k rPaul Twitchell when he was a writer for a Seattle Newspaper
You know, it doesn’t make any difference of how many people I face, whether it’s 5 or 500 people, I always feel nervous every time I come out. And, I don’t know why. But, it’s one of those things I suppose that everybody who faces an audience always goes through. I never will forget the time the people that are over in Stockholm this year, and I guess maybe it’s Stockholm, maybe it’s Oslo. But you know, I take my shoes off, sit down on the table and fold them under me. And after a while, I’d put them back on again and then I’d take them off again. And, I’d notice these eyebrows all coming and going up and down. It’s very funny because they are used to someone coming out, dress and tie, well a certain deportment that they have with public speakers, and they suppose that everybody is to follow out this sort of thing.
Now, I have nothing to offer in the personality area because I think the personality doesn’t belong in this work. Now, there are a lot of people who belong in the personality cult and they form groups around these cults. But, in the ECK, we can’t do that. Personality must get out of the way because it forms too many problems, because, it forms too much of the difficulty in getting beyond the personality into the depth of the message.
This year, as you know, many of you know who’s been in ECK for a long time and I suppose that you’ve read this in the letters, in the books, in the works, that this is my last year. And, it almost became my last year. And, when all the things happened to me I thought, well, it’s very interesting to know that I made the prophecy right. But, I have been given an extension to stay in the work and stay in for another 5 years at least. And, the extension was, they had no one to follow me.
We have chosen, on occasions, several persons to follow me and they were prepared, they got the tests, all of that but they failed. Now, I told you this morning, it isn’t an easy route. And, whoever follows will have it somewhat easier but he will find the that the hardships will be just as hard as it has been in my case. Why certain things happen this work on the reasons why that they want a successor, why that they want, the Masters want, certain things to be done, are not revealed to me. Perhaps it’s just as well, because if I did know then I would be in that position of having the future already laid out for me in my own knowledge. I somewhat know what the future is. I’ve seen quite a bit of it but on the people who will succeed and that is why that we are working so much on the youth program. We scrap the people or we have been scrapped, the people; we drop the idea of some of those people who were to follow me and went into a new group which is now coming up and these are now out of the youth which we formed last summer in Chicago.
It will take anyone who goes into training quite a considerable time in order to ever inherit the mantle. I, as I told you this morning, it took me more than the 15 years of intense training. It took me terribly a long time to ever realize so much of this. So, whoever follows will have to go through the same path. And, there’s none accepted; there are no exceptions when they’re chosen. But, it still depends upon the individual, whether he wants to take and accept the responsibility. Usually, he’s never told until maybe the last two years or something of that nature.
And, there’s also the fact that he has a considerable amount of experience in every practical field you can think of over the centuries of incarnations and over the centuries of working with… Flash will love me. He can ask my wife sometime. She will never tell him I am a sweet fellow. I have to tell you this funny story at least. Not long ago she was driving me someplace. We had to drop some mail in the box and I couldn’t get the mail in the box. And, some impatient fellow drove up behind us and honked two or three times. And, I put my head out and said something that I should have never said. And, she says, “Is that my Master?” And I says. “If he honks one more time, he’ll get a demonstration of I’m going back there and punching him in the nose.” And, you know, she didn’t say anything further because I think it rather surprised her, too.
Well, actually, within the work, there’s something I do want to talk about this afternoon that I do believe is of great interest to you. And, that is the influence of the astral upon this world. And, frankly, the astral has actually more influence than any of the other planes. The astral, as we know it, in the esoteric worlds or the esoteric studies, is the emotional body. And the emotional body, which is the other term for the astral body, is a considerable deep body or is body which has all of the emotions and feeling fixed into it and which, in turn, impresses the human senses. And this, in turn, causes our actions physically in this world.
So, you must remember that, in some of the training of the ECK Masters, has been control of this feeling or emotional body. And, it’s a body that creates these tremendous problems in this world. It is the body that creates the physical love and the sentimental love which we find. And, it also creates a violence on the opposite end and all of the things that I think the whole human race has an intense dislike for. It creates a tremendous amount of hatred. I think Buddha was right when he made the statement that there’s only a hair-breadth between love and hate.
