In the Lord's Prayer, Our Father which art in Heaven was not intended to convey the idea that heaven was elsewhere.  Jesus meant what the original Sanskrit intended to convey, the everywhere-present inner peace and harmony.  That is Heaven in its true meaning.  The Kingdom of Heaven is among you.  There is an inner meaning in the Lord's Prayer which cannot be given out except privately and orally.  If man understood this inner meaning he would be in the Kingdom of Heaven.  This involves completely surrendering what we have called the self and accepting the Self that is the only reality, which is the spiritual Self, for there is no other Self.  Those who have attained follow this path and enter into that which exalts the whole into Spirit.  Such an one knows himself as God.

23. This is difficult for many to understand for they think of themselves only in terms of their conscious thought.  All such thoughts must be discarded.  The realization includes the conscious mind when the Christ mind has become the complete consciousness of the individual, for the conscious mind is then included in complete consciousness.  All thoughts that we have embraced within our consciousness that are at variance with the Truth must be given up.  That is what Christ meant when He said to deny thyself.  Give up your own estimate of yourself and accept yourself as you are in complete relationship to the whole.  It is forsaking all conditions which appear outwardly in favor of the architectural design back of it all.  The Christ mind is the God mind always.

When any individual attains to true knowledge of God his works will be completed instantly.  If he would stand completely one with God, it would be finished instantly.  Jesus said, It is finished, and from then on went right on to other accomplishments.  If we ourselves recognize perfection we become that perfection Itself.  We need no other recognition.  It is all God if we wish to put it that way.

Paragraphs 8, 9 and 10.  If God is ALL and man is created in His image and likeness, in what manner can man grow except in the enlargement of his consciousness to comprehend the greatness of his created state.  He truly does not attain to anything but only in the discovery of that which already is.  The point is whether he shall discover himself a little at a time or whether he shall discover the ultimate fact from the beginning.  The wise of all ages have declared that the latter is the true way.  Know ye not that ye are Gods and Sons of the Most High, is calling man back to his beginning, which is his perfection in and with God.

Paragraphs 11 and 12.  If man is in a certain state of consciousness, he automatically does not express that which is its opposite.  On the other hand, the elimination of certain modes of conduct does not produce an opposite state of consciousness.  Action, and not inaction, is productive of results.  It may be well, in a state of ignorance of the Truth, to refrain from error states of procedure but it is not this practice that leads to illumination.  If you are not happy, you do not become so by merely refusing to act unhappy.  If you are happy, on the other hand, you do not act nor look as one who is unhappy.  This may be illustrated in many ways.

Paragraphs 16, 17, 18 and 19.  Progress is made, not through denial, but through the practice of habitually unifying all things with the Source.  Unified with the Source, all things begin to manifest their likeness to the source and all appearance to the contrary disappears like ignorance in the presence of knowledge or shadows in the presence of light.  To deal with fact is to dispel fancy.  To work with fancy is to work with nothing and to accomplish nothing.  To achieve something one must work with something.  Something can never be made out of nothing.


Paragraphs 22 and 23.  The Kingdom of reality is all about us and the only transition we need to make is to discard our notion that it is a remote place.  All that God is is within, through, and around all men and man himself is included in that allness of God.  There is nothing he can do about it but accept it and, in accepting it, living in harmony with it, he becomes aware of it.

Man as man can never be a completely independent organism for he is inseparably united with the whole.  How could he remove himself out of infinity?  He only imagines his isolation and that imagination is the sole source of his limitation.  It is purely imaginary.  The extent of his free will, or right of selection, cannot be carried beyond his imagination for, in fact, he is always united in and with his source.  He only needs to rid himself of his vain imaginings and accept the inevitable and he is at once in his rightful place with the Universal system.  He is king only in the sense that he has the privilege of carrying out the laws of the Kingdom and any king who disregards the laws of his kingdom does not remain king for long.  Kingship is subject to the laws of the kingdom just as are the subjects and they are all units in a single system with the law superseding at all times.  Only through the binding influences of the law does the kingdom remain an harmonious unit.

