach, but by recognition that many sons of light serving together as invokers of the Cosmic Presence, serving with hierarchy and with the Karmic Board, can yet put a finger in the dike of world karma and produce a spiritual renaissance through the teachings which must be carefully formed, preserved, exhibited in a proper setting, and extended as a chalice of hope to a waiting world.
The sunlight of God's love is the sunlight of God's freedom. Into the dimensionless, limitless world of the Spirit man must come, bearing in his hand the cup of his desire for God's wonderful revelation, for God's wonderful work to be made known unto him. There is so much that is hidden, waiting to be revealed, that we can scarcely contain ourselves as we work under higher guidance to raise the consciousness of the aspirant toward the Light and away from the shadows that life has sought to impose upon him. It is altogether just that you be raised into the perception of the Light and to shun the darkness, and thus have I lengthened this epistle in the hope that greater perception might come to those whom we love so dearly.