GOD

CHAPTER VII

1. People generally are interested in the Masters’ idea of God and the location of God. We shall, therefore, consider this idea in the present chapter. However, it will be impossible to consider their idea without including man for to them God and man are
2. The Masters talk of God considerably but they consider It as One attribute of Being— Being as one attribute, or a single entity comprising the entire universal system, visible and invisible. The mind of man got its idea of God through superstition about God. Man saw then nothing but the graven image. It was then necessary to bring him back to the realization that he is God, there being no separation between the individual and the Universal; that man is an integral part of the whole and is identical in nature with the
3. They teach that God is right within man always, just as Jesus Christ taught. That is always the attitude and thought of the illumined. Man is God. That statement, “I am God,” is one of the most definite statements that man can use. We have never known them to give instructions in But they do give oral instructions or oral talks. They do not call their talks instructions. They are simply stating facts which are obvious and they assume that the obvious should be known universally. Therefore, they do not teach, but merely confirm what all men instinctively know and which is universally true.
4. As a guide in individual progress they suggest reading the Mahabharata, the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita. This reading is suggested as preparation for one who desires to take the real inner work and for concentration. A few verses at a time are best. They never suggest reading a whole book through. They often read but one sentence in a whole day. The instructions given in the Gita are steps toward the accomplishment of individual perception of what God really is and to really bring the individual into the consciousness of what it
5. No man will actually know God until he himself experiences the realization of God within himself. “NO man knoweth the things of God except the spirit of God which is in him reveal them.” The preparatory work prior to the discovery of the inner or secret doctrine as it is sometimes called is the result of training the mind to grasp that which is within the statements for that is the inner work or inner doctrine. It is like studying to understand the meaning of a mathematical rule. The thought is that, when one has trained himself to gain the knowledge of the inner meaning of the teachings of the Gita or the Bible or any other Sacred book, he is then in position to make an inner search of himself to find the inner meaning of his own being. Man is not a physical organism, but that inner self living through a physical organism. The inner work is finding the Self which is the God-Self.
6. There are so many orthodox conceptions today that hold to the theory that God is made in the image and likeness of man instead of the truth that man is made in the image and likeness of God. But they think of man as physical rather than that which is back of the physical, the inner Man is really the image and likeness of God.
7. If God is the sum of all things visible and invisible, the Infinite One, the image of God embraces all time and space for there is nothing but God. Man could only be created in or within His image for there could be no outside where man could be created. He subsists within the very image of God, as your thoughts exist within and live as an integral part of your mind. Not only is man created within this image of God or contained within the allness of God but he is made of the very essence of the God nature, like unto it. If the cause is God, the effect is God in manifestation. Cause and effect must be Can there be thought without mind and can there be mind without thought?
8. The union of every condition brings man right back to God. He does not need to attain. He is God. That is wholeness of Principle. The materiality of illusion is that which gets us into all kinds of difficulties and strife. In that complete unification of Principle in man we rise out of objectification entirely as we know objectification. There is a pure manifestation of God but it is not a material or limited objectification. It is a state of consciousness expression of all that Principle is. But there is not the slightest degree of separation or limitation. It is like a ray of light among innumerable rays of light, which altogether make the light that is universal, but each ray IS
9. The statement, “I am God,” accompanied by the realization of what is truly involved in it will heal any condition instantly. If you realize it and see nothing but that Truth, only that Truth can manifest. In treating yourself or another you see and declare only the eternal Unity with God. That Light comes forth instantly for it is the true light and then we know that unity is in existence within ourselves and within everybody else. It is all That is the Christ Light, the Christ Principle.
10. This eliminates the theory that it is necessary to do any specific work on the glands, on body centers, upon the body itself, or to treat disease, as you state it. The physical will fall into line as soon as we realize that fundamental Unity. When this state is reached the glands and all bodily functions are stimulated until they become Every atom of the body is stimulated and aroused to action in perfect coordination with the Spirit. It is the Spirit that quickens. You cannot raise the bodily action into accord with spirit by the processes of mind for the Spirit is above the mind as the heavens are high above the earth.

