Chapter 2

Getting This, You Have All

We are learning much of late of the finer forces of the universe and of life. The law underlying the finer forces that has made the radio possible, or rather our apprehension of that law, indicates still finer forces that we are yet to apprehend, understand, and formulate in terms of law.

Can we state the Master’s fundamental teaching in the terms of law? Through our continually enlarging knowledge of the finer forces of the universe, within us and about us, the law can be stated in this form: The realisation of the real Self — as the indwelling spirit of Life — brings about the condition wherein the individual life becomes a focal-point, and in turn a centre of the Universal Life force. Becoming thus attuned to it, it takes to itself, in an ever-increasing degree, its qualities and its powers, and becomes thereby an ever-increasing centre of creative force and power.

It was that eminent English Churchman, Archdeacon Wilberforce, who said: ‘The secret of optimism is the mental effort to abide in conscious oneness with the Supreme Power, the Infinite Immanent Mind evolving a perfect purpose . . . .Our slow-moving minds may be long in recognising it, and our unspiritual lives may seem to contradict it; but deep in the centre of the being of every man there is a divine self to be awakened, a ray of God’s life which Paul calls “the Christ in you.” Jesus is the embodiment of the universal principle of the immanence of God in man. Thus is Jesus the “Mediator,” or uniting medium between God and man.

‘The principle of what is called Christianity is the immanence of our Father-God in humanity; the fact that individual men are separate items in a vast solidarity in which Infinite Mind is expressing Himself. Jesus has shown us what the ideal is to which that principle will lead . . . . The mystic Christ will win us here or hereafter. To find him within us now, to let him conquer us now, to recognise him as Emmanuel, God with us, God for us, God in us, is the secret and the soul of spiritual progress.’

It was the divinity of man that the Master revealed — the true reality of man — in distinction from the degradation of man. This it was that he realised in himself, and that he pleaded with all men to realise in themselves.

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RALPH WALDO TRINE

THE MAN WHO KNEW

It is a life foundation that will never have to shift its base in order to conform to an advancing knowledge or science. It is true to the best that our modern psychology is finding. If a child or a man is taught and believes that he is a worm of the dust, he will act as a worm of the dust. If he is taught, really taught, that he is a child of God, he will live and act as a child of God.

One of the greatest educators in the world’s history, Froebel, built his entire educational system, as it is given in that great book, “The Education of Man,” upon this truth.

In fact, the pith, the fundamental principle of his entire life, thought and teaching, is epitomised in his following brief statement: ‘It is the destiny and life-work of all things to unfold their essence, hence their divine being, and, therefore, the Divine Unity itself — to reveal God in their external and transient being. It is the special destiny and life-work of man, as an intelligent and rational being, to become fully, vividly, and clearly conscious of his essence, of the divine effluence in him, and, therefore, of God.’

The Master concerned himself but little with externals. He perceived and taught that the springs of life are all from within. As is the inner, therefore, so always will be the outer.

Therefore get right at the Centre, and life — the whole of life — will flow forth in an orderly and satisfactory manner. This is the natural and the normal way of living. Anything else is a perversion, and there is no satisfaction in it. Love that higher life, that life of God that is within you. Realise it as the Source of your life. And again I say, ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’ And again I repeat, lest you forget, ‘The Kingdom of God is within you.’

There is a definite law that operates here; otherwise there would be no truth in the Master’s oft-repeated statement or injunction. His wonderful aptitude for discerning the things of the spirit, the fundamental laws of life, enabled him to apprehend it, to live it, to reveal and to teach it.

It is for us to know then that the Infinite Spirit of Life and Power illumines, and works in and through the individual life, when in our thought we become in tune with it, and realise it as the life and the power within us. The Infinite, the Central, power is always working; but we must definitely and consciously make contact with it in order that it may illumine, radiate, and work through us.

If the Master, with his wonderful insight and understanding, said, ‘Of myself I can do nothing,’ how can we expect, if we believe his word at all, to attain our highest unless we realise this same fact, and live likewise in the realisation of the oneness of our life with the Father’s life — the Divine rule, the Kingdom of God within us?

So essential, so fundamental is this, that some of his most striking parables are set forth to emphasise it, so that it will be made to grip out minds, and to sink into our consciences. The Kingdom of God is, in his mind, the one all inclusive thing.

It is the pearl, he said, the pearl of great price. The merchant is seeking goodly pearls. He finds one of great value; and he goes immediately, sells all that he has, and buys it.

