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As a wondrous bell tolling out the radiance of the eternal cycles peals a new beginning, hopes rise like smoke of fragrant incense. And the souls of men are purified by hope in the renewal of the ancient covenants bearing witness to the souls of men, of the gentility of their origin, when all savagery ceased to be and was not, for it had not yet begun.
Today the hearts of the world await the coming of the cycle of eternal peace when all turmoil shall cease and virtue shall be enshrined, crowning the brows of those wisdom children of the sun who are chosen chalices of infinite grace - not self-appointed but chosen by the Light to bear the Light, and accepters of the grace of God. The word scepter - long ago used, but today, in a world no longer subject to many kings, forgotten - embodies this idea of acceptance of the government of God to rule over the hearts of men.1
Long ago, as Siddhartha Gautama, when the wondrous love essence first began to rise within my heart - from my knees unto the very center of my forehead, there rose a mighty wave of compassion for the world. I first witnessed death and my heart grew faint as if with giddiness, for it had been kept from me. And I pondered as to how so unreal a condition could have even the spell of unreality.
I soon found the tarnish upon the escutcheon of man's honor, and I recognized that it must be removed. It was then a seemingly impossible task for the world, and so I set about seeking to find the path of righteousness for myself, as contemplatives have done throughout the ages of earth.
The mercies of heaven, beholding my struggle and strife, permitted it to cease; and ultimately I found nirvana - the stilling of the cosmic breath, the gentle enfolding of the eternal cycles at rest. Within the consciousness of infinite oneness, I knew at last a compassion - a compassion with life in all of its perfectionment.
But there came a moment when I heard a voice in nirvana crying unto me and saying: "Lord Buddha! Lord Buddha! Come and help us!" At first it seemed to have a quality of unreality, for it came from a sphere afar - your orb you call the earth - and it came from the hearts of many devotees who had learned to love the quiet way of meditation, contemplation of the divine ideal. These gracious men and women pursuing God's heart called unto me until the momentum became a cosmic edict.
And so in nirvana, the great gateway swung open and the word passed through: "Gautama! Gautama! Come and help us!" And so my heart was stirred, and I knew the beginning of God's own yearning for every part of himself. I knew it in a different way.
Oh, I had known it before. I had known it in a state so wondrous that it seemed as though it could not be transcended. And here I was face-to-face with all the glories of eternal peace and my heart could not be still, for I knew that I must return to the world and I knew that a spiritual work of infinite grace lay ahead.
In the cycles of life, and by the side of Jesus and Mary and Saint Germain and others of the Great White Brotherhood, I returned, and my momentum was added on behalf of the light of the world. And when the hour came appointing me to the position of Sanat Kumara, who returned unto the heart of Venus, I said, "I am ready."
And thus ye call me so kindly "Lord of the World," but it is the Lord of the Universe who is the Lord of the World seated upon the lotus throne of each heart among mankind. And I but serve to give my light in the humility of the Christ to the world waiting the dawn of the perfect day appearing.2
O hearts of light and loveliness, the calls that have gone forth throughout this class, rising with ever-mounting crescendos of spiritual desire, attainment, have stirred your hearts; and the regenerate fires now there are blazing brightly. I add the momentum of the other masters to that you have heard before, that in the unified action of the profound peace of God, the hearts of men may wax hot in the pursuit of Christ-victory.
Our peace knows no limitation! Our peace enfolds you. Our peace is your victory. For in moments when the dust of the ages - the untransmuted karma of the mass consciousness - hangs like a pall and shroud over the world, the streaming light of the Christ stands with outstretched arms, joined by all of us in solemn and holy invocation that the day of the LORD and the LORD's victory for the earth be established forever and the kingdom spoken of by Daniel the prophet3 be established in the house of becoming.
You, here in the great schoolrooms of earth, troubled at times, should be reminded again and again of the words of the Christ: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me."4 The hearts of men have been troubled by many things, but it is the fact that there is any trouble at all that must be remedied, and speedily.
To one afflicted with a thorn picked up upon the pathway of life, in any part of the anatomy, it is painful. And the thorn must be removed, all of it, and the healing oil promote the healing of the wound, and nature herself establish tranquility in the body politic of the world.
The heads of state, troubled in the past by a sense of restless destiny - an uncontrolled probing to solve the problems of the world's destiny - continue to the present hour to seek some manner of relief for the multitude of problems besetting men. The hand of God goes unrecognized by many who ought to perceive it. But remember well, O cherished children, that they who are alone and in the darkness are frequently affrighted, like a stricken child seeking for its mother. And unless the comforting arms of that mother be found and a light be brought, the crying may continue.
