LESSON NUMBER 6 Continuation of PRAYER SCIENTIFICALLY EXPLAINED RELATIONSHIP OF PRAYER TO MEDITATION

“Let us unite in prayer.” How familiar these words are on every religious occasion, and upon hearing them the congregation automatically bows its head, bends its knee and words come from the pulpit in earnest tones which may be superficially heard by some, hardly heard at all by others, while the very few who hear in their hearts are deeply stirred by the ardor of the supplication to God for forgiveness, or mercy, or blessings upon the congregation and various other human interests.

Prayer is just meaningless words if not felt in the heart; just as music is no more than sound if it does not reach the Soul. Prayer to God is the appeal of the Soul of man to the Universal Soul. As such it is the mightiest of man’s powers, but when prayer is but words, not coming from the Soul, it is no more effectual than the hundreds of prayers written and distributed throughout the streets in Asia, or prayers written into a disc and whirled to repeat themselves by turning the prayer wheel swiftly.

Worded and formal prayers, issued periodically, like morning and evening prayers, prayers of thanks at meal times, and prayers on arising and retiring become habits which people obey automatically. There may be great earnestness in them, or there may be none. The habit of praying periodically and with a sense of duty tends to automatic prayer rather than devotional.

Those who thus pray might just as well not pray, for prayer is a union of Soul of man to Soul of God, and words alone cannot make that union.

Automatic, formal and habitual praying from the lips, alone in one’s chamber, or in groups is of no avail. Prayer, based upon desire, and uttered within the Soul of man, wordlessly or otherwise, will always command the whole universe to fulfill the desire, but words alone are not prayer any more than paint is the art in a picture.

When you pray to God asking for all of the things you want, enumerating them carefully–even to timing their arrival as your desired possessions–yea, even informing God as to His method of giving them to you–detailing your business and family needs–never giving thought as to your worthiness to receive them, or whether it is wise to have them, or what you shall regive to deserve them–you are but making yourself into your own selfish image and not in the image of God’s spirit in you.

When your child prays for a long list of birthday, or Christmas presents, ending up with “God bless Papa–God bless Mamma” you tell the neighbors how cute that prayer is and then buy everything the child wants to uphold its belief in prayer.

It is not cute, it is tragic. It is helping the child build its own selfish image. It is also helping the whole world to build its own selfish, greedy image. It is helping to perpetuate this Barbaric Age of greed, selfishness and fear of neighbor against neighbor.

When will parents teach their children that they must give love for love given them? Not until they first know that they themselves must not ask to be given anything without a deep desire in their hearts for regiving love equally for love given.

Parents who know that will say to the child: “God will give you all you desire because He loves to give, but what are you planning to regive in love to God? You want God to show His love to you by giving you the things you want, but God wants love from you. The way you can show your love to God is to love all things which God puts on earth. When you ask God to bless Papa and Mamma you can help God bless them by getting Papa’s slippers and helping Mamma dry the dishes. That is the way you can be worthy of receiving all the things you ask for.”

When a mother prays to God to extend His loving protection to her son from harm in transit on stormy seas she herself must extend her love equally to all other sons of all mothers of earth, and to all things of God’s creating. Her devout prayer can alone be answered that way.

When she prays devoutly, no matter how deep her sincerity in asking love from her mother heart, then turns angrily or impatiently upon her friend, or neighbor, or a servant in her house she, herself, voids her prayer–as though it never had been uttered.

When you ask God to bless your business and make it prosper God will answer your prayer when you go out into your plant and bless all in it and make them prosper. When you regive to your helpers the love given you by God it is God’s love given to them by God through you. That is what is meant by manifesting God on earth.

When you pray for God to show His love for you by giving your field good crops you must yourself give your love to your fields to regive His giving. Your love given to them is God’s love given to you for regiving. Your love and God’s love are ONE. Its manifestation is TWO in giving and regiving but that TWO is the ONE HEARTBEAT of God’s body, even as the swinging of the pendulum is the TWO of the ONE source of their manifestation.

