Lesson 15
Last week we discussed the ideas of the world and what happens when those ideas are tempted to be used as a philosophy or as a means of self-improvement. This week we will attempt to study the world and what happens when one uses the ideas of the Teaching. THE IDEAS OF THE WORLD as we saw, which you have been experimenting and checking to find out for yourself if this is what makes up the world, are four ideas:
1. The idea that there are IDEALS of what ought to be and what should be which are different from what is.
2. That there is the idea of SELF-IMPROVEMENT to bring about the ideal.
3. There is the belief in SIGNS, WONDERS and DEMONSTRATIONS. Signs that one has achieved some self-improvement, that one has come closer to realizing the ideal. It may just happen some week when one feels pretty good and, of course, that is accepted as positive thinking or whatever other means or that one has been tolerant of other people, so things were better.
4. Then the fourth one was BLAMING which is to find something to blame when the ideal isn’t realized and, of course, the signs and wonders are to take credit for it when something like the ideal happens in one’s existence.
Now the Teaching starts off with four ideas. These ideas are very precise.
1. The first one is SELF-KNOWING. We have been working at self-knowing since we started several weeks ago. Knowing the self, without condemning or justifying, without trying to improve it, just to be aware of the self. To be aware of the conditioning, to be aware of the automatic mechanical behavior of the self and of the split in the self, the contradiction in the self. A going one way to gain the ideal and B going another way to gain the ideal and the war experienced between these two, the constant conflict much of which is called “thinking.” Now it says SELF KNOWING, not self-knowledge. Self-knowing never ends. It is always observing everything and reporting accurately to X.
2. The next idea of the School is FAITH. Faith does not mean agreeing to some ideology or some belief and it does not mean strong belief. It means the ability to make up the mind. Sometime ago we saw that there is seeing what is and seeing the value of it. That is to make up the mind and then X always operates upon that. Whatever one sees as true or the fact and sees the value of whatever one saw as true or fact then there is an action that is known as Truth. Somewhere it says: “Where two or more are gathered together, there I am in the midst.” And, of course, these two are value and what-is are joined together in the form of a cross. Then whatever one sees as being true and sees the good in that, or the value in it, the worthwhileness of it, then there is action upon it and that is faith on one level. We will discuss another level of faith another time. But that is the first level of faith. One cannot force faith. It is something one experience’s and that experiencing depends upon having self-knowing from moment to moment.
3. The next idea of the Teaching is GRACE. Grace is somewhat defined as the recipient of undeserved good or gifts and, of course, all things that are seen as worthwhile are recognized as a gift of X; that X does all the work. That it is something one experiences. It’s not something one can do or say I’m experiencing or I am gaining grace unless one is giving undeserved good. But you’ll find that that is very difficult if not almost impossible. So the recipient is seeing that one has tremendous gifts. You know we’re all very, very rich if we stop to think of it.
Now we won’t experience it from this but let’s take a look. What would you take for the gift of sight? You can see things. You don’t know how it works. You have no idea how two little pieces of human flesh pick up and record impressions. Those little ones don’t see; they are only the cameras. Something sees within and throws a picture up for awareness to experience. What would you take for that? Would you take $100,000 and let somebody have both eyes or cut the nerves to the eyes? Would you take a million? Would you take 20 million? What would you take to have someone destroy your hearing, the ability to hear, that great gift of picking up sound waves and transmitting them into intelligent sounds, thoughts, conceptions, and viewpoints? What would you take for the ability to sense touch, what would you take for it? And above all, what would you take now and let someone take your life, destroy your existence and have the body for experimental purposes five years and three days from now? Would you take a million, 20 million dollars, would you take a billion? You have all you want for five years and four days and then it ends. Have we done anything to receive these great gifts or are they simply undeserved goods of various sorts that we have? That is something of the conception of grace. You will experience being the recipient of grace someday, but now we can only intelligently see what it might be.
4. The fourth idea of the School and of the Teaching is AGAPE, which means and translated into the English word, LOVE.
However, there are four ancient words translated into the one English word love.
1. One word is PIA, which means children. One has a feeling toward children, towards family. One has that love but so does a dog and so do many other mammal creatures. We don’t know about the others but we can observe that mammals have this love for their offspring. So they have pia along with the human being. It is something that just happens. It doesn’t come from effort or anything else. It is just that a child is born and you have an urge to protect it, defend it, and care for it.
2. The next sort of love word that has been translated into the English word love is EROS. It is the mating attraction and it, too, just happens. We also see it in other mammals and possibly all sorts of other creatures, sub-mammal. It just happens, it is the mating instinct, the mating desire. It is shared among many living creatures.
