The Deeper "Secret", Part III
Monday 4/2/07

Over 40 years ago, a modern-day mystery-school text — still not publicly released — wrote a more enlightened view of "The Secret", as it is now called. An excellent viewpoint of the spiritual significance of money…

This is an excerpt from the never-before-seen inner text of a secret society based on the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries. It is the last volume that we know of in a small, secret series of books – six in total – that were privately self-published. They are nothing more than typewritten pages, mimeographed, three-hole punched and bound into red paper brochures – dating from 1960 to 1963.

I came into possession of these books from a client, back when I still did readings. I was overwhelmed by the quality and depth of insight. There are a variety of clues that led me to believe the author's higher self was in the same group that inspired the Law of One series and my own writings… so I did some editing on the last book in the series to modernize its verbiage a bit, and make it easier to read in places where the translation into language wasn't as readable or understandable.

This passage you're about to read is a great meditation on money, and the true nature of spirituality. You can also see that by this point, in the early 1960s, such groups teaching the same concepts as "The Secret" were already alive and well. I should also point out that one of these books has an extended discourse on "The Law of Attraction to a Nucleus," at least 20 years before Ester Hicks' readings ever started.

For the purposes of this blog, I have added subject headings where appropriate, to help break up the text and make it easier to contemplate the writing in sections.

This isn't as clean or fast a read as my own writing. You will probably need to slow down, get still and meditate with the words to really take them in. That's part of why it took me two years to get to a point where I was ready to share them. Let's proceed…



MIND AND SPIRIT CANNOT BE SEPARATED

When we separate spiritual contemplation and search from the mundane problems of life, as if mind and spirit inhabited two separate worlds, we make a great error… which separates us from reality. This life and its experiences, its trials, its joys, its instructions are Divine reality. One day of the experiment of living life from the depths of the soul out, instead of from the mind in, will prove this to anyone who is not already living this way.

Many well-meaning teachers and experimenters have taught the doctrine that there is no reality in “matter”. This is pure absurdity. Matter is as real as the spirit which permeates it, and the two are inseparable while the miracle of life animates the body. To live from this point of view is sufficient to prove its truth. Everything in our lives has cause and significance. There are spiritual trials and experiences, obtainable through imprisonment or restriction in matter, which can be gained in no other way.



THE VALUE OF PHYSICAL PAIN

Physical pain is an example of this. The brave endurance of physical pain, and its inspiration to alleviate the physical pain of others, is a spiritual experience necessary to soul growth. One of the great Indian saints was dying slowly of cancer of the throat. One of his heart-broken chelas asked him why he did not heal himself, aware of his healing powers. The saint answers – “Because it is easy to heal myself, but to endure the pain is hard.”

One of the recurring questions which the unaware find most difficult to answer is that of the subjection of the kind, the good and the illumined to pain. To those who have awakened to the overpowering revelation of the significance of all life experience, the question does not arise. As in normal universities, those who have attained the highest grades will study the most advanced lessons.

Pain has many values even in the shallowest examination. Physically, it protects the body from injury due to carelessness. It awakens sufferers to the troubles of others. It develops endurance. It leads to God through the pursuit of divine healing. It is one of the providers of a field for humane work, for in a world where no suffering or privation existed, the humanity of the heart would cease to exist. When life and its experiences are examined objectively, and from an enlightened point of view, all things, events and situations fall into an order of awe-inspiring complexity and rectitude.

The fact that much pain and illness is due to stupidity, self-indulgence and ignorance does not mar the rightness of the experience, for the discomforts which result from these lead to seeking and knowing. They also lead to the concern of those whose knowledge and enlightenment then influence them to find a field to work within, where they can be of service.



THERE IS NO 'SOMETHING FOR NOTHING'

Nothing in this life is insignificant and meaningless. Often the meaning is deeply hidden, but as the saying goes, “Seek and ye shall find.” Much as he might seek to find the easy way and the easily obtained, it is not in man to value that which is easily discovered or attained. In fact, the easy attainments often lead to the greatest hardships, as if “Providence” continually works to affirm that everything worth effort or possession exacts a great price. There is no “something for nothing” in this reciprocal universe, all the magic mind cults of “prosperity” and “abundance” notwithstanding.

