LESSON NUMBER 16 ANSWERS TO STUDENTS QUESTIONS WHO WANT TO “KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT”

Lesson No. 12 began with these words from The Divine Iliad: “All questions are answerable in Light. Thou art Light. Thou canst answer them.”

I repeat these words because you will gradually know their import as the lessons progress. You do not yet know their import and one reason for my repetition is to take advantage of your growing understanding of your Sonship with God which the last lessons have unfolded and add one more reenforcing thought.

For this reason I will repeat the paragraph in other words, as follows: All questions are answerable by YOU. You have all knowledge within the Light of Self. When you KNOW this sufficiently to thoroughly believe it you will become as a rock upon which you, yourself, will lean.

This is a more direct way of making you feel that God’s words were meant for YOU alone.

What I want you to do is form the habit of thinking inwardly toward your center of Consciousness instead of outwardly through your senses as mankind has been doing in the past.

That is what I mean by saying “you must know what to do with it” for the answer to all your problems lies within yourself. Anything which is wrong with you is due to an unbalance somewhere in your interchange between the two opposite conditions within which everyone must work.

You alone can find that unbalance which is the CAUSE of your problem. Your problem is an effect which you have produced. The more you work knowingly with God by thinking inwardly toward your God-Self the more you will keep every decision in balance. As your actions always follow your decisions they also will continually manifest the principle of The Divine Trinity.

That is what I mean by knowing what to do with it for when you go outside of yourself in either thinking outwardly or asking of others you are admitting that you do not know what to do with it, and will never know what to do with it so long as you continue to deny God in you.

That is why I have been telling you to never seek the solution to any personal, social or business problem outside of yourself by asking advice from anybody, of even telling anybody. The moment you do that you complex your problem mightily. No one can take over your problems as their own. No one even cares to listen to them. There is something in human nature that makes one shun listening to other people’s problems, and that is the way it should be.

Try to recall when you, yourself, have done this when something which seemed unpleasant or unfortunate, even to illnesses or operations, tempted you to ask advice from anyone in any such manner which inferred leaning upon them or casting your burden on them.

If you will analyze your action you will probably find that your motive was deeply colored with a desire for sympathy for yourself as well as suggesting a desire to another that you needed to have him decide upon actions which should be your decisions arrived at by YOU in communion with God.

To seek sympathy for yourself, or sympathize with yourself is founded upon self-pity for a situation which you are thereby making a reality of–instead of conquering it yourself by your own decision and glorifying it in your own God-given Omniscience. Such passings of YOUR CREATORSHIP of YOURSELF to another Self is the greatest possible factor in weakening, rather than strengthening yourself.

A leader of men does not ask to be led. When you ask to be led you are acknowledging your weakness. A genius creator in the arts goes to God for his inspiration. An unwise one who asks another might just as well stab his creation to its heart.

Do not misunderstand me by thinking I am advising against consultation with another. Let me clarify my meaning in this respect. If something is wrong with your car you are aware of it, and you decide to have it fixed. That is your decision. You are not a mechanic. You have not been informed regarding such techniques and you have not acquired the skills nor equipment needed to fix it. Information, skills and techniques are not knowledge. You have what is required to fix your car–the knowledge of its condition which makes you decide what to do about it, and that is your decision, not some friend’s or neighbor’s.

Likewise you must consult with doctors, or tailors when you need their information, skills or techniques to mend your broken bones or make a suit of clothes.

Such consultations all must have, for not anyone has all skills, all information and all techniques. The idea which I am accentuating is that you should never be a reflection in the mirror of another. You should extend your Self to all other men, as all other men extend themselves to you.

That which you decide to take on of other men’s extensions is YOUR decision, not theirs. You can take on Jazz or Beethoven as YOU decide, or you can insulate yourself against them, but if you are a reflection in a mirror instead of being the mirror which reflects, or a sponge which absorbs instead of a rock which withstands all things alike, you are denying your inheritance from our Father-Mother, and becoming that which is being created instead of being co-Creator with our Father-Mother of our mutually creating universe.

