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To Those Who Are Determined, Victory!
Not words, words, words but the Word. "In the beginning was the Word."1 In the middle are words, words, words. But in the ending only the Word will remain.
The students who would understand themselves should realize that the expansion of the middle - a term which I use symbolically to describe the finite realm - is intentional in order to provide in the field of kal (time) and desa (space) what may be called a fort of opportunity. Here the chaff of human experience can be separated from the wheat of spiritual growth.2 Here the false starts and the false moves that inscribed the karmic record upon the soul can be adjudicated and balanced. And here the beautiful purpose of realigning the consciousness and of manifesting the original purpose for which the individual took embodiment can best be served.
There is a statement that some may say is trite, nevertheless it seems to us that it must be said. It is this: "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."3 The ways of death signify the death of the human person, the stamping of "finis" on the dossier of an individual life.
Now, those who identify solely with the expressions of the personality do actually die when the life energy that beats their hearts is withdrawn, for their existence was based entirely on the flesh. But those who have already cast their anchors beyond the veil, those who have relinquished their ties to the human person simultaneously fulfilling their responsibilities and obligations which they have contracted in the world of form - these live on in the consciousness of immortality.
We would impart holy wisdom to men and women on the spiritual path and to those who are in a state of becoming all that their Presence would have them to become. We would make clear that it is essential that they do not prematurely forsake, before they exit from the world of form, those natural and reasonable obligations which they have made.
Care is a quality of the Deity. And it is, therefore, the consideration of God for humanity which prompts men to underwrite humanitarian endeavors during the tenure of their earth life and even beyond its span. These are the marks of God's own cosmic care and consideration for each one.
The Eternal God, in his sweeping program to give to humanity the fruits of the kingdom of the Spirit, has provided in reembodiment a renewal of opportunity to those who fail to make the grade in the first, second, third, or subsequent battle for attainment. To those who are not on the Path it provides a hopeful continuity in order that one day they might recognize the splendid purposes of life and thus become a part of the vanguard of the kingdom of angels, elementals, and men who seek the increase of beauty in life always and everywhere.
When men are able willingly to surrender their habitual sense of identification with the changing, death-centered mortal personality, at that moment they actually attain immortality. This act of surrender is a splendid one. It is truly a rebirth by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a transfer of the consciousness from the forcefield of mortality, with its attendant sense of struggle, to the domain of the Spirit - right while the consciousness occupies a physical body.
When this transfer occurs, the body need no longer be a liability to the soul but it can provide the necessary adjunct that will assist the soul in bringing about the ascension of the consciousness and the reunion of the vehicles and of the total man with the heart of his Divine Presence. Inasmuch as the Presence is birthless and deathless and holds contact with every other part of life in the most beautiful sense of infinity, at the moment of awakening the whole universe bursts into view within the consciousness.
Now, let us understand clearly that we are talking about two forms of consciousness: (1) the consciousness of the outer self with its awareness of externals, and (2) the consciousness of the soul with its inner knowing. The eyes of the soul once opened are able to witness the birth of star systems that even the most powerful telescopes cannot reach and they are able to respond to the prayer of a child embodied behind the iron curtain with the divine pathos and the divine answer.
You can never truly serve the needs of all whom you love until you hold within your grasp the infinite power of God. We have witnessed healings upon the Earth planet that have been accomplished through the agency of embodied men and women who have made intercession for those in need. Consider, then, what it means to be able to hold in your hands the globe of compassion as the scepter of power, to be able to serve to assist as God does in the development of the universe, to be free from mortal limitation, and to commune with the immortals in their exalted state of consciousness; for they formerly passed through the same doorway which you will now be passing through as the soul awakens.
And remember, dear hearts - those of you who have difficulty in accepting the truth of reembodiment because you do not in your outer mind recall all of the events of the past - that it is the soul's memory that is able to integrate all experience into a comprehensive whole. The objective consciousness is naturally confined to the memory of the events of your present life until it learns to reach into the memory of the soul and to draw forth with crystal clarity the patterns of life that integrate the allness of self into the allness of the universe. When this is done, it will not create a decrease in happiness but a tremendous increase in happiness because it will bring about a natural unfoldment of the divine memory from within.
Those who attempt to force these spiritual experiences through the use of dangerous drugs or mental probings and exercises literally tear open the petals of the flower of the soul from the budding center. One day they will find the fallen petals at their feet, faded and dry - returning to the dust from which all things were made.4 Only by recognizing that the soul within, the living soul that God made, possesses the capacity to span the centuries will you be able to enter into immortal life.
The soul has been neglected, the soul must be awakened. And man, too, must awaken himself to the soul's consciousness. He must never permit the desecration of the beautiful soul which the Lord God made in his own image.5 The restoration of the son to the image of the Father is the precious way of salvation which is implemented by the power in hand of the living Christ-identity vouchsafed to every man.
When every eye shall see him as he is,6 they shall place their fingers upon the body of his substance, they shall feel the symmetry of the Spirit that is within him, they shall feel the electronic throb of his heartbeat as the essence of his life pours through the garment he wears and floods their souls with identification with higher realms. Then shall man truly come to know who and what he is.
Man is a God in the becoming, but he can never know this while he thinks earthly thoughts. He can never know this by worldly knowledge. For the things of this world are foolishness with God,7 and in the eyes of God the only real values are those that free man from the eclipse of being that has concealed the Sun from his eyes. And it is the Sun that will awaken his spiritual senses that enable him to see with Saint Paul the face of the master and to hear his cry "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."8
"God loveth a cheerful giver"9 and those who surrender sweetly, joyously to his program of hope for them and for the whole world are forerunners in the cause of understanding the great, blazing noontide reality of themselves. These not only will to be free, but they will also be free.
Graciously, in the never-failing light of God, I remain