k rWay of Eckankar CD Set, CD1 – Track 02
The second lecture in the Way of Eckankar is called Eckankar as a Path to God. At the beginning, I had to take up a discussion here, which really I think will give you an understanding and help enlighten you towards understanding the overall picture of the whole field of spiritual works, metaphysics, religion
The first one is the intellectual field or the path of the intellect, which is concerned with the mind. This is all of the lower areas of, I would say, the field of the mind, from the mind plane down to the physical plane. And, this was, actually, opened up in modern times by Judge Ford in about 1890 in what he called New Thought. Now, then I’m talking about modern times, but we can go back into the ancient times, into the times of Confucius, and, before that. And, we can find that the Chinese, also, were working in the field of thought, even in those days and, bringing it down to the time of the Judge Ford, who brought it out in modern times and made what they call the field of New Thought. And, out of that field of New Thought, grew a number of the other groups like the Christian Science Church, the the Church of Religious Sciences and many other groups that we know of. This is the one field, I would say, that I believe that we all go through with in the beginning. It is a field of formal education that we are working in. It’s to sharpen the senses, the physical senses, to get the whole understanding through the physical senses and be loaded down with all the study and all of the knowledge, with trying to stuff ourselves with so much study and understanding. Now, mind you, this is all right, when we’re living in the physical world when it comes back to the point that this is completely in opposite of the Spiritual Law and Spiritual Action, the modus operandi of Spirit
We come, then, into a second field in which we call the cosmic conscience path. Now this cosmic conscious path can happen, start anywhere that we want to. It can start here in the physical world and it can work on up to the soul plane. The cosmic conscience has a word for God in life or God-knowledge or God-realization, which is a false terminology for it. But we find this is a field that in which the Vedantists, the Hindu religions, many of the Eastern religions will fall under because they’re actually working for this Cosmic Consciousness. And in other words, they are illuminating the inner senses so that they will have what we term the word wisdom or knowledge. And, this is what they’re seeking, actually, the wisdom of God, which comes back as a violation of the law or the spirit. I explain some of this in the August letter which will be out in a few days. But, very briefly, this seems to be the thing and it becomes a fad and a fold for many people to study the complexities of the Eastern religions, to learn how to find their way to God through the illuminated or the cosmic consciousness state. Now this, of itself, is to me, a wrong path, although it is another path.
The third path is a path of bilocation or that which we know as soul travel. And, eventually people, those who are studying the ways and means of reaching the Ultimate, will come to this path. They’ll go through the first three and, then, they will come to the path of bilocation or the path of soul flight to God. This is an ancient path which came out of the misty past. There was a many, many centuries ago, about the beginning of time on Earth, a religion that was formed that came off of the planet, Venus, and went down to the spiritual city of Agam Des. And, they called it, at that time, the Naccal religion and it is spelled Naccal, if I’m correct about that. Anyway, it was a religion that was formed out of the the soul flight which has become, now, as Eckankar today. And, it is, now, the records of this are kept in two or three, I believe it’s two, very remote monasteries in Tibet in which that had not been invaded by the Chinese there yet. But, no one will be able to get to these because it is well guarded. And, the monks, there, and the abbots keep a very strict watch over them and they have the some of the records on the city, spiritual city of Agam Des, which is up in the wildest part of the Himalayan mountains and what is called the Hindu Kush Rings. They may, I say, some of those peaks there went up into 15, 25,000 feet high and, even when the planes come down through those mountains out of those Eastern countries, like Persia and Russia, they have to fly between the mountains and they never fly over them because they go so high that the pressure oxygen, they can’t get oxygen in the planes pressurized that great.
Well, anyway, I am trying to say here that these are the three paths that, the overall paths, that we follow to that of reaching the Ultimate. Now, in the first, we eventually will start out in that and it’s like the child growing up. He goes through all the stages of life until he reaches the adulthood and then he settles down. This is the way that we do on reaching the Ultimate. We, eventually, go through all of these stages of this, like we will take, first, the mental path, then we’ll change to the cosmic conscience path. Then we’ll change the soul path. And, don’t be mistaken, here, that it is going to be this way with everyone. Some will stop at one and they’ll stay there, which is perfectly all right because we can never push anybody in this work at all. If a person wants to take a certain path to God let him take that path. Let him keep it until he, of his own state of mind, changes.
We, ourselves, cannot change anyone’s consciousness. If we do change anyone’s consciousness, then we take the burden of that upon ourselves. In a sense, this is a type of karma. We are putting ourselves in the position of saying that we are actually taking the responsibility for making the change within this individual. If Spirit wants to flow through us and change that person by upliftment, then that is the proper way. We, of ourselves, have, in a sense, nothing to do with it because Spirit will lift this person up, will dissolve the problems of these conflicts and the obstacles that are within this person, within the consciousness of this person, and take them and throw them off. When we, of ourselves, will take the responsibility of changing the person and, then, find out that we, ourselves, have put that person’s conflicts within our own state of consciousness and we when we do, if we cannot get rid of them by throwing them off through, giving them to, this Cosmic Stream or the Holy Spirit, of itself, then we’re stuck with them. And, we are, actually have taken, their karma.
