Chapter 5

He Called it ‘The Way’

The Way of the Master is indeed a wonderful way if we will but understand what he meant. God is love, he taught, and love is the very essence of God. God to him was Father, the term that he so continually uses. The Father cares for him and reveals Himself to him, because he seeks to know and to do, and in doing reveals the Father’s will.

He trusts the Father, and the Father enlightens him. He trusts the Father, and the Father cares for him. Through his mind in the attitude of desire and trust, he lives in a filial relationship with the Father, and the Father responds to his every desire and need.

My Father who loves me and cares for me, is your Father who loves you and cares for you. It is for all men to realise this and come into the same filial relationship with the Father. Life is hard and uncertain, filled with fears and forebodings. It should not be so. It is not the natural order of life. Instead of being estranged from God, we should draw nigh to God. God rules in the world and on the earth, and replenishes the earth, but always through established laws. God lives and rules in the life of man; but He does this through the channel of man’s mind. This is the law - the established law.

The things we see and feel get their being, in form, from the creative force that is their mainspring. It is the creative force which man calls God that gives form to his body and that shapes his world — his individual world. Were it withdrawn, or were anything to interfere sufficiently with its functioning, the body would become an inert mass, dead, as we say, and likewise his individual world. So the life of individual man, the individual tributary, opens out into the great sea of life, which is its source.

To know that the individual life and its Power are one with the Infinite Spirit of life and power, enlarges one’s consciousness and gives a larger reception from the Source for that life. It was the flood-gate of this larger reservoir of life that, with his supreme aptitude for discerning the things of the mind and the spirit, the Master opened; and it so flooded his own understanding of life, that it pushed him out as a revealer of this larger truth of life to all who would hear and believe his word. It was a great intuitive perception or consciousness which opened the knowledge of this life to the Way-shower.

Speaking of this larger life, and of Jesus who perceived and who revealed it so completely, it was that highly illumined philosopher, Fichte, who said: ‘An insight into the absolute unity of the human existence with the Divine is certainly the profoundest knowledge that man can attain. . . . Jesus of Nazareth undoubtedly possessed the highest perception containing the foundation of all other truth, of the absolute identity of humanity with the Godhead, as regards what is essentially real in the former.’

And how clear-cut and, coming from such a source, how convincing is his thought in his conclusion: ‘From the first standing-point the Eternal Word becomes flesh, assumes a personal, sensible, and human existence, without obstruction or reserve, in all times, and in every individual man who has a living insight into his unity with God, and who actually and in truth gives up his personal life to the Divine Life within him — precisely in the same way as it became incarnate in Jesus.’

Significant also in this same connection are these words of Swedenborg, that highly gifted scientist and seer: ‘There is only one Fountain of life, and the life of man is a stream therefrom, which, if it were not continually replenished from its source, would instantly cease to flow. . . . Every created thing is in itself inanimate and dead, but it is animated and caused to live by this, that the Divine is in it and that it exists in and from the Divine.’

Kindred in his thought is that of the beloved philosopher, Rudolf Eucken, late of Jena. Whenever he deals with Christianity he makes it plain that it is this alive and vital Christianity of the Way-shower, the Christ of Galilee, in distinction from the Christianity of the creeds and dogmas of the past. To a purport almost identical with the fundamental thought of Fichte — that the Divine Life and energy actually lives in us, is inseparable from religion — Eucken has said: ‘Religion is not merely a belief in some supreme Power, nor do I consider it to be the establishment of relations of any kind between this supreme Power and ourselves. It is an inner identification with it and the creation of a new life through it. . . . The union of the Divine and human nature is the fundamental truth of religion, and its deepest mystery consists in the fact that the Divine enters into·the compass of the Human without impairing its Divinity. With this new phase, life is completely renewed and elevated. Man becomes immediately conscious of the infinite and eternal, of that within him which transcends the world. For the first time the love of God becomes the ruling motive of his life, and brings him into an inner relation with the whole scope of reality. . . . It is here that we find a new self, our true spiritual self.

29

RALPH WALDO TRINE

THE MAN WHO KNEW

‘The cleavage in the depth of our souls is bridged over at last. That inner estrangement, so often felt, has disappeared and the whole universe is now part of regenerate man’s experience. That feeling of isolation disappears, which so often depressed us, and we are conscious of partaking in that “inner life” common to all of us. I cannot conceive of the development of a powerful personality, a deep-rooted and profound mind, or a character rising above this world, without his having experienced this divine life. . . . That is what I believe to be the character of Christianity.’