If the farmer would but stand in the midst of his fields and pray, saying unto them: “I love you my green fields. I love every part of you, every grass blade–every root and herb and ear of ripening corn. I love every tree of you, each leaf of you which gives love in oxygen for nitrogen given you in love. I love the fruit of each tree of you–and the red-gold you give me in your luscious fruit for the love I give to your roots.” If the farmer would but pray that way–deeply–and in his heart–he would prosper as his fields prospered with him. And he would know no fatigue for love given, for love given is never work–and there would be a light in his eyes and inner joyousness in his heart which naught but the manifestation of love given on earth as it is in heaven can ever give to man.

AGAIN TEACH US HOW TO PRAY

He who can say in his heart: “I and my Father are one”, and feel the ecstasy of that unity, is continually IN PRAYER, even as he is continually IN LIFE and continually breathing. His prayer is like unto his inward-outward breath which is forever with him, forever vitalizing him.

He who knows the Light of love in him does not beseech the Father-Mother of the universe for his next breath, nor for his next heartbeat, for he fully knows that his heartbeat is one with the universal pulse, and that for which he would needlessly ask is already his.

Therefore I say to you when you ask of me: “How shall I pray, and when?” I say to you: As you live and breathe continually so shall you be in prayer continuously–as you are in life and love.

And as the air you breathe surrounds you abundantly, awaiting your need of it, so is that which you would ask for your need awaiting you in abundant supply, yea, even to overflowing fullness.

And as there is not a time when God centers you, and an interval elapses in which He again centers and controls your balanced heartbeat to synchronize with His, so is there not a time when you should pray to Him, and another time when you should not.

And, likewise, as there is not a time when the air you breathe is denied you while you manifest your Father-Mother on this earth, so, likewise, there shall never come a time when that which you need to worthily manifest Him shall be denied you, for, I again say, you already have that for which you ask, even as you have love, and life, for which you have not asked.

If there are times when you would like to put words to your desires to give them form let not your words be from your lips, nor give voice to them. Say in your heart when sorely perplexed: “Be Thou Thee in me my Father”, and know Him as your very Self.

Your problem may be great and your wisdom in doubt to your Self. If then you would say: “Father, stand by–I deeply need Thee”, it might mean more in assurance to you–but to our Father it weighs not one whit more than saying it in your heart–so pray to Him that way if it comforts you to thus commune.

If sleep will not come to you for heaviness regarding your dealings with a friend, write your questioning upon your heart with desire that love shall guide you, then sleep in peace and know that the answer will be written in balanced rhythms where the question has been erased.

And if your handiwork goes not to your liking, having too much of your earth self in it–sensing instead of knowing–liking and not loving–diverted by sounds of earth from hearing the silences of heaven which borns them on earth–then, I say, open wide the doors of your Soul and let God in to work with you. Rejoice then in your again renewed ecstasy as you again think your work knowingly with God, creating with His hands and yours as one.

If a friend approach you with a grievance send love to open the door for him to you–and say within your heart:–“Father, let my words be Thy words to him, not mine alone”,–then weigh his grievance in the scales of love and not let him depart unillumined by the Light, but void his grievance with your love.

If you find your business slowly ebbing because you have, perchance, founded it afar from where you should have founded it, and you grieve because you have not the means to transfer it to that far State where you now know it would thrive, I say to you to not grieve, but rejoice that God has illumined you with the Light of knowing what to do to balance your unbalanced beginning. In your rejoicing is your power to take the first step of that far journey which will be followed by another, and still another one–even as one breath forever follows another–until that far State is beneath your feet in answer to your prayer.

Know you, however, that all the prayers in all the world would have been as soft blown winds on desert sands, had you not regiven to your Father, even as He has given to you, by working with

Him, step by step and breath by breath to balance that given to you by Him to manifest you on earth, with that which you give to manifest Him in heaven.

He who would become a music master and grieves because he has not the means to meet the years ahead to so become, already has the means to play his first note. And when that first note is played he has the means to play the second one. Therefore, I say, that he who takes his first gift from God, and regives to him, will find that first gift to be a trickling stream, a running brook or mighty cataract of power ever ready to be given in the measure of any man’s ability to regive equally.

Again I say, God will work with you but not for you. No one ever became a concert pianist by prayer without action, for that is wishful thinking, or faith and belief without knowledge manifested.