Again I say that the answer to all problems and questions concerning any effect whatsoever lies in your knowledge of the principle of balance and its extension into The Divine Trinity.

During the 48 lessons this principle of balance will be extended and exemplified. I have hardly touched the subject as yet. Knowledge of the relation to mental balance in the extensions of your thinking, and to your physical balance in relation to the effects caused in your own body and in the thought bodies which you are forever creating will give you a power you have never yet dreamed of having.

In the next lessons I will give you knowledge of the balanced relation of your body to the earth from which it is extended which will amaze you, and should affect all world thinking and medical practice for its great benefit.

Gradually you will take within yourself this new knowing to replace old habits of relying upon your senses of observation which are so deceptive and lead you into such strange paths.

Before I leave this subject to answer the questions I want to call your attention to something which happens to cosmic thinkers (meaning those who think from their Consciousness rather than sense from their brains) which may confuse you if you do not understand it. The following question prompted me to explain it now for many really inspired thinkers are very much confused by it and misinterpret it to their injury rather than to their glorification.

QUESTION. “Ever since studying The Divine Iliad and your other writings I have had strange mental happenings such as I never knew before. Suddenly something I never knew before comes like a flash and when I am compelled to write it down I am surprised for I never knew such things before. I write them down with that wonderful feeling which must be the ecstasy you speak of. I am wondering if some “Voice” is trying to speak through me. Please explain It. Is that what is meant by being “occult”. My writings are not “automatic” for I know what I am writing.”

ANSWER. No there is nothing “occult” about it, nor is there any other Voice than your own–which is God’s–trying to speak through you. What is happening is that you are beginning to think from the divinity of your Self–which is from your Consciousness. Knowledge comes to you in timeless flashes when you think inwardly toward the Light of Consciousness, rather than outwardly toward the senses. Inspiration comes that way–and great inspiration is always accompanied by the ecstasy of the God-nature.

The geniuses in all of the arts know that ecstasy and seek it constantly in order to interpret God’s rhythms as they resound from the silence of our cosmic heartbeat.

What you are doing by your meditation over God’s words in The Divine Iliad is unfolding your own genius. All geniuses are cosmic thinkers. As this new thinking increases in its intensity you will find that quality which is known as intuition increasing in its intensity. Intuition is a cosmic quality which is unfolding in the human race. It is one way in which God speaks to man. It is a timeless and wordless communication of the universal Mind to [the] universal Mind in the unfolding of Creation.

You are a part of the unfolding of Creation. Your destiny is an integral part of that unfolding. Intuition is Mind unfolding desire of Mind. Just as inspiration is a Mind awareness of idea so is intuition a Mind awareness of one’s plan of action concerning the destiny of that idea.

How often I have felt intuition telling me what to do or what not to do. It is as though God holds up His hand and says: “Do not do that My Son.”

Do not be surprised, therefore, when your inner thinking toward the Light causes the Light to respond to your desire to be guided by the Light of inner knowing.

QUESTION. “When we decentrate should we “visualize” our desire mentally, or should we visualize this before or after decentrating?”

ANSWER. First charge your whole being with your desire. Concentrate upon it as intensely as you can–then relax and forget it. The very reaction to concentrated desire is decentration. You may have hardly time to realize that you have decentrated. I have had many of my conceptions unfolded to me from the stillness of my Consciousness almost as soon as I expressed the desire. In a timeless flash the concept stood before me in a Mind imagined thought-body to which I afterward gave a material body over a period of years.

QUESTION. “Why does it seem so extremely difficult to decentrate in the early mornings before rising which is not the case later in the day?”

ANSWER. I am afraid you have confused the activity of your senses with the thinking which extends from your Consciousness. In the early mornings before rising one’s brain is sluggish-sleepy-not yet electrically active. Consciousness is stilled with lack of desire for creative expression. Until you have extended your desire from your Consciousness it is at rest, for it is not your Consciousness which decentrates but your thinking.

I have another question which I will answer next, in which you will get a greater understanding as to “what to do about it”.