15. The ten commandments are not the objectified law of God at all. In them Moses tried to lay down a law for mental and moral conduct but there is no such conduct outside the law of the Spirit and the consciousness of the activity of Spirit must be discerned as the only governing law. The statement, “As you stand one with Law, you will not” do these things, was the original intent, but has been translated, “Thou shalt not.” If you are within the law of harmony you will not produce discords but to merely refrain from producing discords does not place you within the law of harmony. To refrain from discord merely involves doing nothing at all and surely this never would produce a musician nor would it express harmony. The active doing of the law produces effects commensurate with the law. Life is active, dynamic and not static. It is DOING TRUTH, not merely refraining from that which is not
16. If you are in obedience to the Law itself you will automatically refrain from doing certain things which are not included in the natural operations of the law. You do not do these things if you follow the law, but in omitting these things you may not fulfill the law at all but only obey your own notions. “Thou shalt not,” was the Mosaic law as Moses gave it out. These were the emanations of the Sephiroth or the Tree of Life. He veiled that fact and objectified it for the people but gave the Priests the real meaning in the
17. When God spoke to Moses in a “loud voice” as it is given, it was not intended to convey the fact that He spoke with much noise. God is a “sound voice,” which brings light into That was Moses’ statement. A “Sound Voice,” not a “voice of sound.” There is an important difference. If we have a “sound voice” that voice is One and will bring light into existence. It gives us that power. It may be out of noise completely or what we would designate as soundless. And that is what we are coming to today, the Soundlessness of sound. Then it is beyond noise completely and you pay no attention to noise because you are in Sound Voice or definite principle.
18. Soundness is wholeness and, when God spoke in a sound voice, He spoke in the completeness of Himself. It is like we often say of a person, “He put his whole self into what he said.” It is only when the entire nature is aroused and operative that the voice is sound or that we speak with soundness. We do not speak partially or in any separateness but in complete oneness. When God said to Moses, “I am that I am and beside me there is no other,” He was speaking in a “sound voice,” for He excluded nothing from His proclamation but moved as a complete Unit. This is particularly illuminating regarding the discarded psychological idea that the mind is a sectional or departmental thing made up of many operations. This is the hypnotism of unsoundness. The more differentiated, the more unsound becomes the mind. Study some of the people who are given to this departmental function of the mind, concentrating here and there and moving their minds about one section at a time. They are extremely unsound and are never safe within themselves nor are they safe to follow for they lead only into confusion. It may be a good way to build up a large following for a group of people who are unsound mentally are easily herded into organizations, but this ultimately becomes the greatest bondage, particularly to the one who thus deceives the people. Soundness is wholeness— “I am God,” spoken in the consciousness that you are one with the All and that the All is centered within you and that you move with and are included in the operations of the whole, is the only truly sound statement for it is complete. No structure is stable unless it becomes a unit and no man is stable until he is a complete unit in and with the Principle.
19. We cannot stop in our progress with organizations and systems either orthodox or metaphysical for they are sectional, sectarian, and teach a doctrine that is more or less involved with the idea of separations. They are only steps in the process of man’s discovery of himself. We cannot stop at any point without becoming orthodox. That prevents further progress until we break away.
20. That is where so many people become mixed in affirmations and denials. Of course, many modern thought organizations become mixed up in that very thing when they begin to deny. They fasten to themselves a condition which does not exist and then, when they feel this false influence of their own mental reaction, they call it malicious- animal-magnetism. They begin to get into psychic influences again, being held there by their
21. One is really not working properly when he denies. Denial separates us from Spirit for we stop to consider something that we designate as “not spirit.” In Spirit there is no separation and, consequently, it is only man’s separation through which he becomes involved in the psychic or phenomenal. Moses classified anything and everything in phenomena as a separation from Spirit. The orthodox churches evidently get into trouble because they allow a separation. They have built up a great image in the heavens, calling it God. There is a psychic determination there which they see, believing that this image talked to them instead of which it was their own voice talking to them through psychic influences. The voice of God speaks within man as Jesus It is the Father within.
22. Christ’s denial of limitation—Satan—was not a declaration of his non-existence but a simple letting go of the idea which was entirely He did not reckon with it at all.
23. Moses, in referring to the dividing of Heaven and Earth, evidently meant that the earth was the outer. In the Sanskrit there is a word which defines the Earth as the outer That condition is to be overcome and that overcoming is in thought only. Moses meant to convey that Heaven and Earth should be complete and One always. He let go of Earth completely and then the One attitude of Principle stood forth. He knew fully that the form was a complete embodiment of Spirit as life.
24. That is what Job was trying to bring out when he said, “Yet in my flesh shall I see ” It even is expressed that way in the Upanishads. In everything bring forth the Christ Self and see reality in place of a differentiated physical body. The body is radiant and pure spiritual substance and it will show forth this condition when the thought of its materiality is withdrawn and gives place to the truth that flesh in its true state is the radiant light of God through which and in which God is manifest in His spiritual perfection.
25. Flesh does not need to be spiritualized; it is already spirit in manifestation, just as water is oxygen and hydrogen in manifest form. The water is one in and with its source and is identical in nature with its source. To separate oxygen and hydrogen from water would be to disintegrate the water itself. “Your body is the temple of the living God” in exactly the same manner and, when reunited with its source, the body becomes pure and perfect as radiant light, the Light that was in the beginning and out of which all things were That which makes the body appear to be something else is the clouded mentality that has imposed itself between the flesh and its true source. The body— Temple of the living God—has become a den of thieves, robbing the body of its true sustaining principle.
26. In the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father which art in Heaven” was not intended to convey the idea that heaven was elsewhere. Jesus meant what the original Sanskrit intended to convey, the everywhere-present inner peace and harmony. That is Heaven in its true The Kingdom of Heaven is among you. There is an inner meaning in the Lord’s Prayer which cannot be given out except privately and orally. If man understood this inner meaning he would be in the Kingdom of Heaven. This involves completely surrendering what we have called the self and accepting the Self that is the only reality, which is the spiritual Self, for there is no other Self. Those who have attained follow this path and enter into that which exalts the whole into Spirit. Such an one knows himself as God.
27. This is difficult for many to understand for they think of themselves only in terms of their conscious thought. All such thoughts must be discarded. The realization includes the conscious mind when the Christ mind has become the complete consciousness of the individual, for the conscious mind is then included in complete consciousness. All thoughts that we have embraced within our consciousness that are at variance with the Truth must be given That is what Christ meant when He said to “deny thyself.” Give up your own estimate of yourself and accept yourself as you are in complete relationship to the whole. It is forsaking all conditions which appear outwardly in favor of the architectural design back of it all. The Christ mind is the God mind always.
28. When any individual attains to true knowledge of God his works will be completed If he would stand completely one with God, it would be finished instantly. Jesus said, “It is finished,” and from then on went right on to other accomplishments. If we ourselves recognize perfection we become that perfection Itself. We need no other recognition. It is all God if we wish to put it that way.
29. That was the only thing which the people two thousand years ago had against Christ. They thought it “blasphemy” that He should consider Himself as God for their state of hypnosis could not fathom the mystery of His position, which is the true position of all But that was the only thing they had against Him. When we make that same statement before unillumined people, those steeped in ignorance regarding the true state of all creation, they accuse us of blasphemy today just as they did Christ two thousand years ago. But why should we care? So long as we care what people think, just so long will we keep ourselves in subjection to the hypnotic spell of the earth. But one who is awakened never goes about making such outward statements to the profane world. One meaning of I am God is “I am silent.”
30. The attempt to make God a trinity came through the idea of differentiation of the One. The reduction of all elements to the One element, or emanating energy, leads to the three in one or unity and directly to the true Trinity or Triad as one attribute of Being. This is the Holy Spirit, the Whole I, the Creative Spirit as complete action. The moment we project our thought to the Holy Ghost we are projecting our being to the complete Creative Spirit in action. It is the movement of the whole as a UNIT. When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you are conscious that all action within and without is but the complete action of the Principle in its entirety without the slightest sense of separation or It is ONE action.
31. There can be no actual sin against the Holy Ghost. In the original text we find nothing about the expiation of sin. Man alone commits what he himself calls sin and man alone forgives sin. The son of man on earth has power to forgive sin. There could be no sin against the Holy Ghost for it is impossible for man to divide the indivisible or to actually separate the uni-action of the One. He only seems to do so. That is where the Divine Right of Kings comes If the King is in his Divine Right he can make no mistakes and man, as the King, could make no mistakes. This did not refer only to a certain king or family ruling over a nation but to man ruling over himself. When he rules over himself he becomes a King. Every man is a King when he knows himself as God and exercises his God Authority to completely subject every phase of himself to the One idea.