Books have been written and great claims made for what appears to be a magic way of life, which obtains material goods, heals the sick and solves all problems. [DW: Now we can add 'films' to this list as well… i.e. The Secret.]

Some are exaggerated, some are wholly false, and others reveal the secrets that those who seek for an easy way today do not wish to acknowledge. If you look more deeply, you will see that the demonstrator has exercised powers of single-minded concentration quite beyond the scope of the easy-way-seeker; powers which would make any accomplishment easy if they were applied to it.

It is therefore very profitable to meditate on that which would have the most value for you: to attain powers of deep concentration and use them for trivial acquisitions or occupations, or in developing them to attain great fortitude, the faith that is deep knowing, universal understanding and compassion, fearlessness, integrity – all that amounts to great character.



THE ILLUMINED LIFE WITHIN

Heaven does not lie in wealth we must soon leave behind, nor in domination over others, nor in the security of material comforts, nor in fame and success, nor in the confidence of human love. Only when we glide in the harbor of the illumined life within do we find the peace that passes understanding.

Do not mistake this peaceful, illumined condition for self-denial, the bearing of crosses or any other worn-out ideas which associate failure and misery with the “Will of God". Nothing can cope so successfully with the material world and its problems as the developed occultist of great character and intellectual education. He is the spine of civilization.

Buddha, one of the greatest of the Teachers, dealt with the subject of the acquisition of wealth in this wise. He taught that it was permissible for a man to acquire wealth honestly up to any amount, provided he used it with wisdom and unselfishness.

He said to his disciple, Anathapindika:

“It is not wealth and power that enslave a man, but the cleaving to them. He who possesses wealth, and uses it rightly, will be a blessing unto his fellow beings.”

MONEY AND THE OCCULTIST

The Supreme Path of Altruism is a short cut
Leading to the Realm of the conquerors –
A track more speedy than that of a racing horse;
The selfish however, know naught of it.
Ocean of Delight for the Wise (Tibetan)

God loveth those who act generously.

Islam

If you continually give, you will continually have.

Chinese Proverb

The wise man succors the needy.

Confucius

Give and it shall be given unto you: good measure, pressed down and shaken together, and running over, shall men give unto your bosom.
For with the same measure ye mete withal, it shall be measured to you again.

Jesus

The measure with which man measures will be measured out to him.

Talmud

The only individuals who can really meet and master the problems of life are those who show in their striving a tendency to enrich all others, who go ahead in such a way that others benefit also.

Alfred Adler

Ever seek to promote the good of others, for the best riches are universal benevolence.
Hindu

The two words “peace” and “tranquility” are worth a thousand pieces of gold.

Chinese

Heaven is the exercise of the faculties, the added sense of power.

Emerson

A wise man preserves an equal mind in both adversity and prosperity. He allows himself neither to be crushed by the former, no elated by the latter.

Hindu

Of the rich, he is the poorer who is not content with that which he has, and suffers anxiety for the increase of anything.

Zoroaster

The man who is possessed of much property, who has gold and food and still enjoys alone his sweet things – that is the cause of loss to the losing one.

Buddhism

Lay up your treasure in Heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt, neither do thieves break in and steal……The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.

Jesus

Sow much, reap much; sow little, reap little. He who sows hemp, will reap hemp; he who sows beans will reap beans.

Chinese

Blame yourself if you have no branches or leaves; do not accuse the sun of partiality.
Chinese

A life entangled with fortune resembles a wintry torrent: for it is turbulent and muddy and difficult to pass, and violent and noisy and of short continuance.
A soul conversant with virtue resembles a perpetual fountain; for it is clear and gentle and potable and sweet and communicative, and rich and harmless and innocent.
Epictetus

The greatest wealth consisteth in being charitable:
And the greatest happiness in having tranquility of mind.
Experience is the most beautiful adornment:
And the best comrade is one that hath no desires.
The Precious Treasury (Tibetan)

Pay thy workman before the sweat is dry on his body.