QUESTION. “I still am not clear as to decentration. If decentration is the opposite of concentration I cannot see how it could be the zero of stillness for if concentration is the positive sex mate of decentration, the latter must belong to electricity and not to the magnetic Light of zero stillness. Please explain.”

ANSWER. Yes, decentration does belong to electricity, but it is the unwinding of that which has been wound up to concentrate. If you just unwind enough to find balance in zero you will have decentrated to zero from a concentrative condition–but if you continue to decentrate you will still be active mentally, for its opposite sex mate will demand that you interchange to find balance.

A continuity of that is what thinking is, but if you stop that interchange, when both are balanced, you will find the rest in the zero of the Light of the universal equilibrium from which you can gain the knowledge and impetus for another start in thinking.

Have you not often heard a man say, when deeply confused: Hold on for a minute and let me get my equilibrium?” That means that he is so far out of balance, or confusion of ideas, that he wishes a fresh start from zero.

Another way I can exemplify this idea is to imagine two children playing see-saw. That dual interchange exemplifies the thinking process. When they are sitting on the ends of their see-saw before starting to move they are in the sexless condition of undivided balance. They are in the condition you are in if you stop concentrating or decentrating. The moment they move they have divided their one balanced condition into two unbalanced conditions of concentration and decentration which need to interchange to restore balance.

When one child is up high and the other down low they are in uncomfortable opposed positions which they cannot long sustain. That is the sex divided condition which arouses all the passions of all of earths creating things in the desire of all things to find balance and rest from such uncomfortable positions of separation of one half of itself from the other half.

That zero of rest is in the middle of their board. That is the point of rest from which they are divided to express idea in motion. When the children reach that level they are momentarily in equilibrium, but they instantly lose it again. If they stopped there it would be like your ceasing to think.

Even though they do stop they are still extended from their centering source. They are still divided, though motionless. If they both drew together in the center they would be united with their source and could not move until they again desired to become divided.

To apply that to thinking and Cosmic Consciousness–first stop thinking–then withdraw your electric extensions into your centering Consciousness. That causes a partial or complete forgetfulness of body according to the intensity of your ability to sever the electric extensions which divide you from your Consciousness.

The genius partially severs body sensation from spiritual Consciousness. The fully illumined Cosmic Conscious mystic completely severs sensation from Consciousness.

The more you meditate within the zero of your own Consciousness the more you will become enabled to sever sensation from Consciousness. On the other hand you can overdo this by thus neglecting to intensify your thinking. That is the mistake many of the Buddhists make. While trying to seek “Nirvana” in Cosmic Consciousness they lose it by depolarizing their power of thought–which also depolarizes their bodies. Cessation of purposefulness depolarizes both body and mind, for thinking is polarization of Mind, and action is polarization of body. But this in another story which will come to you later on when I have sufficiently laid the foundations for its comprehension.

QUESTION. “If, during either concentration or decentration, one feels an extreme ecstatic state through the entire body–is this actually the ecstatic state mentioned in your lessons, or is it merely emotion?”

ANSWER. Cosmic ecstasy is a Mind condition, not a body one. It is the Mind nature of God and the God in you. You cannot feel it “through your entire body” as you say. In fact your body cannot feel it at all.

You mistake the exhilaration and joyfulness of the harmonious, rhythmic vibrations of vitality, good health and peace of Mind coming from the purely mental state which shuts out bodily vibrations. When I am skating, or climbing mountains, I feel that bodily exhilaration which you refer to, but when I am meditating, or walking quietly in the forests, where I continually step in and out of my body, there is a constant alternation of that vital bodily feeling of intense joyousness which just as suddenly disappears and gives place to the stillness of mental ecstasy.

A good example to illustrate my meaning is in the sound vibrations of the body which a harp string creates to manifest the idea which lies within its silence. Let us say that the idea is D in the octave. That idea of D is in the silent stillness of the motionless string. When you pluck the string, you give that idea a body–a sound body of wave vibrations.

Those vibrations are felt by the senses of other bodies–but when the body disappears into the silence from which it sprang the sound still exists as idea in the silent, vibrationless string. You can no longer hear or see its body but you can KNOW it–and you can hear it in your thoughts as a thought body not yet given a material body.

