LESSON NUMBER 28 QUESTIONS CONCERNING FAITH, BELIEF AND FAITH HEALING

So many questions have come to us from various sources which are so unlike the workings of Natural Law and God’s ways of working that they might appropriately belong to the Middle Ages.

People who are rational and wise about many things of life seem to lose all their rationality and reason when it comes to matters of interpreting God’s ways. Many of these questions concern faith and belief, faith healing, intercessory prayer, and their belief in them is like unto belief in miracles which never happened nor could happen.

Many of these questioners sincerely believe that if many sincere and devout people pray long enough and with sufficient intensity they can induce God to do something for them which He otherwise would not do–even to reversing His laws as special favors, in special recognition of their devotion.

Many of them border so closely to superstition that it is useless to answer them for those who ask are not ready for the truth. These prefer the so-called miraculous and find greater interest in the claim that people can walk on hot coals through faith and belief than in the real law of Nature by means of which they can change their own depolarizing body by a joyous polarizing thought, proving that the truth is always more wonderful than the most picturesque untruth, even though not so spectacular.

It is very gratifying that our close students are practically free from this character of questions, for they are more ready far enlightenment, but even those who are closest to the Light ask for scientific explanations so that they can better answer those who question them. We look to you who are ready for cosmic knowing to become the seed for spreading the Light of Cosmic awareness to all mankind.

Therefore, I say to you that you must have comprehension and knowledge to manifest God, for faith and belief are blind. They are dwellers in the dark and will cause your feet to stumble and bind you to a slavery of dependence upon a basic nothingness where you need a rock of granite for your feet.

You would not expect to write a story, compose a symphony or solve a problem in mathematics upon faith and belief unsupported by knowledge, yet countless prayers go up to God with the hope that faith and belief without intelligent action based upon knowledge, will bring fulfillment of desires.

You do not have faith and belief that you can walk. You KNOW that you can walk. You also KNOW that you can do anything by acquiring the knowledge of how to do it through action, yet many there are who have faith and belief that God will do it for them. God will not do it for them, He will do it only with them.

THE GREAT MISCONCEPTION OF PRAYER

Practically every prayer which carries with it a request also carries with it the inference that God is overlooking something in the management of His universe and needs a reminder that things are not running smoothly enough to suit the petitioner. Also they carry the inference that requests are asked as personal favors from reverent and devout believers that such favors will be granted if enough devout and reverent people join the weight of their petitions together to be heard by God and His interest in their personal requests is sufficiently aroused. Such prayers carry an inference of intercession in someone’s interest–as though intercession is necessary with God–or would have any effect whatsoever upon Him.

To those I would say that God does His part always and needs no reminder. His part of Creation is perfect. His law is perfect. HIS LAW ALWAYS WORKS. You do not have to ask God to make his law of gravitation work. Neither will he set it aside if you ask Him. If you fall over a cliff the law of gravitation will cause your death whether you are saint or sinner, and no prayer will set that aside. God will tell you not to fall. He has told you that in your very seed, but if you disobey you will perish.

God’s whole universe is in perfect balance. He keeps it so. You may depend upon it always. If you want good crops God’s law is there to give them to you IF YOU WORK WITH HIS LAW. But if you ask God to do your part of the work as well as His, you will harvest nothing, no matter how great is your faith.

Many humans would not ask God to cure a potato blight. They would think it quite reasonable that the farmer does something to cure it himself. When, however, a blight strikes their own bodies, they vigorously condemn anyone who suggests that they do what the farmer does who works knowingly with God, doing his part of the work together with God’s part of it.

What was the cause of the potato blight? Too much rain and damp?

What was the cause of the human body blight? Tight lacings generations ago? Wrong diet? Unbalanced emotional disturbances? Frustrations? Infection from rusty nail? Distorted seed pattern of ancestors unbalanced actions?

No matter what the cause of any disintegrating, or depolarizing effect the remedy for it is to restore balance. The restoration of balance in any machine can be accomplished through action.

The restoration of balance through any mental unbalanced condition is purely mental. A change of thought from negative to positive will cure any mental ailment. A physically unbalanced condition which is a reaction of the mental unbalance, will also become balanced.

