Threefold Pattern of Focalization
from Peter, James and John — John, James and Peter
Uranda
May 20, 1954 am Class
We remember the pattern that was
portrayed in the Master's ministry on the basis of what is popularly conceived
to be Peter, James and John. We would like to take note this morning of the
basic fact that if it is understood, this particular arrangement is all right.
If we recognize that Peter, James and John provide the proper pattern of
recognition from the standpoint of the body, then all is well. But if in that
pattern of perception Peter is conceived to be the point of focalization, and the mind does not perceive that
which is above and beyond, we have confusion. And that is the state of the
world consciousness with which you must deal. It is because of this confusion
that we do not have the adequate manifestation of spiritual power on earth. Our
ministry, our service, attunements, can be of consequence only to the degree
that there is the actuality of spiritual power reaching through us into the
world. Without that it turns into so many words and so many ideas which have no
more meaning than a host of other words and ideas to be found in the world.
We recognize that John relates to
spirit, James relates to mind, and Peter relates to the emotional realm—the
feeling realm. We recognize that spirit issuing from the supreme point of
focalization in the invisible realm must have a focalization in the outer
realm. If there isn't an overall focalization the various members cannot of and
by themselves come to focus. If the various members try to establish a focus of
and by themselves they fail. We could take any member of your body as such and
assume that that member of and by itself, without regard to the head, could
establish a completely satisfactory relationship to the realm of spirit, and we
would find that it was not so. If the factors that are in the head, from the
standpoint of the endocrine system, the nervous system, the brain and all the
rest of it, are not providing the
point of focalization for the body as a whole, the member of the body cannot of
and by itself establish a pattern of focalization directly with spirit.
But the pattern of focalization is with
respect to every member, and we are not to assume, merely because the head of
the body provides the essential primary focalization, that the rest of the body
is denied the reality of spirit—for it is not. And yet that particular false
concept is one with which you will be working and contending in every sphere of
service which has any relationship to spiritual things, because the human being
will constantly assume that a recognition of the primary focalization at the
point of the head suggests that the members of the body are denied their own
individual patterns of focalization and direct relationship in and with spirit,
which is not the case at all.
If we recognize this pattern and do not
put it “Peter, James and John” as if the true order did not exist, we are all
right. But the minute we assume that it is “Peter, James and John” on this
basis, we are wrong. From the standpoint of Deity the approach is John, James
and Peter. From the standpoint of the mass of humanity, which we call the body
of mankind—and from the standpoint of the individual, for every person has
individually the vibrational focalization factors of John, James and Peter,
every single person on the face of the earth; but if that focalization is to
have any meaning individually it must be established with respect to the whole
body—in the mass consciousness we have it Peter, James and John, instead of John, James and Peter. If we
realize the falsity of this concept and recognize that from the standpoint of
Deity it is John, James and Peter,
and we clearly establish that pattern in consciousness symbolizing these
factors of being, we will have a basis of understanding, a basis of viewing, a
basis of analyzing, which will stand us in good stead in every circumstance in
life. If we break that pattern and try to establish it on some other basis we
will fail, regardless who it is or how much effort is put forth.
We recognize that there are certain
religions where the idea is: “You are not supposed to understand why. That is
what you are taught; that is what you must believe. It is not a matter of the
mind having any part to play; merely belief—feeling. It is not a matter of a
recognition of the spirit in direct relationship with the individual; it is a
matter of feeling acceptance regardless of the working of the mind.” And the
mind is forced, from babyhood, to conform with that which is impressed upon
consciousness through the feeling realm by reason of fear. “If you do not do
thus and so you will go to hell or purgatory or somewhere. You will suffer. The
devil will get you.” So, not so much on a basis of love for God as a basis of
fear of God, the emotional nature is used as the primary point of focalization—concepts
and ideas of every sort are implanted, not only in the field of religion but in
the field of discipline for small children. “The bogeyman will get you. The
policeman will get you. Somebody will come and get you.” All those ideas are
utterly atrocious, in relationship to discipline for the childish mind and
heart. So we use the feeling nature—we
do not say fear has no place—but we recognize that mind is superior. However we also recognize that mind has within it
that which is given particular focalization below it.
There is an absolute principle which
must be realized if we are going to understand: that which is carried out in a
pattern of differentiation in the expanded expression must be in essence
contained in the point of focalization.
Now if you will really remember that, it will save you from many a pitfall.
