nfully oppressive to your senses and agony unto the spiritual Being, I am only drawn to more rapidly and diligently be about our work, for ours is the methodology of coming into communion and understanding in that transmutation can be achieved and you can possess the power and control of Creation which allows perfection. One cannot be achieved without the other. The steps are simple but mandatory for the path is explicitly drawn and knowledge of the transportation is necessary—you do not bungle and bumble your way into the perfection of the halls of God. The point is to NOT remain in illusion and delusion through ignorance. But worse, is to require self to remain in ignorance through refusal to see and hear the TRUTH of it. What a wondrously beauteous challenge given into our hands and what honor to be granted the Presence to present this gift to all who will accept of it. Therefore, we will be diligent and comprehensive in our work so that man has opportunity to come into the fulness of understanding and then, he is responsible for his own journey but we shall have given perfection unto our own that his feet are not misguided.

As with instructions unto your earth physicians—”first do no harm”. Well, as ones ponder and accept or denounce our suggestions and word—ones of the readers and practitioners must see first that “there is nothing within to HARM.” What have ye to lose for study and revelation of the WORD and then, what have ye to find harm in respite within self to touch with God? He who chooses not to touch with God, so be it, at the least you will have had a few moments of peace and rest of body. As it would turn out IF all we bring would be but lies and more lies—what would it be to harm you to awaken and then when awake and “thinking” take time from thine schedules to relax and rest? There is only positive response from that which we bring for God sends instructions for regaining “order” from the chaotic madness about you. You have lived long with the promises made by the adversary of goodness—you have corrupted your world and you find no peace but rather, continuing chaos. Would you not now TRY God? Certainly there can be no HARM to come into COMMUNION WITH GOD. The worst that could happen would be that you throw off the shackles and move into freedom and that would distress those who have you in bondage for they would lose their ability to parasitize you. This is WHY you are continually misled and restricted under fear of tribulation if you DARE to LOOK at another’s projection. If it be false, you will not accept it—and if it be Truth, what have you had in damage? The adversary KNOWS that when you find Truth you will accept it and see that which has been done unto you—and, therefore, he works constantly through his tools to see to it that you do not partake of knowledge. To keep you isolated into the narrow discourse projected upon you is the only way to keep you in chains—through ignorance. So be it, for ignorance is something you can choose to release or retain. But through ignorance you will never attain KNOWING and only through KNOWING WILL YOU FIND GOD AND BALANCE.

SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION OF PRAYER

THE POWER OF PRAYER

I wish to supplement everything I have told you about meditation—or communion with God—and talk to you about “prayer”, which is the desire basis of meditation and out of which meditation grew.

Prayer is the mightiest of man’s powers, for through prayer—if understood and rightly used, and accompanied by action—man may have anything he desires, attain the loftiest heights, or extend his powers to others for their exaltation. Rightly and knowingly used, prayer can transform one’s own condition or that of the whole world. If prayer is not rightly and knowingly used, the time consumed is wasted, for it will be of no avail.

PRAYER IS BASED UPON DESIRE

Desire what you will and, behold, it stands before you. Throughout the aeons it has been yours without your knowing, even though you have but to ask for it. Sit not and ask, acting not, for unless you reach out for your desire it shall not walk your way unaided by your strong hands and arms.

This means that God will fulfill your every desire if you work with God to fulfill it. The whole power of the universe will work WITH you for its fulfilling, but it will not work FOR your while you do nothing about it.

In this promise is the key to why prayers are or are not answered . God tells you very plainly that He will give you whatever you desire, BUT YOU MUST REGIVE EQUALLY BY THE ACTION OF SERVICE TO GOD THROUGH NATURE OF YOUR FELLOWMAN.

Think that over. Recall the many prayers you have uttered and how disappointed you were because they were not answered. Most prayers are just selfish ones, continually asking for something to be given without even the intention of giving something in exchange.

Think of the thousands of entreaties which are sent up to God with the hope that what is asked for by people will just fall into their laps. You ask God for money. God says, “Yes, I will give you money, all you want of it, but what are you, yourself, giving for it? What is the price you are paying for it?” Again we quote God’s message in the Word:

He who desires riches of earth alone, denying Me in him, shall dwell in outer darkness of his own making, until he shall desire Me strongly.

