THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH LECTURE GIVING LOVE

To me it seems that the most difficult problem with which in our human contacts we have to contend, is our emotional relationship to one another. I am always amazed to find (even among students of Truth) whenever I visit either the humblest home or the most exalted one, that disharmony, lack of love, and little understanding prevail. Such folk should have faith in, and knowledge of God, should have learned firstly that He is Love, secondly that His Love is concerned with them, and thirdly that they themselves have access to It irrespective of what troubles have to be resolved. The personality with its wilfulness or jealousy seems to overlay whatever spiritual enlightenment they may have accumulated. When I question a wife I am told, "I do my utmost to do the right thing, I am kind, loving and forgiving, but my husband will not co-operate." And when I speak to the man he says, "She nags, badgers and criticises me, and no matter what efforts I make, I am always in the wrong." "You have," I remind him, "God to fall back upon. He is not something nebulous, abstract, separated from you; He is a living Presence within you, and as --following upon the application of Truth-- you have already had demonstrations in material matters, you should know the He is also the answer to this discord which is shattering you. You cannot, yourself, see this, but you nevertheless require that your wife be the first to respond." In my office, among others, I have two paintings, done for me by a man who was originally a priest. When I met him in 1938 he was in hospital mentally aberrated and completely paralysed down the right side as a result of a brain tumour removal. The matron, at his request, asked me to visit him and I subsequently joined the visiting committee and later became a member of the governing board. For sixteen years I had a very close relationship with this man who, because he could not remember my name, called me "Padre." He died at the age of 82, but at 65, when he was about 30 years older than I, he was a brilliantly educated man with no inkling whatever of the spiritual message given to mankind by the Master.

Though a wonderful storehouse of theological information, he asked me to teach him Truth which, because of his impaired memory, I did on paper. Eventually he was completely healed. The right hand and arm had suffered total paralysis resulting from the severance of the motor nerves; but with these restored, he painted over a hundred pictures for me which can be seen in our offices all over the country. I have two, both of the same vista, in my office. One, facing my desk, illustrates the text: "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures." The composition is of a placid lake upon which a little boat is riding, with mountains in the background, green trees that look like elms, and a path, alongside which is a bright herbaceous border, leading into the distance. The other, when I sit on the side in my easy chair, is opposite me and it is based on the biblical words: "He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my emotions." I cannot describe to you the feeling that comes over me when I look at these landscapes, for I see in them the healing that took place in the artist when he was 67 years old. I would say to him, "Give me your good hand and come and sit with me in the garden in that chair." I suppose he weighed about 230 lb (he looked like Churchill) and day after day, year in and year out, he would sit at a table on which were two stands and an easel. He used to pick up his right hand with his left and put it into mine, and so we would shake hands. If the doctors had seen this they would probably have told the matron that I must be mad, getting a man with a paralysed arm to shake hands with me after that fashion. I visited him every Thursday, but I could not reach him with words, which went in at one ear and out of the other, so I had an artist who was on our staff paint for him what we called a "spiritual plan" in which he was doing the things he would have liked to do. This we placed in front of him and I asked him to imagine that he was looking at a plan which God had created for him and that --having taken in the picture with his eyes-- he was to feel that he was seeing what God was doing for him, and to be grateful. I asked him to remember that "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my spiritual nature." And within six months that man developed new motor centres in his brain and painted, as I have told you, over a hundred pictures for me! I would like you to get a picture that symbolises green pastures, which shows the prolific expression of God in Nature, and The Path of Truth that leads to emotional peace, with the soul in harmonious relationship with the Almighty. Do not try to produce this state on your own; do not feel, as so many mistakenly do, that concentration of itself will bring to pass. That will produce only tension and headaches. What I want for you is a letter in picture form, God talking in imagery to you of your desires. It must be like a communication you would post in the conviction that it would reach its destination, and that the person who received it would do what you were asking him to do so that you would experience the inner satisfaction of knowing that you had handed over to him --in this case to God.

