(v.2, #16, published by The White Lodge, copyright 1980) "He whom we believe said, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' And not without reason. There was a reason. There is a reason why he said it, and it is a vitally important one. Because whatever we think--and in effect, from an opportune standpoint, we are gods in the making. We are embryonic gods. And as embryonic gods, we are already endowed with the divine thought. The flow of that thought over the dura mater and the pia mater of the brain is only a physical expression but it actually causes us to act and react, sometimes in a manner that is not consistent with a son of God. And we desire to express divinity because divinity is a chord and a chord is harmony, do you see? And harmony is involved with the music of the spheres. Far-off worlds turning in space are heard by our ear here, and this also is an expression of the heart by which we begin to understand the beauty of life's expression. Otherwise, we become quite frequently the victims of boredom, of entering into a no-man's land where achievement goes. We do not actually experience anything. Nothing is happening to us, yet often it is. Sometimes in moments where nothing seems to be happening, a great deal is happening because we are beings who receive not only sensory expressions that are known to the conscious mind, that are heard, momentarily realized, and then stored for later examination but we also are receiving impressions from the far distant past and from far-off worlds. Do you understand? And this expression makes us not only recipients of the visible but of the invisible impressions. These are all occurring all the time. Not only do they occur for us but they occurred for many people who have gone on before. We must understand that we actually come from one shore to another and keep on going from shore to shore. Somehow or other, people seem to think that it is too hard a thing for the Lord to put a soul that has lived here and has perished back into another body. This seems to them sometimes, owing again to traditional concepts, a bit bizarre. But why does it seem strange? It seems strange to them because, in many cases, Western man is not accustomed to think in these terms--his brand of Christianity and understanding denying this tremendous reality and thus blinding himself effectively to an understanding of the law of karma. He doesn't understand the law of cause and effect. That is what the law of karma is that all of the causes that he puts into motion during any lifetime will become--either during that lifetime or a succeeding one--effects which must appear upon the screen of life, because Jesus said, 'Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.' And his words are the law of our being. And the laws of God fulfill it clearly that here below we will have these experiences because you see there is a purpose to being here. There is a purpose between the lines of our life, and that purpose is revealed when we understand that God intends us to be perfect beings. There's an old saying in the world that I think the world loves to repeat over and over again, and it goes like this: 'There was only one good man and they crucified him.' What a sad travesty upon the divine nature. I said to one Christian gentleman who came into this house, 'Is it not a sad thing that God has failed so often and succeeded so seldom?' Because if, in all the course of the centuries, there is only produced one man, then life's purposes become unclear. But when we understand that we live in eternity, we live in eternity, not in time--we realize that whether or not we are perfected in the 1800s, the 1900s, or the year 2000 is not important. What is important is that we are perfected. I do not believe that God created a hurdle that cannot be jumped over. I believe that with every temptation he will make a way to escape. I believe that God will make possible the realization of his own perfection. I do not believe that our self-righteousness will suffice, but I believe that the righteousness of God will prove to be the cleansing stream that will, though our sins be as scarlet, make them as white as snow because it is imbued within Christ-purpose--the idea of forgiveness in the cosmic stream of catharsis, of our bathing within the cosmic stream that we may come clean in the eyes of God. As I said this morning in our sermon to our staff, he that keeps the peace, he that is able to master himself is greater than he that keepeth a city. We mentioned New York City and how many people think that to be mayor of New York is the greatest thing in the world, that is to say they think it must take a great man to be the mayor of a great city. But yet the Bible says, and it isn't just the Bible alone but it's written in the bible of nature, 'He that keepeth himself is greater than he that keepeth a city.' So we must realize and recognize that self-mastery is our goal, and self-mastery involves itself mightily with perfection and its magnetism. What is perfection and its magnetism? The law of the rumford coil stands before us. We realize that here we are, involved in this world of electronics and this world today that has computer expressions everywhere. If people deny karma, they say that there is no accountability. I say today, in repeating the old axiom 'Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small,' therefore there is no escape from the set of values that we exude into the universe, the expressions of ourselves. What we make of ourselves and of our life, whether it's one of honor or dishonor--this is what we are going to reap. There is a reason for being Christ-aware and for being Christ-directed. Because when we are Christ-directed from that focus of the flame of the eternal Christ within ourselves and we move toward our fellowmen with that divine grace which is the grace of God, we are going to be different people and create a climate of a different world. Today, as some of the great authors of the world have said, our cities are fake in their monumentality. Their whole expressions are expressions of man's phoniness and his failure to realize and recognize the abundance of God that teems within him as eternal life. It is there. It's waiting to express. But we, as though we had hearts of stone, fail to understand. There is an act of mercy in man being born again and again and again until his services will stand complete. Mankind, unfortunately, have failed to understand the divine mission of the only begotten Son of God. They have failed to understand the mission of Jesus Christ. They have failed to understand the mission of themselves. And because they have failed, they have created a hodgepodge of religious ideas that, while they may temporarily satisfy, do not actually completely satisfy forever because the seeker wants to know the allness of God. The seeker wants to know Christ-truth, Christ-reality. The seeker does not wish to be duped by anything in this world, by anyone--and shouldn't. No, I do not ask that anyone should accept anything that I say because that is not my purpose in saying it. I say it because I give all the freedom to say and to believe what they wish, but I must be true to myself. As William Shakespeare wrote long ago, 'This above all: to thine own self be true,/ And it must follow, as the night the day,/ Thou canst not then be false to any man.' And so in the world today, wherever you go you are always going to find that people are expressing the highest of which they are capable--even the criminal, the criminal and the blackguard. Those individuals who are doing absolute wrong by all standards--they too are expressing that capacity that they seem to feel is best for them. Of course, some people would say that they don't think they're doing very well, and I would quite agree. But nevertheless, they are on that ladder somewhere and their senses and their assessment of their senses and their assessment of life has brought them up to understand life in that way. Many of them do not believe in God, and some of them do. Some of them believe in God and just think that they're taking the low road that will eventually lead downward, downward. But somehow or other, there is room in the heart of God for all. And this is what I want to convey to you--that everyone has a chance to rise, everyone has a chance to express himself and be a great deal more of God if he understands that God is giving himself to man in the Christ-focus within him. And if that man believes that by his own self-righteousness he will find the way home, he won't find it unless he seeks because it is not to be found in the marketplaces of life."