Even to him will I give all he asks without stinting; yea, and even more; but he, having more than all he sought will have nothing but worthless “stuff” in his earth desire.

Things of earth which man desires are but things of earth to be returned to earth with bones of him. But things of earth, heaven blessed by Me, are as eternal in the immortality of his Self-recording Soul as Light of Me IS ETERNAL.

You ask God for peace, happiness and prosperity to be given to you, but you take peace, happiness and prosperity away from another by malicious gossiping about your neighbor or treating your servant unjustly, thus taking happiness away from him or her, or by misrepresenting the product you are selling.

Until you balance your desire for peace by giving peace, or happiness by giving happiness, or prosperity by giving prosperity, your prayer will be voided by you, yourself. The only way you can have happiness given to you by the Light of love, which God is, is for you to give love to others. You cannot take happiness or love. You can only give it. If you give love, it will as surely be given to you as light shone into a mirror will reflect light back from the mirror.

Witness the nations which have tried to become powerful, prosperous, peaceful and happy by plundering other nations. Empires who have thus taken by force, without giving equally in exchange, are heavily in debt and on rations, and for every man killed in taking wealth and happiness away from others for themselves, ten have paid the price in blood and a thousand in tears. Witness, also, the great fortunes which have been built upon that principle. No man has ever yet been able to purchase happiness, prosperity, peace or love with any other coin than happiness, peace and love.

THE PRICE OF LOVE IS LOVE—THE PRICE OF

GREED IS AGONY!

You ask God to heal your body from its ills which you, yourself, created by overeating, by giving vent to violent anger, or by diverse acts which destroy normalcy of balance given you by God. It seems never to occur to you that you must re-give that which you ask for by eating properly, by substituting love for anger, or by cessation of the abuses which have caused your disorders. Such unbalanced conditions as anger or overeating, addictions, or worry and excessive grief—yes, and even loneliness and introspection—will cause grave disorders.

That which we wish to impress upon you is the one fact that any disturbance of balance in the body is immediately recorded in the body by some malady or maladjustment, which you think of as sickness. Also, that any sickness of any kind is self-made, whether knowingly or unknowingly, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

God’s laws are never set aside by prayer or otherwise. The CAUSE of your illness is in your defiance of the law. You are suffering from its effect and ask God to eliminate the EFFECT while you continue to repeat the CAUSE.

MAN BLAMES GOD FOR MAN-MADE WARS

Consider the many prayers for cessation of wars. “O, Lord, we beseech Thee to stop this cruel war,” you say, forgetful of the fact that you make your wars yourselves by the free will to act as you choose. You certainly fail to realize that the way TO STOP WARS IS TO STOP CAUSING THEM. War is just as much an effect of a cause which man created by his selfishness as a business failure is the effect of a cause created by man.

You not only pray to God to let you defy His law without suffering from its effects but you blame God for your own actions in breaking His law. How often we hear people say, “How can a loving God in heaven permit such cruel wars? It is hard to believe there is a God, else He would not permit such wars.”

YOU MIGHT JUST AS WELL SAY THAT IF THERE IS A GOD, HE WOULD NOT PERMIT US TO LIE TO OUR NEIGHBOR.

God gives you free will to do as you choose in the making of yourselves to your own image, and He gives you all the power in His universe to help you break His law if you so choose, but the nature of the free will you exercise will become your nature. Again, let us hear God’s pronouncement:

Verily has man free will to control his actions. That my Father-Mother has given to man as his inheritance. But the control of the reactions to those actions man has never had.

This my Father-Mother holds inviolate. These cannot become man’s except through modifying his actions until the reactions are their exact equal and opposite in equilibrium.

THUS—YOU CREATE YOURSELVES IN YOUR OWN IMAGE.

GRAVE MISCONCEPTIONS REGARDING PRAYER

It is generally believed among men that one who prays often, and with many words loudly and piously uttered, is holy among men and much favored of God. But we say that he who finds ecstasy of happiness in his Soul from the giving of his love to touch the Soul of a despairing neighbor is a hundredfold more holy in God’s sight. To him the “kingdom of heaven” is as though he dwells in the house of the Lord, while the holy man of piety and words sits afar outside its garden wall.

