THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH LECTURE HIS WILL IS ONLY GOOD

How marvellous it is to know that God gives with one hand but does not take away with the other hand, that his "blessings make rich and add no sorrow therewith." In my decades of teaching I have found that a great number of people have misgivings about saying "Thy will be done." For them it is a sort of resignation to what may be good or indifferent or even not good. When so it manifests they say it is God's will. They believe it is their fate, and attribute it to God. I remember my early years in Truth, when I was being abundantly blessed, and my asking myself if it was my will being done or God's. I wondered what God's will really was. Everywhere I saw poverty-stricken conditions, incurable diseases and great unhappiness manifest in people's lives, some of them "good Christians." Some said "I am being punished for wrongs I have done in the past" or "in previous lives." Others said "This is my fate. I have accepted God's will." Almost none of them acknowledged that God's will is only that which is good. I thought to myself "This response is a contradiction of everything the Master teaches, everything he stands for." I was so disturbed by the situation that I went back to basics. I actually stopped working - thinking, feeling, speaking and acting - in tune with my own desires. I stood aside and prayed after this fashion: "Not my will - not all these qualities which I would like to have – Thy will be done. Let me know for certain, for I am teaching people that Thy will is good. Let me know that all this goodness which has come into my life in the last very few years is Your will, is not just the manifestation of positive thinking. If you are, as the Master says, Divine love, I have no doubt." And I stood aside quite unperturbed. I stood by myself, the tiny microcosm of the Universe. I would rather have been destroyed than find I had been leading people astray. I wanted proof of what the will of God is, what the will of Divine love is, for every human being, not only for me. We are all spiritual beings but we call ourselves human beings. And instead of things being taken from me, and my health deteriorating, and unhappiness coming into my life, the whole of life expanded for me to fill a larger vista. More and more good poured into my life - spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically and materially - so much so that I could hardly keep pace with it. Good was heaped up, pressed down, shaken together with a running-over measure to share and to spare. "This" I said "is God's will for every person, not only for me. How wonderful to know it." How can you ever know it unless you have had that experience? Unless I am tested I cannot be trusted. My character must be proven. And here, expressing as me, was the character of God, the character of Divine love filling my life with so much good. People on all sides were asking "Where does he get it from? What is he doing?" My assured message was "Come and share my fortune, come and share my happiness, and my health, and my prosperity." Some felt that there must be a catch and said "It cannot be so." But it was so. And for over four decades I have observed the same Presence in continuum building Itself into more and more good in my life in spite of circumstances and challenges. I can say to you with understanding that the only person who binds you to your problems is yourself, not God, not a devil, no satanic force. You bind yourself through your fear, your faith in nothingness. What demonstrations the world is having of this inverted faith called fear! On every side poverty, and hunger and misery, and hatred, and untimely death. "This is my karma" people say, or "This is my cross" or "I must accept God's will." What nonsense. Even my love, the tiny microcosm of universal Love, enables me to pray for my enemies, to incorporate them into the joy and wellbeing I have and I think they would like to have. Universal Love says to me "Forgive seventy times seven times" which means ad infinitum. But narrow-minded humanity does not admit God's forgiveness: "You shall pay the last farthing. You shall escape nothing." They even misrepresent God's law "as you sow so shall you reap." They do not grasp that all thoughts and utterances and deeds which are in terms of unhappiness, or ill-health, or poverty, are negation, are nothing, and if I sow nothing [then] nothing is my crop. It is not God's will; it is my stupidity.

