As we gather on this beautiful Sunday morning, I would like to meditate with you for a little hour on one of the aspects of significance, to be found in the Master’s Gospel, His Good News—the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Let us have a moment of devotion. Our gracious Lord and Holy King, we thank Thee for the privilege we have of yielding body and mind and heart into the Spirit of Thy Presence, that Thy name may be hallowed to us in every phase and department of life, that we may share in letting Thy Kingdom come and the Spirit of Thy Presence appear, not only in our minds intellectually, not only in our hearts as a hope for the future, but as a realization of the present in body and mind and heart, that Thy Will may be done on earth in relationship to ourselves, in ourselves and through ourselves, and so also for all who turn to Thee, whosoever, wheresoever they may be, in a recognition that Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever, IN the Christ, Aum-en.
As we aspire to move from the world of the unreal into the realm of the Divine Design in form and function, our progress, individually and collectively, encounters the hindrances established in the human pattern of life by the realm of illusion—the mirage world around us—and it is highly essential to our progress that we should, being with one accord in one place, share a realization of the distinction between the mirage world which human beings in self-activity have produced and the reality world which the Master called the Kingdom of Heaven at hand.
Innumerable philosophies and religious concepts have been developed on the basis of the idea that the human being can make of his life whatever he may determine by the uses of will, determination, perseverance, devotion to a goal—that he may achieve his purpose. Within a certain limited realm, this is true within the scope of individual capacity in function and aspiration. The stuff of life, physically, mentally and emotionally is all around us and is subject to the impulses which we project into it, but that which comes forth by such endeavor can be no more than that which is contained in the design utilized—and the design utilized can appear only as there is a firmness in dedication and purpose with respect to the heart and mind, so that ones whole capacity of Being is channeled to the given end.
This then means that by reason of such endeavors as we see all around us in the world, the usefulness of life is limited to the level of consciousness of the human beings involved, limited to the clarity with respect to the vision inherent in the individual, limited to the individuals own potentiality in forcefulness, will and determination, and limited by his capacity to maintain a sustained application of these factors in the equation of his chosen pattern of life. Add to this the fact that human beings are not the masters of themselves, that they are subject to various emotional stresses—those of which they are aware and many of which they are ignorant—and we see that even with diligence in application, even with a strong will in sustained endeavor, there are countless factors which enter into the pattern, changing its nature, limiting its fulfilment and producing something far below that to which the human being thought he aspired.
And having attained his goal in a limited sense, he finds it to be a hollow victory, and he is assailed by an emptiness of spirit, a fearsomeness with respect to the ultimate possibilities of fulfilment because having reached futility and failed in his endeavor, he imagines that the invisible future contains nothing more than that which has already been experienced. Under such stress of consciousness and heart, he falls back upon the vain hope of a slow progressive movement upward, which even while he wishes for it, he sees to be endangered by man’s ingenuity in the realm of destructive endeavor. And all of the things to which human beings apply themselves are measured on a basis of relativity—of relative values in relationship to the accepted goals of other members of humanity—and each one tends to judge his pattern of relatedness with others on the basis of the degree to which the other person’s pattern or ideal or endeavor can have meaning to his own—a relative measurement, wherein we find nothing stable, nothing sure, except as may be stated by the old saw, “death and taxes.”
Until we find something stable and sure; something that relieves us of the necessity of measuring our own endeavors and the activity of others on a basis of relativity, we cannot have any true orientation point in life. Witness for instance, the pattern as it appears commonly in the lives of human beings who follow the traditional course of growing, getting a certain amount of education, getting married, and finding a job. The points of orientation with respect to the pattern of life which such human beings think of as home, has two poles—the love which may be experienced between the newlyweds, and the sense of security permitted by reason of the job or the business. And human love is such an uncertain thing when it has no consciousness of orientation in that which is above and beyond the mirage world in which human beings move while they decay and die. And the uncertainties of the job, of the business cause human beings to shrink within themselves, subject to unspeakable fears with which they decide they must learn to dwell. So they harden themselves and assume a sophistication which belies their aspiration.
This is the mirage world—the thing which man has made with the substance which God gave him. This is the realm of illusion, where such things are for a little time, because man creates them and sustains them with the outpouring of his own life's blood. And within the scope of the levels found in this mirage world, human beings can choose and do this and that to add their little forms for a moment in the realm of illusion, but the little forms pass away with them and if, perchance, they have achieved recognition in the patterns of history, they are remembered for a time—but with how little meaning are they remembered, are the historical events that have been shaped and molded by great men and women who have achieved the distinction of historical recognition.
