THE SCHOOL OF TRUTH LECTURE THE GROWING CONSCIOUSNESS

When you took up the study and practice of Truth, what did you expect to find?

Were you not all seeking the assurance that God is interested in you? Am I not

seeking the same thing, the consciousness of God in full expression in my life? I

want to be able to say to all who come to me in His name, "Your faith has made

you whole!" I want to be able to say to disease and to poverty, "Go! Dissolve

yourself into the nothingness from which you came!" I want to see fear transmuted

into a constructive, living and vital faith. Yes, that is what you are seeking and

what I am seeking. Even if you think you are seeking some purely personal

demonstration of good in your life now, what you are ultimately seeking is the

consciousness of the Presence of God - All Good.

You have heard the expression, "Whatever is, is best." What is your interpretation

of that? Do you feel that you have to bow your head to your poverty, your disease

or your unhappiness? Do you feel that it is the will of Almighty Power that you

remain in those conditions of lack? Perhaps you have tried this way and that, you

have read this book and you have read that book, used affirmations, tried to pray in

a simple, child-like way, but nothing happens! You say, "It just does not work!"

You have seen and heard of others who have made remarkable demonstrations, but

you now feel that it will not work for you.

But is it possible that God, Divine Law, all the Love in the Universe, desires only

good for those others and not for you? Is it impossible for All Knowledge to show

you how to do whatever is necessary for you to do, when to do it and how to do it?

If it is, what is the value of faith? If God discriminates between His children, what

is the use of some of us trying to have faith?

If whatever is, is best, if we bow our heads and say it is God's will that we remain

in poverty-stricken conditions, that God is testing us and is trying to raise us up to

express dominion and power and to rise above negative conditions, then we might

well give up all effort to find Him! Have you believed that it was necessary for you

to have disagreeable experiences, that God was deliberately placing obstacles in

your path to hinder your spiritual growth? Or have you realised that these

experiences and conditions are only there so that God could glorify Himself in and

through you, and use you as His beloved channel for His good? Have you ever

thought that God, by means of those very conditions, is trying to show you what

miracles can be wrought through faith and prayer?

When Christ healed a man who had been blind from birth, His disciples asked

Him, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?" The

Master replied that neither the man nor his parents had sinned, but that he was

there so that "the works of God might be glorified in him." Here is a man born

blind and he asks Christ for sight. Christ did not tell him to take up Truth, or to

read books - even if he had been able to read books - nor was he to meditate or

affirm or deny the condition. He gave the man what he wanted - sight! Can you

imagine the reaction of the people who saw the miracle and of those who heard of

it afterwards, how their faith was renewed? When the religious leaders attempted

to discount the incident and destroy the people's faith by questioning the man, his

reply was, "I do not know who this man was. All I know is that whereas I was

blind, now I see!"

Isn't there a lesson for us in this story? We are so often blind - blind to happiness,

blind to the Presence of God, until through some experience our eyes are opened

and we also say, "Whereas I was blind, now I see!" But what is it that you see? It is

not a physical material "thing" that you see. It is an inner realisation, by which you

know that your good is here for you now. You "see" the Truth which sets you free

from this, that or the other condition that has bound you down. That is what this

School of Truth is trying to teach you - how to attain to this realisation and to know

the Truth that will set you free and to know that you are a child of God, realise that

the condition to which you have given power over you is only an opportunity for

you to glorify God through your faith and prayer.

You do not have to ask God for health or pray about your health. Long before you

called, God had answered. You are a temple of this loving God and He is trying to

express Himself through you as your health.

There was a paralysed woman who came to us for help and she was taught, "I am a

temple of a loving God, and because God is perfection, then permeating me from

the centre to the circumference, every bone, tissue and muscle, is this perfection. I

will not dwell on what I want but just on the Presence of God in me. He knows that

I need help so that I can walk and I do not have to tell Him what He already

knows, for He is conscious of my needs."

Then one day she sees again, can see and feel the presence of Life and she knows

she is going to be healed. She is still paralysed, but she says, with conviction, "I

know that God is telling me I am going to be healed!" That was in December and

in January she was walking! She saw the Truth and saw that she was not a temple

of disease. She saw only one thing, that she was a temple of perfection which

desired to be expressed through her, like a battery plugged into the Power Station

and receiving the new power flowing into it. Formerly a battery took twenty-four

hours to charge but now it can be done in half an hour. As man becomes more

conversant with the Laws of electricity he brings the time down from twenty-four

hours to half an hour, and as he becomes more conversant with the Laws of Life he

brings the time of demonstration of health down from years or months or weeks to

NOW.

How are you reacting to your condition? Are you striving with all your might,

trying to concentrate literally to drag your good into manifestation? You can do it,

provided you are prepared to pay the price! One man told me he had worked for a

position as a manager and it did not take long before he got the position. But he did

not get paid accordingly! He got exactly what he forced. He saw himself in the

managerial chair, saw himself telling certain people to do things. But he forgot that

his desire for an executive position was God desiring something better for him, and

he made the mistake of picking the channel himself. He insisted on that particular

channel and he demonstrated, but not under grace!

