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To All Who Seek Greater Communion:
I consider true prayer to be a cornucopia, a cylinder of abundant blessings. The showering of these blessings may require a bit of shaking of the bower, as the receiving cup of the disciple is lifted upward in holy anticipation. Between the dark and the daylight - the dark of unmanifest substance and the daylight of manifestation - there is at times a slip of needless dissipation. Excess anticipation of self-good without self-surrender drains spiritual treasure and prevents manifestation.
Childlike trust should rise to become manlike sensibility where, through the process of natural development, the life of the individual is seen as an opportunity to become Godlike. The man who does for himself what others expect God to do for them, according to the best understanding he has and the limit of his personal capacities, will soon find flowing through his consciousness a unit of transcendent life which I call the abundant life.
When I brake the bread before the five thousand, the one loaf easily became the many; for all substance is one and all power is one.1 When universal good is the motivating principle and selfishness is cast down through the individual's desire to serve the perfection of life, he is often granted a release of unparalleled strength - the strength of the Divine, the abundance of the Divine, the purity of God, the wisdom of God, and the love of God.
The nature of the Father is within the Son. It is within ye all, now and always. When you reach up hands of seeking faith and allow the unbroken prayer of steadfast purpose to act, you are opening the door to that perfect understanding that transcends all mortal sense of limitation.
Some say: "Why need I read? Why must I consider these things?" Precious ones, as above, so below. Man's sense of individuality and his perception in the world of form have been builded through the centuries as the soul, outwardly perceiving substance, fashioned its own inward sense of substance and circumstance. It is just as necessary in dealing with spiritual matters for the individual to program himself, to orient himself, to prepare himself through cosmic study to grasp universal principles as it is for him to grasp external ones.
A release such as I am giving in my series on continual prayer is invaluable to the aspirant; for it conveys thought matrices calculated to develop in each one who studies an inward approval of the consciousness of the universal Creator, our heavenly Father. Most unfortunate is it that the same words of life which I speak are often spoken by laymen, ministers, and teachers who claim to be of the eternal craft of builders and are not. Through much hearing, the ears of men have waxed dull; and there is a tendency to compare the fruits of other men's labors with their words. This brings the individual to a sense of judgment where he spends too much of his time in judging the lives of others and not enough time in communion with God whereby he seeks to erase the results of negative assaults upon his own soul. Thus men often become critics whose criticism denies the fruit of progress to themselves.
We seek then to show forth the fact that no matter how many spiritual words may be spoken by men in surface utterance, using ideas or expressions similar to our own, unless the Spirit lives behind the Word, the flesh is as grass and continues so to be. The conveyance which has been cited as "the laying on of hands," or the transfer of the Spirit, must be made through the universal life-principle whereby one actually contacts God.2
God lives, the Father lives, and he lives in you. But you must evoke him by continual prayer until the strands of discord that bind you to the world are severed for all time, until the opaquing clouds of mortal densities are blown away by the wind of the Holy Spirit, until the sun shining in his strength is seen by you and drawn down into the chalice cup as the fire of life unto regeneration.3 Unless this be done, you cannot drink of the cup of which I drink or partake of the baptism with which I am baptized;4 for there is but one Holy Spirit, and he manifests to all the knowledge of the Father. You are baptized into one body.5 There is but one Great White Brotherhood of light; and all souls aspiring to it, who enter into it, enter into the One.
My reason for reiterating these facts in this discourse on prayer is that there has been formed down through the ages a pseudocult of religious seekers who would build a hedge around themselves, claiming a sovereign superiority in dogma, in teaching, and in possessing the things of God. This attitude forestalls the manifestation of reality and creates inharmony between peoples. Our will, as God's will, is one; it is to create from the one life the manifestation of the manifold and to create from the many the one. It is not in the mere acceptance of the pressure of socially or religiously acceptable ideas that men become wise. Progress is obtained outside of sect and order, yet to deny that it exists within sect and order is to deny that God has worked with individuals and societies down through the ages.
You must learn to become the arbiter of your own destiny, not by denial and severance, not by separation in all cases, but through understanding that the advent of the Eternal moves through societies and orders, through organizations and peoples, manifesting for a season in this or that order and then, in the interest of progress, forming a new order of the ages. We must have access to men's consciousness in order to bring forth new ideas, yet it must be clear that the new ideas are also the old truths that have always lived in the universe.
It is man himself who, through misunderstanding and a false, exalted sense of his own worth, has cast stones of stumbling in his brother's pathway. That these may be removed is our prayer. Yet it is too much to expect that everyone will understand our effort, our existence, and our ability to communicate with mankind in this day as in former times.
I live now even as I lived then, and my life is continual, as is your own. To have and to hold this sense is to keep forever the unbroken communion with God that pushes back the clouds of unknowing and transfers into all outer conditions the joy of the Lord that he expresses in the rose, in the soul, in the child, in man, in woman, in the birds that fly, in the wind that blows, in the gentle rain, in the dew upon the grass, in the breath of life, in the consciousness of peace, in the hope of becoming, and in the triumph of victory.
In all things God is. He animates all, he lives in all; yet he is unknown by many. He sings the song of the new day which comes into view as the shadow of former things passes away and all things become new.
Your humble servant in the divine domain,