Emerson epitomises his conclusion in regard to the Master in brief and clear-cut form: ‘Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in me and you. He saw that God incarnates Himself in man, and ever more goes forth anew to take possession of the world.’

All of the men just quoted were staunch seekers after and revealers of truth, free and independent in their thought. No one of them was the representative of any system or institution or dogma, and that is one of the chief reasons why they all stand so high in the estimation of thinking men and women everywhere. That is why their thought is of real value in light and help.

Seeking for truth with unbiased minds, they found it in simple clear-cut form, and gave it expression in similar form. Their reception and understanding of truth were, on the one hand, similar to those of Jesus. On the other hand, their finding and understanding of Jesus were no part of any perplexing or mystifying system that he himself would so thoroughly condemn, even as he condemned the self-seeking purveyors of system woven around and strangling the truth of the prophets before him.

So deeply was his righteous soul stirred by the system that he found in vogue in his time, giving stones for bread, empty formulas instead of truth — for power, or self-show, or money — that he did not restrain himself.

Speaking in very articulate form, either of or to the expounders of ecclesiastical system and form, he said: ‘Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.’ And again: ‘Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.’ ‘Ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.’

Search as we will, we shall find that it was the burning purpose of Jesus to make lighter the burdens of common men and women, who had their doubts to face, their problems to meet, their battles to fight, their fears to conquer. This he did in simple common language by showing them primarily that there was nothing to be afraid of — nothing except their doubts and their fears. But how? how? — as is the cry of common men today — How? How?

He proclaimed and taught this on that opening day of his ministry: through the gift of the truth, the truth that had been revealed to him, and that he longed to reveal to others; the truth that, if they would but believe him, would become the veritable gift of God to them. With this high purpose and with his high faith he proclaimed his ministry: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.’ Repent — turn, and believe the gospel — the good news.

The good news is what I mean when I say: You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. It is the knowledge of God the knowledge that God, whom you have been worshipping as afar off, is within you. ]He is the life, the Spirit of life within you — the Infinite Spirit of life and power that is behind all, working in and through all, the life of all the life therefore in you.

When you realise this you will find that you are not alone; and the more fully you realise this, the more fully you will find yourself conscious of an enlarging reception of life and light and energy and power. You are born in the sense consciousness with all of the sense limitations. I bring you knowledge of a higher consciousness, which is the consciousness of the spirit, the spirit of God within you. You must be born anew — you must be born from above; and this new birth opens up, and makes active in your life, possibilities and powers that otherwise lie dormant and dead.

It becomes in you a fountain of life, watering the soil for an ever-greater harvest in your life. It reveals the Christ within you, and makes you heir, joint heir of God. It lights your way and it lightens your burden, for then: you realise and live in the consciousness: It is the Father that worketh in me, my Father works and I work.

It is the nature of the Father to give good gifts unto His children. You must have faith, and as is your faith, so will be your realisation and your life.

‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask
him? Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.’ (Matt. vii. 7-I2.)

The eye of faith then becomes clearer in its vision through the guidance of the spirit, the spirit within.

‘The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!’ (Matt. vi. 22, 23.)

This higher conception of life which the Master realised and taught — that we should under this higher guidance with implicit and without fear or foreboding — he called The Way. It seems to our sort of earth-bound, led, material type of thought almost unbelievable; but he said it was true. It was to him so plain, and he spoke with such absolute knowledge of it, that he called it the ‘pearl of great price,’ this knowledge of the Kingdom and the power of God within.

It is for each individual to be wise enough to make it the predominating reality, and therefore the source of the greatest good in his life. To open oneself to this inner Power and to live. continually under its guidance — and then to go about one’s work with faith, with full implicit faith, was his injunction.

‘Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’ (Mate. vi. 25-33.)

It seems a wonderful way of life, but he knew. A help, a great help lies here: To follow this teaching of the Master, by living always in the realisation of this Kingdom within, and then to go about one’s daily work thinking or voicing, but always living and resting in: Be still — And know — I am — God.

Be still

And know

I am

God.

Give God the chance. ‘According to your faith be it unto you.’ He knew, and the purpose, the great passion, of his life was that all other men might know.