Lesson 23
For as long as we have records of any kind and as far as traditions, myths and stories go, the Teaching or the Work has always been available for man. It has generally been in the form of parallels, parables, fairy stories etc., things that anyone could read and may or may not get anything other than a little entertainment or might have found them incomprehensible or possibly decision number 5, the one that says the whole purpose of living is to be non-disturbed by putting on a different front, by appearing to be different, and they use these ideas for putting on a different behavior or different front. Now always when the Teaching is alive, when there is an active instructor around the parallels are used, but also specific people are given specific instructions as to what the parallels refer to. Of course, this is called Teaching from lip to ear. We are using that method at this moment even though we are using the media of recorded tapes, it is still from speaker to a specific individual who is given the inner meaning of many of these little stories and parallels that are in many, many places. One may have these parallels at ones command that have a tremendously rich meaning, one that could be a continual source of instruction to one if one understood the meaning of the stories.
There is a story told of a man who lived in South Africa who had a little farm on which he was trying to farm and produce crops on. But the soil was so very rocky and unproductive that he finally decided to go to a city and seek his fortune and find an easier way to make a living. After a number of years someone who knew about little rocks and various things came across this particular farm and found that the rocks, which the farmer had cursed and found of no value, were diamonds. It was the beginning of the great diamond mining industry of South Africa. Whether the story is true or not, no one knows. It is a very common story and illustrates very wonderfully the fact that we have so many things of great value to us. By taking them literally, as the farmer took them as rocks not seeing their inner structure, their inner meaning, one passes over much that is of great, great value to one’s development of their inner state, the development of a spiritual body.
Outer life is really a parable of the inner state. There are many of these little stories that relate to simple everyday incidents or describe something that one doesn’t see. Up until a very few years ago the study of the inner state of man was taboo, has been for many, many long years. The reason being that all the so-called spiritual writings and material came into the hands of institutions. Institutions insisted that the meaning of all these parables was really the moral code and that it related to one’s outward behavior. Their interest was in people behaving differently, in being shall we say domesticated, that they would believe and do as they were told, would obey and would be what is called “good” compared to the ideals of the world. This was the intent. So any effort to study the inner state of man was considered heresy and was subject to severe penalties. So little stories began to be told that could still carry on the inner meaning of these. There might be fairy tales that told about miraculous creatures, about a sleeping princess, that a prince of some sort came to and when he kissed her she awakened. Or stories about people who had had spells cast upon them and believing that they were somewhat limited, of evil spells cast on them by witches, sorcerers etc. and always some sort of a prince would come by and break the spell. Now we saw these as fairy tales and the children read them and the grownups seldom saw any value in them.
There was a whole system of chemistry called alchemy that was not particularly interested chemistry, however some discoveries were made and are possibly the forerunner of modern chemistry but their ideas as far as chemistry were concerned were preposterous. What they were really attempting to do under the guise of making gold out of base metal, finding the elixir of life, or forming something called the philosopher’s stone, was really to take a base conditioned man and turn him into a fully objective conscious man. They did all this under the symbols of chemistry as it was known in those ancient days. Other groups tried to teach by using the tools and the forming of buildings, schools of buildings and the various forms of architecture; they taught under this symbol. In the mean time they built some very beautiful and wonderful buildings and many are still standing. If one knows how to read the various symbols they put in the buildings one can read the same things of the Teaching over and over again. It was also used many times in agricultural ideas, that here was the whole parallel of planting, cultivating, harvesting, getting rid of weeds, and many other things. Agriculture is not a popular subject to most people today; we are more interested in industry, electronics, etc. So obviously many of these old symbols are only seen as being the talk of an ancient pastoral people that really doesn’t relate to us today. It was also used in commercial fishing, the gathering of many fish, catching them, throwing out the evil ones which we have remarked somewhat about of seeing that the personality had everything in it, that some of it might be useful but all the trashy stuff is thrown out. Today we can be more direct and concise as to what they mean because psychology is a popular subject today.
Phrases that were used 1,200 to 4,000 years ago sometimes seem rather strange unless one is aware of what these people were talking about and how they used various symbols as a parallel for the inner state of man, the conditioned state of man. As we said, there was a long dark age of the study because the institutions had power. They had a stranglehold on all information and only gave out what they wanted to. It seems to be really a revival of the old Scribes and Pharisees. It’s all concerned with outward behavior, with outward form, with being good. Nothing was concerned with being conscious because a conscious man is not under control. A conscious man is a free man, and, of course, an institution sees a free man as a heretic. Not all of that effort is dead until this day. However, the institutions don’t have the power they once had, only over a few million today which is still a lot when we stop to think about it.