God's time is NOW. But although His time is NOW, it takes time for the idea to

possess your mind completely so that you can build on it. If you get impatient and

try to hurry matters and force them, you introduce complications. In all the years

since I first took up Truth, I have never had to look for a job. I used to tell God that

whatever He wanted me to do I was prepared to do, because I knew that if I served

Him I was His labourer and I was worthy of my hire. If I served this or that man

and did not get paid, I knew God would pay me because I was serving Him, and

He always did pay me. When I had learned that particular job and the lessons it

taught me in developing my faith, the channel closed and another opened. You do

not have to tell God what you need; God is telling you, through your own desires,

that you need greater happiness, more supply, greater faith. He is saying to you, "I

think you are a worthy channel through which I am to be glorified, and because

example is the only teacher, I am giving you this opportunity."

But our trouble is that we are always in a hurry and we are afraid God will be too

late! Our Father, the very Spirit of Love, knows what we need and He wants us to

grow in stature, in strength, in faith. If your faith capacity is only fifty Rand a

month you cannot live at the rate of five hundred Rand a month. As far as your

Father is concerned you have only reached the consciousness of fifty Rand a

month, and it is only by these experiences that He can grow your consciousness to

a higher level and let you understand what He is doing for you. You don't learn by

your work, by the sweat of your brow, but by going within and finding the

consciousness of God within your own soul. Just go within, to your own secret

chamber in your own mind and shut the door to all outward things and try to

realise what God, Love, Power, Happiness, Faith all mean. They are all attributes

of the One Power, One Presence - God, your Father.

Perhaps some of you find it difficult to visualise or make mind pictures, difficult to

pray? Then you should pray just like a child, and keep at it until you are so sure of

God that you can realise that He is in you and through you, that He is already the

fulfilment of all you need. During the last four or five weeks there were things that

I have been working on that have suddenly been revealed to me. One problem

occupied me for thirteen years and another for eleven years, during which I waited

for spiritual guidance, and nothing seemed to happen. I just felt that I had to do my

best, although my mind was telling me one thing and my heart was telling me

another. Then, at the most unexpected time and in the most unexpected way, I

found the answer in my own consciousness.

I told God that after all these years I was going to do this thing because I felt

convinced that it was what He wanted me to do and that He would show me if I

was right, and within three hours I had the necessary proof! How did I prove it? By

the wonderful demonstration that came within three hours! Today I have no

hesitancy on these matters, but it has taken eleven years of striving and seeking to

know and finally to discover that I had allowed myself to be led entirely by the

heart, and had not wanted to see what God wanted me to do.

I felt it was so because my heart said it was so, and I did not wait for God to show

me, so I blocked His entry into my consciousness by not being impersonal and

detached from the problem. I did not completely hand the problem over to God by

saying, "Father, this is a matter for You. You show me what to do, what You want

me to do and how You want me to do it, and no matter what other people or my

friends or my family think, I will do what You want me to do." Then the revelation

came to me as I was on my way home from a bioscope, when I was not even

thinking of the problem. Today, instead of having the nagging worry of these two

problems, I know exactly what to do and my mind is completely free - all because I

finally allowed God to do what He wanted.

God is waiting to express Himself through you, whatever your need may be, but it

is only when you retire into your inner chamber and become still and peaceful and

make contact with God there. Then you know that you are a temple of Love and

Power and the Presence of God Himself, and your guidance will come at the right

time and in the right way, much sooner than you expect. There will be no delay as

soon as you are right in your own mind, and at that moment the answer will

manifest, either in tangible expression as the thing you desire or as the particular

idea necessary for its fulfilment. Try to forget your problems, forget the solution,

forget your affirmations, and instead, first thing in the morning, just sit down for

ten or fifteen minutes and realise that God knows what you need and that He wants

to express it through you. Then go about your daily duties, knowing that you have

left your problem with Him and that He is perfectly capable of doing in and

through you what He wants to do.

Before you go to bed, think of Love, Power, Faith, Peace - whatever comes into

your mind and heart - but do not think of your needs and wants and

demonstrations.

If I had not had the two spiritual leadings which I have mentioned, I could not have

gone on with this work. If you feel now that you have reached the end of your

tether, the limit of your patience, that your faith is being too severely tested, just

consider whether you have not been making the same mistake that I made. All

those years I was actually pushing God out of my consciousness because my heart

was telling me to do certain things, and I thought that I must be right. I had failed

to realise that God knows what is best for us, because He can see the end from the

beginning, but I was allowing my emotions of sympathy for other people to cloud

my vision. You may be making the same mistake. You may be so intent upon a

certain material blessing and so determined to get it that you are not allowing God

to give you something very much better, something He knows will be of infinitely

greater value to you in your growth and progress.

So many people fail to realise that God is always trying to express His good

through them, that they are His temples, temples of Love and Power and

Happiness, and by their very insistence on the wrong thing, they are actually

refusing to allow God to give them the blessings that will be so much greater than

those they think they want. If you will only allow Him to decide you will soon be

able to say, like the blind man said and as I said myself, "Whereas I was blind, now

I can see. Through the Presence of God, the presence of all my good, now I see."

Before you ever called God had answered, and while you were yet speaking He

had heard you

Just try to put your problems and their solutions right out of your mind and fix

your mind and heart upon the Presence of God, Love, in you, and know that He is

arranging everything for you in the best possible way and will show you, in good

time, what you are to do and how you are to do it. Then you will allow His

blessings to flow steadily through your lives and affairs and be at peace.