2/14/19

Let us be quite honest- Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood



Let us be quite honest

Some of you say, why is this silence you speak of so important? Or, he is a mystic, as if that put a person outside of the life of practical religion. What is religion? What is a “faith”? Are they not worship of God and a belief that we can know him? Jesus said that eternal life was a state of mind, that is, if knowing something is a state of mind, when he said, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee.“
Let us be quite honest and ask ourselves how we can know him and if there is any other way than through communion with him as well as that communion can be made. Can we learn anything without listening, even in the sense of scholastic study? Complete attention in a classroom is the first step in an institution of learning.
The student with a steadfast heart, whose first desire is to learn of him and worship him, must in the end give complete attention; “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Surely the two commandments of Jesus were given by him in their logical order; thou shall love the Lord thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself. Can we love our neighbor as he meant us to do it without knowing anything of the love of God? Paul answers that in no uncertain terms “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor . . . it profits me nothing. Though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.”

To have eternal life through knowledge of God is to learn of him, to learn of his love from him, and then to put it into action in our everyday world. Acts without faith can work good but faith without acts is hard to imagine, and the consequences are inevitable. Neither way belongs to the children of God who desire to come into knowledge of their godhood.
How can we learn of him except through communion with him? How commune with him except in silence? It can only be through putting aside for intervals of quiet all human activities, not only of the hands but of the mind. And if you think you are master of your mind watch your mind when you try to still it.

Let us make an image that will help you. Suppose you wished with all your heart to be in his presence and suddenly Christ appeared to you to teach you. Would you have a thought of any importance whatever to offer him?. Could any human experience matter in the least? Could you listen and hear unless you offered your mind completely to him? What prayer conceived in your mind would matter at all? What human act, what experience received through the senses would contribute to the transcendent experience of simply being aware of him?

And yet you say, I believe he dwells within me.

Do you clean the room of your mind and invite him in to reveal himself to you? Not that you may talk to him?

Why must we go to him in silence and not in prayer as we usually know it?

Because he said, “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you . . . and he that loves me shall be loved of my father and I will love him and will manifest myself to him.”


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