And when the child goes to school, how little meaning is there to the child's mind and heart as he is compelled to study those historical events; and as he passes into the realm of practical living in the world mirage, how soon are the significances and the meanings forgotten. And he contents himself with being as other men are; of measuring his own worth by his own concept of the worth of others; his own successes by the successes of others; his own failures by the failure of others. And he knows of no measurement by which he may properly comprehend himself, let alone have a means of evaluating the lives of those around him.
And so, with the passage of time, the human being comes to the end of his days, the cycle of his creativeness is concluded and he is retired from activity in the realm of illusion. He looks out into the mirage world with the wisdom garnered by his years of function in that mirage world and he assumes that he knows something, and seeks to impose his ego upon others, or he assumes that he means nothing and by his attitude proclaims a gospel of futility. Thus it is that in this realm of illusion, in the mirage world, human beings have concluded that if there be any fulfilment, it must of necessity come after death, and they hope with an inner longing that there is something that survives the grave, and that they may come to know the blessedness of higher aspiration in some realm on beyond.
Because of these compulsions in the mirage world, we find those who give themselves to the delusions of spiritualism, for instance, as they seek to establish a connection between the realm of illusion and the realm of whatever there is beyond the veil. The futility, the heartbreak, the disillusionment, the failure, and in the end, man’s seeming greatness is seen to be so small that it may hardly be recognized. The greatness of a Napoleon or a Hitler or a Stalin, who for a moment impose their tyrannical wills upon unnumbered human beings, changing the patterns of existence in the mirage world and robbing human beings of the privilege of living in the realm of illusion. They strutted like tin gods upon the stage of the mirage world and hypnotized human beings into thinking that they were great, but as they are gone, the mirage begins to shift and change and lo, that which seemed to be so great, appears to be so small and has meaning no where but in the realm of illusion.
How is it that human beings have contented themselves, generation after generation with having a part in the building of the unreal passing forms of the mirage world? Each generation assuming that it could produce forms that would endure, each generation assuming that those who had gone before were old fogeys and had no real intelligence, no real understanding. “Look at us! We are the young. We shall arise in this realm of illusion and pass forth upon the stage of the mirage world, and that which we build shall endure.” But when they have came to the doddering steps of their passing, they have become the old fogeys, and round and round it goes once more.
What is there in this life of illusion that should be so appealing, so fascinating, generation after generation, so that the things of God are ignored? The illusions about God are hugged to the bosom and the Truth is left untouched, unknown, while human beings imagine that they search for Truth when they examine the relative and temporary facts of the mirage world.
And in the midst of all of this, there was one who came into the world and he said, “This good news do I bring you, the children of men, that you may begin to know that you are in truth, though you have long forgotten it—the Children of God, that your bodies are not to be looked upon as something foreign to God, something widely separated from God. I bring you the good news that this realm of the Kingdom of the Divine Control and Design is at hand, within reach, available to you, so that you may have a point of orientation, so that you may have a true foundation upon a Rock, and you may no longer build your houses of life upon the shifting sands, merely to give an appearance for the moment in the mirage world. Lo, the time is at hand for you to begin to see that you do not have to measure your lives by the relativity of other human lives.
Lo, the time is come when you can begin to know that this stuff of life with which you play as children at their games, can be shaped and molded to fit the Divine Design. You can come to know a sure foundation. You can come to know a Power greater than yourselves by which the limitations of this realm of illusion may be transcended, by which you may know the beauty of Truth and the Truth concerning beauty—that you may no longer in your own attitude toward yourselves be governed by the sordid concepts of ugliness, but that you may begin to perceive and know and appreciate the beauty of the Divine Design in your own physical body; that you may begin to know that God gave you these physical bodies, that they might be the Temples of God in this world; that you might know the secrets of the human heart and mind and arise and be noble men and women, measuring the expression of your lives, not by the changing mirage of the realm of illusion, but rather by the eternal verities of the Kingdom of Heaven—that Kingdom which remains invisible to you because you are so busy shaping the stuff of life to patterns that are unworthy of you; being controlled by your own concepts of your own sordidness, controlled by your own convictions of ugliness within yourselves and others.
Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and you have the privilege of letting the stuff of life be molded to that Kingdom—that which endures. For this of which I speak has endured down through all the generations, all the centuries while you have played at your children's games, misshaping the stuff of life, abusing your opportunities, making it to be a mirage, a passing thing in the realm of illusion. But this realm of illusion need not be what it now is, for it can begin to be a realm in which the things of Heaven, the things of beauty, the things of the Divine Design may take form, that they may be seen when you have let the stuff of life give them form, when you have ceased to misuse and abuse the stuff of life and let it be shaped to that design which is yet invisible—but which can be made visible as you let it take form according to the Will that is stronger than yours, according to a Power that is beyond your own weakness.