When you pray to God, saying, “O, God, pity us for we are as dust beneath Thy feet,” God’s silent Voice whispers within you:

“Know you the Light which I AM. You are man, exalted in Me. What I AM, you are. You are light.” He may also very well tell you to get up and stop groveling and request respect and reverence rather than pity—for pity indicates helplessness of the other and usually is only self-indulgent refusal to accept responsibility. For instance, “Oh pity me, Father, for I cannot serve for my head pains greatly.” He might very well give you a worse headache until you see the point of that which you are avoiding.

For long ages, God’s silent Voice whispers within your unhearing ears. God, therefore, gives you your desire to be what you wish to be in the building of your Self. As long as you believe yourself to be dust beneath the feet of the almighty God, you are that dust which you have built in the image of YOUR imagining.

When you pray to God, saying, “God have mercy upon me, a miserable sinner”, you have not prayed to the one God of Love, Creator of His universe of love, Creator of you to manifest His love, for you do not know HIM. YOU HAVE BUT PRAYED TO A GOD OF WRATH AND FEAR OF YOUR OWN MAKING WHOM YOU HAVE BUILT IN YOUR OWN IMAGE.

He who builds gods in his own image builds idols for his worshipping and for his own purposes in a sensed world. He whose idol is fear and wrath cannot know the God of Love. Until you know love, you are what your idol is, a miserable sinner to whom mercy must be shown by your idol whom you, yourself, are. And you will be punished for your imagined self-made sins by you, yourself, for the idol you worship will show you no mercy until you are freed from him by knowing love.

When you pray to God resignedly, as though patiently accepting the punishment of grief at the death of a loved one, and you say, “Thy will be done, O Lord. The Lord gives and He takes away”, you have not yet known the God of Love, for God GIVES ONLY. GOD NEVER TAKES THAT WHICH HAS NOT BEEN GIVEN. What God gives to you, you REGIVE TO HIM for HIS REGIVING.

You rejoice when God gives birth to life, yet you deeply grieve when you give rebirth to new life—for that is what death IS.

Mass-man is unable to comprehend this idea which is commonplace thinking to cosmic man, but you, in whom the seed of cosmic thinking is being sown, will go to your neighbor and sow it in his Consciousness and he, in turn, will do likewise until man-in-the-mass will be transformed from barbaric man, who still crucifies love, to cosmic man, who IS love.

RELATIONSHIP OF PRAYER TO MEDITATION

“Let us unite in prayer.” How familiar these words are on every religious occasion and, upon hearing them, the congregation automatically bows its head, bends its knees, and words come from the pulpit in earnest tones which may be superficially heard by some and hardly heard at all by others, while the very few who hear in their hearts are deeply stirred by the ardor of the supplication to God for forgiveness, or mercy, or blessings upon the congregation and various other human interests.

Prayer is just meaningless words if not felt in the heart; just as music is no more than sound if it does not reach the Soul. Prayer to God is a realization that the Soul of man is ONE with the Universal Soul. It is not an appeal by man to God. It is a communion between the divine man to the divine God of man. As such, it is the mightiest of man’s powers, but when prayer is but WORDS, not coming from the Soul, it is no more effectual than the hundreds of prayers written and distributed throughout the streets in Asia or prayers written into a disc and

whirled to repeat themselves by turning the prayer wheel swiftly.

Worded and formal prayers, issued periodically like morning and evening prayers, prayers of thanks at mealtimes, and prayers on arising and retiring, become habits which people obey automatically. There may be great earnestness in them or there may be none. The habit of praying periodically, and with a sense of duty, tends to automatic prayer rather than devotional. A silent prayer at mealtime brings more realization of God than wordy prayers half listened to.

Those who thus pray might just as well not pray, for prayer is a union of Soul of man to Soul of God, and words alone cannot make that union.

Automatic, formal and habitual praying from the lips alone, whether in one’s chamber or in groups, is of no avail. Prayer based upon desire and uttered within the Soul of man wordlessly, or by silent thought, will always command the whole universe to fulfill the desire, but words alone are not prayer any more than paint is the art in a picture.