Nature is wonderful. In my garden is a pond, and in the centre is a little fountain which has not worked for 30 years. A short while ago my wife and I observed a tiny shoot coming up from the sun-bleached concrete of the fountain. There was no soil to be seen, no way for soil to get there. And a little shrub grew up without any soil, without any regular water. It is now about 18 inches high. This is the mightiness of God - and this is the mightiness of the seed which God has placed within each of us. It never expires, but yearns and strives to grow in spite of our ignorance and stupidity. I have a mustard seed sent to me by one of our students who is a Rabbi in Jerusalem. It is just a little larger than a pinhead. I have looked at it over the years and marvelled. All you require is faith the size of this tiny seed, a tiny quantum of knowledge, of understanding or awareness of God, and you can say to this mountain of difficulty "Be taken up and cast into the sea." This faith is Love, feeling in the heart, and it fulfils the Law, God's law. Every good thing comes from God. The Master weeps because of man's obtuseness. He opens his arms lovingly: "How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" His predecessor says "I am a voice crying in the wilderness." Man will only accept what is registered on his intellect and senses, which lie to him about Reality, but it is how he judges and lives life. I go past reason and logic. None can understand the Creator, will ever understand the Creator. Power is indefinable, beyond man's comprehension. "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." I experienced crisis 31 years ago. A medical specialist told me "You have 18 months to live. If you had come 18 months earlier I could have helped you." I felt numb. This was a death sentence. "How could this happen to me? This cannot be His will." I did not know how to pray at the moment so I wrote down one word of affirmation - "GOD" - and looked at it, and in looking at it I was looking into the faith of millions of people throughout the world who loved Him, and worshipped Him, who had demonstrated His presence in their lives. It was like an infinite mirror reflecting my other selves - and within a fortnight one of the conditions was completely gone, and not long afterwards the other condition disappeared.

A gentleman who was with me at the time, a psychoanalyst whose wife is sitting in this auditorium today, was asked by this specialist "What does he do?" And the gentleman replied "He teaches faith." The specialist responded "Well, his faith has made him whole." People said "There must be a catch somewhere." The answer is in a letter a man wrote to me a few years ago "I have been a Truth student for ten years, and I am still waiting for the catch." Why must there always be a catch in something good? Can man the microcosm not express the honesty, the integrity, of God the Macrocosm? Again: "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" but even if we are only at the outer fringes of Wisdom we may yet touch the hem of His garment, and be made whole. Everything is possible with God. I have found no limitations in God. I find that in spite of myself, not because of myself, Divine love is always aware of me and is always caring for me - and for you, if you will allow It. It is permeating you at this moment. Your every desire for good is the yearning of Love to manifest as your happiness, your health, your security, your prosperity. Man still doubts. "O man of little faith, why did you doubt?" For those who understand, Divine works are to be seen everywhere in and about them, but how blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. I ask for good and it is manifest, then I ask for better and that is manifest, and when I ask for the best that too is manifest. And it is only the beginning, only the start of God-consciousness, of goodness. I have walked along the path of Truth in my way and I have discovered that if you stick to the principles His presence is always demonstrated, and His presence is always beneficent. It always cares, and loves, and guides, and protects. This is my experience not because I am any better than you, not because I am more advanced or "evolved," but because I believe It. This is what I am trying to infuse into your consciousness - belief in Love, God, Truth, accepting It in toto, with no reservations, no qualification, that "I have overcome the world." So many people, even highly educated people, Doctors of Divinity, believe in a man-like God and a devil and, between them, judgement being handed down on man. They believe we are led astray by evil and our subsequent suffering is "God's will."

My own father, a man with high character and a most beautiful soul, was a deeply religious man but was also chronically anxious and, as a result, spent a great amount on abdominal operations. He was like a sponge, absorbing all the bad news around him, giving substance to everything that was negative. It became part of his consciousness. But he came up to the School of Truth in 1945, eight years after it was started, and sat in an office and saw the thousands of letters pouring in. One day he said to my mother "I think Nicol has got something. These letters come spontaneously from all parts of the world. There must be something in it." And then he began to understand. I receive many intelligent and well educated men and women, full of conscience, who believe God is punishing them. But Love says "Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again." Convention, man's ignorance and arrogance, punishes you, not God. Thousands are being killed in the name of God. I do not know this God. Next year I will have walked along with Him for fifty years and I find that His will is good and only good. Within my ambit in this country alone there are thousands who have experienced His will of good overcoming all kinds of "incurable" diseases. Like me, they accept and know the will of God. We bring people to God through Love, not fear.

The only thing you need fear is yourself, your fearfulness. I see, metaphorically, two arms outstretched and I hear a voice saying "Are you weary? Are you heavy laden? Is there too much pressure? Have you too much stress? Come unto Me, I will give you rest." It is my business, until I pass on to the next plane of consciousness, to teach His will of good. I cannot change Truth. All I can do is be in tune with Truth, in tune with God. Is it not wonderful to know that this Presence is in you, regardless of your resistance or failings? Would you have It closer? Then let your heart go with your wish. Let it be your sincere desire that all individuals understand the will of God, of Love within them, constituting them, making all things new for them - and you.