Shapes  and  Forms  of  the  Mirage  World

from  Magic and the Mirage World

Uranda   June 2, 1953  Class

We have begun to recognize the basic difference between white magic and black magic. There is another basic difference, or we might say, a number of facets of difference. A jewel has many facets but it is one jewel. So whatever aspects we may consider with respect to the reality of divine magic, or white magic, we are considering one jewel with many facets. But always there is a basic difference between these two types of magic. One is that in divine magic there is always selflessness, and without selflessness divine magic cannot appear in the individual life. With respect to the workings of black magic you will find, even though it may sometimes be camouflaged quite expertly, it is always projected on a basis of selfishness and self-centeredness.

We recognize that all energy comes from the divine source. All life, all of the forces, which under control and directed in action become power, have their source in God. The power of black magic comes from the misuse and abuse of the life forces granted to human beings from the divine source. It is a process of stealing and misappropriation, misuse and consequent abuse. When we realize that all of the forces of the black magic realm, all of the energies of the mirage world, all of the seeming powers of the realm of illusion, are stolen and they are misappropriated, they have no true source of force, power and energy, we can begin to realize that this contest can have only one outcome. It is utterly impossible for man in his self-activity to win. Once we have a deep and abiding realization of that central truth, the basis of fear is removed.

The reservoir of power, the unlimited resources, are all on our side, in spite of the illusion in the world, in spite of the fact that human beings seem to have the money and the position and the setup from the standpoint of government programs or social orders or what have you. We have all of the true resources back of us and all of the material resources are seeking to escape from misuse and wrong control.

Note in the world of man how quickly material wealth is lost, how unpredictably in the ordinary sense position is lost, influence. The reason why human beings have such a hard time hanging on to their material wealth is because material things are seeking to return to the control of the divine design. Material things are not trying to get away from us when we are functioning according to the divine design. Material things are seeking to come to us as surely as a pet, like a dog, would seek to come to its loved master or mistress. The things of this world are seeking to get away from the wrong pattern of use and abuse. They are seeking to come to us as long as we are working from the divine standpoint. So in actual fact the stolen goods seek to return to the proper owner, proper use. And all of the vibrational resources are back of us—not just some of them; all of them. Our adversary has to depend on what he can steal from the divine source, because there is no reservoir, no resource, except that which can be stolen. So once we begin to actually realize this, to know it from the depth of our beings, the basis of fear of the so-called power of black magic, or the world of the unreal, is gone.

This brings to point the factors with respect to selflessness and what is sometimes called faith, confidence, the deep assurance with respect to the working of God and His powers and His laws; and on the other hand, selfishness and that faith which is fear, for fear is faith in the wrong thing. Let us examine these factors just a little.

Patterns of expression or form in the outer sense, with respect to situation particularly, may vary tremendously; but there is a very great limitation on those who work from the standpoint of the unreal realm. They have only a few basic tricks, only a few basic patterns that will work. They may manifest in a thousand different ways but there are only a few basic methods and they all integrate, more or less—the attempt to divide and conquer, confuse the issues, and in that confusion, attempt to produce an appearance of superiority. We see the dictatorships of the world use the same method, to produce confusion, to divide and conquer. And always in this process there is the utilization of fear, and there is always a selfish purpose, the seeking of some personal gain; not a genuine interest in the welfare of the people involved.

You will recall that I emphasized the point that the force of magic is possible only on the basis of deep feeling, deep emotional influence. So we see here one of the very vital factors with respect to the two types of magic. Divine magic uses the feeling pattern of God's love. Black magic uses the feeling pattern of hate. The individual who is subject to resentment can be made to feel that he is being imposed upon, that after all he is a pretty good fellow; he really should not stop at resentment; he should hate; he has got just cause for hate here. And so human emotions of the baser nature, lower than the animal, are stirred up, stirred up to a feeling pitch; and it is that feeling current which is utilized in the processes of black magic, by reason of which the leaders can have a hold on the people. Those who are subject to hate can be easily induced to have fear. So whether it was Hitler's Gestapo or the Blackshirts of Mussolini's day, or the secret police of Russia, they are instruments of fear and instruments of torture.

Here we must examine for a moment some of the basic psychological factors which appear in the distorted makeup of human beings who have lost polarity in the divine source. We recognize that there are people everywhere in the world who have a natural tendency to get a great deal of satisfaction out of inflicting suffering on others. The only pleasure which they have left in life is derived from causing other people to suffer. But there is another side to this, because there are many people who derive their only pleasure in life from suffering, and the two do their best to get together: those who find pleasure in making others suffer and those who like to suffer, looking for someone who will make them suffer. Often some of the peculiar patterns in marriage that the ordinary person cannot possibly understand come out of this basic fact.