What does it mean here, in practical application? That which is at the point of focalization,
which we speak of as John, contains
both James and Peter. That which is carried out to the point of
differentiation from John to James carries the vibrational factors of Peter.
The supreme point of focalization must contain the essence of all that is
focalized and made manifest in the differentiation pattern in the expanded
expression.
So you look at the nervous system and
you have simply the differentiated expanded expression of the brain which
reaches to all of the parts. Your nervous system is simply the differentiated
aspects of the brain in expanded expression connected with the parts or members
of the body. Now always, that is true. This, then, follows: If we are going to
think of James as relating to the mental plane, and he certainly does, we are
not going to assume that the mental plane is differentiated from, separate
from, unrelated to, the emotional realm. The feeling nature is contained in the
level of the true intellect. And there is one of the things that has not been
generally recognized, let alone understood, because the attempt has been made to
establish the intellect on a mental basis without regard to the emotional
factor which is inherent in the mind itself, and to do so establishes the mind
as something which it is not. It is only a part of a thing functioning on a
basis which tries to make it the whole thing.
Now this relates to you as a person. The John aspect of your own being is the first outmanifestation, in the realm of
yourself as a being, of that which is of the invisible focalization of Deity
which we speak of as your Father, or your God Being, your centering in Deity.
Whatever name you wish to use is beside the point as long as we do not get
confused patterns. The John aspect of your being is the first beginning point
of manifestation, the focalization of all else that is to manifest as spirit or
by reason of spirit. As soon as that begins to be a fact in manifestation with
you, and John is there, the John aspect begins to differentiate and we have the
James aspect of your being beginning to appear. But the James aspect does not function
on a basis segregated from the emotional aspect in its own level—the Peter
aspect is there. But with continued expressions of differentiation we come to
that which is primarily, dominantly, Peter. That relates, to a very high
degree, to the subconscious range, the subconscious
mind. Actually, while there might have to be some adjustments in your
consciousness on the point—so do not establish it with too fixed a sphere of
limitation—the Peter aspect of your being is the unconscious or subconscious
realm of the feeling nature, which in turn correlates with mind. There is the
aspect of mind which extends into Peter—and remember that the subconscious mind
is primarily the emotional nature.
If out of Peter we receive an impulse
which does not correlate with James, which is not controlled or directed by
James, and it is allowed expression, action, it also disregards John and makes
Peter the supreme point of focalization for your existence. And then you are
subject to every wind that blows. There is no stability. There is uncertainty.
There is fear. There is every sort of ill thing, until we begin to realize that
we do not deny Peter, as Peter denied the Lord, but we refuse to accept Peter as the supreme point of focalization in our
being. And how is most of the control extended into the body? In the range
of the automatic or subconscious. Every automatic function in your body relates
to the subconscious, doesn't it? Certainly. How many of you can, by thinking,
just willing that it be so, change the pulse beat of your heart? Now if you
select certain things to think about, about which you feel deeply, you may by
reason of feeling begin to have an effect in the body through the subconscious,
but it will not be by direct will or conscious intent. It will be indirect. It
still goes through Peter. So with the exception of the external patterns of
action—walking, talking, movement of the hands, etc.—we do not have very much
control on the intellectual level of consciousness in relationship to the
functions in the body.
Now the pattern of habits which we
establish and maintain in the conscious range has its influence in the
subconscious range. But the important thing is to realize that you are very
fortunate that God so constructed you that your mind as such does not have
direct influence and control in your body, because if you had the interference
of your intellect you would not be able to live. I will venture there isn't a
person here in this room that could live twenty-four hours if the coordination
of his internal processes, even in their primary aspects, depended upon
conscious control in the mind. Do you think you would live twenty-four hours? I
don't think you would live an hour, do you? No, I don't. How brilliant you are!
I wouldn't want it either. I am pointing out, however, some basic factors which
are vitally essential if we are going to learn how to live and how to serve
others, because Peter, the emotional nature, must not be allowed to take
supreme control in the body, even though Peter is the direct means by which
control is released in the body, influence made manifest. The control into the
body is primarily through Peter, into the realm of form. And that is not
limited to you as a person. That applies to the whole mass of mankind. Now if
this control level be used wrongly we call it black magic. If it is used
correctly we call it white magic. The point is that the right use at this level
is of the divine design, the magic of living, of beauty, of love and of life.
The wrong use at this level results in the distortion patterns of the world,
which are in fact elements of black magic.