We find this really within our lives that we swing back and forth between these extremes. So very seldom are we ever sitting in the neutral area of whether we have likes or dislikes for the individual or for life itself. This is a very important point that you should remember because this is a world, rather this world of matter including all the planets, all the physical universe, is not a universe of peace. And, you’ll find that when we come into this world that all of us, as children, expect everything to find everything outside of our own home environment to be exactly like our home environment. We expect our mother’s love. We expect all of these things and then it never happens. And, we are at that age in which we then have, perhaps, an aberration or what you might call, in the vernacular, the hangups. And, these hangups stay with us all through our adult lives into the time we go up to death’s door.
Now, this is the point which I try to get across to people more and more in the work of ECK, that if you can stay on the path of ECK, if you can get into the initiations, if you can get beyond the second initiation, there is always that one thing that one thing that we can practically promise and that is: working out of the karma. We don’t promise it as the great general promise because there are people who, despite the fact that they do get the initiations, sometimes do not live up to the fulfillment. And, these people may have to take a few more lives but they will not have to take all of the lives they would if they were not or if they were on other paths and if they were working into these areas in which they had no Master or anyone to guide them.
Now, this emotional body and the influence of the astral plane has a tremendous force that pours in upon this world. A few years ago when they started all the, the scientists started all of the work of, I would say, the atomic testing in the skies and the other types of testings, they broke into what we call the Van Allen Belt. And, the Van Allen Belt was a belt which had a physic side of it that protected us from those entities of the other worlds. And, by doing this, they opened this belt and these entities and these forces are now pouring in upon the world.
As a result, you only have to read the newspaper regularly to begin to find out what’s happening to all people, to all the world, to all the nations within the world to see that we are now learning that something is wrong and we can’t cure these wrongs or give treatments to these wrongs simply from the standpoint of trying to make treaties, trying to love the brother and all of these sort of things. It’s going to take something else. And, what is it going to take?
It’s going to take a vast amount of influence that comes out of a singular group which can counteract and bring back and try to balance of these forces so that man can live in a little better term and a little more peaceful. And, this is why the ECK Masters have, once again, made themselves visible into this world as to form the whole entity of the ECK which will begin to take care of this sort of thing. Now, this may sound a little far-fetched to you and I know there’s a large number of groups who have brought messages into the world and have tried to give protection to others through this sort of thing but they have not been strong enough because we, collectively, and we, individually, form that channel in which that this force can flow through in order to correct the environment. And, many times it looks like we are not doing anything but results show it in time.
And, you’ll find wherever there is a deep-seated problem and has been a deep-seated problem, I would say in a community of some nature, and if the ECK Master appears there or if there is a strong Satsang group is developed there, you’ll find all sorts of problems which seem to be natural phenomena happening. And, it’s only the clearing out of the negative forces and it’s only the battle between the negative and the positive which will try to one getting the upper hand over the other. And, this goes on time and time again. And, I have found, within those places that we have formed strong Satsang groups and I have found at times when I have visited certain places, that the many things that happened there that even tried to keep us from, the natural phenomena keep us from, having to spread the message there.
I think if you’ll talk to the Chicago group, goes way back there like Dorothy Liggett, they can tell you what happened. I think it was 1968 when I went there in January. And, that was just the one incident which I spoke about, that I mentioned here, in which that we had balmy weather all along and the next day they had the worst storm they ever had. But, people still came. And so strange, that we had an auditorium in a hotel which was, I think was Holiday or one of those hotels, and they couldn’t get the thermostat working. The people had their topcoats at one moment and the next moment they’d have them off. And, it was just absolutely ridiculous of what was going on. But, this was the way that we were trying to be stopped, from out of these astral forces through the Kal, to not deliver the message. And, I would say at least there were people who through that, I don’t know, maybe the 5 or 6-foot snow. They tromped down through this 5 or 6-foot snow in order to get into the auditorium.
And, I remember there was Coody Foster who walked all, I don’t know how many blocks in that sort of snow, to get down to see me and, unfortunately, I missed him. And, I had to call him up and apologize because it really wasn’t my fault that I missed him. And yet, to think that these people would come all of these distance through all, practically, blizzards, to get the message of ECK, 75 people or more. And, it’s amazing that this sort of thing happened and that this influence, or this astral force, tries to keep these, the people, stirred up emotionally, and tried to keep, tried to use the nature or what we call nature, working against anything to bring out the message of ECK.
You’ll find this working within yourself at times. Of all these different things that people will do in order to halt you, to put blocks in your way, to do something to keep you from ever having the opportunity to get the message out.
