Good morning. Morning. It came to me this morning that we should understand the meaning of a word which appears not only in the infinite way.
literature a great deal. But in all mystical literature and which is but little understood. The word is reality.
Capital R E A L I T Y. Reality. This word is a synonym for the word God.
And in some cases and at some periods of development may be a very satisfactory word to use for God. The trouble with the word is that the opposite of the word is unreality. And of course there is no such thing as unreality because there is no opposite to God.
But the word unreal and the word unreality have come into metaphysical literature to such an extent that many people believe that this world is unreal or that this body is unreal. And so they have set up a state of unreality as uh the opposite of uh reality. Then they set about devoting their lives to overcoming unreality which of course never existed to begin with and so couldn't be overcome.
Now please remember this there is nothing unreal to be overcome. There is no state of unreality to be overcome anymore than we would say that 2 * 2 is five is unreal and therefore it's to be overcome. No, no, no.
It's unreal but it doesn't have to be overcome. It merely has to be seen as unreal. That itself is whatever overcoming is necessary.
Once you have said 2 * 2 are not five, you have overcome that belief. You no longer have the belief that 2 * 2 or five. Merely the recognition that 2 * 2 are not five is the overcoming is really the healing because you no longer suffer from 2 * 2 being five after you've said 2 * 2 are not five.
It's an unreal statement. So it is when you have said God is infinite or reality is the only true being. You have in that done all the overcoming of error that is necessary or if you state it negatively the evidence of the senses is unreal.
That's the overcoming. There's nothing left to do. Perhaps you have done this sometimes, been confronted with some physical condition or mental or moral or financial and then said to yourself, "Oh, I know it's unreal.
" And then either sat down to do some work about it or called a practitioner. When the work was done, the very moment you said, "Oh, I know this is unreal. " Had you just dropped it right there and then and gone about your business, that would have been the end of it.
But the mere fact that you didn't shows that you didn't believe it was unreal when you said it. You were merely indulging a platitude cliche. You didn't really mean it.
Now, if we say that car tracks seem to come together in the distance, but because we've written car tracks for so many years, we know it never happens. So, I know that that appearance is unreal. That's the end of the work, isn't it?
That would be the end of the treatment. You could then get on your street car and ride as far as you wanted because having said, "Oh, I know that that's unreal. It doesn't exist that way.
You're no longer bound by the belief. Or supposing you wanted to go to sea and as you stood at the shore, you saw the horizon and then you smiled at it and said, "Ah, yes, but I know that's not real. " Then you'd step into your ship and sail.
But supposing you stood there and said, "Oh, I know that's not real. " And said, "Oh, but I was going to call up my practitioner. " Do you see what I'm getting at?
Unreality isn't a condition. Unreality is a nothingness which for a moment appears real until you have made the declaration it is unreal. After that, even though the appearance remains, don't do anything about it.
Now, if the mere statement that all erroneous conditions and appear appearances are unreal was sufficient, then all classes and spiritual wisdom would end on the first day of class. Because it is just as simple a thing to say that God or reality is infinite, eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, all being, all law, all action, all cause and therefore nothing else is real and then send the students home and that's the end of spiritual wisdom. But the point is that even after you have intellectually accepted that and that's quite an a step forward remember there are probably not more than 1 million people in the whole world of 4 billion who are ready even to intellectually accept the fact that uh appearances are unreal that discords have no law.
So even that is a big step just to intellectually arrive at that point. You won't find doctors, ministers, lawyers agreeing with you on that point and you won't find many college professors willing to accept it. So you see that it is a tremendous step in spiritual development merely to be able to read such literature as makes those statements.
But hearing it and reading it is not demonstrating it. There is yet the other point. And so I'm going to bring to you this morning the word reality in a different light.
As you know, there was a day when homes were lighted by candle power. And nobody dreamed at that time that there was such a thing as gas power. Homes were heated with either wood fires or coal fires.
Nobody dreamed that there was a power called gas that would do the heating better, cleaner, cheaper, less effort. And so gas power was absolutely unknown and we had to be satisfied with our candle power, wood power, coal power. And then the day came when it was realized that the gases coming up from the earth could be utilized for lighting and heating.
