The Contemplative Life
Chapter 8

Contemplation Develops the Beholder

Many times the young student is likely to believe that the spiritual or contemplative way of life is a life without discipline, but the very opposite of this is true, because there is no life that requires greater discipline than does the spiritual life.

Life, as it is lived by most persons, is more or less undisciplined, because little or no attempt is made by the individual to control the nature of his thinking. He is prone to accept everything that he sees or hears, usually rejoicing over what he thinks is good and moaning over what he believes to be evil, so that seldom does anyone ask himself "Is this as good as it appears to be?" or "Is this as evil as it appears to be?" Rather are appearances accepted in accordance with human judgement.

In the spiritual way of life however that cannot be done because the entire spiritual life is based on the rejection of appearances.

The entire spiritual life is based on the rejection of appearances.

 

Judge Not After Appearances

Commonly accepted metaphysics today teaches the rejection and denial of the appearance of evil and the realisation of its unreal nature. But in the truly spiritual life we have to go beyond merely rejecting evil as error because we also have to deny reality to that which appears as good.

We have to unsee the humanly good appearances to the same degree as we unsee the humanly evil ones. Spiritually discerned, there is neither good nor evil, and it is on this premise that the entire spiritual universe is built.

The discipline on this path lies in rejecting every appearance, whether it is good or evil, in the realisation that whatever is of God is invisible to human senses.

Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God..... Neither do I condemn thee.

In other words, there is no sitting in judgement on what appears to be evil, but neither is there any acceptance of the appearance of good. There is a recognition that the only real is the Invisible – the Spiritual – and that is something that cannot be seen with the eyes nor heard with the ears.

Under the old metaphysics, if we were confronted with an appearance and judged it to be evil, we immediately had to resist it: overcome, destroy or remove it. If on the other hand we were confronted with an appearance of human good, we accepted it and rejoiced over it. The danger in this procedure, however is that the very thing that appears to be good may in and of itself be evil, or may change to evil, or its effect upon one may be of an evil nature.

A very good illustration of this is that nearly everyone would agree that having a million dollars – earning or inheriting it – is good and yet the acquisition of a million dollars has proved to be the ruination of many people. It has changed their nature and made them grasping because when some persons who have had little or nothing and who have always been free and joyous in sharing that little acquire more than they are accustomed to having, many of them begin to hoard and grasp it and lay it up for a rainy day, fearing to spend it, so that what would appear to have been good has turned out to be evil for them.

In the human picture practically everyone, almost without exception, rejoices at a birth and mourns a death. Nevertheless, more trouble has been caused in the world by birth than has ever been caused by death. So if we were to judge from human appearances, we would be struck by the tragedies that take place as a result of birth, despite all the rejoicing, and by the uselessness and futility of much of the sorrowing at death.

These are extreme illustrations of how unwise it is to judge good or evil. Spiritually, however, judging as to good or evil goes far beyond being unwise. In a spiritual sense it is absolutely wrong because there is a Power that is within each and every one of us, and this Power has as Its function the creating, maintaining and sustaining of harmony in our existence, and when for any reason harmony is apparently taken from our lives Its function is to restore it.

Living as a Witness to the Activity of God

This Power or Principle is illustrated fully in the experience of Jesus Christ, as narrated in the four Gospels.

Jesus clearly revealed that his function was to heal the sick, raise the dead, feed the hungry and forgive the sinner. Always he said,

I can of my own self do nothing...
The Father, who dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.

He always bore witness to the presence of God. In every one of the miracles performed by the Master, there was always the denial of self and the glorification of the Father.

Always it was,

I of my own self am doing nothing, for I of my own self am nothing. If I speak of myself, I bear witness to a lie. Therefore, it is not I who am good, it is not I who do the healing: I am but bearing witness to the presence and power of God.

How can we bear witness to this Power, except by being still. If we do otherwise, we can no longer say that we are doing nothing or that we are nothing.

We have become something the moment we do something. therefore when we are confronted by appearances – whether the appearance is called good or evil – we are being confronted with a human appearance. and if we would bear witness to the presence of God, we must do nothing, we must think nothing, and we must have no judgement.

I am sure you will not confuse this with an ignoring of our life's work, nor as a lazy good-for-nothing attitude, but you will understand this to be disciplined withholding of judging as to good or evil, and an attitude of expectancy – as of listening within. Be sure that you understand the significance of this attitude.