Such a Mind healing has no relation whatsoever to faith and belief. It is purely CAUSE and EFFECT working in accordance with God’s established law.

Purely physical abnormalcies, whether a broken bone, a cancer, a cut upon the head, a gunshot wound, paralysis from blood clots on brain, misshapen bodies or other deformities can be “cured” only by physical action. One might just as well ask God in all faith and belief to mend a broken spoke in an automobile wheel as to ask Him to cure a deformed foot without intelligent action.

CAUSE AND EFFECT

Creation is a play of CAUSE and EFFECT. The CAUSE is undivided. CAUSE is always balanced. It is always ONE.

EFFECT is divided. Instead of one balanced condition it is a division into two unbalanced conditions.

The play of life is to keep the two unbalanced conditions of EFFECT in balance with each other. When CAUSE and EFFECT are in balance with each other the spiritual and physical manifestations of either man or Nature manifest harmony, unity, growth and normalcy in all parts. When such an almost impossible rarity occurs with man one might then well say, God made man’s body perfect as well as man.

Until mankind unfolds to such a high cosmic goal, however, we must use every means within the power of our increasing knowledge to remedy unbalanced conditions in imperfect bodies.

God’s law of CAUSE and EFFECT always works. When anything goes wrong with you or with civilization, it is you who are at fault, not God. If men steal from each other and kill each Other for ages, they harvest hate and fear which culminates in wars. The seed of fear, hate and greed will not yield harvests of love, prosperity, happiness and peace.

Men pray to ask God to stop the wars, instead of praying to ask God to so enlighten them that men can practice the love principle in their human relations and, therefore, reap a like harvest.

So long as man continues to violate God’s law he will hurt himself. All the faith and belief in the world will not alter the effect of any cause whatsoever. Try it. Try putting your finger on a red hot stove while praying reverently, with full faith and belief that God will cancel the law as a favor to you–and see what happens. Your finger will burn.

Therefore, I again say to you that when you ask God for anything, never ask Him to fulfill His part, for He has already done that, but ask Him, rather, to show you what you should do to so harmoniously work with Him that your desire will be fulfilled. Everything which is wrong with you is of your own making, therefore, ask that you be enlightened.

If, for example, you want a roof for your church and your people pray in full faith and belief that God will give it to you, and you then rely solely upon your prayer, your church will not get its roof. If, however, you ask God to give you knowledge to guide your actions in giving service for regiving of money for the roof, you will as surely have your desire fulfilled as the farmer’s desire is fulfilled when he does his part by tilling the soil and planting seed.

That is what I mean by the prayers of men who tell God what they wish Him to do instead of asking God to tell them what they should do. That is the great misconception of the power of prayer. The cause of that misconception lies in the fact that people who ask God for fulfillment of their desires forget that requests for material things are created only through two-way action. Material things are not created by rubbing an Alladin lamp, or through wishful thinking. They are created through balanced action and reaction.

When a mechanic fixes your broken car through KNOWLEDGE of its workings, or a surgeon fixes your broken body through KNOWLEDGE of its workings, those operations are as much Mind healings as the elimination of toxic poisons from your body by thoughts of love, is a Mind healing.

ALL CREATIONS ARE MIND CREATIONS.

ALL MIND CREATIONS HAVE BODIES FORMED IN THE IMAGES OF MIND-THOUGHTS.

ALL BODIES ARE CREATED BY ACTION AND DESTROYED BY OPPOSING ACTION.

WHAT MAN FORGETS WHEN HE PRAYS

When man fervently asks God to fulfill desires he forgets that he is asking God to do what he himself should do. God’s part has already been done.

Man asks God to stop wars, forgetting that wars are man-made, not God-made. Wars are effects of the disunity, greed and selfishness of man. Man has free will to manifest the spirit in him, or his senses, as he wills. It is all a part of the Play of Cause and Effect.

The Play must go on until man learns by experience that he must some day manifest the love principle upon which the universe is founded.

