Chapter 3

The Quest

BECAUSE We are Divine children of our Father (Father-Mother, Wisdom-Love) God; and because we, like the prodigal son, have left our Father’s house to wander in a far country (our journey through time and space, which includes our life on this plane) in order to gain wisdom, there is in each one of us an unconquerable longing for Home.

Home. What blessed memories cling to this word, even though we think only of the earthly home of our youth. The home of our youth is scattered—and the home which many of us have got together for our children will be scattered also—but our Father’s House is eternal, forever calling us to return.

Deeply embedded in each soul is this longing for God and for Home. It is the origin of desire. It is this desire that makes men dissatisfied. If they are in one place they wish to be in another. As soon as they arrive at the other place, which seemed from a distance to be so desirable, they are still dissatisfied and want to go elsewhere. Others seek satisfaction in sex passion and other forms of sensation, or in human loves of the purest kinds. Some seek in high things and others in low, but in none of them is satisfaction to be found.

Desire is always driving man forward. Disappointed in one thing he tries another, but in none of them does he find satisfaction. They all bring pain and suffering.

Nothing is more elusive than the call of sex. It promises happiness, but gives only the ashes of disappointment. It is only when passion is replaced by the purer flame of a more spiritual love, that true and lasting domestic peace becomes possible.

People sometimes write to us saying they are unhappy in their marriage, and that they love someone else. What shall they do? How can they get a divorce? How can they use occult powers (they call them New Thought!) so as to bring someone of the opposite sex to their side’? Poor things! Still chasing rainbows and will-o’-the-wisps. Will they never learn wisdom? They are offended when they are told that if they try to satisfy their desire they will become still more unhappy; and that if they use mind domination they will literally destroy themselves.

Let it be said here that if mind powers are used (even in the form of prayer) to alter the objective life and to change one’s circumstances, trouble and disharmony are increased thereby. Confusion is made worse confounded.

Yet man’s power to love must not be repressed. It must be poured out to the utmost. A remedy for this is found in our Lord’s words of infinite wisdom: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: . . . and thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than this.’’

Not love of self, not passion (mis-termed love), not even love of personalities, but love of the Whole, namely, God and our fellows. This does not mean that we are to love those near and dear to us less, but to love God and our fellows more.

Christ came not to give us our heart’s desires (that is, desires for carnal or material things); neither was His mission to help us in chasing the baubles of life. He came to transmute our desire, so that we might seek after wisdom and Divine union, in which there are eternal joy, peace, satisfaction and felicity, instead of for the things which fade away.

Christ can raise us to the heights, where, with eyes opened by Divine Wisdom, we can look over the sea of life. Upon its surface are blown the gaily painted baubles of illusion that lure men on and on, and ever in vain. Eager hands clutch at them, then sink, only to make room for others just as deluded. But there is one—the Christ—who stands with arms outstretched to save, saying: ‘’Come unto me and I will give you rest.’’ “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest for your souls.

“ Today on the heights I stand Above the sea of thought, And look o’er the changing drift At the baubles for which men fought;

That slip through their clinging hands And ever remain uncaught.

Unchained through the drift of years They float o’er the surface clear;

And forever warm hands reach out As the illusions of life draw near:

Till the weary hands sink deep And the eager new appear.

Today on the heights I stand Where God’s winds sing lullaby,

And no more I reach for the gleam Of the baubles for which men die—

For I reach to the heart of God And master of fate am I.

—HENRY VICTOR MORGAN.