28. The interpretation of God speaking to individuals or groups of people as designating only that particular person or group is false. What God speaks to one man or one nation He speaks to all men and all nations, for He created of one blood all nations of men and He is no respecter of persons. But, from this false interpretation man has built up separate groups into nations. The orthodox churches, according to Dr. Lyman Abbot, have done more toward the retrogression of civilizations than any other influence because of their hatreds. The first intention in the presentation of God was that you look immediately to the Light which emanates from your own being and from the being of every individual as being ONE and the same light and that God equally manifests Himself to and through all beings in exactly the same sense without partiality or The moment you can project your vision to that light you are at once conscious completely, namely, in the Divine Consciousness, and there can be no separation there. With no sense of separation there can be no separation in creed or race or nation and hence, no strife or war.
29. Referring to the incident mentioned in The Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East where Emil separated the jackals that were fighting over the carcass of an animal, Emil said, “It is not the self that you see, but only the God-Self that does the work.” He meant to convey that when you get away from the fear of the animal and project the God-Self there is peace and harmony. And they came together and ate their meal in perfect harmony instead of
30. This is the theory back of our experience in walking through fire. The Masters told us afterward that we had raised our vibration to such an extent that there was no conflict between us and the fire. There was perfect harmony and oneness. We clearly saw the fire raging all around us but we felt no heat or discomfort. Our clothes were not even This experience has quite recently been duplicated in London by a young Hindoo Yogi under the severest scientific test conditions. Pictures of this incident were shown in America on one of the news reels and Edwin C. Hill, famous news commentator, wrote at some length upon the subject. Copies of this comment were mailed to 100 teachers conducting classes on these lessons.
31. The life of the Masters is simply the God life. They always put it, “Life is Light.” “The moment we express Light, life emanates.” If you live the Life, then you will Know and that knowing is complete. It is not a life of ascetism or apartness. It is a Life and Light in unity, in
32. Anyone may break his seeming bondage to a condition that is not Godly by simply letting go of the bondage completely. That was our training from boyhood on. If a discordant condition came into our surroundings we let go of it completely. The Masters sometimes go for hundreds of days without eating. They are not bound in any way. But when they do not eat outwardly they do feed upon the Prana or spiritual substance that is all about them. They take in Pranic substance and it is assimilated for the direct and complete sustenance of the body. Plants feed upon Prana and when man uses the vegetables for food he takes in Prana also. He can take it directly even more readily than the plants and vegetables do, if he
33. It would not be the part of wisdom for the Western world to discard the Bible in favor of the Bhagavad Our Bible is of greater importance to the Western world for we do not understand the Bhagavad Gita. The later is best, however, for the East. The West could with profit read the Bhagavad Gita, as it would obviate the necessity of wading through the folklore and mistranslations of the Bible. The Bhagavad Gita has taken all that out. The Vedanta Philosophy in most instances is the best exposition of the teachings of the Masters. Many people get a more simplified thought and can assimilate these thoughts through the Vedas. Then they can go on to the Vedantic teachings.