In order to make ourselves nothing, we must immediately realise within ourselves

There is neither good nor evil. There is only God.

Then as we look out at the erroneous appearance with no judgement, there truly is neither good nor evil: There is only the presence of God, and now the Father within can perform His function, and His function is to dissolve the appearance and reveal God's glory – reveal His own being.

Even though to our senses a healing appears, it is not really a healing. It is the dissolving of the material picture and the bringing to visibility of the spiritual one. There is only one way in which that can be done, and that is to withhold judgement as to good or evil, and then let the Father within do the work. Then, and then only, can we truthfully feel that we have had nothing to do with the demonstration except to bear witness to God in action.

This reminds me of a woman who was healed of a disease that had been pronounced incurable, and her husband, out of deep gratitude, went to the practitioner and offered him a cheque as a token of appreciation.

When he began to express his gratitude, the practitioner said, Oh, I didn't do it. God did it.

At which the man put the cheque back in his pocket, and replied, Oh, well, then, I don't owe you anything. I'll give the money to God.

As a matter of fact, insofar as the healing was concerned, the practitioner was right, but the husband was also right. The practitioner had not brought about the healing. He had merely borne witness to God in action, so therefore there was no money due because of the healing.

Where the husband was wrong was that he should have known that if the practitioner had not been available and had not been able to bear witness to God's grace, there would have been no healing. If the practitioner had been dependent for his livelihood on hanging telephone wires, tending furnaces, or whatever his job might have been, he perhaps might not have been able to live in the Spirit and to bear witness to God when called upon.

Giving him money therefore was not for the healing. It was merely to enable him to be free of other obligations so that he could keep his consciousness clear and free of entanglements and could always be in the Spirit to bear witness to Its activity.

When you witness healing works, always remember what it is you are witnessing. You are not witnessing the power of an individual, for an individual has no such power. You are merely witnessing an individual who is keeping himself free of the appearance world and maintaining himself in a consciousness of no judgement, so that the grace of God can come through, because the grace of God cannot come through the human mind.

And what is the human mind but anybody's that is still indoctrinated with the belief in two powers.

Discipline in the Contemplative Life

Regardless of how much knowledge of truth a person may have, no matter how many years he may have studied truth, he may still have no healing power. It is not how many statements of truth a person knows intellectually, or can declare. Healing power has to do with the degree of actual awareness and conviction attained of the non-power of appearances. It is for this reason that the spiritual path is a path of discipline, and every disciple or student must begin at some moment in his career to withhold judgement.

In proportion as this consciousness of no judgement is attained, the appearances in this world change automatically as they touch your consciousness. This is because your consciousness is not reacting to good or evil, and is therefore, able to pierce the veil of illusion, even the veil of good illusion, and see that there is nothing to fear and nothing to gloat about, because what you are seeing is not the spiritual creation, but a finite concept of it, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes rich, sometimes poor, sometimes healthy and sometimes sick, sometimes alive and sometimes dead.

But none of that is true of God's kingdom.

The Master's statement, My kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36) helps us to discipline ourselves.

Instantly we shut out everything that we see or hear, realising that that is in this world, but it is not My kingdom, the Christ-kingdom, the Spiritual kingdom; and therefore we neither hate, love, nor fear it.

It is not My kingdom, the Christ-kingdom, the Spiritual kingdom; and therefore we neither hate, love, nor fear it.

Think of the discipline involved in refraining from all attempts to change the appearance when we are in the midst of what seems to be a problem for ourselves or another. Think, think, of any discordant appearance that you have ever seen, heard, tasted, touched or smelled. See the discipline that is necessary to refrain from attempting to alter, change or do something about it; and then be convinced and know,

My kingdom – the place wherein I live, move and have my being – is not of this world. Therefore, I have nothing to do about this world except to know that it is not of My kingdom.

As we withdraw judgement – which means to withdraw our hate, love or fear of the appearance – it is then that this Invisible, the Spirit of God, which is in us, can immediately go to work to change the appearance.

Self-Preservation Is the Dominant Note in Human Experience

When the disciples were afraid because of the storm at sea, they awakened the Master, but he did not attempt to stop the storm by praying to God, because he knew that he was being faced with an illusory experience. He merely rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, Peace, be still, and the wind ceased and there was a great calm.