When you pray to God asking for all the things you want, enumerating them carefully—even to timing their arrival as your desire possessions—yea, even informing God as to what His method should be in giving them to you—detailing your business and family needs—never giving thought as to your worthiness to receive them, or whether it is wise to have them, or what you shall GIVE to deserve them—you are but making yourself into your own selfish image and not in the image of God’s spirit in you. You are thus telling God how He will serve you without thought of how you will be worthy of that service.

When your child prays for a long list of birthday or Christmas presents, ending with “God bless Papa—God bless Mama”, you tell the neighbors how CUTE that prayer is and then buy everything the child wants, to uphold its belief in prayer.

IT IS NOT CUTE; IT IS TRAGIC. It is helping the child build its own selfish image. It is also helping the whole world to build its own selfish, greedy image. It is helping to perpetuate this barbaric age of greed, selfishness, and fear of neighbor against neighbor.

When will parents teach their children that they must give love for love given them? Not until THEY first know that they, themselves, must not ask to be given anything without a deep desire in their hearts for REGIVING LOVE EQUALLY FOR LOVE GIVEN. Parents who know that will say to the child:

“God will give you all you desire because He loves to give, but what are you planning to regive in love to God? You want God to show His love to you by giving you the things you want, but God wants love from you. The way you can show your love to God is to love all things which God puts on earth. When you ask God to bless Papa and Mama, you can help God bless them by giving love and doing loving things for them which gives them pleasure, help or assistance, i.e., bring Papa’s slippers and/or help Mama dry the dishes, etc. That is the way you can be WORTHY of receiving all the things you ask for.”

When a mother prays to God to extend His loving protection to her son and keep him from harm in transit on stormy seas, she, herself, must extend her love equally to all other sons of all mothers of earth, and to all things of God’s creating. It most certainly requires more than hanging a yellow ribbon bow on a tree—it requires the changing of a situation which takes the children away and places them in danger through the passage of life. Her devout prayer CAN ALONE BE ANSWERED THAT WAY.

When she prays devoutly, no matter how deep her sincerity in asking love from her mother’s heart, then turns angrily or impatiently upon her friend or neighbor, or a servant in her house, she, herself, VOIDS her own prayer as though it had never been uttered.

When you ask God to bless your business and make it prosper, God will answer your prayer when you go out into your plant and bless all in it and make them prosper. When you re-give to your helpers the love given you by God, it is God’s love given to them by God through you. That is what is meant by manifesting God on earth.

When you pray for God to show His love for you by giving your field good crops, you must yourself give your love to your fields to re-give His giving. Your love given to them is God’s love given to you for REGIVING. Your love and God’s love are ONE. Its manifestation is TWO in giving and regiving but that TWO is the ONE HEARTBEAT of God’s body, even as the swinging of the pendulum is the TWO of the ONE source of their manifestation.

If the farmer would but stand in the midst of his fields and pray, saying unto them,

“I love you, my green fields. I love every part of you, every grass blade, every root and herb and ear of ripening corn. I love every tree of you, each leaf of you which gives love in oxygen for nitrogen given you in love. I love the fruit of each tree of you—and the red-gold you regive to me in your luscious fruit for the love I have given to your roots.”

If the farmer would but pray that way—deeply and in his heart—he would prosper as his fields prospered with him. For if he surely and sincerely gave unselfishly of his love he would nurture and tend to the very best of his ability to show that love and it would be returned in a thousandfold. He would know no fatigue, for love given is not work—and there would be a light in his eyes and inner joyousness in his heart, which nothing but the manifestation of love given on Earth as it is in heaven can ever give to man.

AGAIN, TEACH US HOW TO PRAY

He who can say in his heart, “I and my Father are one,” and feel the ecstasy of that unity, is continually IN PRAYER, even as he is continually IN LIFE and continually breathing. His prayer is like unto his inward-outward breath which is forever with him, forever vitalizing him. Every life should be a continuous Mind-communion with God. He who knows the Light of love in him does not beseech the Father-Mother of the universe for his next breath, nor for his next heartbeat, for he fully knows that his heartbeat is one with the universal pulse, and that for which he would needlessly ask is already his.

Therefore, we say to you when you ask of us, “How shall I pray and when?”, we say to you, “As you live and breathe continually, and as you are in life and love continually, so shall you be in prayer continuously.”

And as the air you breathe surrounds you abundantly, awaiting your need of it, so is that which you would ask for awaiting you in abundant supply; yea, even to overflowing fulness.