Now James has the ability, by reason of
the essences which are differentiated into manifestation as Peter—the elements
in James differentiated as Peter are present in James, and by reason of the
factors of intellectual and feeling perception we have the means at our command
by which we may become acquainted with and learn to understand John. That is
our purpose here in this Class. And until the human being establishes a pattern
of right relationship with John, the John aspect of his own being, he cannot comprehend or become aware of, or know
in any way, shape or form, his own Lord, his own God Being, or en masse, the
LORD of Lords. We can have all kinds of ideas about, concepts of every sort—and
the world is full of them—but if you cut the nerves between the head and the
body, the fact that the nerves are in the body will not permit the normal
function. And it is just as true in relationship to mankind as a whole as it is
true in relationship to you as a person. In the John aspect of your own being, what do we have—the negative focalization of the positive aspect in the invisible realm, in the range of focalization—simply a
means by which the inner positive, or invisible focalization, is transferred to
the realm of outer form—a connecting link—the invisible part of
the chain and the visible part. If there is a break at the level where
invisible things are supposed to begin to be visible, what is going to happen?
The visible chain will be weak and of no value. It will not hold you up. So the
John aspect of your own being is the
connecting link.
Human beings try to understand the John
aspect, in one way or another, to whatever degree it is comprehended, without
correct function in relationship to Peter and James. And it will not work, try
as you will. You are going to let Peter be the control point in your being and
then learn to understand John? It will not work, because if Peter is the
control point, you are being controlled by external things, by circumstances,
what people say and do and what you think they feel, what you think their
attitudes to be—when you do not know. You are controlled by all these things,
and then you are a slave, pure and simple. It is from that slavery that human
beings are to be liberated, and the moment any human being is liberated from
that slavery, he or she begins to be a son or daughter of God. But that slavery
is there whether we like to admit it or not. No matter what we do about it, without
regard to James and John there is no liberation—and faith in Peter, hoping to
achieve that liberation, will not achieve anything, no matter how you struggle
or what method you use. You can go to the yoga philosophies of the Orient or of
India, or pursue any idea of developing willpower and mental abilities in the
Occident , and it will not work. You can get so far and you run
into a blank wall. Human beings everywhere, by the millions, are up against
that blank wall.
The only excuse we have for being a
separate or distinct organization is to provide something which is not provided
by other organizations—the means by which the individual as a person, and the
mass body of mankind as a whole, may begin to have an awareness of the John aspect of being, so that there may
be true comprehension of what we might call the Jesus aspect of being, the supreme point of focalization for the
whole, the LORD of Lords and KING of Kings. The focalization of Deity to us was
made manifest in the form, the body, the man, who was known as Jesus. But that
Jesus aspect of being, now invisible, can have no real or true meaning except
by the means which He Himself outlined. And it always works absolutely, whether
anyone likes it or not. Millions have destroyed themselves trying to make some
other method work, and it will not. There is just one way. And the more quickly
we come to that absolute conclusion and realization the better for us, the less
time and energy will be wasted, the sooner we will be out of the abyss of
nothingness into the realms of joy and peace.
Now, then, if we are going to comprehend
James we must start on the right basis. The popular idea is to judge all things
mental on the basis of the way you feel about it. You are going to let Peter
pass on everything that James says. “I do not like that idea, so I will reject
it. I like this idea, so I accept it, the way I feel about it. I am letting
Peter determine what is true or not true with respect to what James says.” And
it is a snare and a delusion. If the way you feel about it is going to
determine what you believe, you will never be a true server. What happens? If
we have a certain feeling—shall we call it prejudice?—a certain feeling of
aversion toward some idea, or something we think is an idea, and we refuse to
examine it because we have this feeling, we are going to remain in ignorance.
But if, regardless of how we feel about it, we will examine what James presents
with an open mind, what do we find? That when we see the truth the old prejudice,
or adverse feeling, falls away. We do not feel the same way about it anymore,
because we begin to feel on the basis of truth, not on the basis of all the
things that have been pounded into us since our babyhood. And there is the
difference between slavery and liberation into manhood and womanhood. If a
person continues to be subject to his aversions, to his prejudices, to what he
likes and does not like, he will be a slave until his dying day, a slave of
things not controlled.