Buddha

We judge human activities by their goal; that activity is great of which the goal is great.
Chekhov

With money you can make the devil work for you.

Chinese

Kindness is the foundation of all good; avarice the source of all evil.

Chinese

Those who despise money will eventually leech on their friends.

Chinese

The foregoing few quotations, drawn from quite varied sources, both in time and place, are to illustrate the fact that the great teachers of occult, spiritual and metaphysical laws have never, at any time, separated the spiritual from the material plane of life.

Only the lesser teachers (the amateurs, as it were) of philosophical thought, purporting to be of the spiritual plane, have either ignored money as a necessity of physical life or dramatized it as a great barrier to soul development or to spiritual progress.

This has led to two widely divergent tragedies of misconception.



MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL?

One is the idea that “money is the root of all evil”, whereas the correct rendering of the original statement is that “the love of money is the root of all evil”. Actually the love of money is not the root of all evil, fearful as its fruit may be. Obsession with physical sex causes extreme cruelty, as does jealousy, vanity, revenge, sadism and other negative emotions which may be equally observed in the lives of the rich, the prosperous and the poor.

This teaching has resulted in extreme misery in the lives of thousands of spiritually or mystically inclined people, who have thought or talked themselves out of even a moderate supply to meet their material needs and pay their obligatory bills.

Many places in the Path as we travel bring us up to rough experiences, which are inevitable if we are to mature by action and practice rather than reading. Nonetheless, the neophyte is not doing himself nor anyone else any good by inviting the hardships consequent with a contempt for money.



'THE SECRET' - EVEN MORE BANEFUL!

The other extreme to which the amateurs have gone can be even more baneful; that is the adoption of the idea that material success can or should be attained by “calling down abundance” or “treating for prosperity.”

[DW: These are obviously names given to the same phenomenon as 'The Secret,' since there were many such 'New Thought' groups already circulating in the early 1960s.]

Such is the unplumbed magic of the mind that many curious events take place, bringing turns of fortune and sporadic windfalls to the eager followers of such teachers, which can only be attributed to the mental operations. Other followers get no results whatever.

The teacher of the art, himself or herself, can point to personal results in material gains and “demonstrations” which appear to prove the truth of his premises. We say “appear”, for it is overlooked or forgotten that the well-endowed teachers are profiting by one of three sources of wealth:

• one, the income from the followers

• two, the income from books or family inheritance

• three, (the one most overlooked,) the teacher may be obeying the actual law of prosperity – that of loving his neighbor as himself and putting his needs before his concern with the demands of his own life

Jesus, the great teacher, said “Give, and it shall be given unto you.” Before Jesus came to earth, an ancient Chinese sage said, “If you continually give, you continually have.”



THE TRUE NATURE OF GIVING

Giving means much more than the giving of alms or material goods. It means also the gift of oneself – the greatest of all gifts. This is concern, sympathy and involvement with the needs and problems of others. When the nations come to observe this law, wars will be impossible to wage, and the selfish will perish from the earth.

Those cynical and materially-minded businessmen who would advise their government to put domestic financial interests before all, and let the little nations fend for themselves, would soon find they had no interests to protect.

This is a reciprocal universe, on every plane of being. Those who follow a teacher who advocates the pursuit of “something for nothing” will inevitably reap disappointment. Now and then, a true miracle – in the sense of a happening that is outside of known laws – flashes into a life, but apart from these rare occurrences, anything which goes counter to the balance of nature must be regarded with intrinsic skepticism.

The balance of nature is concerned with man and his affairs, as well as with the world of animals and the green growth of the Earth. One man’s needs are filled by another man’s labor, and he in turn can pay for his wants and employ services by the fruits of his own industry or service to humanity.



