Chapter 2
DIVINE ENERGIES IN EVERYDAY LIFE
NOW what, let us ask, is the result and hence the value of this realisation? For unless it is of value in the affairs of everyday life, it is then a mere dead theory, and consequently of no real value. Use must be the final test of everything, and if it has no actual use, or if no visible results follow its use, we had better not spend time with it, for it is then not founded upon Truth.
First, let it be said, it is not the mere intellectual recognition, merely the dead theory, but the conscious vital and living realisation of this great truth, that makes it of value, and that makes it show forth in the affairs of everyday life. This it is, and this alone, that gives true blessedness, for this is none other than the finding of the kingdom of God, and when this is once found and lived in, all other things literally and necessarily follow. Through this the qualities and powers of the Divine Life are more and more realised and actualised, and through their leading we are led into the possession of all other things.
Those who come into this full and living realisation of oneness with the Divine Life are brought at once into right relations with themselves, with their fellow-man, and with the laws of the universe about them. They live now in the inner, the real life, and whatever is in the interior must necessarily take form in the exterior, for all life is from within out. There is no true life in regard to which this law does not hold. And if the will of God is done in the inward life, then is it necessarily done in all things of the outward life, and the results are always manifest. Thus and thus alone it is that individuals have become prophets, seers, and saviours; they have become what the world calls the “elect” of God, because in their own lives they first elected God and lived their lives in His life. And thus it is that today people can become prophets, seers, and saviours, for the laws of the Divine Life and the relations of what we term the human life to it are identically the same today as they have been in all time past and will be in all time to come.
The Divine Being changes not; it is man alone who changes. It is solely by virtue of man’s leaving the inner life of the Spirit and thus departing from God, or by virtue of his not yet finding this real life, that sin and error, pain and disease, fears and forebodings, have crept as naturally and as necessarily as that effect follows cause into his life; only by closing his eyes to the inner light, by shutting his ears to the inner voice, that, although he has eyes to see, yet he sees not, and, although he has ears to hear, yet he hears not. It is only by uniting one’s life with the Divine Life, and thus living again the life of the Spirit, that these things will go, even as they have come.
All the evil, unhappiness, misery, and want in the world are attributable to man, and are the direct results of his taking his life, either consciously or unconsciously, either directly or indirectly, out of harmony with the Power that works for righteousness and consequently for wholeness and perfection. And when our life is lived in the life of God, and God’s will therefore becomes our will, all is and necessarily must be well with us, for contrary to His will it is impossible that anything should ever come to pass. And thus it is that he who seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness shall have all other things added unto him.
The soul, the real life, is Divine, and by allowing it to become translucent to Infinite Spirit by living continually in this conscious union with Divine Being it reveals all things to us. Things become hidden, mysteries fill and uncertainties pervade life only as we turn away from the inner light and life. There is nothing that is hidden of itself; to God all things are known, and one who consciously lives their life in the Life of God sees with the Divine vision that reveals all things to them. One who lives continually under this Divine guidance enters thereby into the realm of the highest wisdom, and even in the most trivial things of everyday life they never find themselves in a state of doubt or perplexity, for they always know what to do and how to do it. They have no regrets for the past, because before they entered into their present consciousness they were in a sense dead unto life, and all regrets that they might have for the past are now swallowed up in the joys that the new birth that has brought them into fulness of life continually spreads before their every step. They have neither fears nor forebodings in regard to the future, for they know that contrary to God’s will, (which is now their will), nothing can ever come to pass. Peace, therefore, a full and abiding peace, is continually theirs.
As all life is from within out, and as this is absolutely true in regard to the physical body, the fountain of Divine Life that has been opened up within, which of itself can admit of no disease or imperfection of any kind, will allow only healthy conditions to be externalised in the body; and where unhealthy conditions have been built into it before entrance into the new life, the life that now courses through it will in time drive them out by entirely replacing the diseased structure with that which is pure and whole.
As you begin to grow in this realisation, a continually growing sense of power will be yours, for you are now working in conjunction with the Infinite God, and with God all things are possible. In material things you will not be lacking, for all things are from this one Infinite Source, and, guided by the Divine Wisdom and sustained by the Divine Power that are now yours; in a perfectly natural and normal way you find that an abundance of all things are yours, always at hand in sufficient time to supply all your material needs, and never is there lack when the time comes, if you simply do each day what your hands find to do. Sure always of this unfailing source of supply, one does not give oneself to the accumulation and the hoarding of great material possessions, thereby robbing life. Your thoughts will grow more and more into the nature of their Divine Source, and as thoughts are forces, and as in the degree that they are spiritualised do they become even more effective in their operations, so through their instrumentality you are able to mould more and more effectively the everyday conditions of life. And so as you enter into this new life you find that all things of the outer life fall into line; for as is the inner, so always and necessarily is the outer.
These truths will come as new revelations to many, and again to many they will come merely as agents to strengthen and possibly to arouse to renewed life the realisations of which they are already more or less conscious. In themselves, however, they are not new, but as old as the world. They are the real spirit of true Christianity; not, however, of the Christianity that the majority of people conventionally hold, and which in many respects is as radically inconsistent as it is void of results, but the great transcendent truths of our relations with the Father’s life that Jesus taught. They are likewise the real essential spirit of all the great religions of the world, and as all religions in their purity are from the same source,—God speaking through the minds of those who have come into a sufficient union with Him to hear and to interpret His voice, the one universal source of all true inspiration and revelation,—so far as their fundamental principles are concerned they are necessarily the same.
The great spiritual awakening, the beginnings of which we are witnessing in all parts of the world today is evidence that the Divine Breath is stirring in the minds and hearts of men and women in a manner such as it has rarely if ever stirred before. Men and women are literally finding God. They are now breaking through the mere letter and form of an old and too-long-held ecclesiastical theorising and dogmatism into the real vital spirit of the religion of the living and transcendent God. They are waking here and there and everywhere to the realisation of their oneness with the living God. Their lives are being completely filled with this realisation, and as a consequence they are showing forth the works of God. They are leaving the old one-day-in-seven, some-otherworld religion, and they are finding the joys as well as the practicability of an everyday, this-world religion. They are passing out of the religion of death and possible glory hereafter into the religion of life and joy and glory here and now, today and everyday, as well as hereafter and forevermore.
With this new religion of the living God and the spiritual power that through it is being made active in their lives, they are moulding in detail all of the affairs of everyday life, proving thereby that their religion is the religion of life. And any system of religion that does not enable its possessor to do this is simply not religion; and we should no longer desecrate the Word by applying it to any such hollow mockeries. To this old semblance of religion those who are thus entering into this new and larger religion of life will never return, nor can they, anymore than the chick can enter within the confines of its shell again after it has been once born into life. Having found the pearl, the shell for them must perish; or rather, as it is of no farther value to them, it perishes simply by the operation of natural law. Centred thus in the Infinite, and working now in conscious harmony with Divine forces, they ever after rule the world from within.
Chapter 3