THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH LECTURE CHECK YOURSELF

"All things are possible with God." - all things, not some things. I want to go even further with that quotation and say that all things have already been established by God. Because God is, you are. Therefore you are all things, not only what you might call the basics - life, health, material means - but also the luxuries like peace, joy and limitless abundance which through worldly indoctrination you may believe you do not have. If you go back to your childhood you will in most cases remember that your parents were very good to you. Not only did they supply your every need, they even anticipated them, and it gave them great joy to see the pleasure on your faces when you received this good. We are taught that we are even closer to our heavenly Father than to our natural parents, that we are in the very image and likeness of Him. Yet, when we look about us into the mirror of life as it appears, we may wonder. The crippled person, the mentally deranged person, the individual with a chronic disease - I have spent long times very close to such people - are these really the expressions of God? Surely there must be something wrong somewhere. But if you replace the name of God with the name Love, it may help you to understand that you cannot ask such a question.

If you yourself are expressing Love, radiating Love, if you are full of forgiveness, you come to understand that there is no separation between God and His image, between yourself and others regardless of how they appear. But most of us fall down do we not? We are prepared to love certain people, perhaps our family, friends and associates, but we are quite indifferent to the man around the corner or to the competitor in business. Yet our competitor is God.

Love is a continuum, is Oneness. We must love the whole of God, we cannot love a "part" of Him. And if I love you I must love the whole of you, regardless of your apparent deficiencies. Do you not see why you cannot say of anyone, as though they were separate from you, "Surely there must be something wrong somewhere?" I have a tough time with people sometimes, and in the beginning I found it difficult to cope, but I had been enjoined "Come now, let us reason together" and I began to reason with God after this fashion: "Is not every person God, the temple of God? Is every person not experience which I have attracted to myself for my own unfoldment? Why then do I object to aspects of them, why do I resent him or her? Why do I allow myself to become critical, even to lose my temper?" When I was young, through lack of understanding, I lost my temper quite often. I found that these outbursts had a bad effect on me, not on the person who triggered them, so I tried with all my mind and heart to realise that not only am I my brother's keeper but I am my brother - I am my sister, I am my enemy. Love within me says "What is that to you? Follow Me." I continue to reason with God "Let me make my enemy my friend. Let me make those who speak disparagingly of me a part of myself. Let me look into myself and ask 'Where am I falling down?'" Through this reasoning I found it quite easy to love my enemy. He becomes my teacher. He is helping my spiritual development, helping me to let Spirit crystallise in my life. He is making me abundant, and healthy, and joyous. If I want to fly my kite I must have the wind. And if there is no wind I must run along the ground to get resistance so that my kite can go up. My so-called enemies or adversaries, or negation of any kind in my life, provide the resistance I need to rise into the light and space of God. I must love these people and circumstances. Ask yourself constantly what it is that you truly desire in life, for your true desire is the thing itself in incipiency. It is Spirit telling you what is already yours. As I have said so often before and will continue to say - your true desire is the shadow of the guaranteed event. That which you long for is coming through your mind and heart in order to present itself tangibly in your life. So why resent that which is forcing you to exercise the love and trust to release the good? The personalities that seem to be hurting you are helping you to unfold God in yourself, bringing you into a greater awareness that you are not a lonely isolated personality but the wholeness of God. You are not parts of God, you are not fragments of God, you are God fulfilled. How wonderfully fulfilling it was to discover that my enemy is my teacher. I started praying for my enemies, and all my enemies became my friends. I forgot my little personality and prayed "God, be whatever You want to become through me. Let my voice become Thy voice, the Voice of love, understanding and caring." I found that others became the open hand of God to me. From every conceivable corner I was being blessed. The windows of my consciousness were now opened, and I could see a reflection of myself everywhere, as in a mirror. What I was sending out in thought, word and deed was returning to me.