It’s an old, old psychological law. It’s called the anti-success law. And, I think John Dewey explained it, oh, it must have been 30 or 40 years ago in one of his books on psychology, in which he says, “We don’t mind taking the dog out of the gutter and bringing the dog up to our level but when the dog gets ahead of us we want to put him back.” And, this is true. So many of us like to help people but when the people get even on the same level of equality or go past us, we don’t like it. Everybody is for the underdog. Everybody wants to see him and prove himself and bring him up but they don’t want him ahead of them. In any form of life, they don’t want him spiritually. They don’t want him economically, politically or any other way to get ahead of them. And, they will form groups to stop him.
Now, this is a problem that we have run into in this work a great deal. Now, I went on this trip this summer. It was very interesting. Everything happened, I think, that ever happened. When I took off for Europe, Gail and I in August, we were 23 hours in getting to London on a 10-hour flight. We landed in a cornfield in Scotland. And, the plane broke down. We couldn’t get out of there until they sent planes to get us. We were on our way to Turkey. We missed all the planes to Turkey. We were cut short on our time and canceled the time and went to Vienna and, in Vienna, I had a nice crowd, a well-behaved crowd, a crowd that was eager to listen. But, at the last night, the last moment, some fellow who didn’t like me, who didn’t know what I was saying or didn’t care, walks up and deliberately spits in my face and tells me that I was a phony and a fraud and he hopes that I get out of Vienna right away.
Well, we flew on then down to Belgium and we had a fair crowd in Belgium, in Brussels. And, it was very funny. They put us in a room in which, that was at one of the better hotels that day, that they couldn’t get the windows down. But, it was hot and they had more traffic. I think all the traffic in Europe ran right under our door, especially on Sunday morning. And, then we got ready and got on the plane two days later to go to Madrid and I said to Gail, “I don’t want to get on this plane. It’s not safe.” And, like a wife, you know, she says, “Well, let’s go. I don’t want to stay here any longer.” So, we get out on the apron and they turn the plane around, bring it in port again. They go through and sweep the plane. They found out that we were supposed to have a bomb on that plane. We sat there for 7 hours again.
We flew down to Madrid and we were in Madrid one or two days and somebody who was in a small group there that I just met there handed me a soft drink and in this soft drink was enough, I won’t name what it was in there, but it was enough to knock me out for 4 days. And, if I hadn’t gone in trance and worked on the body, I would of never gotten out of there and we canceled the trip for the next week, canceled out everything in London and came home. And, I had to spend another two months getting rid of all that poison that was in my body.
And, these are the things which I say keeps us constantly in that position of always being aware of what the forces, the astral forces, the Kal forces, all of these things they’re trying to do, to keep the message from getting out.
They did that with Jesus. The message was to be gotten out through him of his own teachings. What did they do? They destroyed the vehicle. But, they didn’t ever destroy the message. And, that’s what I say. Even if they destroyed me, they wouldn’t destroy the message because we have enough people who will go out and give the teachings and these teachings will be carried on regardless. They could burn the books and yet, somebody would have a book that would be there to be reprinted someplace. This was one reason why Christianity, during the early part when it became established as a religion, did put out monasteries all over the world. They knew that, if the church, of itself, was ever destroyed and all monasteries were ever destroyed, there would be one in which they could start from again.
And, this is the same with us in the fact that someone or something could destroy everything that we have but there would be one Satsang class or one Satsang group that could carry on and rebuild from there, So, you must remember that these astral forces which keep pouring down and pushing into us and trying to create a disturbance within the man himself, was put very aptly when Jesus said he came to set the sword within the family, father against son and daughter against mother. And, he knew and this is what is being brought out so much in the work of ECK, that if one receives a degree of truth, even within the families, the families begin to be separated because truth has a way and a strangeness about it that irritates those who do not have it. And, this is working with it, this emotional body. Every charge of anything that you could think of comes within the battle to take the control over the one who has not, or the one who has gained any inkling of truth.
And. I think we find this so much today, within these worlds, of the divided line politically where brainwashing is the great factor and it knows, where we’re supposedly, and I say supposedly, to have free minds and free wills. Although, it’s doubtful at times that we have these because I have not found very many places within the world that one can go and have freedom and freedom of thinking and freedom of will. And, I’ve been a tremendous amount of places within this world.
And, I suppose that we could go out on some island where there are only a half a dozen natives and that would be the only place that it would be. But, on the other hand, tradition is sent down by the Kal forces within in a society in order to get people to have a marked behavior. And, in a way where there’s a mass of people to be handled and managed within a society, I suppose that it is very well the way to manage and handle them.