THE VALUE OF ADVERSITY ['CATALYST' IN THE LAW OF ONE SERIES]

From time to time, shallow thinkers have envisioned a world of strifeless and effortless harmony, where wants were simple and no man vied with himself or another. This is not far from envisioning an intolerable world of human vegetables, sunk in the apathy of unspeakable boredom and utterly ignorant of the creative fires of the human spirit.

A great American pioneer woman doctor, whose practice embraced the service to a large city hospital, was asked if she thought the abolition of poverty would solve these problems or was desirable. She replied she could not answer, because she saw that if poverty went, too many valuable things would go with it.

Nevertheless, to work upon its abolition and the evils that arise from it is not only a right thing to do, but a necessary thing to do.

Wisdom is the understanding of great paradoxes.

In moving towards the horizon of change for the better, we continually move forward – but the horizon also moves, ever beckoning onward and never to be reached, whether physically or spiritually, in this world. As fast as one human problem is solved and outgrown, another arises. The student in this school conquers one grade only to find himself confronted with even more difficult studies in another.



HAPPINESS AND GUILT

The word “happiness” has as many varieties of meaning as the word “love”, according to the user of the term. Let us take the word “happiness” to mean a feeling of bliss or exceptional wellbeing. Who will deny that this is the accompaniment of a man (or woman) expressing himself on his highest levels of mental ability and spiritual perception? He who denies it has never known this state, or risen above the level of the human vegetable.

The guilt complex is a very real thing, but in our opinion it seldom rises from the sources ascribed to it by modern psychology. It is rather the dreadful unease of the spirit denied its expression, or the anguish of the prisoner who seeks to harvest an alien field.



FINANCIAL CONDITION NOT NECESSARILY REFLECTIVE OF SPIRITUAL ADVANCEMENT

Nowhere is straight thinking more necessary than in this imaginary contest between materiality and spirituality. It is a very visible fact that there are many thousands of people who prosper in the accumulation of material goods and the amassment of large bank accounts, who show no spiritual awareness whatever.

It is another visible fact that there are many thousands who, in their sincere desire to realize God and live in this world up to their highest spiritual possibilities, are in a constantly wretched financial condition. They are afraid of money, afraid of expressing by word or effort their normal want of it. Yet they desperately long to pay off their debts and live up to their inescapable financial obligations. This is their concept of heaven on earth, and the idea that they are also entitled to (by reason of effort or contribution) to surplus funds, for normal enjoyment of life, seems almost sinful to them.

Growing up to the idea – in many climes and languages – that one “cannot serve God and Mammon”, they are mentally crippled from childhood and ready to swell the ranks of those who become so inept at living that only the life to come holds any hope of normal happiness for them.

These are the people who, faced with a sudden salutary challenge to bravery, initiative, effort or endurance, say lachrymosely “God’s will be done”. This God of Wrath, who rejoices in making his creations suffer, is the pathological product of primitive man’s imagination. It has no place in modern thinking, or the daily life of the modern world. The God of Abundance, who rewards selfishness and gives something for nothing at the chant of a mantram, is also a product of man’s imagination.

This can very easily be deduced from meditation on the visible evidence of the invisible laws all around us.



A 'GOD OF UNEARNED ABUNDANCE' WOULD BE MORE DESTRUCTIVE THAN A 'GOD OF WRATH'

There is no health in the creature who wishes to let his faculties rot unused while he demands payment in goods or money for his degradation. A God of Unearned Abundance would be even more destructive than a God of Wrath. (Study the Parable of the Talents in the New Testament of the Western Bible and draw some new conclusions, should you harbor either of these two delusions.)

What may seem almost fantastic changes for the better can be achieved in the life by prayer, and that meditation which leads to realization. The change is not in the circumstances, but in the individual himself. From these inner changes, the outer changes take place.

“A man’s fortunes are first changed within.”

Chinese
 

MONEY IN THE 'WAY OF INITIATION'

To clarify, we are not dealing in this chapter with a prayer as a help to mundane stability. This will be found in the chapter on telepathy. Here the important thing, perhaps the most important thing that can be resolved in many neophytes’ lives, is the part played by money in the Way of Initiation.