Now, this is why that, many of those who are called the High Masters may die of an early age or died of an affliction or an incurable disease, is because he, himself, has picked this up from someone else. And, he does not in, some form, do it all for some reason that is unknown to us, perhaps, that he gets stuck with this and he cannot get it out of his consciousness or he does not allow it to go into the stream of the Holy Spirit and be dissolved of itself. The longer that it stays within us, is the harder that it becomes. It’s like the fact that we, of ourselves, may have taken on a trait or a condition of a mate that we marry because we, ourselves, then, are in this state of accepting this. And, we don’t know how to throw it off. And, years later, we may have the same affliction as as I have seen, in many cases, where a person who had died of a disease that had been in his family, with various members of his family.
In fact, I knew one family who had 13 people, yet that family who had cancer, and I’m talking about the immediate family and all of the new relatives, 13 of them died of cancer. And, the last time I’ve heard of that, even down to the youngest of them, now, begin to develop the symptoms of cancer. So, you see, this was taken on by the fact, in a way it could be Karma, which would be for the reincarnation of a soul selecting a body which had this and it had to work himself out of this area. Or, it could be that they have taken on this from some other member of the family with an image that was set. Many people will accept an image that is given to them and it works into their state of consciousness and they cannot get rid of it. The way, actually, to get rid of anything that anyone has given you, is to throw it out upon the the stream and let the Holy Spirit, of itself, handle it.
Now, if you have someone who is working close to you, a teacher, a friend, anyone who is very adept at being an instrument, as I spoke of in the last lecture, having this Spirit to flow through them in a positive manner, they themselves can take it for you and dissolve it. It can be just given to them. And, actually, you don’t have to go and discuss it with them. You don’t even have to write them letters. Sometimes, you can even send them thoughts and it’s picked up and just being dissolved by the fact that you direct your thoughts towards them. Another way of being, of course, as I mentioned as it can be done by letter, many
Well, the fact is that, so many times, that you find the people who go to all sorts of healers for the healing of themselves will not get healing because they’re running into the problem of a karmic condition, And, the karmic condition, no matter who they go to as a teacher or a High Master or any of these, they will not do anything about this because they say, “You, of yourself, must go through this experience and then you’re through with it. Because, if they accepted, they, themselves, may take it on, which they don’t want to do. Or, they may deprive you of an experience which you had to have. This often is the case with many people who pass away with an incurable disease.
I had the case, not long ago, of a woman who wrote to me and she had a sister-in-law and brother. The brother was in the sanitarium with TB and sister-in-law was in with cancer. And, she was very fond of both of them and she wanted something done for them. I told her, very frankly by letter. that her sister-in-law would soon go out of the picture, out of this life, because it was a karmic effect and she had to go through with this. Then, on the other hand, her brother would live a few more years and he would get better and have some conditions. He wouldn’t completely get rid of this problem, but he would get better enough to go out and do some work. The letter I had from her, about two days ago, told me that her brother had now left the sanitarium and he was applying for a job, someplace, because he felt better. But, a previous letter had told me that her sister-in-law had gone out of the picture, out of life, and it was a very sad thing. Naturally, we don’t like to be parted from people that we love very much. But, on the other hand, when we go to trying to keep the body here after it is
We have to develop a a pair of traits within ourselves that must, at all times, be given to workable use. And, that is, first, we must have a tender heart and we must have a tough mind. We must look upon everything with detachment/ Yet. we must have compassion and it’s demanded of us. But, we cannot be compassionate when it will make our emotions go over balanced and enter into their problem. This is something which we must never do is enter into the problem of a person. It’s a very interesting thing happened, not so long ago. A woman was discussing how that she took care of problems, that she let the person tell every thing that they had to say about their problem. Then, she entered into the problem and solved the problem from the Whole. But, what was happening was that she couldn’t get rid of the problem after she entered into the problem. So, what we do, we stand back and look at the problem as a detached, as something detached. Or, we rise above the problem in moving out of the body with a detached viewpoint and looking at it and allowing it to be seen as the Whole and, then, we can take care of it from there.
Otherwise, when we enter into the problem, we are apt to become stuck with it. These three ways, as I spoke about, are simply the ways in which that we, of ourselves, are to choose as a path. If we choose the intellectual path to God, we will eventually come to God but we will come in a much slower, slower way. If we go through the cosmic consciousness, we are getting, we will go through, the slower way. We can have the cosmic conscience on any plane. We can have it on a physical, the astral, the mental, any place you think of, we can have the cosmic consciousness.