FAITH WILL NOT DO YOUR WORK

You know that the fulfillment of any desire whatsoever comes only through intelligent action. You guide your car through busy streets by intelligent action, not by faith or belief unsupported by knowledge of the right actions which are necessary to take.

Faith and belief are wonderfully consoling for a wishful thinker who is willing to believe in miraculous happenings, or who is quite ready to evade effort on his part, but it should be erased from the lexicon of those who desire to achieve, or to acquire anything.

God creates what He KNOWS by thinking it into divided forms. Man should do likewise, but he must first KNOW that which he desires to think into form.

You may have faith, belief, and also HOPE in regard to others but not in God. You must KNOW that God will give you your desire. Others may have to justify your faith and belief in them but God should not have to prove Himself to you.

If you ask a builder to build a house for you you KNOW that he can do it, and also he knows that he can do it. If he answered your inquiry as to whether he could build a house for you by saying: “I hope I can” or “I have faith and belief that I can”, your own faith in him would be tinged with deep doubts, for your very belief in him is founded on confidence in his knowledge.

YOU MUST HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOURSELF based upon your KNOWLEDGE, for knowledge is your power, not faith or belief.

Therefore, I say to you, whenever you desire to do anything for which you do not feel yourself equipped, do not start doing it with doubt in your Mind, or with blind faith that God will do it FOR you, for you must not start that way.

Stop, rather, and talk with God. “See Him, know Him, be Him,” in deep meditation. Seek knowledge through inspiration. That is the only way to build omnipotence into your desire. That is the only way to start with strength to fulfill your desire. Never start anything without inspired knowledge which puts love into your givings–for that which is called WORK should be only joyous givings.

Your weakness lies in asking God to fulfill your desire instead of asking Him to give you the knowledge to work WITH Him in the fulfilling of a universal desire. You render yourself weak in so asking–and you double your weakness by the very thought of having “faith in God”. Having “faith in God” implies a doubt of the certainty of His promise, and places God on His honor to grant you your request. That is not the right attitude. You should approach any achievement with an attitude of certainty.

You should never approach God–or your Self–in an attitude of supplication. You are not asking benevolence–nor is God dealing out patronage. God is Creator–and you are co-Creator–not a supplicant for favors.

You must lose your idea of separateness and find your universality. Until you KNOW your Oneness with the universe you are but one part of it.

As long as you feel yourself to be a separate individual person you will think of God as separate and apart from your Self. Until you can think of your Self as The Person, or the Universal Self, God will be another Being whom you may reverence, or worship, or ask favors from or depend upon, in the measure of your KNOWLEDGE of God.

To have faith–or belief–in God implies separateness. It implies that God is another, of Whom you cannot say “I and my Father are ONE”. That is why much deep meditation, or communion with God is the most important thing in your life, for the more you lose yourself in the Universal Self the more you think of God and your Self being ONE.

When you plant corn you do it with knowledge, born of experience, that the corn will grow and fill your granaries. It does not grow because you have faith and belief that it will grow, it grows because of the workings of God’s laws. Likewise, you put the seed in the ground intelligent action. You do not sit in the house and pray to God with faith and belief that He will plant it for you, for you KNOW that He will not. God will work with you but not for you, and all of the faith and belief in the world will not give you a crop without your doing your part with God in the fulfillment of your desire.

Corn grows, forests rise in their majesty, vapors rise and storms rend without faith and belief, or even without knowledge. God’s law is being fulfilled in them. God’s law is also being fulfilled in you. You may break your leg and God’s law will heal it just as God’s law grows the corn. But if you ask God to do more for you than fulfill His law, in other words, if you ask Him to do something for you which is your part of it, He will not do it, no matter how much you pray, and no matter how much faith and belief you put into your prayer.

To exemplify my meaning, suppose your broken leg is badly twisted out of line, or the bones pass each other, and you ask God to reset the bones, which you yourself should do or have done by a surgeon who KNOWS, you will find that God will do His part by making His universal law work for you, but your twisted leg will be the evidence of your own neglect to do your part of the work that God is doing with you, and you will be a cripple for life, a self-made cripple self-destined to suffer from your own disobedience to God’s law.