3. Then there is simply approval. It was from the word PHILO. It means, I approve of you or I approve of a piece of furniture. One says, “I just simply love that piece of furniture,” meaning, they very decidedly approve of it, or “I simply love that house,” they approve of it. Now, apparently all sorts of living creatures have things they approve of and things that do not appeal to their taste. So they have philo also and that is definitely with their associates.
4. Then there is that fourth word, the one that is used in all esoteric literature. It is called love in the English translation but it is referred to as AGAPE. It has also been translated into English as CHARITY and it has nothing to do with caring for the poor even though that may be one small aspect of it. Agape means, to see that what everyone is doing, including self, ever has done, or ever will do, that at the moment of doing, it seems either right or proper or justified. Now as long as one is conditioned much of the behavior is because one sees it as justified. “He did thus and so, therefore, I can do so and so.” To the enlightened person, the one who has practiced SELF KNOWING, who has experienced being, never justifies any behavior or any attitude. One simply sees what is at the moment seems right or proper because of the situation of what is and what is of value in it. Agape is understanding the other person; it is understanding the person that one has been, all the conditioned states. One has love, AGAPE. It has also been called, “one has charity.” I think it was the writer Paul, one great teacher, in addressing some communications to his students, said: Even though he did all the wonderful things in the world and had all manners of gifts, he had the gift of healing, he had the gift of prophecy, could foretell and speak out great truths, and that even though he practiced all manner of giving such as even giving his body to be used for research or for being burned up as a sacrifice, that if he had all these things and he could speak in the tongues of men and angels and he could speak every known language in the world, that if he had all of that and did not experience AGAPE, he was as tinkling brass, worthless little tinkling bell, some little ornament that hangs in the wind to chime just for amusement. Because without this AGAPE, without experiencing it and really having all the ways of living it, experiencing it and being it, one is as nothing.
SELF-KNOWING is the one thing a person can do. The other three ideas are something that one experiences as an outcome of self-knowing over a long period of time and over a period of valuing. However, they are the very fundamentals of the Teaching. SELF-KNOWING, FAITH, GRACE and LOVE. And that love is not the love of the world, which is tolerance. That grace is not having something to say when things didn’t go well such as, “It is the will of God.” It does not say that God is a capricious being. And faith is the ability to make up ones mind, the ability to see the fact and the value of the fact without any clutter of what ought to be or what should have been or what should be or what is the right thing. It sees what is with what light one has and sees the value of it with what light one has. As one continues self-knowing, one is having more and more light. The self was completely dark, was an unexamined, unexplored area. Using self-knowing, self-observation, one has thrown a light on that self that is constantly trying to be non-disturbed and is in conflict as how to gain that with the various methods of complaining, pleasing, putting on a front, blaming or what have you. This is beginning to throw a light into the self. So the more light one has the more one experiences various things. Now the first thing that one experiences, and this is called the spiritual experiences, the first spiritual experience, the one that really starts one on the way to being a new person, being a new man, is from self-awareness.
1. The first one is called confession. It has nothing to do with telling someone where you didn’t fit some ideal. It means to confess to X, and only to X, by self-observation. I is observing the self and reports accurately to X what is going on; this is confession. It recognizes that the self is in a state of conflict. It confesses or reports what is there.
2. The next spiritual experience that one may experience is that of SURRENDER. Surrender is to surrender the will of the self. The will of the self is to be non-disturbed and to set up ideals. I has been very identified with it. There is a great temptation for I to identify with this ideal of being non-disturbed. But as one continues in self-observation, confession takes place, and every time one sees something that is going on in the self one is experiencing confession. Then there is a surrender of the will, of the urge to be identified with mammon, the non-disturbance idea, the ideal of the world. One surrenders one’s attachment to the world. It is not an act of will. It is an act of self-observation that results in an experience of surrender. You know we all think we can do many things. We think we can walk but actually all we can do is see a place to walk to and the value of walking there or the good of it and X does the walking; and it is the same thing in these various spiritual experiences.
3. The third spiritual experience one experiences is REPENTANCE. Repentance is from a Greek word meaning turnabout or about-face. One has been tempted, always, to identify with the self, with the ideals, with the world. One sees the fallacy of that. One has been serving mammon and one suddenly sees the value of serving X by observing what’s going on and reporting it and of valuing. One begins a growth of the inner being, I begins to grow and establish a spiritual body where heretofore it had a distorted body that was given to it, you might say that it had picked up here and there in bits and pieces. So one has turned about. One has ceased to serve mammon and sees what is, that one is the awareness function of Spirit and sees the value in being aware. When one experiences repentance one finds that self-observing, self-awareness is almost continual and that it does not require and act of will as it did when we started. One sees that it is really the only true value is to serve the King, X; and one has experienced repentance. Now any effort to do that on one’s will is only a bit of vanity sticking around. It can’t be done but it can be experienced, one experiences repentance.