And as there is not a time when God does not center you, nor an interval in which He does not control your balanced heartbeat to synchronize with His, so is there not a time when you should pray to Him and another time when you should not.

And, likewise, as there is not a time when the air you breathe is denied you while you manifest your Father-Mother on this earth, so, likewise, there shall never come a time when that which you need to manifest Him worthily shall be denied you for, we again say, you already have that for which you ask, even as you have love and life for which you have not asked.

If there are times when you would like to put words to your desires to give them form, let not your words be from your lips, nor give voice to them. You cannot deceive God with empty words as you deceive man. Say in your heart when sorely perplexed, “Be Thou Thee in me, my Father,” and know Him as your very Self.

Your problem may be great and your wisdom may be in doubt to your Self. If then you would say, “Father, stand by—I deeply need You”, it might mean more in assurance to you—but to your Father it weighs not one whit more than saying it in your heart—so pray to Him that way if it comforts YOU to commune thus.

If sleep will not come to you for heaviness regarding your dealings with business or a friend, write your questioning upon your heart with desire that love shall guide you, then sleep in peace and know that the answer will be written in balanced rhythms where the question has been erased. Then let not the morrow pass without extending love to your friend.

And if your handiwork goes not to your liking, having too much of your earth-self in it—sensing instead of knowing—liking and not loving—diverted by sounds of earth from hearing the silences of heaven which borns them on earth—then, we say, open wide the doors of your Soul and let God in to work with you. Rejoice then in your renewed ecstasy as you again think your work knowingly with God, creating with His hands and yours as one.

If a friend approaches you with a grievance, send love to open the door for him to you, and say within your heart, “Father, let my words be Your words to him, not mine alone.” Then weigh his grievance on the scales of love and not let him depart un-illumined by the Light. Void his grievance with your love. In so doing, a great happiness will descend upon you.

If you find your business slowly ebbing because you have, perchance, founded it afar from where you should have founded it, and you grieve because you have not the means to transfer it to that far State where you now know it would thrive, we say to you, do not grieve but rejoice that God has illumined you with the Light of knowing what to do to balance your unbalanced beginning. In your rejoicing is your power to take the first step of that far journey which will be followed by another, and still another one—even as one breath forever follows another—until that far State is beneath your feet in answer to your prayer.

Know, however, that all the prayers in all the world would have been as soft blown winds on desert sands had you not re-given to your Father even as He has given to you by working with Him, step by step and breath by breath, to balance that given to you by Him to manifest you on earth with that which you give to manifest Him in heaven.

He who would become a music master and grieves because he has not the means to meet the years ahead to so become already has the means to play his first note. And when that first note is played, he has the means to play the second one. Therefore, we say, he who takes his first gift from God and regives to Him will find that first gift to be a trickling stream, a running brook or a mighty cataract of power ever ready to be given in the measure of any man’s ability to re-give equally.

Again we say, God will work WITH you but not FOR you. No one ever became a concert pianist by prayer without action, for that is wishful thinking, and by faith-and-belief without knowledge manifested.

If you are low in spirits because of some fancied hurt, or have been too much alone and would balance your Self-awareness with God-awareness, let your prayer be a desire for realization of your high place in God’s universe. Say within your pulse-beat, wordlessly—for God has such good hearing that you need not speak it:

I, My Father, am not alone “I”. You, my Father, are “I”. You are in me and I am in you. I am favored of You, my Creator. I AM of the inner Mind. I KNOW your joy and I am exalted in You.

I have all knowledge and all power. That which I desire to know, or to have, or to give is mine to know, to have, or to give. My dwelling place is in Your high heavens. Be in me that I may be You—knowingly.

I AM in Your Light, O my Father. Enfold me ever in Your Light that I may not again feel the heaviness of the dark upon my heart. Dissolve my separateness and make me ONE with You that I, too, can ever be in the giving.

Dharma, we will end this chapter with the following discussion of misconception of prayer and then we will close this segment.

MISCONCEPTION OF PRAYER

Realize, therefore, that prayer is not for the purpose of asking for something you wish to have. It is for the purpose of realizing that you already have that for which you have asked. All power exists in the universe and is yours when you do your part in bringing it to you.