And therein lies most of the confusion regarding faith healing. God’s laws of growth are absolute. They work automatically, and they work whether you pray or do not pray. Conversely, God’s laws of decay and disintegration are just as absolute as His laws of construction, and all the prayers which ask God to set aside His laws as a special favor to you, are more than wasted.

Let me exemplify. Potato blight develops in a farmer’s field. The farmer does not go to his chamber to pray with full faith and belief that God will cure the potato blight while he sits by his fireside and does not do his part in working with God to reverse the destructive blight. Nor does he reason with God by making such useless affirmations as: “God made the potato perfect. Therefore, there is no imperfection in God.”

The farmer knows that he must do his part in checking the destructive growth with God’s help–which means with the CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE that God’s unalterable laws will always work, so he corrects the faulty, damp, or undernourished soil which was the CAUSE of the blight and God’s constructive laws heal the scars and restore normalcy.

If you would not expect a farmer to heal his potato blight by faith and belief in prayer to God why expect it of humans? Yet a blight develops in a human–such as cancer, or tumor, or wasted lung, or any of the many things which can happen to any material growing body which came out of the ground through the constructive forces of Nature, and must return to the ground through the destructive forces which are always waiting to do their part in Nature’s work the instant they are called upon to do their part.

Many humans would not ask God to cure a potato blight, nor condemn a farmer for curing it himself, but when they find that a blight has struck their own body, they pray that God will set aside His inexorable laws because of their great faith in Him, instead of doing what the farmer does by working with God.

Those who believe this way make certain affirmations upon which they base their beliefs regarding humans as being quite different from laws governing potatoes. These believers say with much reverence : “God made man perfect, therefore, there can be no imperfection. If you will but see yourself perfect you will then be perfect.”

The great fallacy of such a belief lies in the fact that man’s body is not man. Man is Mind–an idea of Mind, an idea with a spiritual entity. That is what God made perfect–and it is quite true that there can be no imperfection in the spiritual, eternal man.

But it is not the perfect spiritual man that has a cancer, or tumor. It is man’s body which has the cancer or tumor. And it is man’s body which is following the inexorable laws of cause and effect which constructs and destroys all bodies sequentially.

PERFECTION OF GOD’S LAW

God made His law perfect also. Perfection of God’s law means perfection of balance between two opposite forces, the force which builds bodies and the force which destroys them. God made both these forces and they are inexorable and unalterable in their workings. God made the divided universe and the laws which govern it are perfect.

But God gave man KNOWLEDGE of how to control those forces by putting his knowledge into action. The forces of Nature, and the construction of bodies cannot be controlled by wishful thinking. The divided universe of bodies which come from the earth and go back into the earth is one of action–not inaction and wishful thinking.

I cut my finger one day when my hands were soiled. I knew very well that the disintegrative forces would have an excellent opportunity to manifest God’s law by infecting my finger if I gave those waiting microbes a chance to return my body to the earth. Destructive microbes are manifesting God’s law as purposefully as sunshine and growth are fulfilling it.

I stepped into the bathroom where my host was washing his face and asked for iodine and hot water, whereupon he said to me: “I am amazed that a man with your knowledge would ask for iodine.”

“What would you have me do?” I asked. His reply was “Why not let God do it?” “Then why do you not let God wash your face?” I asked. “That is different. I must do this for cleanliness, but you are using medicine”, he countered.

“So are you. Soap is as much a medicine as iodine is. You keep clean in order to keep your body from decaying, as it would if you did not keep it clean. I am doing the same thing with a stronger microbe killer than soap is because my finger is bleeding. That is the only difference, but the principle is the same.”

When we went in to dinner I asked of my host: “Why do you eat food if God made you perfect? And why is Janie going to the dentist today to have her teeth filled–and why did you go to the occulist to have glasses made for your body if God made you perfect?”

The answer is that GOD DID NOT MAKE BODIES–but GOD IS CONTINUALLY MAKING BODIES AND IS CONTINUALLY DESTROYING THEM–with YOUR help and the help of all Nature. Your body is being made. It is not finished–and that is why you are eating food now. You are helping make your body and if you put good food into it you will help make a good body, in accordance with a perfect law which will work with you.