What the disciples were seeing was something more than a storm: they were probably not aware of it but they were seeing a selfhood apart from God, and above all they may have been afraid that they were going to lose their lives.

The disciples, seized as they were by fear, were responding as most people do to that first law of nature, the law of self-preservation. In the human picture, that law (if we can dignify it by the name of law) is responsible for most of the evil there is in this world.

A person would not steal if it were not that he is trying to preserve his personal and human sense of life. He is hoping to keep himself from starving or from being a failure, and he is staving off lack and limitation. In short, he is preserving his own human sense of identity.

What but self-preservation lies behind every war? Men call it patriotism, because they claim that wars are fought to preserve the nation, but a nation is only a group of individuals, so in the final analysis it is the preservation and perpetuation of themselves, of their human lives and human supply, that induces them to enter into a war.

The horror of it is, however, that people are always willing to sacrifice and send their children off to get killed as long as they can stay at home and be saved. Children are not as important to most people as they themselves are. The children must go off and get killed or wounded or demented so that others can stay at home and have abundance.

In the storm, then, the disciples were not really afraid of the storm. What difference would a storm have made to them if they had not believed their lives were in danger? Who cares whether the wind is forty or a hundred miles an hour if there is no danger to one's life or limb? It is only while there is fear of the loss of life that anybody cares whether the storm rages or ceases.

Many of us would be able to obtain our release from the world of cause and effect, that is, from the world of appearances, if only we could bring to bear upon the situation that great assurance of the Master: It is I. Be not afraid. To know the truth would divest us immediately of any judgement as to the nature of the appearance.

It is I. Be not afraid. I, God, is the only life; I, God, is the life of individual being, and that life cannot be lost, and it cannot be destroyed. Let this storm do what it will. I cannot fear.

Similarly, who cares how many germs there are in the world, unless we can be made to believe that germs can destroy our life? Ah! That sets up an antagonism in us, and we are going out now to wipe all the germs off the face of the earth. Why? What have we against germs? Nothing! Except that they threaten destruction to our own lives, or our own health!

But suppose we came to the realisation that our life is indestructible, that neither life nor death can separate us from God. Now what difference would germs make? And in that realisation, the battle against error – that particular form of error – would cease, and none of these things would move us:

None of these things move me. My life is God. My life is in God. My life is with God. And neither life nor death can separate me from God.

In that realisation, death itself has no longer any fears or terrors. No-one an possibly fear death once he realises that neither death nor life can separate him from the Life that he is, the Life that is his being.

The Detachment of a Beholder

If we accept the Master's statement, My kingdom is not of this world, we do not have to fight, remove, or overcome anything in the external world:

It is I. Be not afraid. I am the life of you. I, God, the Spirit of God in you, is your life, your being, and the substance of your body.

When we are no longer afraid of anything in the external world, then we automatically arrive at a state of consciousness that no longer concerns itself with the good appearances or fears the evil appearances, but looks out at them with a sense of detachment, as an onlooker, or a beholder, with no interest in changing, improving or destroying them; with just the attitude of a beholder.

In this attitude of a beholder, our personal mental powers come to a stop, and it is as if we were watching a sunset or a sunrise. Nobody in his right mind believes he can hasten the rising of the sun or its setting, or that he can increase its beauty.

Therefore in watching a sunrise or a sunset we become completely the beholder, watching nature at work, watching God at work. We never enter into the picture, never seek to change, remove, destroy, or attempt to improve it in any way. As a beholder, we are always in the absolute centre of our being; and as a beholder we can truthfully say, What a beautiful sunset, or What a beautiful sunrise God is bringing about.

If we were in an art gallery, standing before the works of the great masters, we would be beholders because all that we would be trying to do would be to draw from the picture what the artist had placed there.

We do not try to improve the picture. We do not try to destroy it. All that we seek to do is draw from the picture what the artist has created and placed there for our enjoyment. We do not enter the picture. We behold it. If we enter anything, it would be the consciousness of the artist to behold exactly what he beheld, because we are now of one consciousness, one mind.

When we hear a symphony, we do not enter the symphony. We stand off as a beholder, this time listening, listening to what the composer had in mind. We are not trying to improve his work, nor are we trying to destroy it, we are merely trying to understand it.

Even if it sounds like bad music to us – unpleasant, discordant, or offbeat – we do not try to change it. We stand still, without judgement, trying to grasp what the composer had in mind, and it would not be surprising if eventually we found ourselves right inside the consciousness of the composer, hearing the music as he heard it when he put it on paper. Then we would have the same understanding of it as he had.