QUESTION. “Will you tell me if using the two hands in massage for healing will cause a voidance, or should only one hand at a time be used? Please explain.”

ANSWER. No, it will not. Working with both hands multiplies your power immeasurably over working with one hand. The only way you could void your power is in not working with either hand, for your power is in your decision, not in the action. You extend your power by the action of manifesting your KNOWING through action.

Your decision comes from your knowledge. That concept which you have arrived at mentally is the REALITY which you extend to your patient but that REALITY will do him no good unless you do extend it through action–not through the inaction of wishful thinking.

It is through polarity of body that we manifest our action by extending our balanced polarity to others whose polarity is unbalanced. Balanced interchange balances unbalanced polarity.

By referring to Fig. 20 on page 232 you will see how the human body is vertically polarized by an equator which divides it into positive and negative halves. One lobe of your brain is on one half. How much thinking could you do with one lobe? Likewise one arm is on one half. How much can you do when one arm cannot interchange with the other?

Think of the rhythmic action of interchange in the swinging of your arms when you walk. If you tie one arm when you walk you would vastly divide the benefit to your body by lessening your ability to balance it. By using one arm for your massage you are virtually binding the other. This makes it more difficult for you to restore balance to your patient by extending yours to him.

Balanced interchange is helpful but rhythmic balanced interchange is infinitely more helpful. Rhythmic expression will soothe and induce sleep, which is evidence of a restoration of balance, while unrhythmic movement would have the opposite effect.

QUESTION. “What do you mean by the two lights of God’s thinking?”

ANSWER. One of the two lights is the positive light of concentrative thinking. That light compresses light waves into solid forms. It is the red half of the octave spectrum which leads to white hot incandescence. It is the light of universal fatherhood.

The other of the two is the negative light of decentrative thinking. That light expands light waves into formless gases. It is the blue half of the octave spectrum which leads to the blackness of cold space. It is the light of universal motherhood.

These are the two lights of the senses which you can see, and feel, and hear in sound waves when the two lights interchange. When they are balanced and cease interchanging you can no longer sense them for you are a vibratory body which can sense vibratory bodies only. You cannot sense the equilibrium which follows the voidance which results from cessation of motion.

QUESTION. “I have a son who worries me very much, I fear he will be a failure in life for he refused to go back to college the second year and will not go into my business with me as I had hoped he would. I just cannot keep him in the office ten minutes. He seems to either dislike business or is very stupid about it. He is forever wasting his time hanging around air fields and making drawings of planes. He knows every make of plane and every part of a plane, besides knowing all of its [personnel.] Please tell me what can I do about it?

ANSWER. If you are a wise father you will give him all of the encouragement in the world in allowing him freedom to live his own life as he chooses instead of demanding that he live it as you choose. What you tell me leads me to believe that he is tremendously interested in flight engineering, and in nothing else. A man can achieve greatness only in the thing he is most interested in. He would either make a failure of your business if you obliged him to inherit it, or make his life a failure even though he succeeded in building it to high altitudes.

I know a man who made fifty millions of dollars because he was unavoidably drawn into his father’s growing business, yet he was unhappy because his life was one long frustration. He had other desires and loathed business, yet forced himself to become master of it. He told me he would gladly give his entire fortune if he could have lived as he chose–even though that meant living in an attic room.

The greatest men I have ever known revolted at the thought of going to college, and many of them were considered to be failures because of their low marks. Thomas Edison was one of these.

I knew a man who tried to force his son to follow the sea and navigate great ships as he did. The son threw himself into the sea. I know another one who insisted that his son become a dentist. The son ran away. I know of many such cases. I trust you will let your boy have the opportunity of becoming a master mind in the profession of his own choosing.

QUESTION. “I find it difficult to keep up a sustained state of ecstasy. Why is this?

ANSWER. So long as you are really inspired and working knowingly with God that state of ecstasy will last for hours, or even days if the measure of your inspiration is great enough to demand a long time in fulfilling.