In our modern world, except for the life of the wild animal, there is no escape from the handling or the influence of money. Even those who have retreated to monasteries and convents are fed and clothed by the exchange of money. Even the rishi in his cave is fed by the pious, who, passing by, place food in his bowl.

The great world of complex, modern civilization beats with a heart that pumps money as the blood of its life and motion, through its veins. The most cursory meditation on money reveals that it is a power, and it has qualities and ramifications which make it a subject for lifelong study.

It is inseparable from daily life, family life, national life and international life.

There is no use, as many neophytes do, in crying out against money as a manifestation of the rule of Mammon and the dark power that brings all the evil of the world. It is not any such thing. It is a gift of the Creator, as are all the other parts and qualities of the seen and unseen world.

The fact that ignorant and evil men juggle with it, hoard it, steal it and ruin their health for it does not in any way alter its meaning, nor its Divine purpose and origin. Men have murdered for diamonds, but the diamond remains unsullied ever the same.



MONEY IS A DIVINE CREATION

Money, in some form or other, has existed for the use of man since it was first invented for the barter of labor or the products of labor. If it were outlawed tomorrow as an experiment in world harmony, there would be complete chaos, or a reversion to the use of cowrie shells. We cannot do without money as a means of barter.

It is a perfect system for the interchange of commerce in a world where men work and produce in the process of developing skills and faculties, and such qualities as endurance, enterprise, stamina and creativity.

This perfection of money as an adjunct to man’s labor indicates that it is not an evil, but rather a divine creation of God – equally as useful and desirable as the fruits of the earth and the vast fields rich with cattle and grain.

The fact that men abuse it, and abuse each other in their misuse of it, no more alters its quality and desirability than children are to be regarded as undesirable because so many of them are abused and even brutally treated by those to whom they are entrusted.



MAKE FRIENDS WITH MONEY

The neophyte on the Path must makes friends with money and respect it, since it is the material of his barter of food and shelter for labor, his measure of dependability and self-reliance in readiness to earn and pay for his share of necessary goods.

There is no place or situation where God is not. Therefore the Presence of God is at work in the world of money. Its demands and its pressures are therefore not outside the spiritual life of initiation, but are essential and valuable parts of it.

All men do not travel the same route to the Summit. In some, spiritual growth strips them of all material desires. They live as simply as hermits in the midst of plenty, shedding the burden of material goods so as to better concentrate on the inner life and enlighten their fellows. This is a true and constructive development. It has nothing in common with the poverty of ineptitude, nor that of religious false conditioning.



INEPTITUDE AT THE ROOT OF WORSHIPPING THE 'GOD OF UNEARNED ABUNDANCE'

Ineptitude, through sloth or lack of education to meet the responsibilities of contribution to the common good, is the most common motivator to the worship of the God of Unearned Abundance. Your feet are set on this precarious and disappointing road to negation if you desire such abundance, but fail to meet the price demanded of those who seek a large share of the world’s goods or power.

There is a paradox here.

It is true that there are neophytes who appear to lead Enchanted lives. Their needs are met as if by magic: their wishes are fulfilled. Why, then, is it not possible to be like them? It is possible. They are not inept and impractical. They are heavy contributors to the universal store – not only of talent, industry and professionalism in their work, but also of love, sympathy, understanding and goodwill to all men. Their understanding embraces the hidden laws, either consciously through study and practice or intuitionally through their rare gifts of the spirit. They are not inept, and they are not selfish.

The selfish know nothing of this enchantment of living. The doors are closed to them.

“The Supreme Path of Altruism is a short-cut
Leading to the realm of the Conquerors-
A track more speedy than that of a racing horse;
The selfish, however, know naught of it.”
Ocean of Delight for the Wise (Tibetan)

IT CAN BE VERY DIFFICULT FOR A 'SPIRITUAL' PERSON TO MAKE PEACE WITH MONEY

It is impossible to sympathize with the woes of the selfish who have no sympathy for others. However, consider the situation of the kindly mystic who lives on the razor’s edge of poverty from day to day, not by ineptitude at earning a living nor by lack of that generosity which contributes to the universal good, but by actual rejection of money, amounting to an inner apology for obtaining even that which is essential for their barest needs.