So it is that God created the universe and all that is therein, and it is good! To our finite sense, however, we see some of this universe as evil and some of it as good. Strangely enough, the man beside us may be seeing what we call good as evil and what we call evil he may be seeing as good. So, therefore, we cannot be seeing the universe the way God created it. We are seeing it through our ignorance of God, our lack of God-awareness, just as we might see a painting or hear music and because of our ignorance be unable to discern what the artist or composer had in mind.

As we look out at this world of appearances without judgement, it is as if we were realising that God's spirit made all that is, and made it spiritual, and in that realisation we now behold a spiritual universe, even though at the moment we do not understand or see it the way the Grand Architect of the universe created it.

We cannot see through the eyes of Him who designed and formed this universe while we are looking out of human eyes, but by looking at this world without judgement, it is as if we were trying to see what God created, as God sees it, in other words, entering into the consciousness of God.

The only way we can do that is to withhold judgement and be still, seeing neither good nor evil, being a beholder, and letting the Father present the picture to us. We just bear witness; we just behold – but not with the idea of healing anyone, not with the idea of improving or enriching anyone – merely with the idea of beholding the picture as God made it and as God sees it.

Withhold Judgement as to Good or Evil

The only way that the mind of God can be consciously expressed through us is when we are withholding human judgement as to good or evil, and letting ourselves be beholders, and then the Spirit of God lives in and through us, changing the picture from what it seems to be, and revealing to us that which was always there, even though finite sense could not discern it.

Flowers, beautiful and colourful as they are, actually have no colour. We are not seeing the flowers as they are, because colour does not exist. There are light wave and when they strike our eyes, we interpret the rate of their vibration as colour. A certain vibration is interpreted as red, another as purple and another as blue. It is colour only when it touches our eyesight, and if our eyesight is not accurate we may see one colour as red, whereas another person may see it as quite a different colour.

It is the same with sound. If in a forest, the largest tree were to topple over, there would never be a sound heard in that forest because no sound is taking place. There are inaudible sound waves set up by the falling tree, but the silence is absolute and complete until it touches an eardrum. Those sound waves must touch an eardrum before there can be any sound, and if they touched an impaired eardrum there would still be no sound, no matter how loud the sound might be to you.

We are always judging by the limits of our finite senses. We are not seeing this world as it is. We are seeing the world as our mind interprets it. In some parts of the world, people go about quite naked, and in that kind of a civilisation, nobody thinks there is anything wrong with it. The fact is that being clothed is a concept of life that has evolved: it is not life itself. The Father said, Who told thee that thou wast naked?

As we live the life of contemplation, therefore, we find ourselves gradually withdrawing judgement from appearances, and when we see, or when we are told about, erroneous appearances we do not react to them, and they do not register in our consciousness, and as far as they are concerned, our mind is a blank.

We have no desire to alter, change or improve the appearance presented to us: we are just beholders waiting for God to reveal it to us.

"Awake thou that sleepest"

I shall be satisfied, when I wake, with thy likeness. (Ephesians 5:14)

 

A spiritually awakened person is completely satisfied with the people of this world because he knows them as they really are, and even though he sees the discords and problems that they are experiencing, he also knows that these are no part of their real being, but only a part of that "educated" sense that is trying to preserve an already immortal life, or trying to get more supply for one who is and always has been joint heir with Christ in God. Therefore he looks with compassion on those whom he knows are in ignorance of their true identity, or those who do not understand the nature of God's world.

Suppose you come to the realisation that I and my Father are one, that the life of God is your individual life, and that therefore your life is indestructible, and that neither life nor death can ever separate you from God, which is life eternal and immortal.

Now you begin to lose your fear of death, and you begin to lose your fear of the burglar with the gun in his hand because you know that you have no life to lose. No longer do you fear for your life. Your life is now recognised as God – indestructible, immortal and eternal. Death? Even death cannot separate you from God.

Awake thou that sleepest and learn that God is your life. Neither life nor death can take your life from you. Life goes on whether you live in the East or the West; it goes on whether you live in this house or that house; it goes on whether you are young or old, or even if you have gone into the realm beyond. Life is a continuous experience, because Life is God and God is Life.

