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Come, Let Us Build a Better World!
To All Who Love Peace, Greetings!
When man is aware of it, his search for God is the most beautiful experience of his life. The Lord of the universe continues his love-striving for his creation, seeking to bring it to the lotus throne of peace. But as long as their hearts are involved in the sense of struggle, as long as their ways are not the ways of peace, they cannot truly know him.1
He hides in nature behind the visible forest, beneath the carpet of the grass. His face peeps through the billowing clouds, and life for the soul who would scale the infinite is as a game of hide and seek. The concept of ships that pass in the night, each containing the dearest of friends, is like unto the unrealized man - the soul within who knows, the outer self that remains aloof.
There are many who feel that God should show himself to all men by his omnipotence. Others understand that life in bud can come full bloom only through the stresses of nature that open the rose. No careless hands of violence can steal from life the treasures of the Infinite. Yet the question is asked again and again, "What can we do to inherit eternal life?"2
At times the searching ones feel a sense of helpless frustration. It is as though ebb tide has come to the soul who seeks to illumine others. At that moment we commend all to the patience of God.3 He who has labored six days and rested the seventh patiently observes that the sun does not set upon the first day of creation. He is Lord of the seven days, yet the dalliance of outer expression as it seeks to run in the race with the fleetness of the Spirit seldom achieves the heavenly goal.
Is it any wonder that God speaketh to the avatars and saith, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"?4 For while he, the Great Giver, continues to expand his passion for peace and beauty, his love of serenity and the glow of his fires suffuse all of nature. How few search him out all the way. How few understand that to search him out all the way does not mean an end to one's spiritual responsibilities, even as it does not mean an end to one's earthly responsibilities as long as one remains unascended.
First there is man. Then there is man and God. Then there is God and man. Then there is God, and then God stands embodied in flesh form. Clothing mortality with immortality, he seeks to express the fullness of his magnificent infinitude within a dewdrop, a rose, a glimmer of sunbeam, and the hum of the universe, Worlds without end, vast skyey distances - all of them collapsed into a second, into a pinpoint of light - bespeak the fragrance of hope as hope permeates the universe.
God has not reckoned with the ultimate end of his creation, for living and dying worlds turning in space all turn in him. But it is within the domain of his highest expression, man - whom he seeks to raise to coequality - that peril threatens. The appearance of death, of cessation, of blackness and void is no part of reality - as it was expressed so beautifully in the Bhagavad-Gita - "Never the Spirit was born; the Spirit shall cease to be never;/Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams!/Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the Spirit for ever;/Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems!"5 Nevertheless, the fragility of the soul looms as a shroud as the Spirit of life seeks to convey immortality in order that man may continue to become a living soul.
It is elementary that life, which is God, could not continually support any manifestation that must die - that carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. Death comes when the initial impetus of spin in the top of manifestation is lost; no longer vertical, it has passed the point where the hand of the master could yet provide another turn. Thus the personal manvantara has ended, the flow of individual experience has terminated.
Now the miracle of mercy, of reembodiment, raises the hopeful gurgling babe to begin again the "long" trek of individual life expression which, in reality, is but a vanishing mist - no sooner come than gone. The love of God is not so. And his way of peace and of beauty, eluding men more than pursuing them, remains the goal of all ages.
One of the most unfortunate conditions in the world of men is that they seek constantly for a god who will favor their ways, who will condone their infractions of cosmic law. Thus a god made in their own image is easily raised in the idols of the marketplaces, in spiritual organizations as well as in political and cultural circles. Thus are born personalities to be worshiped, lauded, and sought after who glorify the status quo whatever it may be.
In pursuit of these "haloed" figures - and I apply this term equally to the idols of the screen whose questionable temporal crown many covet - the masses deny the light of the Christ that God has placed within them, the unfoldment of reality within the center of their own being, and the last full measure of devotion that they must give until the great divine magnet can draw them to God's heart.
The way of the illumined ones is not to proclaim, "Lo, Christ is here" or "Christ is there." It always has been and it always will be to find the kingdom that is within.6 This is why the gurus, the great spiritual teachers of all times, have proclaimed that the kingdom of God is within.
The way of personality, of personal adulation and personal glamour, is not proclaimed in the ascended masters' Summit Lighthouse activity. The masters of wisdom have sought herein to teach men the way of the lonely ones, the way of those who choose to unfold the bud that life has put upon its stalk and offered unto them, the way of those who are grateful for the flow of vital energies within themselves, who recognize that God's garden is composed of many varieties, who understand that the firmament of the heavens is filled with many stars who seek to unfold and express his light and beauty. This is the way of God.
Mankind must learn to surround themselves with the elements of creative expression which God has given them. These elements must be outpictured in the fields of government, religion, social service, the cultural and dramatic arts, and all manner of human endeavor. Men must seek to fulfill their places in the creative scheme of God and in the brotherhood of all in whom he has breathed the breath of life. They must recognize the golden-rule ethic, even though it may seem hard to live by in a world where harsh individuality in crude bas-relief leaves in its wake monuments to the defeat of self in the valley of the skulls.
Golgotha, the place of the skull,7 is the place of testing and crumbling - a testing of that which is real in man and the crumbling away of that which is unreal. The divine man, having surrendered his all to the infinite Way, is crucified between the two malefactors8 and his form is removed in the hope of a quiet resurrection. With the first rays of the dawn and the summoning of the life force, as a lamp wick draws the oil to the flame, the emergent spiritual forces pulsate through the flesh form and quicken it.
The hope of resurrection from the dead lives in every man, for triumph of the Christ and the triumph of the Buddha is one magnificent initiation that is recorded in the memory body of every man, woman, and child upon the planet. This recording of victory makes it possible for every seeking son to find his way home to the peace of God that accomplisheth and transcendeth all things.
Peace is not dead, beloved ones. Peace liveth, peace floweth, peace ascendeth, peace transcendeth, peace anointeth, peace maketh still and draweth out of the stillness the eternal sound of Home. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also," said my beloved brother, Jesus.9 Together we offer to the world arms intertwined and hearts devoted to life's purpose. East meets West in the flow of our love, and individuals are summoned to frame a more beautiful world. Together, the Carpenter of Nazareth and the Arbiter of Peace extend hands of heavenly compassion to the world community.
Come, let us build a better world. Let us raise man below as above - in the life of form and in the formless, in the visible and in the invisible - to the throne of enjoyment and happiness in order that the cosmic spectacle may involve God and each one.