People say, "Well why does she live with the brute? Why doesn't she leave?" Well he naturally has to have someone who will cringe, whom he can make suffer, and she would not be happy unless she was suffering. Now sometimes it is turned around. Very often, probably just as frequently, it will be the woman who has to make somebody squirm in order to have any self-satisfaction, and there will be a man, a so-called man, physiologically a male of the species, who is not happy unless he has something to suffer about. He may talk about his wife, he may object strenuously, to hear him talk—"Look how terribly she treats me"—he will complain and fuss and fume and make all kinds of threats, and he loves it! He would not give up that torture chamber for anything, not if it killed him. Well now, when you are serving human beings you will run into many things that you cannot understand unless you recognize these distortions in the human makeup, human beings who like to suffer and who feel that when they are suffering they have a purpose for living; they have a natural martyr complex.

This tendency in human beings is utilized by all black magicians. We can see it perhaps more clearly in the realm of gangsterism, whether it is a gang in Chicago or some other place, or Russia; for the human being who has a natural suspicion of everyone else and yet who is governed by greed, who is willing to make a "fast buck," as they say, wants to get something for nothing, is inside filled with shame. By maneuvering a little—and here we have the basis of many of the con games that are at work in this country—by maneuvering a little, putting on some kind of an act, the man or the woman can be made to feel that he or she is guilty of some particular crime or some particular thing that would discredit, etc. And once someone gets something on someone else, the process of blackmail in one form or another begins, and blackmail is not limited to the extraction of money as such. It is used in producing a compulsion for personal services in various ways, sharing in some kind of illegal activity, increasing fear and increasing the pattern of suffering.

There is the old saying, "There is a new fool born every minute." People like to be fooled. As it is put in the vernacular of the, well, shady side, there is always a gimmick, something, a little maneuvering proposition, by which you can fool people, and people just love to be fooled and they are always looking for the gimmick and take it on as a sort of a challenge—"I wonder what the gimmick is?"—whatever it may be. As long as they can keep on being fooled, searching for the gimmick, without really believing that there isn't any, they can be quite happy. As long as they are convinced that there is a gimmick and they just haven't found it yet, they don't mind being fooled.

But if you undertake to make a straightforward approach to human beings on an honest basis, without any gimmick, they will be so very sure there is one that they will distrust you; they will be looking for the gimmick all the time, wherever you turn. The people that come to you to get well, or anything else, they are always looking for the gimmick. People just love gimmicks of various sorts; they love to be fooled and they are so dishonest that they don't believe there is anyone on the face of the earth who is honest. Therefore if you appear to be honest you are dishonest, and if you would appear to be just a little dishonest, then they trust you. This is the human creature we are dealing with. Oh yes, they are peculiar things. All of these little quirks, tendencies, distortions, are the prey of the black magician. They are the instruments of the black magician in some way or other—fear, greed, selfishness, distrust, and so on.

Oh people will be honest; their word is as good as their bond, you know. They will be honest up to a point, but no one expects anybody else to be honest more than up to a point, and their concern is to find out what that point is; then they can begin to do business. People trade on weakness, in other words, and they are afraid of strength. People trade on weakness, and if one does not show proper fear of some particular outworking or threatened effort at blackmail of some sort—stop and look at it, how many times have you acted on the basis of black magic? Maybe you didn't think of it that way, but I am talking about being blackmailed into doing something because somebody else was going to do something else; they were going to say something, they just wouldn't be pleasant, unless you did. That is blackmail.

The house was going to be grumpy and an unpleasant place until you did thus and so. Well that is blackmail, pure and simple. How many times in daily life are human beings subject to the compulsion of blackmail. They are used to it. They are trained to it and they don't understand, really, anything else. The good, honest citizens of our town, or any city you want to go to, any state in the Union, they are so used to being blackmailed into doing this and that, pressured into it: "It is good business, you know, to let so-and-so have his way. Well I don't think I had better buck so-and-so; I will just give in; I think it would be good business." And so, back and forth, people are always looking for the level on which others can be blackmailed, and once the keen operator, the good businessman, finds out the levels on which he can establish pressure on his fellow businessmen, salesmen, or something, so he can put on the pressure, he is going to start going forward. Why? He has got blackmail, black magic in other words.

I have outlined it this way so that you could begin to see how people are trained practically from babyhood either to exercise black magic or to be subject to it. The little one who becomes a tyrant, all he has to do is yell long enough and loud enough and Mommy and Daddy will give in, or this and that—blackmail, black magic.

Now of course that can be carried to the other extreme, because sometimes human beings fail to consider the feelings, the various factors that go into play in a certain circumstance. But we have this distortion pattern, and it is a distortion pattern every way you turn, as it is in the world. Whether you go to the Ladies' Aid Society and hear the talk there, or function in relationship to it, an afternoon tea, whether in the United States or Britain or anywhere else, up and down the line, the innocent-looking affairs and those that are shady, there is blackmail pressure being applied to force issues, to compel human beings this way and that, everywhere you turn.