We will read one of these little parallels so that one can see how it is constantly being referred to. It gives one the possibility of having continual instructions so one does not have to depend upon a Teacher or an instructor or any kind of a guide. That there is adequate material about one that one may use when one understands the inner meaning of this material. We will read from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament chapter 6, verses 22 through 24. It reads: “The lamp of the body is the eye.” Eye is singular, it doesn’t say the eyes. “If thy eye be sound thy whole body will be full of light. But if thy eye be evil thy whole body will be full of darkness. Therefore, if the light that is in thee is darkness, how great is the darkness itself. No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will stand by the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Now let’s take as a reference point the picture of man we drew some time ago. It might be more advantageous to redraw it. The center section is the AWARENESS. The awareness was referred to as the inner EYE or the third eye at one time. It was considered to be blind in the usual conditioned man. The third eye is closed, blind, unused, evil, contaminated. It may have rock in it; it may have salt in it. At any rate the person cannot see. So the eye is the awareness factor that sees that which is true, what is and the value of what is. Or else it sees what is, and when it is contaminated, when it is conditioned it then sees what ought to be as the ideal and that is what has value and there is no connection between the two. There is struggle, conflict and resistance to change what is into what one thinks what ought to be. In this case the eye is considered to be dark or evil and the awareness is the only light that is in one. The light means that which sees relationship, that which comprehends all the situations about one. So, “If thy eye be evil the whole body will be full of darkness.” Now we have the picture of man that is taken over by the four dual basic urges and the six means of self-improvement, three in one camp and three in another, and they are at war and this is considered to be evil. The word evil doesn’t mean in the usual case of bad as an opposite to good. It means something in a state of contamination, something not serving the purpose for which it is designed. The awareness is designed to see what is and what is valuable about what is on a varying scale. However, here it is not seeing; it is evil, it is dark it is blind, it is conditioned and our picture of man shows what it is that makes it dark. It is what “_I_,” I with a line dawn under it, observe when it is observing self. The light has been contaminated and turned into a “self” instead of awareness. It says the whole body will be full of darkness. In other words one is unaware of the whole nature of what goes on.
We have been talking about what happens when one has expectations that everything should fit the ideal, then when the actual what is comes along which gives one an opportunity to evolve, one sees it as bad, one then is disappointed, feels hurt and looks for blame. Then one gets the unpleasant emotions of anger, guilt, fear, insecurity and all their many subdivisions which is a state of stress which is being mobilized to fight or run. The body is in a state of chemical imbalance and neuromuscular tension. Then an adaptation has to take place. That is in the form of unusual cellular activity, unusual sensation and unusual action of the cell. In other words a change or alteration in the tissue cell itself. We don’t know what is going on, we blame disease for having attacked a person. We want to stop all of it. We never consider that it is a signal so darkness fills the entire body.
It says, “If thy eye be sound thy whole body will be full of light,” full of understanding, seeing what is. That is the picture of man when I stands in the middle of the awareness function. It has a spiritual body and that body is full of light, that body is based upon experimentation with the ideas of the Teaching. With allowing various experiences to come into being, being fully aware that one cannot confess, surrender, repent or be baptized by some act of will but that it is an experiencing that comes from observing this self, this darkness. I the observer is throwing a light through all that dark area and one is beginning to understand conflict, one is being cleansed of many conflicts. One is seeing what is of some value and what is totally without value; sees that which is very harmful and X casts it out. So one is being filled with light. The whole purpose of I observing the self is to be filled with light. It is to heal the blind because the awareness function of man was totally blind.
It says, “No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other or stand by one and despise the other.” The four dual basic urges is the master when man is in a conditioned state, when he has not observed self over a long period of time. As you have kept records, and as you continue to do, you’ll see that there is the constant temptation, which we have been studying for the past few weeks, to identify, to agree, or to allow mammon to agree with us. The four dual basic urges referred to here is mammon. And, of course, all of the means of self-improvement which are three on the A side and three on B, which are ever at war with each other. This is to be in the dark and to serve the master mammon; everything concerned with it is misery. It is why you see the tremendous amount of illness, why you see so much conflict, so much violence in the world.