And so, the Voice of One has given an invitation and summoned those who have forgotten their heritage, forgotten that they are Children of God—summoned them to return to the Father; to recognize that the things of God are at hand, that the Truth can be known; that stability and certainty can come into life, and the stuff of life can be shaped to the beauty and the wonder and the glory of that everlasting Design, which has survived the ages of man's lunacy in the realm of illusion—his own idiocy on the stage, not of life, but existence, while he plays at being a man or a woman in the mirage world.
There is the invitation to sanity—the invitation to a recognition that we need not measure ourselves or others on a relative basis, for we can begin to know our relationship to the Divine Design; and measure not with the passing show, but with the cosmic standard of Being which endures from Eternity to Eternity, and has meaning from star to star, from solar system to solar system. And as it has meaning in the uttermost parts of the cosmos, so likewise is this solar system—so likewise does this earth revolve around a star, so likewise does that which holds true in the uttermost parts of the universe, hold true here, and we may share that which cannot be altered or changed, we can share the creative fulfilment possible in the movements of cosmic forces.
We can cease to fight so futilely against that which is taking form and share its forming. We can cease pitting ourselves against the God of all creation and begin to share the work of God in bringing forth creation. We can cease being puppets in the fields of chance. We can cease being creatures of weakness in a mirage world, and become giants of strength in Divine manhood and womanhood in the world of God—which man has not destroyed, nor will he. When the realm of illusion comes to an end, who shall there be to weep among the wise? When the mirage world is sinking into oblivion, the oblivion from whence it came, who among the wise will regret its passing? For then shall we see and see clearly, the Divine Design that is at hand, and we shall see the beauty that manifests as we let the stuff of life be shaped and molded to that Design.
No matter how much we may talk about the beauties of Heaven, no matter how much we may meditate upon the things of God, those things have no true meaning in our lives while we are governed by the passing show of the mirage world. No matter how much we may think we have faith in that which God shall cause to manifest, it has no meaning to us until we let it appear through our lives.
There is the old saying that hope springs eternal in the human breast—and it is well, or the lunacy of the mirage world would long since have caused man to pass from this sphere of existence. Nevertheless, is this the end to which we were born? Is this the goal for which we came into the world? The purpose for which we breathe? No. Let us accept the basic fact that man with his limited intelligence, is not able to produce a substitute Divine Design as good as the one that God has made, for the Truth is that Design—and if he would know the Truth, he must stop accepting temporary facts of the realm of delusion as if those passing factors were the Truth. He must stop alluding to them as the Truth. He must begin to see the Truth for what it is, and accept it and receive it, and acknowledge that he was created so that something greater than himself might appear through himself, that thereby his own greatness might be increased.
Man has desired to prove his own greatness in this mirage world. He has gone to all kinds of extremes in rejecting God, or proclaiming false concepts about God, in order to establish his own greatness. But greatness is not something which is at any given moment to be recognized on a basis of relative patterns. Greatness is that which results from the increase of that which is to be, and not the decrease of that which is round about. If one remains for a moment as an island in the sea of life, when all else has fallen below his level, he may imagine himself to be great, but that is the aspiration of the decrepit. True greatness manifests by reason of the increase, and the increase can be known in any human being, only as he lets that which is greater than himself find expression in himself and through himself to others, and by reason of such increase, through service, he comes to know greatness—and he gives himself to the work of shaping the stuff of life to the end that the Kingdom of Heaven which is at hand may appear to the dim vision and the dull consciousness of those who live in the mirage world. And to those who are of such dull consciousness, the things of reality will seem like a mirage, for they are of the mirage world.
And as the things of reality begin to take form through the mist of creative function, there are those who will deny that it is, and will proclaim loudly that such things are merely an illusion, and that the realm of illusion, the mirage world, is the only thing that is real. And so there is the challenge today as down through the ages: whom will ye follow; whom will ye serve; whom will ye believe? If the Lord be God then follow Him, if Baal, then follow him.
To what is the stuff of your life being shaped? Where is the helm of control? Where is the centering of design, and upon what foundation does the house of your life rest? Why should those who for so long been in prison in the mirage world hesitate to step forth into the light of a new day and share in forming the stuff of life to the Design which God Himself hath made, that the things of God may appear on earth in blessing to all who will receive? For truly, the Good News is good news—the Kingdom of Heaven is now at hand.
Our gracious Lord, we would let Thy Design and Thy Control determine the shaping and the molding of the stuff of life that appears because we live on earth; that the reality of Thy Kingdom may appear to the children of men and that all who will respond may he saved from the mirage world; that all who will let go, may he lifted out of the realm of illusion and illusion that they may know the beauty of the Divine Design, the wonder of the Divine Control, the Glory of living, living here on earth in the fulfilment of that great Truth, for Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever. Aum-en.