You have health—and a perfect body. It is eternal in you. What have you done to drive it away so that you now think you do not have it?

What have you, or your ancestors, or loved ones, done to destroy the perfection of your body—or the seed of your body?

Why do you now ask for health and a perfect body as though it is not already yours? What you did to destroy your health or your perfection, you must undo to attain the normalcy which is already yours and always has been. Whom are you blaming? If you have lost anything, have you not gained its equivalent? Is not finding your Self worth a broken back?

Balance and perfection are normal. They are primal CAUSE. Imperfection is an EFFECT of unbalance. Who—and what—caused your unbalanced effect? You still have perfection. Restore it by eliminating imperfection.

Normalcy is the basis of abnormalcy, just as silence is the basis of sound. When sound ceases, silence reappears, but silence IS. It has never ceased to be. Likewise, normalcy IS. Stop abnormalcy and normalcy reappears. It has never ceased to be. AND BY WHOSE DEFINITION AND GUIDELINES DO YOU PERCEIVE PERFECTION? I MUST REMIND YOU THAT A HANDICAP IS NOT IMPERFECTION!

When you pray to God for love because you are lonely and without love, God answers, saying:

“You already have all the love of all the universe. Prove what I say to you by giving love out from you. You will find that all of the world loves you in the measure that you love the world.”

When you thus give love out from you to all the world, love will come to you from its far horizons.

He who would pray for love and the companionship of many friends shall be given that for which he asks in the measure in which he gives love and friendship to others whom he befriends.

And he who would feel the ecstasy of all the world at prayer with the God of Nature should go out into nature’s great cathedral of forest pines and oaks and join in that mighty prayer of running streams and babbling brooks, and the singing of birds, the sound of the bees, the droning of countless insects and hidden things that chirp and trill, and sing hosannas to God in His high heavens to gladden our hearts as we walk and talk with God.

When any man prays to you to fulfill HIS DESIRES, as you do to your Father, know that he is praying to your Father who is ONE with you. Even as God works with you to fulfill your desire, you should work with him who desires aught of you to fulfill his desire—for as all men are one, so, likewise, are all desires of all men one.

If he thus prays to you to help him to fulfill an UNBALANCED desire which is not love given and regiven equally, extend to him your love and balanced knowing, even as God whispers it always to the unhearing and unknowing.

If he hears but heeds not your counseling, do not condemn him or fail to watch over him until the Light of your illumining has reached his heart as it some day will, even as God watches over the unbalanced ones who have not yet learned to manifest love. Say to him within your heart what God says in His heart—”All men will come to me in due time, but theirs is the agony of awaiting.” And be there awaiting him with love when he has at last known love. In the interim you must not thrust by force your opinions upon him for that is not of God—but you must allow release of that one to his own path while he alone finds of his way into Truth and giving.

And so it is in all ways of man—for we say that God is Love andlove is all that is in God’s kingdom of heaven—and the manifestation of love is all that is on Earth.

Man of earth does not yet know that, but he is beginning to know it through cosmic man brothers of the high heavens who know love in him and give it to the world in the heavenly rhythms of the high heavens.

The geniuses of the world manifest God’s love and give it out from themselves to uplift the world by reinspiring man-of-earth with the inspirations of heaven-born men.

The love-inspired symphony is prayer for love fulfilled in the composer, and again fulfilled in the hearts of those whose heartbeat feels the ecstasy of God’s heartbeat as expressed in those heavenly rhythms.

And so is all the art of all the world a prayer for love fulfilled in inspired cosmic man for regiving of love to the race of man. For art is beauty, without which man is not yet even human.

The workman at his bench who gives beauty to his work re-gives the love which God has given him to all the world to uplift the world. Likewise, the housewife who puts love into her cooking enriches the food with God’s love which re-nourishes her family with love. Likewise, the butcher, the baker and that candlestick maker who re-give love for love given to them to manifest God in building His universe of love with Him also uplift the world.

And the mason gives love to his wall in the laying of each brick which, in turn, reflects love’s beauty to each passer-by. Beauty thus given by the mason and reflected to man is the Light of the kingdom of heaven extended to man for his illumining.

We shall pick up our next segment with a discussion of the dawning transition of man. I AM GERMAIN