Conversely if you put bad food into it you, yourself, will poison your body. You will then find that God’s perfect law will work against you. If God made you perfect and you destroy that perfection, then you pray to God to fulfill His promise to you to make you perfect, you are not fulfilling that part of the law which is yours to do. You–as eternal man–belong to the undivided universe of undivided balance. That is where your perfection lies, not in your body for all bodies are imperfect to some extent.

BODIES BELONG TO THE DIVIDED UNIVERSE OF DIVIDED BALANCE

Your body, however, belongs to the divided universe of divided balance between two opposite forces. Each of these divided balances manifest God equally. Each are perfect exemplifications of the law. If you put decaying or poisonous food into your growing body and then ask God in full faith and belief to set His law aside for you, you are but expressing Ignorance of God’s way of working with you instead of knowledge of your co-Creatorship with God.

You do not realize that you are asking God to reverse His law and make the destructive force which you have put into your body become the constructive force.

When God divided the undivided He made both divisions perfect. When you use both of them in balance you produce a perfect body, but when you, or all Nature, unbalance the two you are violating God’s law and you must blame yourself only for it. Do not blame God or ask Him to void your mistake. You, yourself, must void it by restoring balance.

Two children on a see-saw play with the two opposite forces of the divided universe with great happiness until one or both of them break that equality. Blood then flows from shins by the children’s own decisions to manifest unbalance.

PERFECTION IS EVERYWHERE. THERE IS NO IMPERFECTION.

When we see what we call imperfect bodies, or imperfection anywhere, whether it be in crippled children, malformed trees or diseased men, or life-taking hurricanes, droughts, smallpox epidemics or any other effect of motion whatsoever which expresses a very unbalanced condition, we must see them as perfect workings of a perfect law. If they are not to our liking we must do something about it. The only thing we can do is to work with God intelligently through action just as God works with Nature through intelligent action.

A smallpox epidemic cannot be stopped by all the prayers of all the world so long as man continues to build smallpox into his own body through ignorance of the law which he is breaking. Instead of praying to God to stop the epidemic man should pray for knowledge of how to work with God in the building of balanced bodies.

If knowledge of the cause of smallpox is given you and you find that mosquitos are carrying those destructive germs to you, and you then insulate yourself from the CAUSE, the epidemic will disappear, as many epidemics have disappeared through knowledge and obedience to God’s law. Victims by thousands died of small-pox when prayer alone was practiced but deaths ceased when knowledge destroyed its cause.

Knowledge made the Bubonic plague to be a thing of the past, while ignorance of its cause would still cause countless deaths no matter how many people fervently prayed to God to stop it by affirming that God made man perfect. Knowledge of cause saved millions of lives while millions died because of ignorance.

Likewise, hosts of reverent people pray to God to stop wars while they still continue the practices which make wars. Love alone will stop wars by unifying mankind. Just so long as disunity causes men and nations to fear each other there will be wars.

GRAVE INCONSISTENCIES OF NON-THINKING PEOPLE

Many who believe in healing by prayer alone without working with God through intelligent action vehemently condemn calling in a doctor or surgeon in cases where a purely mechanical action is needed to save a life, such as in childbirth where both child and mother die because of the lack of a purely mechanical change of position of the borning child which otherwise could not be born.

Refusal to make use of the knowledge of one to whom God has given such knowledge is as much a commission of murder by the one who refuses as though he killed the mother and child with a revolver.

I know of such a person who rejects the help of all doctors and surgeons, and bitterly condemns all operations. I asked of him this question “Do you condemn the idea of a blood transfusion when a person is dying from loss of blood?”

“Yes I do”, he replied, “because it requires a surgical operation which would not be necessary if one had proper faith in God.”

“If you were dying of hunger would you not eat food to make blood so that you would not die?” I asked.

“Of course I would, but that is God’s natural plan, while surgical operations are not. Surgery is a method employed by those who do not know, or believe in God’s almighty power”. he replied.