34. The reason those of the West have difficulty in understanding spiritual things is that the Western consciousness has always been an evasion of Principle for the reason that they did not know what Principle meant. They even misled themselves, largely by the acceptance of their philosophers’ teaching that Principle is an unknown quantity. The Master Mind knows what Principle is but so can we accept Principle and know what it We must accept the Goal toward which we are working or we do not work at all.
35. You cannot go into India with a Spirit of egotism, selfishness and design and get anything out of India any more than you can in these states get anything from these lessons, from the Bible, or any other source of Truth. There is nothing in Truth compatible with these attitudes. You get out of India whatever you take to India. It is not a matter of going into India at all. It is an ever present state is you can receive
36. It is not a matter of going to India, studying the Bible, or the Bhagavad Gita. It is letting go of all these confusions that infest the mind and the upset conditions resulting Then one may get a great spiritual uplift from the Bible or any other source. We are beginning to see that we take from the Bible what we take to the Bible. The very determination to get the very meaning out of the book will open its secrets to us to some extent. If we read the Bhagavad Gita or any other book we must take the same attitude toward it. There is, of course, nothing in the Bible that is not interpreted in the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, and the Vedas. That is where all the knowledge that is contained in the Bible came from.

FOR THE TEACHER

Paragraphs 1 and 2. Perhaps the hardest thing for the average individual is to realize that God is the great Universal Scheme of creation and the point should be emphasized by the teacher and practiced by the student until this very fundamental fact in life has become a matter of individual realization. Personality is an individual identity, while God is the Universal identity, the Universe as a single conscious identity, the sum of all consciousness, power, love, life, and substance.

Paragraph 3. Man cannot escape the ultimate Unity that exists between himself and the Universal system for he is a part of that system. If a product of the Universal system, he must contain the potentialities of the Universe and, by whatever name he designates the Universe, he must also bear that name as well as its nature. One ray of light is just as truly light as a dozen of them, a million, a billion or all of them.