Some orthodoxy would teach us that God is a Being apart from us, marking down our achievements and errors, and then, when the tally shows us wanting, instead of going up into a higher vision and understanding of God, we descend into darkness and oblivion. "Hell" is non-existent. I must pose this question to myself: "How am I living?" I never ask how you are living. How am I reflecting this God in me? Am I mentally relaxed and at peace because I know, and know that I know, that God is me, and that we can never be separated from one another? Do I know this with fullness of mind and heart? I want Good to manifest in my mind, heart, body and affairs. I want to be fulfilled. Today is today - it "is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." Tomorrows and yesterdays are but images of the one day in which God the Good may be fulfilled in me and through me, and in and through you. When my father was dying of leukaemia they told him there was no hope, and both the doctor and specialist saw me and spoke of the work I was doing, saying that it was good work, bringing comfort to people, etcetera. The doctor said to me "You cannot save your father, it is something you cannot do. He is beyond human help." "But" I said to him "I am not asking for human help. I am giving thanks for God's help. You are looking at a tiny light bulb and saying that that is all the light there is, all there is of God. I look at the universe millions of light years around me in all directions, and when I get to the edge there are still millions of light years beyond. It is without beginning and without end, one perfect circle of Love, and Life, and Beauty, and Order." I bought from a pharmacist a poster of a person showing all the internal organs, and I wrote across it "The blood in you is the life of God and it is perfect, Archie Campbell." Throughout every day I thought of this picture. When I went home at night and when I went to bed I looked at it. When I awakened each morning I looked at it. I did not look at my father, lying there, yellow in colour and gradually dying of an incurable disease. The doctor came and patted me on the shoulder and told me not to be disappointed if Truth did not work in this case. I assured him that I was not disappointed, adding "You see the personality, I see God. You cannot kill Spirit - it is ageless and deathless, and it manifests now as the personality." I sat at my father's side holding his hand but not looking at him. Inwardly I looked at the poster on my wall telling myself that it was a true picture of him. I was merely a connection. I knew that my father and God and I were one Individual, one Presence. I was recognising the one Presence, reminding myself that It was Omnipresence and Perfection and that negation was merely an appearance, a lie conjured up by my father's lack of awareness of God. This went on day after day, week after week, and the doctor kept on shaking his head philosophically and said "I used to be a Christian too, but you must be practical." "No" I said "I will continue to know that God is the only Presence, the only Power, constituting Archie Campbell, and he is whole, and is reflecting God’s perfect Health." He did not die. He came back to life and we sent him down to Cape Town with my mother. Then he began exercising and ended up walking ten miles a day. "A miracle" said the doctor, but I said "There are no miracles. Everything is governed by Law." "Well" he said "it works," and I said "It works." In 1979, just as I finished delivering a lecture, I collapsed, and had an experience concerning death, for which I have ever since been deeply grateful because, through that experience I have learnt a great more about God. I have learnt not about the miracle of God working in man's life but about the naturalness of life as God. God constitutes me.

To have faith is to have understanding. Faith and understanding are not and cannot be destroyed, even by death. The first answered prayer, no matter how small or seemingly unimportant, proves to you that God is real, and from that tiny fulcrum you build up more and more faith, until you know that God is the only Presence and the only Power in you, and all seeming-else is a lie. The Master says to us eternally "O man of little faith, why do you doubt? Fear not, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." You have been living in darkness and ignorance. Switch on the light of Truth within you and set yourself free from this limitation. The kingdom of God is within you. There is no heaven above, nor hell below. I check whether I am in tune by asking myself whether I accept in toto that God is all there is. There cannot be two presences or powers in Omnipresence. God constitutes His own universe, seen and unseen. Mind is this universal Presence working in an orderly manner running this universe. And I am the microcosm of all this - my own mind and heart are running my body, and the way I see, think and feel is the way I become inwardly, and thereby manifest outwardly. There is nothing unnatural or supernatural in the whole universe.

The Bible says "The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand." This is God's invitation to us, yet people shrink from the idea of taking what God has given them and using it, of allowing the whole Universal Power to come into action through them and for them. In the fifty five years that I have walked the path of Truth I have never found Him to fail. For five decades I have been seeing God in action - the lame walking, the deaf hearing, the paralysed rising. This is what God wants - but we must call forth His presence. I can pray forever for electricity to work but it will not happen until I switch it on. Are you switched on? Check yourself, your ideas, your vision, your thoughts and feelings, what you give forth, how you act. This will show whether you are working in tune with God or not. And if you are, as in arithmetic, your equation will be fulfilled for you, not by some miraculous measure, but because you have fulfilled the principles. Each one of us is God in action. Each one of us is manifesting a distinctive degree of consciousness. Mine serves me and my needs, and the work that I do, and has taken over fifty years to develop. So pray, as I do, "Lead kindly Light, lead Thou me on to fulfilment of all that I must do to express Thee, here, now and for ever more."