But, when we become the Total Consciousness or Total Awareness, we are in the God-State up above the soul plane and then we are no longer having to think in the terms of cosmic consciousness. We are no longer seeking wisdom, as those who are seeking wisdom through the cosmic consciousness. This point, which I briefly will go to now, as to the seeking of wisdom, is that which I spoke about, a few minutes ago, that we should never seek the aspects of God or the attributes of God. And, wisdom is one of the attributes like wisdom, love, karma or causal effect and the other attributes. We, then, are only seeking the lower part, the lower things of God , instead of seeking the fullness. We must seek the one thing. And, the one thing is the Ultimate Reality. And, when we do this, then we, ourselves, must enter in and, as I said in the last lecture, assume the role of that who is in this state of consciousness. And you can, as you enter into this more and more, you’ll notice a change within yourself. And, this change is the greater we become and the greater in heights that we go, the more ethical we become, the more refined in nature andthe more that we have the benefits of life on all planes.
Now, I say the benefits of life on all planes. It means that we are given, here, what we need. We are given the right work. We’re given the right speech. We’re given the right understanding and we’re given the rightness in foods or anything else, health first and all of that. But, it also comes up on the astral plane. We are given the rightness of all things on the astral plane. We are given the rightness of all things on the mental plane and causal plane, on the soul plane and thereafter. So, therefore, why seek this? Because, as I said before, and very briefly again I say, the Law of Spirit is different from the law of the physical world because it works almost backwards.
There we do not seek these things because when we become established in the Godness or the God-self we,
It’s like the man who’s he doesn’t save himself. He does one job at a time and does it well, and does it within God’s name or for from God in this feeling that he is doing it for the Ultimate or the Universal Cause. Therefore, we are then working in the field of the Ultimate and we’re working in the field of the Consciousness or the States of God because we have assumed it and we have gradually worked into it, be not disappointed if you do not get it for the first few hours or the first few days or the first few months. It takes time to work into this. I would say, if it’s true that Jesus accepted the role of the Messiah and put himself into this position, then it took him 30 years to get to this point, because he only had three years of ministry. And, after his three years of ministry was over, he made the name which is a household word with everyone. The same thing with Socrates and all the rest, it took Socrates 50 years or more to get to his position as a Greek philosopher, as a man who had the great knowledge, because he assumed the role in the beginning. And, then, after that, he only had a short time because, as of all things and it’s like all people who work in truth, they are attacked.
So, you must remember this. That when you give ruth out and when you work in the field of truth, you should work silently. You should work without talking to people about it. You should work without going into the preachings and the thoughts and trying to give it out to people when you think their states of consciousness are not ready for it. Because if their states of consciousness are not ready for it, then you are in the position of letting yourself open for attack. And, nothing in the world is more outrageous than people who feel that they, themselves, are being outraged by the fact that they are being given a truth and they don’t want it. And, this is the funny part about it. Never give anybody anything they do not want and do not force upon people.
Several years ago, I wrote an article called The Freedom of Consciousness. And, in this I stated to the effect that Saint Gertrude, when she was watching the one of the criminals being marched up to the galley to be hung, that she made the prayer that he would change his mind and be converted. He had been resistant up to that point. And, he was changed as said by her prayer. This, to me, was an interference with this man’s freedom of consciousness. This man should have been allowed to make his own state of consciousness, own change of consciousness, so that he, of himself, could enter into it wholeheartedly and fully, Now, I’m not offering a criticism at this point, but I am trying to say that, we who do this, may have to take on that man’s state of consciousness as I’m repeating myself, again, about.
This comes back to the point that that I want to make in the bilocation or the soul travel field, is that you had this church, and in the early days, split upon this. And, they still split to some effect today. And, that is that, there were those who believed directly in the cosmic conscience among the clergy. There were those who believed in soul flight among the clergy. So, you had those two splits here. Those, like Saint John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila and those, were all of those who believed in the cosmic consciousness. Those, St. Anthony and many of the others, say, I forget right now what I’m trying to say, but Father Pio, now, who’s living in Father Italy, are all the believers in the soul-flight or the out-of-the-body movement, the bilocation field. These have often been cited as examples of the two-split among the priestcraft or the clergy.
In your study and reading the biographies of these very great people, the great spiritual people, you will find this distinction, as you can make of that, and how that you can go, how you can take it up and make a study. And, it will give you the understanding of this whole field and will give you a broader knowledge within the area, of itself, so that you will be able to judge when you come up against arguments from other areas or when you come up against readings. Analysis and experience are the only teachers that you will have in this whole field. And by this, I come back to say that Eckankar is, on itself, for me and many others, the path to God. Now, with that, I’m going to close here and we will take up the third lecture right away, which is called The Riddle of the Universe