Sometimes an absolute revolution of thought must take place before these people can see money and the money system as an integral part of the Divine plan of God, not only essential but sublimely fitted to the present-day scheme of the initiation of man.

Only when a perfectly natural attitude to it has been accomplished can any spiritual progress be made, in a world and at a time when the intellectual faculties and industrial skills are challenged to be developed, as part of the spiritual property that we do take with us. Money should be accepted and used as naturally as we accept and use water, without which we would not live. If water were so scarce that it was used for barter as salt used to be, these people would surely feel guilty in their use and possession of it.



MONEY PROBLEMS CAN BECOME A GREAT SPIRITUAL MOTIVATOR

Money problems can become a torture in the lives of the slothful and the inept. This, in turn, can spur changes and improvement of the character through serious industry and development of marketable skills. This is a means of achieving true honesty, and is as much an exercise in ethics as any other activity which is part of unfoldment and spiritual growth.

Stealing, in the literal sense, is a dramatic and clear-cut negative behavior, impossible to anyone who is even contemplating his entry into the Path. However, poor, unreliable and unskilled work, given in return for the wages of an employer, is also stealing. It may be even more damaging to him than stealing in the legal sense of the word.

An ethical and spiritual attitude to monetary gain, and giving an honest value for wages or payment received, will put great square stones into the foundation of your financial life. It also heals many physical ills and mental miseries not often correctly diagnosed by psychology. The soul knows everything about itself – its needs, its aspirations and capacities. It will torment the lazy or dishonest mind that obstructs its clear passage.



YOU MIGHT SIMPLY NEED TO SAY, 'I'M NOT BEING ENOUGH, I'M NOT GIVING ENOUGH'

Many a tedious and expensive hour has been spent in a psychologist’s or psychiatrist’s office, probing into the hinterlands of childhood, in order to find and thus expose and eradicate the cause of some haunting malaise of guilt which clouds the life. Little may you realize that the one sentence, “I am not being enough, I am not giving enough”, expressed and acted upon, might clear up everything.

Your soul will know the truth of your level of involvement and engagement in life when you consider the question in deep meditation.



COME TO REALISTIC TERMS WITH MONEY

In modern civilization, money has become an element comparable to air and water. Only by retreating from civilization into some wilderness may you avoid its necessities and its responsibilities. It is everyone’s concern. The neophyte must think out his attitude to money and his need of it, and come to realistic terms with it.

By simplifying his wants and cultivating living as an art, wherein the richness of the mind compensates for the lack of riches in money, he can exist on very little. However, to the logical mind, such simplification is no great virtue – the complex structure of civilization, which stimulates and requires the use of the divine talents of man, is not well served by such a general attitude.



THE RIPPLE EFFECT

Cast a pebble into a pond and watch the ripples spread in widening circles. Thus does each act of man which concerns his fellows set continuous actions in motion. One man cannot avoid, for one day, influencing the life and acts of at least one other. One man in his efforts and his attitudes can daily affect the lives of many thousands.

We are all deeply responsible in all areas of our lives, and most particularly in the area that affects survival the most – the use and handling of money. Our responsibility ranges from the honesty to repay minute debts, all the way up to the enterprise which can launch a great industry, both serving mankind and giving to others the opportunity of employment in the process.



THE MODERN WORLD IS AN ADVANCED CLASS IN SPIRITUAL GROWTH

The modern Western world is not a great battlefield of materialism inimical to the growth of the spirit – it is rather an advanced class in the school of its development. The modern world is not a purposeless manifestation of human greed and ambition, as it is regarded by many untutored mystics, but a time and place of great testing, tutoring and high responsibility.



GENUINE ENLIGHTENMENT MAKES YOU MORE, NOT LESS, INTEGRATED WITH THE PHYSICAL WORLD

Most people are so ignorant of the true goal of occult, mystical or spiritual initiation that they typically think of the “mystic” as a fragile, sensitive person, liable to be hurt and bruised by this world’s daily reality. This is the extreme opposite of the truth.