Paragraphs 4 and 5. It is not what man studies but how he studies that is the secret of illumination; not what we know about a thing but what we know of it that makes the difference. As well try to classify and describe the size, shape, color, and density of seeds in an attempt to know Nature as to merely read the descriptions of God in the hope of knowing God. To know nature is to know it in its fullness, to see its growth on every hand, and to sense in some degree the force which produces it. Man must be still and know God in the same way; cease from descriptions and come to “feel after Him,” if he would know the nearness, the power, the wisdom and substance that is ever moving within his own nature.

This is the inner or secret doctrine.

Paragraphs 6 and 7. The same as paragraphs 4 and 5.

Paragraphs 8, 9 and 10. If God is ALL and man is created in His image and likeness, in what manner can man grow except in the enlargement of his consciousness to comprehend the greatness of his created state. He truly does not attain to anything but only in the discovery of that which already is. The point is whether he shall discover himself a little at a time or whether he shall discover the ultimate fact from the beginning. The wise of all ages have declared that the latter is the true way. “Know ye not that ye are Gods and Sons of the Most High,” is calling man back to his beginning, which is his perfection in and with God.

Paragraphs 11 and 12. If man is in a certain state of consciousness, he automatically does not express that which is its opposite. On the other hand, the elimination of certain modes of conduct does not produce an opposite state of consciousness. Action, and not inaction, is productive of results. It may be well, in a state of ignorance of the Truth, to refrain from error states of procedure but it is not this practice that leads to illumination. If you are not happy, you do not become so by merely refusing to act unhappy. If you are happy, on the other hand, you do not act nor look as one who is unhappy. This may be illustrated in many ways.

Paragraphs 13 and 14. Soundness is a matter of being complete, a complete unit.

Soundness is without separation. A sound building or bridge is a structure that is made up of many units all bound together in a single unit. You would not think of a building made of many parts all separated as being a sound building. Soundness and wholeness are synonymous. The sound voice in this instance like the “sound” mind in a previous lesson refers to the Unified consciousness in action. No man is sound when he thinks of himself as a departmental being nor is his mind sound when it functions partially nor does he speak soundly when he voices but half the Truth. Truth is that which is true of God, for God is all, and God is One.

Paragraph 15. Wherever one group or race or nation segregate themselves as a chosen people, a distinct people, in some sense more directly related to or favored of God, they are not a sound people and their doctrines are never sound. God is no respecter of persons and His creation is all manifestation and they are all included impartially within Himself. It cannot be that some people are not the chosen of God and others are the chosen of God. He created all men and therefore all people are the chosen of God. All people are God in manifestation just as all forms of plant life are the manifestations of nature. Equality is in the fact, and outward equality is dependent upon the degree to which we have embodied through realization the universal Fact.

Paragraphs 16, 17, 18 and 19. Progress is made, not through denial, but through the practice of habitually unifying all things with the Source. Unified with the Source, all things begin to manifest their likeness to the source and all appearance to the contrary disappears like ignorance in the presence of knowledge or shadows in the presence of light. To deal with fact is to dispel fancy. To work with fancy is to work with nothing and to accomplish nothing. To achieve something one must work with something. Something can never be made out of nothing.

Paragraphs 20 and 21. Whether your face is radiant with joy or clouded with sorrow, it is the same face but appears differently under different influences. The flesh is just as much manifest spiritual substance whether diseased or whole. Only the influence back of it needs to be changed. When the consciousness is expanded to its true state of Knowing the allness and oneness of God, the flesh automatically manifests this condition. It then is the return of the flesh to its true state as radiant Substance of the Word of God.

Paragraphs 22 and 23. The Kingdom of reality is all about us and the only transition we need to make is to discard our notion that it is a remote place. All that God is is within, through, and around all men and man himself is included in that allness of God. There is nothing he can do about it but accept it and, in accepting it, living in harmony with it, he becomes aware of it.

Paragraphs 24 and 25. Cause and effect are one and to know the truth is to be instantly free. To know God as health is to be instantly well. To know God as supply is to be instantly supplied for the one presupposes or includes the other. There can be no separation.

Paragraph 26. We must come to the realization that we are on the way back to the Father’s house and not moving out away from it. We are progressing toward unity and not diversity. “Behold our God is One” is the song of the returning soul.

Paragraph 27. The close of the lesson should be self-explanatory but may be illustrated and enlarged upon as the leader is inclined or inspired. The whole point of the entire lesson is to get away from the formed opinions of man which have led him into the sense of separation and to bring him into the consciousness of his Oneness with the Universal whole, his likeness to the whole, and his access to all that there is in Infinite Space.

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