When one serves mammon, one is serving the ideal that the whole purpose of living is to be nondisturbed. Then one practices self-improvement on self and tries to improve other selves who resent it. Then comes the blaming down the way when things don’t work right. When blaming we always feel ready for violence because blaming goes back to that expectation that if we blame them they will apologize, straighten up, pay their accounts payable to us and will begin to be different and do what they ought to do. But the other persons has exactly the same thing within them and so then there are fights, lawsuits, contention and maybe even wars. Maybe they are little bush wars in Southeast Asia or eastern Asia, maybe in the Near East or maybe world wars. Whatever it is, it is only an expression of that inner state of man that is serving mammon. Whether it is millions on one side and millions on the other makes no difference because the picture of man, as we have seen, is the picture of any organization. It can be the picture of an army, a nation. It is also the picture of the whole world. The picture of man is the master parable of this day because it shows what is going on, how each came into being, how two great nations in it were formed.
In the ancient days of the book we are looking at now, A was called the Gentile nation because they were struggling to have their way, stick up for their rights and blame. B was called the Jewish nation because they were living by rules and regulations, thou shalt, thou shalt not, behaving differently, trying to please people and they were believing and doing as they were told by their authorities, the Scribes and Pharisees.
So we see this same situation goes on through the years. As one begins to understand this parable of the picture of man, which is being referred to here as the inner eye, the third eye, the aspect of inner comprehension, we are seeing that it is not only related to one person but to everyone. That all have it until one observes that self to see it. Then one has stepped out of the world, has stepped into the world of real living beings and out of the manmade world which is mammon’s world. It says that mammon has charge over that entire world. Man ceases to serve mammon because he is no longer interested in the four dual basic urges, not because he is taught to do so but because by careful experimentation of observing he sees that every act to serve mammon results in conflict, struggle, resistance and disintegration. But mammon entices one to struggle toward an illusion, an illusion that cannot be unless one be dead because one is going to experience all degrees of sensation. The more conscious one is the more sensations and vibrations in the world around one, one experiences. Not all of them would be classified as pleasant. In fact, one would be in severe danger if one only experienced the pleasant sensations.
So as one observes this one observes the inner eye, the comprehension faculty, the awareness. It has also been called the soul and today we refer to it as the psyche, which is the Greek word for soul. We see that as we study the psyche we then see it undergoes a transformation from an area of darkness to being filled with light. The only way it can have that light is from the light of self-observation which is like I holding a flashlight and throws it on all these dark areas which are from conditioning of which the person is unaware of. As one observes serving mammon one very easily sees that one’s purpose is to be a conscious reporter to X of what is and the value of what is. One sees that the ideas that mammon holds out are illusions and that pursuing those illusions has one in a constant state of struggle, conflict and resistance.
Have you been through the state of trying to make a decision? A gives many reasons to do it one way and B giving many reasons to do it another. One calls this, trying to make a decision. You may have experienced, at least in some areas by now, that when you see something you see it so completely there is no choice. There is only the “what is” and the “value of what is” and X acts upon it. There is no struggle with choice. There is no going through all the agony of trying to come to a conclusion and convince one that one has free agency or free choice. Of course, the whole idea of free choice implies that one is already in a conflict. However, we find that the idea of free choice is rather an illusion. That finally we never come to a conclusion but circumstances push a button and there is a reaction and we say, “Oh yes, I decided to do it that way.” Then if it doesn’t turn out to be non-disturbing one says, “I don’t see why I ever did that. I don’t know what came over me to make me do that.” So you see, mammon says to deny responsibility. The only responsibility one truly has is to be aware of what is and see the value of it. X does all the work.
One cannot do anything. One cannot open this eye. But by being aware one throws a light in it and that whole spiritual body called awareness in the picture of man begins to be strong, clear and filled with light. When the spiritual body is filled with light, light meaning conscious observation, conscious awareness, not reaction, not conditioning, then one sees that there is no choice to be made. One sees so clearly and so completely as to what is and its relative value that action is spontaneous, X immediately acts upon it. This is called spontaneous living. It a joyful state of existence.
So may we recommend that you take these words that we just read, verses 22 through 24, the 6th chapter of Mathew, write them down and put the picture of man beside it. Refer to it a number of times through the week so that one knows what the inner eye really is, the comprehension, the seeing. One can begin to see whether one still has dirt in one’s eye or whether one’s eye is clean. If it is clean the whole body if filled full of light. If it is injured, malfunctioning due to dirt of conditioning in it, it, of course, cannot function adequately. Write the words and to the side of it put the picture of man with all the conditioning in it on one side. On the other side put the one with the conditioning having been observed and rendered inoperative, removed by X.
One sees entirely differently. ONE SEES WHETHER ONE IS SERVING MAMMON, OR TEMPTED TO SERVE MAMMON, OR WHETHER ONE IS SERVING X, SPIRIT, LIFE.
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.