And so the world today, not having understood the holy light of spiritual truth but desiring to conform to the rituals of the ages, pursues the religious path - and few there be that find it.5 And out of those who find that path, few have continued all the way. And of those that have continued all the way, few have been able at the last to resist the great tests and initiations probing their spiritual stress-and-strain levels to fit them for higher service and, hence, have sometimes taken the grade over and gone back once again into the schoolrooms of earth with unfulfilled purpose and unfulfilled longings.
It is our cherished wish this holy eve to bear to you some fragment of God that can find lodging in your heart and mind permanently. It is our cherished longing tonight to penetrate the density of the most dense here or upon earth with some wondrous fragment of truth that can be a shield and buckler6 to that one at the moment when the shield and the buckler are both needed.
It is our cherished hope to render a service to our Brotherhood that will enable the hearts of men to be anointed with the holy, golden oil of peace. It is our hope to see the tide of the light of men's hearts rise higher and higher in the sense of cosmic desire, until there is a popularizing of the religious pursuit, the search for God, a revival of love for Him who has first loved mankind with so great a love.7
O my cherished ones, children of the Eightfold Path to righteousness and children of the West, I speak to you all: Whether you pursue the way of the Christ or whether you pursue the path of the East, let love for God and his goodness and for his Mediator, the Divine Son of your own God Presence, the Christ light of your being, be your beloved friend and your helper.
Every hour and every moment spent in peaceful attunement with this Presence cannot help but propel you closer; for the Law does not fail, nor can it be so. The standards of men, the criteria established by them, are ever so frequently accurate in assessing mankind's own acts and thoughts. But heaven has its standard and it is implanted in universal law, in universal order, and in universal service. As Columbus planted the banner on San Salvador, as the Maltese cross was unfurled from the Santa Maria, as the New World was discovered, so the world shall yet discover in the midst of its turmoil another new world - the pioneer world of testing, in acceptance, the holy precepts of our own religious instruction.
Mark you well, mark you well the mutilation that has occurred to all holy religion through the ages. Note the destruction that has been wrecked upon nation after nation; whereas during the times of destruction, multitudes were at prayer and invoking the presence of peace.
Sodoma and Gomorrah, cities of the plain, destroyed by fire, testify a dramatic lesson in karma for mankind.8 This great city of Sodom, this great city of Gomorrah - laid waste because even ten righteous men could not be found in the city. And the safe conduct granted unto Lot is testimony to that which has occurred. And before you, in the person of this messenger, you behold Lot,9 who was then embodied in Sodom and knew the wickedness of that city.
I tell you then, beloved ones, that the world is filled with a multitude of dramatic experiences - the crossroads of human lives, the interweaving of contacts - so much so that if I today were embodied in life here where you are, I do not think that I should frown upon a tiny baby, lest I be returned to life to serve him until he had obtained his freedom.
Mark ye well whene'er ye do an act for ill or gain that cannot be reconciled with holy justice. Probe the recesses of your conscience, and see if you can deny to God whate'er he needeth of the substance he first has given to you.
The holy orders of the world today are a bulwark of established spirituality - one we spurn not.
We say, "Welcome brother,"
To they of every sect and creed and clime,
And turn not down any aspiring soul
Yearning to climb the way to find the Goal.
O blessed ones, in many a cloister
Where abides a nun or priest
Or one who is a son desiring strife to cease -
He shall find our light within him shall increase
Until his day is done.
The day of strife is o'er,
When men shall cease the struggle evermore
And yearn to know
The way that leads to peace and righteousness.
Men half born, yet yearning to breathe freedom's air,
Cannot spurn this God that is everywhere!
His peace O know, O noble men and women,
That you may be lifted upon its wings
And find tranquility in a heart that sings
With His peace.
In the quiet moments and the brooding moments,
In the moments of pain and strife and struggle,
In the moments of doubt,
As well as the moments of high courage,
My oration unto thee
Is an acclamation of thine own victory!
And now, let us part the veil and together go to the wondrous conclave of light in the Grand Teton ranges.
O holy Sanat Kumara, we welcome thee and all of the Kumaras here to our retreat, God's retreat, in honor of those noble, beautiful, wonderful sponsors who gave of their energies to be woven into the wondrous tapestries.10
Blessed be all who have furnished warp and woof to be woven into the fabric of a noble life, a God-ideal. These are men of substance, of science, of medicine, of the nursing profession. These are mothers and fathers and expert workmen. These are men and women who sweep the streets and plant the corn and bottle the holy oil, and provide the food through toil and service and love and homecomings and kindnesses expressed.