4. When one has experienced repentance, surrender and confession, then one experiences BAPTISM, baptism with light, a baptism that is a cleansing, that cleans the heart. We have talked one time, that out of the heart of man proceeds all manner of things that defile the man and that only those of a pure heart and a clean heart could see God. One experiences the heart being cleansed, cleansed of mammon, the struggle toward the ideal of being non-disturbed. One experiences being washed of the urge for self-improvement on all the six levels. One finds one washed of resentment. One finds one washed of all these accounts receivable against everyone. One is washed and the heart is clean. It is not something that can be done by being dipped in water or any other substance. One experiences it as one is being obedient to X and is practicing self-observation and it follows closely behind confession, surrender, and repentance.
When one has undergone and has experienced these four great spiritual experiences, not tried to do them artificially by an act of the will, which is only vanity, then one is a new man. One started at being a new man when one begins to observe self. One awakened and began the task of self observation, which has led to where we are discussing a new man. And the new man really sees everything differently. He sees obstructions as valuable, he sees discomfort as valuable information to allow him to check up as to where he might be in a state of stress, whether from the environment, inner feeling, activity or nutrition. He sees it as a signal, as a speaking of X that he is being talked to. Rather than try to numb his sensibilities so that he can no longer hear X talk, he is very thankful. When there is any obstruction, which we have referred to as second force, any resistance to his expectations, he is immediately reminded that this is of great value because it has been making him expect again toward the ideal. He sees that he was about to be drawn towards it. And as he begins to be in this state, one sees everything as being some degree of truth. Everything is what is and then he sees it as having some degree of value. Certainly some things are more valuable to him, at the moment, than others. Another one may be more valuable at another moment. He reports moment to moment, what is and what is the good of this particular what is.
This brings about an entirely different state of being. He has a different attitude now, an attitude of being thankful, an attitude of appreciation, an attitude of being at one with X, as being truly an expression of X. Being the awareness function of X he sees all as what is as being true and all of it as having value. So the cross is always there and an appropriate action takes place for him.
He has the attitude of being thankful, glad and pleased of being a privileged being to have all these great privileges. This, of course, brings about a different behavior. There is no conflict, no struggle with his fellow man. There’s no struggle within because there is no conflict within. He’s been washed of that and seeing everything without the conflict. It is not something one can do. One experiences seeing differently, and of course, as one sees differently one experiences a new attitude and one experiences a brand new behavior. All is new. The old has passed away. A man is a new creature. He experiences, of course, a whole new state of being, a state of vital interest or above, some where’s along the way. Everything is interesting, everything is vital and there isn’t anything that he sees as bad, wrong, improper and unjustifiable. He merely sees what is right and proper for the moment as to what is and what is good or true or valuable about it and his whole state of being is entirely different. So he experiences a new state of being.
1. This new state of being is the experiencing of AGAPE. That is experiencing love, understanding both of what he formerly was, and of what everyone around him is and what’s going on in every relationship. This is being aware, awake, and is understanding it. There is no sense of criticism because in criticism one has to have the ideal to compare to. Did you ever stop to notice that you cannot disapprove of anything, you can not criticize unless you are criticizing something not fitting an ideal?
2. So then one is in a state of love and it is expressed as CONSIDERATION for all beings. To be considerate is to see what is going on and see that the person couldn’t be doing any different from what they’re doing. They feel they are right, proper or justified, and one would treat them accordingly.
3. One is HARMLESS to all beings. One doesn’t try to help, which is to look down on them. It is very easy to go out and be a helper, try to raise people up to some ideal. But it is much more difficult and requires considerable awareness based on long periods of self-observation and continual self-observation to be harmless. To be harmless is to consider that everyone is capable and never treat anyone as though they are incapable of at least being aware, and one treats them accordingly. One can experience being harmless. One cannot figure it out with logic and reason.
4. And then one makes a CONTRIBUTION because one loves all life and one understands it. There is a contribution; at least there is a contribution to a pleasant harmonious mood, which is a very considerable contribution. A contribution one experiences by observing that it is the natural outcome of AGAPE. Then one experiences GRACE and one experiences FAITH; then one is understanding the Teaching, ONE IS THE TEACHNG. One has seen it by experimentation and one has seen its value. Then one no longer uses the Teaching but is the Teaching.
We will continue to observe self. We will also notice, as we experience these various spiritual experiences, we’ll experience being a new man; how the new man grows like everything else in this organic world, it grows. Being in that entirely new state of being which has been referred to as a New World or a New Heaven or a New Earth or the Kingdom of Heaven; it grows also. You know the Christ said that while John the Baptist was the greatest of men born of woman and the greatest of men in the world, he was less than the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. So one can grow in the KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.
Copyright © 1973 by Rhondell. All rights reserved. This material is for an individual student’s personal use; it is not to be duplicated or loaned to another.