And I can well remember the gas lighters coming around every afternoon and lighting the gas lamps out on the street. Each man had a mile or two of of fixtures to go to and turn on the power and light. And it was quite a miracle.
You would go out at night in the dark and find all of a sudden there was a light in front of your house and a dozen doors down the street, another one so that there was light enough to walk from one to the other. Now, at that time, none of us had any awareness of a power called electricity that would be 10, 20, 30 times more powerful than our gas light. And instead of uh requiring gas lighters to walk up and down the street turning on individual uh gas lights that one person down at a central headquarters could just throw a switch and a whole neighborhood was thrown into light and powerful light, electric light.
Well, you see, we then had access to this greater power called electric power. And now of course we're going further with this atomic and hydrogen power. The world doesn't realize that there is something called reality which is still another power.
It is as concrete as gas power or electric power or atomic power or hydrogen power. But like these a contact must be made with them. The mere fact that there is gas in the world will not give you the use of gas in your home.
The mere fact that there is electricity in the world will not give you an electrically operated home. There must be an actual contact with that force or power so that it can be harnessed and brought into the home. So it is with this power called God or reality.
God or reality actually exists and it exists as concretely as gas, electricity, atomic force or hydrogen force. But like these it must be contacted only that whereas the others are contacted through matter, this is contacted through the spirit or soul energies, soul forces. Now because surgery has never revealed the source of soul force in one's body or the place where soul energy exists within one.
It is usually assumed that there is no such thing that it is merely a religious term or a fanciful term that uh dreamers dream about. But that isn't true. Reality spelled with a capital R is concrete fact truth.
It is an actual entity and identity which we can avail ourselves of but not through the body. There is no kind of bodily exercise that will help one attain it. Nor is there any mental exercise that will help one attain it.
Yet by virtue of the mind, turning frequently in thought to this idea of reality, eventually reality breaks through. And uh probably by contemplating the invisible and intangible, the soul faculty is awakened. In other words, we frankly declare that here before me is nothingness.
Nothingness. No presence, no power, nothingness. We see nothing, hear nothing, taste nothing, smell nothing, touch nothing.
There's nothing here. And yet we already have enough developed soul sense. Everyone in this room has as to enable us to admit, ah yes, I it's true.
I cannot hear anything, see anything, taste, touch or smell anything. But yet I know that there is something there because I know that if there is one amongst us who has contacted us, all the rest of us can be freed of this that or the other discord. Every one of us can drop some medic mental, physical, moral or financial ill if only one of us has access to that reality that consciousness of reality.
It is said that one Christ can lift a million people. Why one Christ can lift 10 million people? One Christ could lift a billion people.
Because the Christ is itself that reality. But one individual attaining the Christ and that's the meaning of that statement. One individual attaining a touch of that Christ can raise a million or two or three or five million.
Now this which we call the Christ or God or reality is this infinite invisible. It is a something with a capital S. An unknown something and something which you will never know.
You may experience it. Not only may, you probably will. Many already have.
You can experience it. And you can see its fruitage, but you can never know it itself any more than you can know electricity. You might get hit with electricity or you might see all the benefits of electricity, but electricity itself has never been seen.
This is even beyond the realm of electricity. No man has ever seen the face of God and lived. In other words, no man has ever seen the face of God.
No man knows what God is. No man knows what God is. Not even the son but the father.
Only the father knows the father. Only God knows itself. And so in those moments when physically and mentally we are at peace in that moment God is experienced.
Reality is experienced. This presence and power is experienced and it exterminates error from our experience. Now let us think of the word reality as meaning this infinite invisible substance, presence, power or law.
Let us not try to know it but rather to experience it. So that as we sit in meditation and begin with the contemplation of reality of the invisible. contemplate within your own mind.
Think of the fact that out of nothingness. Well, we'll go back to waterable for a little while, for a minute anyhow, and ask the question, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? And if you like, you can contemplate that old bit of water.
Only do it seriously. Which did come first? The chicken or the egg?