If you are low in spirits because of some fancied hurt, or have been too much alone and would balance your Self awareness with God awareness, let your prayer be a desire for realization of your high place in God’s universe. Say within your pulsebeat, wordlessly: “I, My Father, am not alone I. Thou, my Father, art I. Thou art in me and I in Thee. I am favored of Thee, my Creator. I am of the inner Mind. I know Thy ecstasy. I am exalted in Thee.

“I have all knowledge and all power. That which I desire to know, or to have, or to give is mine to know, to have or to give. My dwelling place is in Thy high heavens. Be Thou Thee in me that I may be Thee–knowingly.

“I am in Thy Light, O my Father. Enfold Thou me ever in Thy Light that I may not again feel the heaviness of the dark upon my heart.

“Dissolve Thou my separateness and make me One with Thee.” He who would pray for love and the companionship of many friends shall be given that for which he asks, and as abundantly as he gives love and friendship to others whom he befriends.

And he who would feel the ecstasy of all the world at prayer with the God of Nature [should] go out into Nature’s great cathedral of forest pines and oaks and join in that mighty prayer of running streams and babbling brooks, and the singing of birds, the buzzing of bees, the droning of countless insects and hidden things that chirp, and trill, and sing hosannas to God in His high heavens to gladden our hearts as we walk and talk with God.

You who have read my BOOK OF EARLY WHISPERINGS know what I mean by that, and how wonderful it is to pray to God with all of His creating things which manifest Him in love for the love He gives all things.

When any man prays to you to fulfill his desire as you do to your Father, know you that he is praying to your Father who is ONE with you. Even as God works with you to fulfill your desire you should work with him who desireth aught of you to fulfill his desire–for as all men are one, so, likewise, are all desires of all men one.

If he who thus prays to you to help him to fulfill an unbalanced desire which is not love given and re-given equally, extend to him your love and balanced knowing, even as God whispers it always to the unhearing and unknowing.

If he hears but heeds not your counseling do not condemn him, or fail to watch over him until the Light of your illumining has reached his heart as it some day will, even as God watches over the unbalanced ones who have not yet learned to manifest love. Say to him within your heart what God says in His heart–“All men will come to me in due time, but theirs is the agony of awaiting.” And be thou there awaiting him with love when he has at last known love.

And so it is in all ways of man–for I say, that God is love, and love is all that is in God’s kingdom of heaven–and the manifestation of love is all that is on earth.

Man of earth does not yet know that, but he is beginning to know it through cosmic man of the high heavens who knows love in him and gives it to the world in the heavenly rhythms of the high heavens.

The geniuses of the world manifest God’s love and give it out from them to uplift the world by reinspiring man of earth with the inspirations of heaven born men.

The love born symphony is prayer for love fulfilled in the composer and again fulfilled in the hearts of those whose heartbeat feels the ecstasy of God’s heartbeat as expressed in those heavenly rhythms.

And so is all the art of all the world a prayer for love fulfilled in inspired cosmic man for regiving of love to the race of man. For art is beauty, without which man is not yet even human.

The workman at his bench who gives beauty to his work regives the love which God has given him to all the world to uplift the world. Likewise the housewife who puts love in her cooking enriches the food with God’s love which renourishes her family with love. Likewise the butcher, the baker and candlestick maker who regive love for love given them manifest God in building His universe of love with Him.

And the mason gives love to his wall in the laying of each brick which, in turn, reflects love’s beauty to each passer-by. Beauty thus given by the mason and reflected to man is the Light of the kingdom of heaven extended to man for his illumining.

THE DAWNING TRANSITION OF MAN

The new age of Cosmic Man which you and I are unfolding for the saving of mankind from self-suicide by the barbaric dealings of man with man is a transition from believers in a far off God of fear whom they fear, to knowers of a universal God of love whom they love.

Those cosmic ones who KNOW God are the cosmic thinkers, inspired geniuses and illumined mystics who know God within them and see God everywhere. These are the ones who, down the ages, have uplifted man gradually by bringing the beauty into the world which has gradually given man his culture and his ethics.

These are the ones who will unify mankind through their knowing to end this babel of tongues of many religions and bring into being the ONE religion of the ONE God of love.

This now ending Barbaric Age is peopled with GOD NEARING MEN.

The dawning Cosmic Age is to be peopled with GOD LOVING MEN.

The coming cosmic race of men will know that love is all there is in God nature and that the expression–or manifestation–of love is all there is in the nature of the physical universe.