The Way that the Master taught is more a Way of Life than a religion. At the same time it is the very essence of religion, for the essence of all religion is the conscious- ness of God in the mind and the soul of man. It was this that he so clearly taught.

Reduced to its lowest and simplest terms, the Master’s teaching might be stated: get right within, and all of your outward acts will then take care of themselves.

If we miss this great revelation of the Master — that to love God is to realise this inner Divine life within us, to open ourselves to it, and to live always under its guidance and its care; and its component part, that of love for the neighbour — we miss the very essence and heart of his revelation to the world.

We can hear him say: Love and live under the guidance of that higher life — the God life that is within you. When you do this you will realise it as the source of your neighbour’s life — of all other men — therefore, all men are your brothers. Then kindness, sympathy, mutuality, co-operation, born of love, will be the guide and the watchword in all of your relations. And because this is the law of the universe, it will become the way of self-interest, as well.

Under this law of life and conduct will come the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth; but it comes in the lives of men and women first, then it blossoms and brings in the Kingdom of Heaven upon the earth. I have realised this, and now am revealing it unto you. If you believe what I say, and do as I say, then are you my disciples. . . .

The religion of the Master is not subscribing to any beliefs, or any statement or formulated statements, about him. It is listening to him, and giving obedience when he says, ‘Follow me.’

Try as we will, we cannot, if honest with ourselves, get away from his teaching of the Kingdom, that puts us in right relations, in tune, if you will, with the Centre of life — that for each man and each woman is within.

When a man finds this new, this real, Centre of life, by realising his real relation with his God, he is brought, and automatically as it were, into right relations with his fellow men; and with this there comes a new motive into his life. Instead of striving as heretofore, working and gathering merely for himself — for his own little self alone and thereby missing happiness and satisfaction — he now becomes a co-worker with God, and in the service of his fellow men. Through this and this alone come happiness and satisfaction.

It is this new light, this new motive, that is animating increasing numbers of our men and women of great wealth and executive ability today. It is one of the notable characteristics of our time. Moreover, the vast amount of good that they are doing is wonderful. Some of them are becoming really great. The Master new the law that is written deep in the universe when he said: ‘He that is greatest among you, let him be your servant.’

And how much he had to say of love! And how definite and clear-cut were his statements. ‘By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.’

That no one can live in hate and be a follower of the Christ is set forth as follows: ‘If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’ And to his disciples he said: ‘A new commandment I give you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.’ And notice the new spirit that he brings: ‘Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which de-spitefully use you, and persecute you.’

He was so independent in his teaching — though sometimes teaching in the temple — that it incurred the enmity of the established ecclesiastical powers. It was revolutionary to them, who said that the proper access of man to God was through them, through their carefully constructed ecclesiastical system.

He was looked upon by them as a stirrer-up of the people. Moreover, his teachings were beginning to spread tremendously. He trod upon tradition, and in so doing he set at naught their self-claimed authority in religion.

It is valuable also to remember that the only people he ever really condemned were representatives of this very class. For the sinner he had always infinite pity and compassion, but not for them. Hear his words: ‘Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness . . . .Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.’

This angered them the more, for they saw the danger of his truth to their institution and to themselves. They sought, and then devised a means to kill him, that they might, as they thought, check his truth. But he had brought a great truth into the world, and he would not be silenced.

He foresaw his fate, but he did not shrink from it. His vision and his knowledge of men were so great, that he realised and even said: ‘And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.’ He understood so thoroughly the psychology of human nature.

He longed to escape the penalty; but he did not hesitate to give his life if need be as a ransom for the truth that he had perceived, and lived, and brought to the world. He was lifted up on a cross — for crucifixion was the regular Roman method of putting to death — but the same love that he lived and taught, he preserved to the end — ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ And finally — ‘It is finished’ — glad that the work that was given him to do was finished, and would, he felt, triumph.

The specific reasons, or rather ‘charges,’ the way he met them, the way that he seemed actually to court death and the way he met it, and what he said it meant to him, and his life message, will be dealt with briefly later.

So he was put to death by the Roman authorities, at the instigation of a little group of the Jewish hierarchy, who, entrenched in ecclesiastical power, fearing for their own authority and safety, were the worst enemies of their own and his own people. And we must never forget that Jesus, in common with all his disciples, lived, taught, and died a Jew.