“Would you recommend that a hundred surgeons and doctors be withdrawn from the battle fields and replaced with men of your belief to save the lives of men whose legs have been shot off, skulls crushed and bones exposed to view, men who are bleeding to death from terrible gunshot wounds or burns where flesh is half gone from the body? In asking you this question may I remind you that knowledge of surgery has reduced the death percentage to one fifth of the death rate of thirty years ago. Could your method give these men new legs, new arms, faces, and parts of bodies which plastic surgery has made possible in giving happiness and new life to thousands who would have died in agony otherwise?”

His answer was so inconsistent that I will give it only in brief digest. It was to the effect that “Mind cure” had not yet reached that stage–that the patients must also have faith–that war was sin and the “wages of sin are death” and other generalities which indicated gross ignorance of God’s ways of working with man and Nature.

Such believers do not realize that when surgeons heal with KNOWLEDGE that is MIND HEALING. It is making use of knowledge followed by action, which is the very basic principle of Creation.

God makes all things purposefully. They must fulfill their purpose. When they have fulfilled it, or have rendered their bodies incapable of fulfilling it God’s law returns the body to the stillness from which it came.

Those who affirm that God made man perfect–meaning the body of man–do not realize that the making of the body of man covers a period of millions of years. The man of the jungle, or of the stone age, or the Neanderthal man are as unalike as the forests of today and those of the carboniferous age are unalike.

If God made man of today perfect, could we not also say that Neanderthal man was perfect–or that cosmic illumined man of the future is also perfect–when neither one resembles the other either mentally or physically?

BODIES ARE ELECTRO-CHEMICAL MACHINES

All vegetable and animal bodies are mechanical instruments which are made for the sole purpose of manifesting God THROUGH ACTION. That is all that bodies do. They do nothing else than express the actions of their centering Mind which motivates their actions.

Bodies are composed of electric waves. One half of every wave is concentrative and centripetal. It is thus polarized in the positive direction of increasing vitality. It is the builder of bodies.

Positive polarity multiplies power in the measure of desire of Mind to express action. Positive polarity expresses LIFE.

The other half of the wave is decentrative and centrifugal. It is thus polarized in the negative direction of decreasing vitality. It is the destroyer of bodies.

Negative polarity divides power in the measure of desire of Mind to rest from expressing action. Negative polarity expresses DEATH.

One half of every wave, likewise, is alkaline in its chemistry. The alkaline elements are positive and multiply vitality in the direction which expresses LIFE.

The other half of the wave is acid in its chemistry. The acid elements are negative and divide vitality in the direction which expresses DEATH.

For every acid element there is a balancing alkaline one. Both are necessary but each must always balance the other, else the body is thrown out of balance and becomes ill, or develops the destructive growths and malignancies which are so rapidly increasing in the unnatural lives of great cities.

Centering the body is the undivided Consciousness which rules the body through its divided extensions of thinking Mind. The wave vibrations of thinking Mind are likewise divided into opposite sets of emotions.

The emotions which express happiness, joy, ecstasy, love and good will polarize the body positively in the direction which expresses LIFE. These emotions multiply the alkaline elements to vitalize the body and to destroy any destructive tissues or malignancies in the body caused by an overbalance of acid supremacy. Poisonous toxins which are not deep seated will thus be voided, but long developing, deep seated growths, due to unbalanced conditions, and to inherited malformations in seed patterns may be retarded but are often not possible of healing without the aid of the surgeon.

The emotions which express anger, fear, worry, jealousy, cynicism and hatred polarize the body negatively in the direction which expresses DEATH. These emotions multiply the acid elements and devitalize the body by developing toxic conditions, which if sufficiently sustained, promote the various destructive growths which gradually decay the body until it is utterly destroyed.

As I have so often said, we build our own bodies by the thoughts we think as well as the food we eat. God’s Mind is forever ecstatic. The more we reflect the ecstatic condition of God’s Mind the more we vitalize our bodies, prolong our lives, and lengthen their maturing points.

That is what I mean by the need for constant communion with God in order that his Omnipotence shall be extended to you in the measure of your ability to recognize it in you. That is why my own lifetime habit of working knowingly with God delayed my maturing point until far in the sixties instead of the average maturity of man in the forties.