When you try of yourself to overcome a condition, whether of sickness, unhappiness or poverty, it gets worse by a process which we call chemicalisation. If you have ever made lemonade you know that you mix various ingredients together, they effervesce, and when the fizzing has subsided you have your lemon drink. When you introduce new thoughts into your emotional awareness a like agitation takes place. Christ said you cannot put new wine into old bottles; similarly, old thoughts and feelings which for years have been negative react against the introduction of new feelings and ways of thinking, so there follows an internal explosion and you get sadder, sicker and poorer and exclaim, "Is this the answer to my prayer asking for surcease from these conditions?" It is only through continuous working with God that you discover that you go through these negative experiences in order that they may, eventually, be eliminated. If you want to put new furniture into a room, you must get rid of all the old rubbish first. It is even so with the introduction into a marriage of new emotional thoughts. The husband becomes more difficult, the wife more irrational, and after a trial period they agree that it is a waste of time practising Truth because It does not work! But It is working otherwise everything would continue as it was and nothing would happen. It is consistency of purpose that is called for as was the case with the priest. Imagine what this man --30 years older than I was with a theological training-- must have thought when I asked him to "pray on paper"; to look at a picture and to feel that God was crystallising it for him. However, he was receptive, had nothing else to do, so he just sat gazing at the illustration until it became a part of his consciousness. If you play this game (which is not a game at all) not striving, but pretending it is true, not being done by you, but by God who is All-knowledge, All-power and Allpresence, it will eventually sink down into your emotional nature and the ideas portrayed will take on form and Substance in accordance with God's Perfection. Eagerly I watched the first movements of his paralysed right hand which was in time going to paint his pictures as he began to lift it by himself, not even knowing what was taking place, his rational mind quite incapable of grasping it. Somehow the matron and others who helped in the hospital got it across to him that this thing called Truth worked, so since his mind was open and malleable he was reconditioned as a child would have been.

In the past very unhappy things had happened in his life here in Johannesburg, and as a result of the worry attached to them he developed the tumour on his brain and landed first in the General Hospital and eventually in the chronic sick ward at Edenvale. He used to cry like a baby because of his sins, the things committed and omitted. He believed, as many do, that his condition was God's punishment, but I remembered how the Master had said that when you live in love --feeling it, not merely thinking it-- It sets you free, for It is the Power that releases what we call God, in your mind, heart, body and affairs, and in those of any other person concerned. If I were dealing with you, and you seemed to me to be a difficult obstruction, it would not be for me to blame you, or to say, "If only God would change him or her I should be able to resolve our difficulty." On the contrary, I should have to tell myself, "This is a reflection of my own separation from Omnipresence," and the more the situation irritated me --and I reacted to it-- the more I should bind it to me, so I should have to bless it as I looked for the cure within myself. Do not ever search outside! If you think rightly, if you feel in tune with the other party, you will find the solution for, as you resolve the affair in your own mind, it will no longer be able to affect you or hurt you, but will dissipate itself. It takes two to make a quarrel.

My job, for the last twenty years, has been to help innumerable families, and I have found that for a week, a month, even six months, things have gone well, then those concerned have become lazy. But Truth, like breathing, is something you have to practise regularly, not just when you feel so inclined. When you stop things go wrong again, and it is no use throwing up your hands and exclaiming, "Look what Truth has done to me!" for it is a case of what you have done to Truth. The problem is always in your own consciousness, and there is none that is insoluble because it is GOD who is waiting to be allowed to come forth into expression AS THE ANSWER TO IT. Envy and jealousy do not merely bind people, they destroy them; not those to whom they are directed, but those who entertain them. Their emotional natures become totally upset when the green-eyed monster rears its ugly head so that the individual experiencing it becomes mentally affected, and body and affairs are thrown out of harmony in such a way that you actually see the whole edifice of his life crash in ruins at his feet.

The remedy, of course, is simple! "LOVE leadeth me beside still waters" where all is peaceful and harmonious, Love restores my soul giving me mental and emotional equilibrium. It is the only Power which produces happiness in all relationships, health in all bodies, and prosperity in all affairs. I watch these things happening all day long. I see people who begin with faltering steps, learning to love and going from strength to strength. Just lately I met someone who had had a most wonderful demonstration. Every hand seemed to have opened to her and her husband and family, not because they were especially chosen children of God but because --having gone through great emotional stress and mutual unhappiness-- they had practised the simple expedient of GIVING LOVE. Every problem, some of which appeared to be insurmountable, was completely done away with and when this woman asked me, "How many more demonstrations can I have?" I replied, "They have only just started. There is no computing the blessings of God. They come --remember this-- heaped up, pressed down, shaken together and running over to share and to spare to ALL who practise --faithfully and steadfastly-- Love."