But, on the other hand, what about those people who have grown above this? And, this is the thing in which I have always been interested in, as being those people that we could say that have gone above this area of society in which that he or she, of themselves, have become the free thinkers and who have become the people who have a greater knowledge and a greater freedom.
Now, here is a very interesting point that you have to think about when you’re living within society. You still have to behave by their rules and regulations but no one can clamp an iron on your mind and on the freedom of Yourself. Because, like all people who have been in ECK, and all people who have developed themselves within to these areas, they know that if they live quietly and if they go on within their own little niches, within their own selves and their own worlds, nothing can touch them.
And, this is what we are quite concerned with today because the emotional body of man is kept stirred up constantly in order that he may have to be regulated and ruled, clapped into prison or given certain restrictions of freedom and held down because this is the way of the Kal. And, let any man, even in his own family, begin to think differently and begin to talk different, begin to look different within his own group or family, immediately everybody wants to hog-tie him and bring him back into the same position and tell him how wrong he is. And, if he doesn’t do that then they will make certain restrictions against him such as, perhaps they will cast him out of the family, perhaps he will become a social outcast with them or that they will begin to do certain other things to him in which he, of himself, will never be able to regain that old position. But the old position is, as we grow older and as environment changes, as we leave childhood and go on into manhood, we can never go back.
And, that is where the great mistake is made in growing up. Youth today will be adult tomorrow. Then he will take the position and look back on youth and say how terrible youth is. I’ve seen that within the generations, the two generations that have past and now, today, I find those young people in their latter 30’s and maybe early 40’s who, a few years ago, were in their own way as bad in their misconduct as they claim youth is today. And yet, you find these people are now all married and they cook barbeques on Saturday night for their friends and have beers with their friends and sit around and talk about how bad the world is. See? Now, this is a factor, because every generation must have its own experience. No parent can tell youth how to grow up because youth is bold and arrogant in his own way and he is in that position in life where he is immortal and he’s never going to die.
When we get into that position, we begin to look at that big door that can open almost any moment for us and then we look back. And, the only thing we can say to youth is, “Well, you better behave because look at me now.“ See? And, youth never figures he’s ever going to be like that. See? And, some of them, fortunately, die early. And, others have to go through the experience of living until they reach that position. This is the great tragedy of youth because youth, in its own way, grows up a great deal like Keats and many of these young people in their day who were geniuses. And, being geniuses they were living in a world of their own personal tragedy in which all life was tragedy.
And, to youth, and even as I remembered it, all life was tragedy. If the girl was going to ignore me, that’s the great tragedy of the universe. If I could not make 50 cents this week in order to go someplace, that was a great tragedy of the universe because the emotional body was demanding that the satisfaction of the material life had to come through the feelings and the emotions in order to have satisfaction. Now, this is the thing in which that we have to think about, where we are at this point. Then, when we get into old age, tragedy is the same because we have no future. We have a past and when we get to that position all we can do is sit and think about how wonderful the old days were.
I was talking today to someone about: I saw Maurice Chevalier, the old musical star, French musical star who was so famous. I saw him on television not long ago and he made a very apt statement. He says, “I’m 80 and I never know when I go to bed that night if I’m going to get up the next morning.“ He says, “I kept on the stage until I was 76 and then I believed I was making a fool out of myself because people only applauded the past glories in me and not what I could perform at the present time.” And, this was true. See? Because we get to that position in which we cannot perform any longer and we’re in that state in which everything goes down emotionally and we live in a state of depression because we can no longer give anything to life.
And, fortunate is the person who can work up until that last day, who can give something to that last day, And, unfortunate is youth who has a future and he always looks upon it as a tragedy because everything in his life is a tragedy. Everything he does has to have great drama behind it. And, whenever he makes… even goes to school that morning and he very politely tips his hat to the teacher as he walks by or his cap or something if he has one on, that is a great deed to him because it is a great emotional experience to see how the teacher is going to react. If the teacher ignores him it is a great tragedy. If the teacher smiles it may become a great romance within him, for I remember when I was in the 3rd grade, I thought there was no more greater romantic figure than my teacher. And, I dreamed a great many dreams of romance with her in my own fantasy. But, then I was so disappointed when she was married. I felt that the whole world had dropped out and my parents couldn’t understand me for weeks, what was going on.
So, tragedy, see, comes through this emotional body. We have to train and find out what is being done or the influences that are working upon us and we have to discipline ourselves and this is the greatest discipline we have, is discipline this emotional self. With that, well, I’m going to close this talk.