The great effort of life is to so live, mentally and physically that you forever maintain a perfect balance between all of these pairs of opposite conditions.

While affirming to your cancer patient that God made all men perfect are you taking into consideration all of these attributes which are so far out of balance in every living body that it is almost humorous to assert, or affirm such an impossibility in Nature?

The actual fact is that there are no perfect living bodies of any kind in Nature. Their very growth under so many varying conditions makes perfection for all of them impossible. The perfection lies in the law which makes bodies, not in the bodies.

That oak over in the open meadow seems perfect. A squirrel planted it on good ground. That other oak over in the shadow seems far from perfect. A squirrel planted it on barren ground in the crevice of rocks where its roots could not spread.

That man over there seems to have a fine body, even though one would not call it perfect. He has injured its shape by over-eating. Next to him is a much finer body. He inherited it from long-lived ancestors. But over to the left is a misshapen body given to him by parents who were syphilitic.

In the hospital up the street are rooms full of bodies with twisted feet, hunched backs and other deformities. Surgery is reclaiming many of these to a semblance of perfection. Could you bring happiness or cure to any of these by telling them that God made them perfect? I think not!

I know a man like these, however, that would believe you and understand you when you say: “God made man perfect.” This man is a hopeless cripple, a paralytic who has not moved in thirty years. He is totally blind also, but can hear and talk. That is all he can do physically. Yet spiritually he is a giant. He would say: “Yes God made me perfect–but Nature, or my parents, or something did not work in balance with God’s law to give me a perfect body.” He is one of the most joyous and spiritual men I have ever known and has brought health and happiness to others by his inspired writings by means of which he has made himself abundantly self-supporting.

You will remember the passage of scripture which says that the unbalanced acts of parents will be visited upon their children unto the third and fourth generation? There are millions of imperfect bodies, even badly malformed bodies, which are the inherited malformations of distorted seed patterns. Our blind paralytic is undoubtedly one of these.

Disease is not alone the cause of all of these malformations of descendants. For several generations women distorted their inner organs by tight lacing of that barbarous invention, the corset. Hundreds of thousands of women descendants of these tight lacing ancestors have suffered great and unnecessary agony in giving birth to children, or in their normal menstrual periods, because of these “sins” of their mothers and grandmothers, while thousands of them have had to undergo major operations because of those “sins”.

When you tell these women that God made them perfect and all they have to do is to see themselves perfect and remind God that He has, perhaps, overlooked them in letting something so hurtful happen to their bodies, you are forgetting that God did not do the tight lacing which caused these agonies. Their grandmothers did that.

THE VALUE OF FAITH AND BELIEF

It must be remembered that bodies are the product of thought of Mind. Mind is perfect, so that part of the building of man which God does perfect. When man’s thinking is unbalanced his body is also unbalanced because his body is built in the image of his thinking.

No one should ask God to remedy man’s own failure to do his part in working with God. All the faith and belief in the world will not induce God to balance man’s own unbalancing, for that would take free will from man and reduce him to the status of an automaton, and that is not in the scheme of Nature.

Faith and belief have great emotional value in healing bodies, for, like other positive spiritual emotions such as reverence, ecstasy, happiness, beauty, love and kindred emotions they reverse the opposite emotions of fear, hate, worry, discouragement and other negative emotions and thus repolarize a depolarizing body.

When you have thus substituted such constructive emotions for destructive ones it is not your faith and belief in God which has healed, it is you, yourself, who have healed yourself by balancing your body electrically and chemically.

It is your own obedience to God’s law that has healed you.

CONCLUSION

God is LOVE. The foundation of love is BALANCE.

God’s universe is balanced by the two opposite pulsations which manifest love.

When man learns to balance all his human relations, and all of his human emotions, he will have a perfectly balanced body. Normal bodies are balanced. Everyone may have as balanced and as normal a body as he is able to practice the principles of balance from moment to moment of his life.

If you could keep in balance all that God has already given you, you would never have any illness of body whatsoever, for it would be impossible. God’s balanced laws are always fulfilled with balanced manifestations. It could not be otherwise. Conversely, unbalance between the two opposing forces will always result in unbalanced manifestations.