The genuine initiate, or even the well-advanced neophyte, brings to this complex maelstrom of material activity an ever-deepening understanding of its significance, its uses and its trials, tests and revelations in the unfolding soul life of man. He does not stand apart from this world, but grows more deeply integrated with it every day.

The initiate requires the lessons, challenges and responsibilities of the world to draw on his courage, extend his powers and build his spiritual muscles. He is also needed in the fighting arena, to pass on his knowledge and raise the wounded. People die every day of broken hearts or even commit suicide because of their failure to understand or cope with the demands of materialism, which can often convince them of life’s God-abandoned insignificance.



PERMANENT RETREAT FROM THE MATERIAL WORLD IS OFTEN A SELFISH ACT

For this reason, it is not a spiritual act but often a selfish one to retreat permanently from the demands of the material world, and live in blissful communion with nature.

There is a time for the “forest life”, when solitude and quiet are essential to the pursuit of integration and realization.

There is also a time to return to the difficulties and rewards of normal life, and apply to them the arts of illumined living.

Without such men and women, thickly sown through the tapestry of business, politics, industry, education, medicine and religions as stars in the darkness of night, man as a divine being would long ago have perished.



INITIATED QUALITIES ARE THE MOST NEEDED OF ALL IN BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY

The qualities of the initiated are not out of place in business and industry – in fact, they are the most needed of all qualities. And, no matter what the aspects of outer appearances might suggest, they are also the most influential. If this were not so, there would be no civilization to save at this moment.

However, with great dedication and great understanding comes great wisdom, and the superior man does not disclose himself – not his knowledge, nor his illuminated capabilities. He simply does his duty as he sees it.

If his particular talents are the accumulation and the handling of finance, he does this in such ways that his gift of wealth is a many-faceted boon to mankind.

“No man has come to true greatness who has not felt, in some degree, that his life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him, he gives him for mankind. It is the different degrees of this consciousness that make the different degrees of consciousness in men.

“If you take your man full of acuteness… of vast knowledge of exhaustless skill, and ask yourself where the mysterious lack is which keeps you from thinking that man great – why it is, that although he may be a great naturalist, a great merchant or a great inventor, he is not a great man – the answer will be here, that he is selfish; that he has no such essential humanity as to make his life a reservoir from which refreshment is distributed, or a point of radiation for God’s light…”

Phillips Brooks

WORK NOT FROM COMPETITION, BUT FROM LOVE

Singers, musicians, actors, actresses, artists, authors and all related trades and professions, in ignorance of the laws of initiation, train their skills and develop their talents to a diamond-hard degree in the face of ruthless competition. In so doing, they contribute immeasurably to the beauty of the world, comforting the soul and stimulating the imagination.

However, those who know the law do not compete. Their effort arises, not from competition, but from love – the love of their art, their God and their world. When your soul is added to the mind, your talent is enchanted so enormously that competition no longer has any meaning. All the bars of opposition fall down before you.



SUFFERERS LACK KNOWLEDGE OF THE LAW

Deep-thinking students of the occult are apt to point to the lives of historical figures in the arts whose sufferings were almost insurmountable. Even in the case of talent that amounts to genius and great contribution to the human treasure, we must face the fact that on analysis, most of their sufferings appear to have been self-induced or self-inflicted. We can therefore say, with certainty, that the sufferers lacked knowledge of the law.

Why then, the student asks, is knowledge so difficult to come by when ignorance is punished with such severity? The truth is that it ignorance is not punished. Knowledge and opportunity to learn lie all around us; even the inner voice speaks constantly, yet is seldom heard.

People even collect books, without understanding or retaining the knowledge offered therein, as lavishly as the sun spills golden coins on the pavements under the trees. Gold – trodden underfoot, without a moment’s pause to ponder: Why are these rays warm? Why are they givers of life?

“Know the truth”, said one of the Teachers, “and the truth shall set you free.”

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