If the egg, where did it come from? Since there was no chicken from which it could come if the chicken came first, where did it come from? Since there was no egg from which it could be hatched.
And so it is. You can go to your garden and ask which came first. the seeds or the trees?
If the seeds, where did they come from since there were no trees to drop them? If the trees were first, where did they come from since there were no seeds from which they could spring? That's contemplating the invisible because in the end you will arrive at the right place where you ought to be and want to be.
no place experiencing nothing, no nothing. You'll be suspended in the air trying to find the answer to these questions, contemplating reality from the standpoint of where did creation come from? You know, scripture passes over it very quickly by saying that the crops were in the ground before the seed was made.
That's very beautiful. I wish you would take my word for that just as readily. But you won't and you shouldn't.
But you should contemplate that original passage of scripture that the crops were in the ground before the seed. As a matter of fact, light came very late in the process, didn't it? You see, if you ever try to explain a healing, you will be just in the same position as scripture trying to explain how the crops got here without seeds.
or if the seeds were first, how they got planted and raised uh without farmers because man, you know, was the last thing created here. We had no farmers but we had crops in the ground, trees, fruit, everything that man is supposed to be responsible for we had before there was a man. And so contemplating that you are contemplating reality and you will ultimately be led back to a blank wall that is called nothingness.
You will get to an actual place where the mind can't get back any further. It will perhaps for a while be on the merry ground of thinking of the seed being created without any tree to come from or the tree being created without any seed to come from. And as you contemplate that and contemplate finally you'll come to an absolute place of stillness where you'll say there is no answer.
And then in that very split second, the answer will appear. And you'll see how all things spring out of nothingness. You'll also see why the word nothing of old was considered the greatest synonym for God.
Nothing meaning no thing. There couldn't be any truer description of God than that. It is no thing that you can contemplate.
It is no thing that you can witness. It is no thing at all except in the sense of an experience. But in experiencing it, you almost can see the sins and diseases and lacks rolling right away from in front of you as as if just by a miracle.
Poof and they're gone. Or you can see them gradually fade away and yet realize no material remedy has been applied. They're just fading away because of nothing of no thing.
In this way, you will eventually get back to that place that we are trying to bring forth in consciousness in this work that we're doing in this Kylo study group. You see the object of what we're doing is this coming to a state of consciousness where you do not think healings into uh being where you realize that no amount of taking thought is ever going to make a white hair black or add one cubit to your stature. No amount of taking thought is going to make you richer and nobody else's thinking is ever going to make you poorer.
that all that you are and all that you demonstrate is an emanation of the nothingness that you achieve at the center of your own being. It is almost like bringing yourself into the rhythm of the universe and finding that the rhythm carries you. And yet what is the rhythm of the universe since nobody has ever seen it, touched it, tasted it, or smelled it, or heard it.
While you are contemplating this invisibility, this unseen reality appearing as form. While you're busying yourself right up here gently with that contemplation way way in the back of you, you will be creating a vacuum of personal sense. And all of a sudden, in a moment that you know not, in a moment that you think not, that reality will announce itself, reveal itself, and again you will know it by the experience and by its effect.
But even then you will not know it as of itself. It is literally true that in the beginning was the word or in the beginning was consciousness, awareness, the source of the word and out of that consciousness all things emanated. So far as that consciousness is concerned, you will soon see that it doesn't have to have a seed.
As a matter of fact, the master didn't have to have a few loaves and a few fishes. He could have done just what Moses did. Bring it forth without one single solitary seed to multiply.
Moses, you remember, brought forth mana, but he didn't even have a few pieces of mana to start with. He had only the consciousness of omniresence. And out of the consciousness of omniresence, all things emanated.
And so it is. You will find that the cruc of oil had in it a few drops. But it was necessary for that prophet to have a few drops of oil.
He could just as well have had an empty cruise and brought forth all of that oil. It had to be so in the beginning. There had to be a beginning of oil without even a few drops of oil to prime it.
Consciousness is the source. Consciousness is the power of reality. And that consciousness while it cannot be found in your body, that consciousness is right present where you are.