You see, O hearts, so blessed are you that you are entering into the time when we of the ascended host are almost through the atmosphere! Our glory is so shining around that those of you whose spiritual eyes are even half open ought almost to be able to see our smiling face, so near is the veil parted.
And yet, for those locked yet in embrace to the carnal mind, we are as sealed and apart as though walls of stone separated us and bands of iron held you back - but not from our love. Our love melts through the stone and bone of being! Our love penetrates all, and naught can hold back our love.
O Brothers of the Grand Teton, in this mighty retreat may we not amplify our love until the world is saturated with it? The world has denied the Presence of God. How can they deny that goodness that we know? That goodness that we know must expand and glow with fervent fire until the world will see that this is a mighty smithy where we will forge the instruments of the new age. New instruments of liberty will be forged in peace here in our spiritual fortress!
And therefore, I see before me a golden anvil as the thoughtform for the year: a golden anvil, signifying that service and love and labor are needed to produce the wonders of the kingdom of God among men, to restore them to the old estate, to let them know in honest service that God's way is best. For that which they have won beneath the Sun of his Presence is achievement, attainment.
And so there is lowered the most beautiful golden anvil - an example of the smithy's art, that men may see here a means of using the smithy's forge to heat white-hot the furnace of divine love and take in hand the hammer of God's law, cutting the chains that bind the world and unfurling the banner of peace everywhere, and freedom and hope.
Ah! Darkening clouds of human maya, may you not manifest! We would push you back and see you put within a sack and then confined to the furnace to be transmuted!
But, O mankind, some despair shall surely fall upon the world and be its lot throughout this year if man shall not make greater effort to repair the breach that exists in the violent world, the world of emotions. And the anvil is needed, the golden anvil, to cut the chains that bind men to prejudice and caste and false creed and the dust of centuries of decay and agonizing.
The politicians would do well to look well upon the infamous record of history and perceive there the need to sound a death knell to all that is discordant and vain and greedy, to lust and vanity that fill the coffers of individuality and take the realities of life and cast them into a place where refuse is burning.
The false sense of values of mankind must be repaired, and the breaches in the wall of God must be rebuilded! And each one must lay a stone for peace - masons building God's holy temple, yea. But more than masons - sons and kings and priests to God,11 servers of his light and of the Brotherhood in white, whose triumph is legion.
And yet, man, lacking in emulation, remains unorganized, disorganized - an abomination of desolateness sitting in the holy places of identity12 and clamoring for God to repair the breach He did not create. All this is their own lot! They have made it, and they should repair it.
We cannot dispense a lie,
But only the truth to men who eye
The precepts of Eternity
And look to us for hope.
O brothers, we must give them hope!
We must give them hope in this golden anvil.
An honest man - a smithy!
An honest heart, not afraid to serve, to love,
And even though the word be toil.
Man and woman together,
Working as one instrument
To forge the bonds of hearth and home,
The greatness that has made America one -
Which Saint Germain so honors before our councils -
Must be a cup dipped to the world
And in which the world must dip.
Some element of hope must spread to all,
And fear must be removed.
And yet, the shadow's pall remains -
Threatening, grotesque, and uncompromising.
You will need and require, O my brothers, great elements of assistance to give to these people. For their hearts cry out for deliverance and for peace. And yet the year of four, `64, seems to give them no specific promise, except they shall forge it upon the golden anvil.
And so I say: O brothers wise and true and kind and good, upon this spot where now I stand, but a few hours ago El Morya stood and reminded our council of the Table Round. Well, let the word go forth then! And let it sound abroad throughout the world this new year - that Light has given forth from the Brotherhood in white the golden anvil!
And remember well the inspired words of your late president: Do not ask yourself what your organization or your country or your world can do for you, but each one of you ask yourself what you can do for your organization, for your country, and for your world.13
And so the golden anvil is passed. And in heaven, when the coats of mail are forged, the strong coats of invincible golden armor that shall protect you from harm and shall give you instruments of service, you shall express gratitude to the brothers here for this symbol of great wisdom, for the times of test - when the forging and all the rest is left to thee!
Destiny lies like a gift in thy palm. The destiny is Life. The prize14 is immortality and peace - here, now, and always - but for those who grasp it here and now! For those who pass it, it remains in the distance always.
Peace of the Buddha and the Christ abide upon all mankind this night in God's holy name.
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"The Summit Lighthouse Sheds Its Radiance O'er All the World to Manifest as Pearls of Wisdom."
This dictation by Gautama Buddha was delivered through the Messenger Mark L. Prophet December 31, 1963, during the 1964 New Year's class in Washington, D.C.