He was put to death by this group, for which the Jewish people as a race should be held no more responsible than the American people should be held responsible for the death of Lincoln, because he met death through the conspiracy of a little group of Americans. Or again, anymore than all of Christendom should be held responsible for the death of great numbers of the Master’s true and loyal and
equally brave followers, who, because they followed his teachings and lived his life as they understood them, were put to death by a similar hierarchy, who likewise feared for the institution and for their own authority and power.

The early Church of the Disciples was essentially a Jewish body. It was composed primarily of those who realised that the young Rabbi from Nazareth, whom they now acknowledged as their Master, had brought a new message of life, the life and the power of the Spirit, in distinction from a lifeless system of formalism. And it was the message of life that be brought, the message of a larger and a fuller life. This we must conclude if we catch the real spirit of his words: ‘I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.

It was clearly his initial and his consistent purpose to reveal God to man; in doing so he revealed man to himself. The established system of his day, as well as that which followed him, took man’s pedigree from Adam. Jesus takes his pedigree from God. He realises, as never man realised, the God, the Divine life within him. And then he taught that this is the real life of every man, and it is for all men to know and to realise it. Otherwise there would be but little meaning to his words: ‘Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.’ Likewise to his words: ‘As I am ye shall be.’

So in substance he says: If you are my disciple, my follower, you will follow me, and come into the realisation of your life in the Father, and the same filial relations with the Father that I have come into.

All men, he taught, are sons of God; but the secret lies here — one must consciously and vividly realise this, and then live continually in this consciousness, in order that it may bring the guidance, the force, and the power into one’s life that he said it would bring.

You must be born from above, his teaching said. This is the new birth, this consciousness of God in the soul. If it is real it will permeate and remould your entire life. Do this, and experience for yourself what a sense of direction and of power, what a sense of peace and joy and satisfaction comes to you.

. . . .My parable of the lost son shows you how empty and barren and unsatis- factory life becomes when it is lived purely in the external. The things that pertain to the body and the bodily senses alone, cannot satisfy. The real life lies deeper: It is to master and to rule the body and the things that pertain to it, and not to be mastered, or even enslaved by it; otherwise there are always heavy penalties to pay.

. . . .It is this that the younger son of my story, or parable, eventually finds to be true. When he finally comes to himself, and realises the misery, the degradation of both mind and body that the purely sense life has brought him to, he longs then to go back to his father’s house.

. . . .As soon as he forsakes his evil ways, the penalty of violated law ceases, and the father’s forgiveness is instant. The estrangement is over, and love and forgiveness are of the very nature of the father. There are no sacrifices, no burnt offerings, no substitutions required. . . .

It is required simply to repent of our sins and errors, to realise our ignorant blunders, to turn from them, and to acknowledge and to give allegiance to that Divine life within, which will then assume the mastery, and which will raise life from the poor, mean, pitiable thing it so often is, to the high-born thing it not only can be but must be, in order to be happy and satisfactory.

It was truth that Jesus taught, not system. When we know the teachings of Jesus, in distinction from those about him, we find no system at all, much less any intricate system that bewilders or perplexes, that leads away from or obscures the fundamental truth that he taught, or that makes it more difficult to follow him.

So, The Way that Jesus taught — the religion if you like — is both Godward and manward. God is our father, and if Divine, then His divinity lives in us. We manifest our love for Him when we let the consciousness of this Divine life unfold and develop and dominate our lives. We then realise that this same life is the life in our fellows; and that when we know our real relation to them, it is that we are brothers.

And so there is no complex system, or anything that could possibly be called a system; that can truthfully be evolved from his twofold fundamental of love to God, and love for our fellow men. It is simply: love God, that Divine life within you; then the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, will direct you and lead you. Do this, and then do not worry about your life. There is nothing to fear. Only trust.

As you do this, then faith and hope and courage grow and dominate, and become the creative and moulding forces in your life. Love your neighbour. Love him as friend and brother, for you are all children of the same father — partakers of the same Divine life.

Then is your life raised from that uncertain, fearing, doubting thing that it so often is, to one of trust and courage and conquering power.

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RALPH WALDO TRINE

THE MAN WHO KNEW

To become centred in the Infinite, to go about our daily life and work, making contact with the very Source of wisdom and power, knowing that in God’s life we are now living and there we shall live forever, above happenings and fears and forebodings, is the greatest gift that can come to any man, and this is the gift that the supreme Way-shower brought to the world.