As the poet said, closer than breathing nearer than hands and feet. That consciousness is right where you are. There's no use of wasting time trying to find it.
It is where you are because it is your consciousness. It is that through which you are even aware of being in this room. How are you aware of being in this room?
And there is another idea of contemplation. Something invisible is the state of awareness or consciousness. And that is the activity through which you hear by which you hear and see and know and reason and think.
And behind it all is this consciousness and it's called God or it's called reality. You can see why when reality appears as form, you mustn't call it unreality. It isn't unreality.
It is form. The way in which you see it may be unreal. In other words, if you see the sky sitting on a house over there, the way you're seeing it is unreal, but there's no unreality out there.
In other words, there's no sky actually sitting on a house. So, there's no unreal condition out there. The unreality is in your vision of the form that you're witnessing.
Since the form sky really exists and the form house really exists and each is in their own place but the way in which you are seeing them beholding them that is a state of unreality but out there is not a state of unreality. In the same way, this form in front of me, pine tree, rock, is not an unreality. It is consciousness appearing as form.
But the chances are that the way I'm seeing it is not the way it actually is there. I may entertain a distorted appearance of it. I can only illustrate that this way that uh if there now appears to be a blur there, the blur isn't out there.
The blur is up here. Do you see that? The unreality isn't out there.
It's in the way I behold the form. The form is consciousness appearing as form. Now, this body is the temple of the living God.
But you're not seeing it that way. But not because it isn't. It is.
This is the temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, but your eyes are blurred. And so you see it as so many inches high and so many pounds heavy. It isn't really your vision that's blood.
It's our mortal material sense of things which is universal to all of us. But could you rise in consciousness to that place of no thing, nothingness, to that place of absolute attunement with the rhythm of the universe, you would then behold this body as it really is. That's what very often happens when practitioners are in treatment.
Sometimes they catch, if they rise high enough, they catch a glimpse of the real body. And it isn't a physical form or a female form or a male form. And yet it is form.
It is as tangible as that which we see with the eye. Only we're seeing it with a soul. And we're seeing it as it is, as if somebody had great enough eye vision to look out there and see the sky up in the sky and the house down on the ground and all that space in between.
Of course, our limited sense of vision doesn't permit that. And so it is that our limited sense of soul vision only permits us to see the divine form, whether physical form, bodily form, or tree form. as it is and only when in periods of enlightenment we are told that we will then awake thou the sleep.
We will then behold him as he is and we will be satisfied with that likeness. Yes. If we can ever see each other through the soul sense then we will be well satisfied with each other.
And we do see each other through the soul sense. Whenever a healing takes place, that's what takes place in a healing. That's what causes a healing.
When one individual beholds reality any form of discord or distress, then in range of that consciousness disappears. That is what constitutes healing. The attainment on the part of one individual of even one single second of reality in that single blink of an eye of beholding or witnessing reality the healing takes place.
The tragedy is that no matter how often we attain these moments of reality, we are not able to maintain them in their fullest extent. If we did, the chances are we would just walk up and down the streets and half the people that we pass in the street would instantly jump into their health and harmony. But it isn't.
So at a certain period of development, there is a transition you pass into it. And everybody who is receptive and responsive does uh receive some measure of good of harmony from contact or association with you, but not to the extent that you would like to see it. And the reason is that you are not able to hold that intense soul vision for long enough periods and you have to keep going back into it continuously.
That is why those actively engaged in the work find it necessary to spend four, five or six hours during the night in meditation. first place. During those hours, they attain more frequent periods of spiritual illumination.
They only last a second or a minute. But in that second or a minute, some one who has turned to them for help receives it. And so if they can just attain it 3, 5, 8, 10, 12 times during that night period when everything else is quiet, they are doing good healing work.
And then it so lifts them that it carries them through all the rest of the day in some measure so that everyone gets some benefit of good from the contact. But for the highest spiritual work, there must be frequent returns to this center of one's being for the attainment of this reality. It it itself must come into activity and then it wipes out the discordant appearances.
Man doesn't do it. We don't do it. You don't do it.