It is always possible for man to improve his consciousness to the point where he becomes God-like.  That was the first thought in the Divine Right of Kings.  It was not for the king to put himself up as the only Divine Ruler.  All mankind should be Divine Rulers and rule as Kings but always with that expression of Love which is Service.  Man stands One with his own Divinity and he is then of Service always.  He never exalts himself above another.  If he is an egotist, he destroys himself.  He cannot be an egotist for long.  Man's kingship arises from his sense of oneness with the whole and egotism arises from the sense that he is a separate ego within and of himself.  Therefore, egotism is the greatest violation of the natural law of his being and produces the most disastrous results.

But, if he understands that he is the universal individualized or that he is as an individual what God is universally, he has something which he can comprehend.  If we leave out the in, then man is the image of God.  I am God is the great statement.  It belongs to man wholly.  The image or likeness means the exactness in the old Sanskrit. 

Some people quite naturally ask that, if this be true, why did Jesus always say that I am the son of God, but never I am God?  But this is only one of His statements.  He said, I and my Father are one.  Then the translators, failing to understand the next sentence:  You are God as you present God, therefore I present God to you, left that completely out.  Yet he said, He that hath seen me hath seen the FatherGod. 

It should be remembered also that the name I am God was the unspeakable name to the Ancients.  The theory was that it was never to be made as an audible statement.  Its utterances were in the silence of their own souls and the only way it was ever to be voiced was in the natural radiation of authority, perfection, and power that emanated from this inner secret acknowledgment.  The Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee openly is the thought.  It is the Silent name of the Silent being of God, the inner and universal fact of all creation.  In a previous talk we noted that another meaning to the statement, I am God, is, I am Silent.  The I am God is the silent witness within the nature of man to a Universal fact.  It is the name hidden within the name Jesus Christ and the secret name of every man that hath breath, and that name is the Breath.

It was considered blasphemous to make this audible statement and the people of Christ's time construed His statements as inferring that the unutterable NAME was applied to Himself.  They condemned Him by their own inference regarding His statements.  But He was true to the law of the mystics and, though many of His statements inferred the fact, He did not utter it.  Thou hast said, I am, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father, all infer this same fact but, whatever He may have said in His heart, He is never credited with voicing the fact outwardly that, I am God.  The theory is that man IS the word himself and his own presence in the Universe is the spoken evidence and needs no further utterance.  In the beginning was the Wordthe word became flesh and when man appears in creation he IS that word unspeakable in sounds or syllables for he is the completed word as he stands.  If I AM anything, the living embodiment of it, it is self-apparent and needs no further projection.  Everything spoken from this consciousness is the authority of the Universe speaking with all power in heaven and in earth.

This was included in his statement that, before Abraham was, I am, for man, as the formed aspect of God universal, always was and always will be God in evidence.  He referred right back to the old Sanskrit law of Abraham:  A-Brahmlighta God.  Then came David the Light-bearer, and one who bore the Light to all mankind, and Mary, the Preceptor of Creative Principle.  You can bring it all down to the Ah Brahm, which means a Christ Child, the Union of all forces to present the Christ Idealman is Godto the world.

"I and my Father are one, was Jesus' true statement and He carried it still further when He said:  When you pray, pray to the Christ of God; include yourself as the Christ.

That is why Emil says, You can do these things just as easily as I do them, with true child-like simplicity.  That was the reason for Jesus' great accomplishments, leaving out all egotism.  These and greater things shall ye do.

It is from this point of view that the Masters look upon reincarnation.  They say it is not necessary.  It is a human hypothesis only.  They say that if there is a light placed in the center of the room the best way to reach that light is to go straight to it.  Why circle around it time after time?  If you go directly to that light and pick it up and incorporate it, you are through with all reincarnation and karma completely.  It is only man's failure to go direct to the central point or fact of life that keeps him in the wheel of incessant grind.  If he will accept that central fact, which is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, he will have arrived and all his going round and round will have ceased, it will have come to an end.

All of these great problems that afflict the minds of man are completely overcome when he lives the life of the Masters or the life of his own mastery, the true inner Self.  Jesus' firm statement was that the Truth makes you free.  Man gets rid of the idea that he is not God by refusing to accept the negative statements.  The statement, I am God, held habitually as the secret fact within his own nature, frees him from the negative statement that he is not God.  It is always better to state the Truth than the untruth.