A musician who is writing a long symphony, or a sculptor working on some inspired time consuming conception can remain much longer in that state because of his work, than one who is not creating something.

Very often some very little thing, such as a call to the telephone, will end the possibility of continuing that ecstasy for a long time. In such cases it is well to take up other little human occupations for awhile, and before you realize it the ecstasy will return. It may be that a return to the work itself will quickly lift you up into the high heavens again by the very contemplation of it.

Always remember that the human you will constantly assert itself for you are obliged to attend to the many calls of your body and your senses which cannot all be automatically performed.

The more you make it a habit of your Mind, however, and also make it a way of thinking, the more easily you slip in and out of it without even thought or effort.

When you have arrived at that stage where you continually slip into and out of it with no thought or effort whatsoever, the more you will be enabled to sustain it when it is with you.

CONCLUSION

Many of the questions we are receiving are very similar. When this happens I select one which is typical and answer that one to cover all. Also many questions are coming which are far ahead of where we now are, so if you have asked such a question do not be disappointed if it is not answered, until we get to where it is appropriate.

It pleases us very much when we receive letters telling us to ignore questions asked because the writers have found the answer within themselves. That is just what these lessons are striving to accomplish for when you actually accept the fact that all knowledge exists universally–which means within YOU, you will not only “know what to do about any problem which confronts you” but you will find an indescribable happiness in your moment to moment communion with God as you habitually turn to Him by thinking within your Consciousness.

When you thus find the kingdom of heaven you will also find that all things else shall be added unto you.

Swannanoa, Waynesboro, Virginia

Beloved friends:

Addressing you ALL thus I am overwhelmed with such deep deep gratitude that it is hard to express in words all the love I KNOW for you. Some of your hands we have clasped and held and with others we have become insolubly bound through that invisible cosmic love that binds all who know and love God as themselves, but there will never be greater treasures for us in God’s whole universe than the words in your letters that come daily.

Never have such letters inspired us as those that are coming telling of the daily unfolding awareness and understanding of God’s divine laws and principles as set forth in the Home Study Course.

I ask you now if you will forgive me if I cannot personally answer all your letters immediately, for working with Doctor on the lessons in addition to an already very heavy schedule makes it physically impossible to write all the letters I so long to do, but please know that you are ever in my heart and your dear love which you extend to us both–as one–is the spiritual food that sustains us through our many long hours of work in delivering God’s great Message.

It is your very own letters that are PROVING this to us for they are living proof of your growing understanding and when you write how your friends, observing the glorious changes in your outward expression and way of life, “want to know more about what you are studying”, we know it is the true beginning of Cosmic Man and Peace on Earth.

If space would permit I would fill several pages this month with whole letters from you who are God’s precious workers. Instead I must be content to quote some brief passages which I know will make you all as happy as they have us. Just multiply all you read by a hundred or more and you will get some small idea of the richness of love that flows out for God’s Message and comes back to you all in every word of the lessons each month.

M.F. writes: “These thanks come from my heart for such a clear, scientific teaching. All my lifetime I’ve searched for the key and now I’ve found it. Words are incapable of expressing the gratitude I feel.”

A wonderful couple who were here last summer and are now studying the Home Study Course together and spreading God’s Message to others write: “We have read or heard in lectures nothing comparable to it in spiritual value. Each lesson is filled with wisdom and carries a promise of perfect unfoldment… The third group of lessons has arrived and we are deep in the contents. Both D. and I feel your nearness as we read. It is like sitting in your rose garden and listening to you talking to us about the things we must know to help spread The Message… All who are taking the Home Study Course that I’m in contact with are very enthusiastic and state that they are experiencing more peace of mind and harmony in their affairs than they have ever had before. Isn’t that wonderful? P. & D.W.