You must learn to recognize that what
you feel about something is absolutely beside the point, that it should not be
allowed to have any weight at all. If you say, “I like this idea so much I
cannot give it up. I have too strong a feeling about it,” you are deluding
yourself. If you say, “I have too strong a feeling against that idea to accept
it,” you are deluding yourself. The way you feel will follow your intellectual
acceptance of truth once you see it and accept it. And there is no other way
which leads to mastery, to
liberation, try as you will. What you feel about it is beside the point, and
you need to reach the point of absolute conviction in yourself, where you will
say, and mean, “What I feel about this or that is beside the point. It is not
going to control me. My likes and dislikes are no longer going to be in
control. I am going to examine everything from the standpoint of the mind,
without adverse influence from Peter. I am going to examine. I am going to
analyze. I am going to learn to think, and I am going to learn to let my mind,
conscious and subconscious, function under the control of the spirit of God.”
This dual aspect of mind is contained in
James, as we noted, and it is not by pure intellect that you learn to see and
understand John. There is a feeling perception there. But this feeling
perception that works from James to John cannot work as long as Peter is in
control. You can say, “Well I am supposed to use my feeling perception.” Of
course you are. But as long as you are a slave, reacting this way and that to
every circumstance that arises, you are unstable and the Lord is not in
control. When you begin to use this feeling perception that arises out of James
in relationship to John, his brother—isn't that right?, in relationship to
John, his brother—it will not be because Peter is saying, “I reject that
because I do not like it. I accept this because I like it.” But there is
feeling perception there, and if you try to do it on a coldly intellectual
basis, logic and reason alone, do you think you will arrive? No, you must use
both of these aspects of perception as they are contained in James, and when
you do you will find that what you perceive by feeling never violates logic and
reason.
You cannot by logic and reason reach the
point of comprehending John. It is utterly impossible. Though millions have
tried it, not one has ever succeeded. It is a waste of time. But when you learn
to use the true perceptive qualities of James, beginning to understand John,
you will find that that which is perceived through the feeling aspect never
violates logic or reason, or what we might call the intellectual aspect of your
being. And if you perceive something that appears to violate, what are you
going to do? Jump to the conclusion, “Well now, I don't like this. I am going
to put it all aside”? No, if you are afraid of it you cannot approach close
enough to it to examine it. There must be control. If you are afraid to examine
any point which appears, it means that you have no faith in your own stability.
Is that not true? And you need to develop faith in your own stability, learn to
examine it. Then what you thought you saw turns out to be something a little
different. You thought it was this way and it wasn't. It was a different form,
different factors. And as soon as you see it as it really is, you have no
rejection of it—an acceptance. You no longer feel against it and you have
reached a point where you know the truth and the truth has set you free from
that which you feared. And it has not violated logic or reason.
The point I wish to reemphasize here is
that until you reach a point of right attitude toward Peter, try as you may,
you cannot begin to use the true perceptive faculties of James, and the feeling
nature is going to be mixed-up and you will not reach a point where you are
controlled by the spirit of God. Why have I, over this period of years here, been
so patient with all the people? Because I knew that each and every one of you,
perhaps inadvertently but nevertheless certainly, were under the control and
domination of Peter, regardless of what you thought in your mind, regardless of
what you thought you believed, or anything else. Peter is too much in control
to permit you to know the truth. The Master did not say, “And ye shall know how
you feel, and your feelings will make you free.” He did say, “And ye shall know
the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” And how are you going to know
the truth? By the perceptive faculties of James in the intellectual level. For
only so can you begin to comprehend John and begin to realize that which John
represents, or makes possible in manifestation in the realm of form.
This means that not by rule and
regulation, not by arbitrary attitude on my part, but by reason of your own
opportunity to observe the truth, you have reached a point where there must be
less subjection to Peter on your part. You may think, “Well I am going to lose
something good.” Oh no you won't. No, you will find things that are lovely and
beautiful and real, the blessings which God would bestow upon you. Nothing
worthwhile will be taken away. Only the thorns that irritate, only the ill
conditions that make one suffer, only that which spoils, will be taken away.
But there is still too much subjection to Peter in your daily function to
permit you to make the kind of progress you can make if you will remember these
things and if you will be sensible and remember that here there is
understanding one of another. But refuse to be blinded by Peter, refuse to
accept the way you feel about anything as conclusive, what you like or do not
like. Do not let it be conclusive. Move to the realm of truth and function on
the basis of James, and you will find that John, his brother, is near at hand,
and all will be well. God bless you.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