It is my responsibility to so clarify the above statement that you will thoroughly understand the basis of what is called evil–or bad–and it is your responsibility to teach it to others so they will gradually comprehend that a universe which is founded upon balance cannot be unbalanced, or one founded upon good cannot be bad.

When you understand how unbalance, which is the basis of the idea of evil, can seem to be overthrown but can never succeed, and that good can seem to be overthrown to create that which we call “bad”, you will readily see how the race of man has made itself suffer through gross ignorance.

Conversely, you will as readily see that the only way to conquer evil, bad, illness, failure, fear, worry, superstition, greed, selfishness, loneliness, grief, or even death itself is through cosmic knowledge of the Light which gradually illumines the Consciousness of man which is in absolute control of man’s body, and of his own unfolding through that control.

You who are readers and deep students of The Message are the seed of the coming Cosmic Age. You, who know The Message in your hearts know God’s command to me–which likewise means you.

I will again read that part of The Message which refers to the method which you and I must use in making the transition of man which will bring love into the world. You will find it in THE BOOK OF BEAUTY, Chapter V. 5 to 18.

5. “Verily I say, the dawn of cosmic man is in its beginnings. Go thou, therefore, to all the world and sow the seed of thy knowing.

6. “Thou shalt sow the seed of knowing man in unfolding man’s progression, and no rest shalt thou know until thou hast well fulfilled thy task.

7. “Through cosmic man the unity of man beginneth.

8. “Many are they who know Me in them. Sow thou the seed of Beauty, Love and Balance in them. And multiply thou them until their legions shall illumine the dark of man’s barbaric ages with My Omniscient Light.

9. “Say thou to thine appointed ones, these, My words. Thou art Love. Thou art Beauty. Thou art Balance. Go thou and give Love, Beauty, Balance and Truth to thy neighbor.

10. “Think not of doing great works in My name. Go thou to thy neighbor. Think thou of Thy neighbor alone. One seed sufficeth not for a meadow but out of one seed cometh a sheaf of ten.

11. “As many sheaves filleth great granaries, even so will thy sheaves of ten encompass the whole earth to bring into being the new age of cosmic man.

12. “Say thou these, My words, to thy neighbor: Go thou to ten men who will believe on thee; and multiply thou them by ten, and yet another ten, until a legion shall be as a wall of granite beneath thy feet.

13. “Heed thou my commandings and sow thou My seed of Love lest man destroy himself by his continued desires of earth, knowing not Me in him.

14. “Be not neglectful of thine own tasks, My son. Leave not to others of lesser knowing that which thou thy Self must do.

That which must be done for cosmic man to come must have thine own Self in it.

15. “He who conceiveth must first unfold his concept.

16. “The mason layeth the stones of the master’s thinking. Thou thy Self, must impart thy knowing in the Light of thy anointing to cosmic man who will build thy knowing and Mine into balanced rhythmic forms with Me.

17. “And out of the knowing of thine anointed legions a new world of unified man shall spring.

18. “For where thine anointed shall gather together to thus unify man through his knowing of the Light of Me in him, there shall I be in their midst. And they shall not fail.”

CONCLUSION

Just as Lao and I are giving our entire lives to sowing the seed of the Cosmic Age through YOU–which is our responsibility–we know you will give great heed to the above words of our Father, and realize that they are addressed to YOU as your responsibility.

These words you have just read do not demand that you give up your lives to help mankind make the transition. It simply means that you should LIVE IT and thus be an example to your neighbor. It means living it WITH your neighbor by making your dealings with him conform to the teachings of the Message.

When people are asked to work for most causes it generally means to give up something, or make some sacrifice to do it. This requirement of our Father reverses that thought for if you actually practice the love principle of first giving you will find that you will have enriched your life in every respect instead of subtracting from it by needless sacrifice which actually gains you naught, nor helps another, and very often hurts.

If you could keep the most important working thought of life before you always, and put that thought into every dealing you have with everybody, your patient, your client, the man you are selling to or buying from, your servant and your neighbor, you would soon find yourself into a very different kind of world of your own making for yourself and for all mankind.

The most important thought is: The God of love is all there is in the kingdom of heaven–and the manifestation of love is all there is on earth.