The Contemplative Life Brings A Consciousness Of Life As Indestructible

Through the contemplative life, you come to a whole new state of consciousness, in which, while you are still aware that there are evils in the world, no longer do you sit in judgement on them or condemn them, no longer do you misunderstand them. Now you have compassion because you understand why they are taking place. Furthermore, you know that they must continue to take place in each person's experience until he is awakened.

When an individual is awakened to the fact that life is indestructible, immortal and eternal, he cannot fear death; and once he no longer fears death, he cannot know death. No one can experience anything that is not a part of his consciousness, and when death is no longer part of consciousness, he cannot die.

Leave this scene? Yes! Yes! That is like a bouquet of flowers, In a few days the form of the flowers will perish, but not their life. The life will go on and be manifested in other forms of the same kind of flowers, and it will be the same life. It will not be a different life. The life that is in a bouquet of roses today or the life that was in roses ten thousand years ago is the same life.

Your life and your identity and your consciousness will still be here ten thousand years from now, but in a different form. You will not be gone. Only your form will change.

That this is true is evidenced by the fact that when you came into this world, you weighed 6-12 pounds, but that form has been changing ever since. Even the form of the organs of the body has changed. Organs not developed when we were born have developed and matured, and some of these at a certain age stop functioning, but we go on just the same: there is no change in us.

We are the same life, the same person, the same consciousness, despite the changes that take place in our bodies. The child body is not that of the adult body, and the body of the aged is not the same as the body of the adult. But the individual is the same, the Life is the same, the Soul is the same, the Consciousness is the same. Only the outer form changes.

So it will be that if I am lifted out of this life, I will be here a thousand years from now, even though the form may be different. As a matter of fact, the sex could be different, and the reason is that I – and this applies to every one of us – has no sex.

Once you become aware of the I that you are, you will find It completely independent of body and completely independent of sex, even though it will still be I. That is because I is spiritual; I is one with God; I is of the nature of God. Therefore, I is without finite form, yet I can manifest as, in, or through finite form.

When you have realised that, the sting of death leaves you because you will know then that you are I and I will always be your state of consciousness, except that you will progressively elevate until there is nothing finite left.

That I is the secret of transcendental life. With the realisation, It is I: be not afraid and that that I is God, all fear goes, all judgement, all condemnation, and then even as you look out upon the world and witness the discords that hold mankind in bondage, the feeling is there: Just think, if the people of this world could awake to their true identity! and that is all there is to it.

They are not evil, they are not bad: they are just fulfilling the law of self-preservation, and so we do not sit in judgement on them because we have done the same thing.

"It is I; Be Not Afraid"

When we throw a bomb at somebody else – an atomic bomb, or a bomb of gossip or hatred – or if we kill in self-defence, we are doing just what the world is doing. We are operating from the standpoint of the law of self preservation, and the self we are trying to preserve is a finite sense of self that has no contact with God. That is why we are trying to save it. If we understood our true identity as one with God, we would not have to try to save it. God can govern and care for his own universe.

In the face of danger, we withdraw judgement and realise,

Whatever is real is God-maintained and God-sustained. Whatever is real is of God, and it is permanent and eternal. I do not have to lift my finger to save it, to preserve it, or to do anything about it. I merely have to behold God in action.

We must sit, not in judgement but completely without judgement, in the realisation that this is God's universe.

It is I. Be not afraid.... My kingdom is not of this world.... My kingdom is intact. All that God has put together, no man can put asunder. My Father's life and my life are one; therefore my life cannot be put asunder by sin, by disease, by lack, by death, by war, or by any other means. Nothing can put asunder my life because my life is joined to God's life. It is one with God. God maintains my life eternally, immortally; and neither life nor death can separate life from itself or change that relationship.

In the face of danger of any nature, we stand by without judgement and bear witness to God. Then afterward, when the harmony has been restored and safety and security realised, we can repeat with the Master, I of my own self did nothing. The Father within me did the work.

Now of course there was one thing we did that was very important and very difficult, and that was to come to the place of being a beholder. The discipline of the spiritual life consists of the ability to discipline oneself so as not to see a picture that has to be changed, altered, improved, or removed, and the vision to look out at the pictures this world presents with the conviction, It is I. Be not afraid, and then stand still and bear witness while God brings about the transformation of the visible scene.

It is I. Be not afraid......

My kingdom is not of this world.....

Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of.....