And the principles of black magic are utilized in advertising—the principles of hypnotism, the principles of black magic. So as long as we are in this world, and the world is as it is, we are going to be surrounded with people who are playing a game, trying to get something for nothing, trying to beat the racket, trying to get a break; in other words gambling, taking the long odds and using the modified forms of blackmail on a basis that is considered to be good business, legitimate, ethical. Most people would be horrified if you called it blackmail. It is not blackmail until you threaten someone's life if they don't fork over so much money—threaten to expose some skeleton in the closet.

My first encounter with a black magician as such, who deliberately set out to utilize the principles of black magic to prey on other people, came back in the early thirties, when I was first beginning to emerge into the sphere of my own ministry. He posed as something of a psychologist, etc. He was quite a mixture really. But he had quite a method of getting people under his spell—I won't go into it at the moment—being very compelling and uncovering the skeletons in the closet, and then taking that step into blackmail. I helped, finally, to set the stage that caused him to get out of town real fast. It was something that he was working quite effectively—a lecturer. His contact was free lectures, and then classes, and so on, something that we might conceivably use in the outer pattern. But there are a lot of those who are giving such lectures around the country who, when it comes right down to it, have a gimmick and they are not, some of them at least, averse to blackmail. Whatever this fellow's name was in actual fact, he called himself Edheid at that time. In any case, he actually got people, particularly women, to open their hearts to him, a supposed process of psychiatry, and then when he found the skeletons in the closet, why he got itchy palms.

Well we could go on and on, but you will notice that all of these approaches, all of these patterns, have a basic desire. We do not have to make an extended study of all of the criminal activities and all of the shady, just-barely-inside-the-law patterns, and so on, in order to see these basic patterns. We see it carried out in Red Russia and extending out into the seemingly innocent sewing circles of the church, Ladies' Aid groups, etc., up and down the line.

The basic thing is that until you begin to realize these things you will say, "Well now, I will be alert; I won't be caught in that kind of thing," and you will be looking for the devil to stand out there with a fork and horns and a tail, and as long as the devil doesn't come in that garb you are all right. Everywhere you turn, if the devil doesn't show up just so, he is not there. He may appear as an angel of light, so to speak, and can be very convincing.

Well now, you say, you had better take another look at me, Uranda. Go ahead and do it. But you can't understand these things in actual fact in relationship to others until you understand yourself and have reached a point where you are not controlled by these things that control human beings.

In this pattern of distortion in the world, the mirage world, the realm of the unreal, the illusion, human beings are not independent creatures; they are not living their own lives. They are pushed this way and that; they are blackmailed into all kinds of activities, when they never think of it as blackmail. Up and down the line, those who are out to make others suffer and those who are, perhaps only subconsciously, deliberately maneuvering themselves into positions where they will suffer. If they couldn't suffer, if they didn't have something to complain about, they would not be happy—if they didn't have their miseries. They just can't imagine themselves without misery, without suffering, and they are going to suffer one way or another; they will find someone who will make them suffer. And some of the most fantastic outworkings, in married couples for instance, both ways; friendships so called, acquaintances, experiences in life: human beings reaching a point—they go along on a comparatively rational basis for a while—they reach a point where if someone doesn't come along and hurt them in one way or another they will start maneuvering, with all the deliberate cunning of the devil himself, until they can produce a situation in which someone will hurt them; they have got to get hurt and they find someone who will do it. Usually they don't have to look too far.

But the fact that human beings have lost a consciousness, a personal consciousness, of the meaning of life and the purpose of life until it has become so colored that in actual fact they are seeking either to hurt or to get hurt—bring it down to that—either to hurt or to get hurt, either to torture or to get tortured, once you see that, you will have a basis of understanding many things that look utterly unreasonable. Well, they are, but you can understand that.

These are the shapes and forms of the mirage world. These things are the paraphernalia of black magic. And until we can help people to find a new vision in life, a new purpose in life, so that they are not either trying to get hurt or trying to hurt, we cannot really help them. Why do so many churches emphasize the point of hell, a burning hell? Do you think people really want to get to heaven? That is just the sheep's clothing on the wolf underneath. They don't want to go to heaven; they want to go to hell, and want to be sure it is a burning hell, where they can really suffer. That's right! People talk about, oh they don't want to go to hell; they want to go to heaven. But examine the patterns of religion and you will find that the real appeal is the prospect of going to hell. Think of all the interesting people down there! Think of all the things they can do and the devil will not mind! A wonderful place that, and they can suffer just beautifully. And they want to be sure it is forever. Class dismissed.

© Emissaries of Divine Light