You never will. But as you attain that moment of soul realization, it reality will do it. And it does it in the same way that intelligence removes 2 * 2 is 5 merely by seeing that 2 * 2 is 5 isn't fact.
And that drops it. The minute that drops it, the word force springs into being of its own accord. You wonder where it came from.
You say, "Why didn't I think of that before? Didn't think of it before because didn't know it before. " Now, whatever discords and inharmonies remain in our experience or in the experience of those who turn to us is due only to our lack of attaining this experience or moment of reality because reality dispels it.
The attainment of the consciousness of reality dispels any form of illusion. Okay. Let us then contemplate reality which is no thing and it's no thought.
It's neither a thought nor a thing. And if you can get back there to where there's no thing and no thought, that's it. I just want to illustrate this to show you another way of attaining.
We're taking now the illustration of which came first, the chicken or the egg. And at first, of course, our thought goes to the egg, because that's the natural thing for us. We know that the chickens come out of eggs.
But if it's true, where did the egg come from? Now, mind goes to the chicken because we know that eggs come from chickens. Yes, but there was no chicken.
There's only an egg. Egg, chicken, chicken, egg. And then you come to a blank.
You come to a stop because you can't go any further. You're stumped right there. Thought can't reason behind which is which.
And so thought reason comes to a stop and you look and it's in that second when the realization comes. Why I can't think this through? Because there is no reasoning process to reveal whether the chicken is first or the egg is first.
Because there's no way of reasoning how an egg got into existence if there was no chicken any more than there's a way to reason how a chicken got into existence if there was no egg. And now I'm up against a blank wall. And it is that blank wall that constitutes the split second in which the answer comes to you from within.
Because there is an answer. It has a perfectly good, logical, reasonable answer which will satisfy you. But it won't come through the reasoning mind.
It will come in that split second when you come face to face with the fact that there is no answer in the mind. Then one comes up from the soul. So it is if you're in healing work and if you're thinking of consumption or cancer or paralysis or headache or blamelessness, heredity and you get to a place in uh your thought where you can't think it through.
There is no way to think a healing into existence and you come face to face with that blank wall for there's no thought that I could think that has influence out there. I'm absolutely helpless so far as thought is concerned. And when you reach that blank wall, that is the split second in which the soul function comes through and gives you that feeling of reality of of of God on the field.
And then is when the news begins to come that the change has come for the better. But it's when you reach the point that the master gave us. I can of my own self do nothing.
Who by taking thought can add to a statue one cubit. Take no thought for your life. When you get to that blank wall where all thought comes to an end, it is in that second that reality comes to the rescue.
Let's go back again. What does scripture mean? When it says they have only the arm of flesh, but we have the Lord God Almighty.
What does scripture mean when it says carnal weapons? For we have the sword of the spirit. Do you think for a moment that these are just fancy words in a book?
No. No. The world has weapons of flesh.
They have weapons of physical strength and mental strength. But we have this invisible reality. That is we have it when we have left off using physical and mental force and let this soul presence into expression.
And so it is about carnal weapons, the weapons of physicality and the weapons of mentality. But the sword of the spirit is an absolute no thing. It is a presence and a power that is only achieved in the absence of thing and thought.
It is attained only at that moment of grace. At that moment of no thing and no thought. So in contemplating take also they have only the weapons of flesh, the arm of flesh.
We have nothing. No thing. We need nothing.
No thing. We need a state of no thingness. And in this state when we require no thing and no thought, it consciousness springs into forth.
If you cannot explain how a crop grows in the ground before the seed is planted there. If you cannot explain how a sun and moon can get into the sky. Then you can understand why in healing work you must eventually come to the place of no explanation, of no affirmation and of no denial because you are virtually expecting to do the same thing in healing work as making a crop grow without seed.
You are going to make harmony appear where there isn't any harmony. You're going to make health appear where there isn't any health. Or you're going to make abundance appear where there's a complete lack.
And you're going to do it all without the arm of flesh. You're going to do it all without physical means or mental means. Now, you can't explain that.
And since you can't explain it, you can see also that no explanation and an affirmation or denial would do anything for you. And so you come to the place in healing work that we are trying to develop in this particular work to where you realize that nothing that I could do will do anything. Nothing that I can think will do anything.