These are the three scriptural passages that have been the foundation of my healing work since the early 1930's. Before that I was doing healing work, but without knowing why or how, or what the principle was. It was, you might say, a gift of God. But in the early 1930's, I was given the revelation of those three statements.

Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of? Do not try to change him, improve him, or heal him, and certainly do not judge or condemn him. Take no account of him. In other words, be still.

Take no account of man whose breath is in his nostrils. In other words, be still.

Then came, My kingdom is not of this world. Therefore, do not judge by the appearance of this world, because in My kingdom, harmony is. My kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, and heaven is established on earth even as it is in heaven.

Again you cease from all attempts to change, improve, heal or reform.

The secret of the success I have had in my work in prisons is in going to the prison without any desire to reform anybody; not blinding myself to the fact that humanly these men and women were not living up to a spiritual standard, but realising that whatever they had done had been done because of the law of self-preservation, because of ignorance of their true identity.

Therefore there was no more need of condemnation for them than a school teacher has for a student who has come to learn. He knows in advance that his student does not know what he is going to learn from his teacher, but he does not condemn the student for that. He recognises that the student is ignorant, and he is going to change that ignorance by imparting knowledge.

So it is that when I have gone into a prison I have not condemned or judged. I have realised, Here are people in ignorance of the fact that God is their life, and that they do not have to sustain it. God is their supply and they do not have to get supply. They are joint heirs with Christ in God. So my work has been to enlighten them as to their true identity because once they know that, their whole nature will be changed.

As human beings. there is not one of us without sin, whether in the act of commission or in the act of desiring. We are transformed in only one way: by coming into the awareness of our true identity, and then learning to be still and knowing that I am God and that because that I is God, that I governs its own universe; It maintains it and It sustains it.

In fact that I is the bread and the meat and the water and the wine unto His creation; and therefore, each one of us has I, each one of us has in the midst of him, closer than breathing, that which the Master says is the mission of the Father within, that which heals, salves, redeems, resurrects and feeds.

That I each one of us has, and It is the Christ. In the awareness of that I, we become beholders of the Christ in action, we are able to pierce the veil of illusion, and then instead of seeing the ugly picture that the human mind has drawn, we begin to see reality.

ACROSS THE DESK

Today,[1962-3] world news holds the spotlight wherever one travels, and wherever there is world news there is fear and anxiety. The past centuries in which this world has lived without spiritual intercession have made men lose their hope that God can save, but the century that has brought forth great spiritual healing ministries will also reveal the nature and activity of spiritual power in the wider affairs of mankind.

In the minds of most persons concerned with the major problems of the world today, as always, the great desire is for victory. Capitalism seeks a victory over communism and vice versa. Trade unions want more and greater victories over the very source of their incomes, while on the other hand there are still some unenlightened capitalists with dreams of victories over labour.

Neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party, Labour or Conservative, Socialist or Liberal wants the peace and prosperity of nations but rather victory over one another.

Who but the blind can believe that the United States, England and France, and their allies won the First and Second World Wars? Look over the list of all of them and ask, What price victory? And yet the lifeblood and wealth of all nations continues to be spent in seeking still another victory. But to turn now to spiritual power for victory would be to revert to the pagan teachings of the pre-Christian era.

Does your vision open to a greater scene than victorious armies marching into civilians' homes and hospitals? Can you envision something better than medals for mass slaughter? Will your vision carry you to greater heights than the alternatives of one kind of material force against another?

Withdraw your gaze from the picture that materialism would paint for you. Turn within and see what promise you find as your gaze travels from the scene without to the Kingdom within. What vision do you see when the word victory is dropped from thought?

When victory is no longer your goal, spiritual power will reveal itself to you.

 

 

The Core Teachings

The New Horizon

God is One

Protection

Break the Fetters that Bind You

Contemplation Develops the Beholder

Introduction (Practising the Presence)

Love Thy Neighbour

The Relationship of Oneness

 

The following passage is an epigraph for all of Joel's published books.

Illumination dissolves all material ties and binds men together with the golden chains of spiritual understanding;
it acknowledges only the leadership of the Christ; it has no ritual or rule but the divine, impersonal, universal Love; no other worship than the inner Flame that is ever lit at the shrine of the Spirit. This union is the free state of spiritual brotherhood. the only restraint is the discipline of the Soul, therefore we know liberty without licence; we are a united universe without physical limits; a divine service to God without ceremony or creed. The illumined walk without fear.