And yet another lovely couple write: “Through your Intimate Home Study Course we can truly say we are working with, and in, the Light… You have given us such wonderful new material that no one who studies the Course need ever again seek outside aid… We have been amazed at what this new knowledge has done for us! Our daily desires are so simultaneously fulfilled that we are filled with ecstasy… From the sense-world standpoint we count these lessons among our most valuable possessions, and yet we know that–having found the Light–these truths will be with us always. We relish the thought of always having you Dear Ones in our Universe… May this short letter assure you that, through the printed lessons, you are teaching men how to find the Light. We marvel at the simplicity of the scientific facts you have been able to give us, and know that, from the results already obtained, your writings will lead anyone to the Light who seeks it according to the instructions contained therein… We are very busy people, but want you to know that we are urging everyone who is sincerely seeking the Truth to take this Course, and look forward to the day when we may give our full time to strengthening your activities… … “P.F. & B.D.

The last sentence of this letter and the following paragraph from another advanced and precious student brings to the foreground a great plan Doctor and I are unfolding in our Consciousness and about which we will tell you very soon. We know it is destined to bring forth momentous things for you who are the seed group for bringing The Message to mankind and heralding in The Cosmic Age.

In the next month or so we will tell you more of this plan and in the meantime we know you will continue to study every moment you can in preparation for the great work ahead. The future peace of the world will depend on man’s KNOWLEDGE of God and the living of His Laws. We who know that every experience is GOOD are fortunate indeed today in these days of seeming world chaos. The chaos is man-made and only KNOWING man can KNOW peace for SENSING man shall ever experience “the agony of awaiting”. This is the paragraph I mentioned which came through the “silence” to fit into our great plan:

“I feel that those of us who are taking the course have much in common, and I believe that if possible we should meet upon completion of the course and discuss ways and means of extending our knowledge, balance, and inspiration, to the rest of the world. I believe there are many ways in which balance could be extended Internationally through business, science, and the arts. H.T.”

O, HOW we want to shed The Light all at once around the world but plans must always be mature, and our plan IS maturing and you are all part of that plan–that is all of you who KNOW the desire to share God’s work with us. So great is the Light of this new knowledge that those who are unfolding it will soon be ready to illumine the world with the Light of their own knowing.

The next series of lessons continue to explain the Source of all energy, and to demonstrate that your control of it lies in the measure of your desire and of your knowing.

The energy of God’s thinking Mind creates thought-bodies, which you might call Mind-imagined bodies. Then that same energy creates material electric wave bodies in the image of the Mind-imagined bodies. As that is all that God ever does, or that you ever do, it is of the utmost importance that the entire principle and process of it be made as clear to you as your alphabet.

For that reason the next series will more fully explain the divided and undivided universe, or the principle of rest from which motion seemingly springs to seek rest–or the principle of silence from which sound vibrations spring to simulate a reality which is not in them.

Although motion is the most evident thing in Nature, God’s universe is really static. It is really at rest. Motion is actually an illusion of the senses. It really does not exist.

God’s thought imagined universe is pure imaginings, and materialized thought-bodies are really illusion. Creation is but a cosmic cinema which simulates ideas in motion which we know are not moving at all.

When Doctor experienced his great illumination he was made aware that the time had come when it would be vitally necessary to reveal the unreality of motion to those who had become ready to see beyond the illusion of the senses into the Source of the illusion so that they could become its Source.

He was, therefore, commanded to bring The Cosmic Age of Omniscient KNOWERS and Omnipotent THINKERS into being to uplift the human race one stage higher in its unfolding.

The transcendent human of the coming Cosmic Age is he who has become fully aware of the illusion of matter and motion, and can thus unbind himself from the effects of matter and motion to dwell only in their SOURCE as co-Creator of the illusion, knowing it for what it is.

God’s commands in the instructions of the delivery of THE DIVINE ILIAD MESSAGE are our ever present thoughts and now that your own glorious letters are coming back to us revealing such a depth of understanding it is small wonder that our happiness knows no bounds as we read your daily letters. To know that already you are able to answer so many previously baffling questions in the Light of your own knowing, and are truly comprehending at last the underlying principles of the Cosmos that are being unfolded to you through lessons you can study in the quietness of your own room–to know these things are our greatest daily blessings for it is the fulfillment of God’s Message for all of us who live but to reveal Cosmic Love.

With love and gratitude for your companionship in this world,

I am Sincerely,

Lao Russell