So the best thing for me to do is to be still and let God announce itself. Let reality appear. Let harmony appear.
Let good appear. And then you'll see that you're at that place where you are not dependent on physical means or mental means. Where you are actually waiting for the spirit itself to bear witness with our spirit.
You're actually waiting for the Christ. You don't know what the Christ is. All the affirmations and denials in the world do not.
No explanation that's ever been put in print can explain what the Christ is. You've merely got one more explanation to uh tell you about what the last explanation didn't make clear. And so we could go on giving more and more and more explanations and at the end you'll still say, "Yes, but I still don't know what the Christ is.
" And of course, you never will know what the Christ is by explanation, by reading, by analysis, or by definition. You will only know by experience. And you can just as well know in the beginning as in the end by going to the same place of getting it that every seer has gone to and found it that is within this that is in letting reality voice itself express itself by knowing I can in my own self do nothing.
I can of my own self know nothing. And now let us sit in this contemplative silence until it capital it t reveals itself. Let's do it again.
Do you see why your ordinary prayers are unproductive or why the prayers of the world are unproductive? To begin with, they are just statements that issue from the mind. behind them.
There's no actual faith, confidence, or belief that they're going to be uh productive. There may be a hope. There may be a vague vague hope.
Sometimes there may be a very desperate hope, but no actual substance is behind the words. In other words, no consciousness behind the words, no power behind the words. It is lip service or vain repetitions.
That is why the master says that all who call themselves Christ will not get into heaven. In other words, all your Christly prayers, all the word Christ on your lips or Jesus or God, all the supplications that come out of the heart, and most of the affirmations and denials are nothing more or less than mental exercises and uh have nothing to do with man's soul center, with that actual soul faculty, that place within us which is called reality. Now when you go into meditation or prayer for the realization or establishment of harmony in human affairs, it can be made productive only if you can get so far within yourself as to feel that emanation of God that unfoldment of reality from within yourself so that you actually can say to yourself, "Oh, it happened.
I felt it. " Now, these prayers that come out of the lips, formed with a mind, and very often not even formed with a mind, just read out of a book, they have no more relationship to God than a speck of dust. spread over a an open wound to cause healing.
It won't work. There is no power in these mental exercises or vain repetitions. There's no power in them.
No spiritual power whatsoever. There is in uh mental practice a degree of hypnosis called auto suggestion or suggestion in which uh the mind is temporarily hypnotized and can be made to say I am well when it really there is no wellness. Sometimes just these vain repetitions will act hypnotically on us to make us give up some of our forms of ignorance and sickness or sin.
For that has no relationship at all to spiritual well-being or to a spiritual life lived through prayer and meditation or through an harmonious life brought about by living in prayer and meditation. You see, prayer and meditation have to do with this spiritual realm, the kingdom of God which is within you. And harmony, spiritual harmony, wholeness, perfection in your experience, in your human ex in your human experience must come forth from the kingdom of God within you or from what the master called the father within me or what Jes what Paul called the inddwelling Christ, the Christ within the Christ in me.
Now this you must remember is not lip service. It is not vain repetition. It is not a form of mental exercise.
It is an actual experience that must take place deep down within yourself. That area of your being which is consciousness or reality. When you have that deep inner experience, you have touched God or you have been touched by God.
And then it is that the son of God takes command of your life and uh brings forth harmony, wholeness, completeness and perfection. Please do not be satisfied while your prayers or meditations are on the mental level. I do not mean to give them up.
But do not believe that that part of your prayer or meditation is effective. It is only effective in helping you to reach the experience of the soul. But until you actually reach it, you have not brought forth the presence and power of the father within to do these mighty works on earth.
So that when you say ah yes this world has only the arm of flesh to use against me don't rest satisfied unless you have actually felt that you have the Lord God Almighty that has to come to you with feeling that has to come to you with an actual sense of reality you must have it as clear as clearly expressed within you as you have your uh home address or the multiplication table. It must be an actual experience, not just a mental exercise or lip service. Thank you.
And that is that for today.