Tumors, cancers, headaches, heart disease, and every other body ailment is the result of unequal interchange between God’s two constructive-destructive forces. Likewise all infectious diseases and all malignancies are similarly caused, for absolute balance between the two would insulate each from the other and allow the complete cycle of appearance and disappearance to con-summate themselves in an orderly and normal manner.

The more you can live and work knowingly with God from moment to moment the more your body can approach the perfection which complete balance can alone give.

Swannanoa, Waynesboro, Virginia

Treasured friends:

We feel that by this time you will have discovered that there is a trend, and a purpose, between the lines of these lessons other than the building of knowledge upon which a scientifically provable philosophy of life can be founded.

You must feel that trend and purpose for your letters indicate that fact, and those letters put recognition of our purpose into words more and more vividly–and that pleases Lao and me mightily.

Perhaps, though, you might search harder for what is invisibly written between the lines if I put it into words and tell you very plainly what I am aiming at, psychologically. Such words would have been wasted if I stated them several months ago but not now, for these words will have a different meaning today than they would have during the earlier lessons.

We spoke in generalities at that time, telling you, for example, that it was a transition from sensing to knowing, or the unfolding of the Cosmic Man, and such generalities. These terms must have intuitively conveyed our meaning to you and awakened in you the desire for cosmic knowledge but you did not have so dynamic an understanding of what lay behind those terms as you do today.

You must now understand by this time that we are trying to make you live and work KNOWINGLY in both the undivided invisible universe and the divided physical universe of bodies in action. The transition from sensing to knowing actually means living in the Light of inspired knowing all of the time, and extending your inspired knowing to your thoughts when you wish to create thought-bodies to image your thoughts.

Thus living in the high heavens the body is but secondary, and to be forgotten as much as possible when not needed for the manifestation of your knowing, through action.

This reverses the rule of both body and Mind by the senses which make continual demands for pure gratification of senses. The senses are important, vitally important, for they are a doorway to the Soul if the door to the Soul is kept wide open by desire of the Soul in you. But when demands of the senses close the door, or never let it open, and the senses dominate you, you then but live in an objective universe of sensed bodies which insulate the Soul and drown out the Inner Voice which would reach the Soul if it could.

The most wonderful thing in all the world is within every man–the genius knows it for he is close to it–the mystic knows it better for he has touched the hem of it–and the cosmic thinker is reaching out eagerly for that kingdom of heaven in the Light which that wonderful thing is.

All mankind has known of it in his heart from the beginning, and started his search for it way back in the dark aeons, but many are now opening the door–wider and wider–which leads to a new dwelling place–the real dwelling place of man who has for such long ages thought that his body was his dwelling place.

To live knowingly in the Light where MAN is–where GOD is–where all-knowledge, power and presence are the fulcrum for expression in the divided universe–to make that kingdom of heaven which lies beyond the doors of your senses your dwelling place–to know the ecstasy of it–the inspiration of it for your interpretations into silent rhythms–into motionless forms unborn as yet–unborn till you want them born–THAT is what I mean by making the transition from sensing to knowing.

I want you to live in God’s universe and look out from its Light into its divided extensions when you will, and thus looking out to find them wonderful–and good–from reflecting the glory of the Light of their Source strongly here, weakly there–but all of it being GOOD, for all are seeking that door which you have found and some are near enough for you to reach forth your hand and help them over the threshold.

And just that is what Lao and I are giving our lives for, both working together toward just that end. Hours upon hours we review all these lessons together with just that end that the right words will be found, the simplest of language and examples used, all of it for just that one purpose of keeping that door to the Light wide open to you for your dwelling place, from where you may work knowingly with God from moment to moment, and be ever watchful for those who are reaching out to you to help them across the illumined threshold into the glory of the all-knowing Light.

For that purpose God led us to this Sacred Mountain from where The Message will spread throughout the world when there are teachers enough to multiply our ability to spread it. They are coming and will continue to come until the time comes when Lao and I shall unfold our plan to you for the great transformation of man, and the dawn of a new day in human relations.

With our deepest love to you,

I am Sincerely yours,

Walter Russell, Sc. D.