Secret of Spirituality – Sacramento, 1970

Well alright, I have lots to say and yet I don’t know in all the time we have here and the time I have here yet to spend with you. I am talking about my time here on earth whether we are ever going to get out the message or not because there’s so much of it to get out. There’s so much to say. There’s so much to write. Now, actually, in all of this work, I wonder how people can go on reading year after year, Studying year after year, work so much to try to learn something and yet the whole secret of the works of ECK and the whole secret of all the works of mysticism is not in words.

And, yet, we who have been so hungry to find what we can, the least it, the smallest of it or the largest of it, we’ve looked just for it in words there. All of it is in one thing and I’ve often spoke about this to people, especially when I used to do readings. I would speak to them about the seat or rather the key to the consciousness which is the key to, actually all the whole secret of spirituality, and yet they never found it, They didn’t understand it and I had to veil it in a language so that some could find it and some couldn’t. And yet, all that what I’m saying is simply that, which is intuitive, that which is perceptive within us to grasp and understand what truth is or to understand the simplest things of life. Now frankly, life of itself or what we’ll say the spiritual life or the unfoldment through all of this, is a simplicity.

Now remember, we are living in a state consciousness which is the human state and all of us think in one term. How complex can it be, the complexity of all of it so we can understand what it is and this is the way the mind works? The mind cannot understand anything unless it has a complexity to it. And, unless we’ve learned to cut through all of this, learn to cut through everything and look at this in the simplest terms and reduce it to the simplest terms, then we will go on and on for years and years, century after century, life after life still looking for it.

We have to understand and I said to some of you today, that all ECK is reduced down to a simplicity and that simplicity Is very simple and we have nothing in ECK except to know that we have survival after death. Soul, of itself, is eternal and therefore we have survival after death but how many realize this?

We are all looking for something that’s got the psychic phenomena mixed with it, the physical phenomena mixed with it and all the metaphysicians that all told us that we can have God now, instantly, or we can have wealth or we can all of these things today and now. I regret to say that this isn’t quite true. A few of us can but not all of us. And it’s a whole of a regret that this sort of a program has been told to us because I have never said that the spiritual path was an easy path. The spiritual path is a thorny path. The spiritual path is the hardest of all paths to take. Now, I used to look at this with quite a quandary and I would wonder that why every time that I made up my mind to do something a little more and a little greater with greater effort and a stronger push into the spiritual centers into the worlds, practiced the practice of Yoga. I practiced the practice of something outside of ECK itself and I would go into this and I would say, “Now, I’m going to do this and I’m going to stay with it until I reach what I want to
until I reach that part that we call the God-consciousness.” Very strangely, there would be more things that would come up, more obstacles and it would seem as if all the demons of hell were turned loose in order to keep me from doing this.

So, I found that going back to ECK and going into the center path, and I’m not the only one who has gone to the center path or the mental path, but by doing this I learned
that the less that I put any emphasis upon making a striding toward spiritual freedom, well, the greater the proof that I had. And this is true for each of you. For some reason and I can never tell you, why I don’t know, why that it is that the more that we push for spiritual unfoldment the less we will have.

We, of ourselves, must know here and now that the way to find what we want in life, what we want in moving into this God-center is simply that of recognition. We must recognize that we’re there already. And, if we don’t recognize that we’re there already then we’re going to have this strange phenomena of always being a spiritual failure. And, this sounds strange because we’re not supposed to be spiritual failures.

But I see them. They come to me constantly. They come in droves because they have gone into the work and they have found that they have been seeking too much. I don’t believe in doing this. I believe that we, of ourselves, should find God, here and now, by recognizing that we’re in the state and working in the state. And. unless we do so, we’ll always be seeking because God is here and now. So, It’s forever living in the present moment so therefore the two must come to the collision course of being one and together’

I feel sometimes in the same state that Jubal Zakarti, who was one of the great ECK Masters in the past, in the way the man who was told that in order to achieve a certain amount of liberation, he belonged to a cult of – a murder cult, that he had to kill a hundred people. And, he met the Master walking along the road one day and he said, “I have killed 99 people and you’re the next I kill for liberation. And, the master say, “Fine. You may kill me now.” So, the man says, “Well, maybe not. Are you a great Master?’
And, he says, “Well, you may kill me and maybe you’ll find out. But, if you don’t kill me you’ll never know.” So, he decided that he would go ahead and find someone else to kill. And the Master says, “Well, I’ll go with you and we’ll find somebody else to kill so you’ll be liberated. Well, while they hunted, he talked to the Master and finally they decided that he did not need to kill in order to be liberated.

So, you see, all I’m trying to make the point is, that we feel we must do desperate things in order to reach a certain stage of life, a certain spiritual stage. So, when we come to this desperation we are in the position then of saying it must be done or this is the end of me. There’s never the end of me. And, this is the strange thing; we go on living regardless.

I have told the story to some of you before, but I think it bears repeating again that I once decided that I was going to have the great state go enlightenment at a particular day and at a particular time. And, I began to work toward this end and the more and more that I worked and the more and more I pushed and the more and more I prayed, because in those days I decided that prayer was the way to get things. I did everything, made the affirmations. I was busied with the old type meditations, everything you could think and decided that when I came up to this period I was going to be struck by God and I was going to have the great enlightenment.

The time came or rather I approached the time I came to within that morning and I decided at 2;00 in the afternoon, that was going to be the time. And, I was lying on my cot and I jumped up and ran to the mirror in the bathroom to see if there was any changes in me. And, I go lay down again and wait. And, finally at 5 minutes to 2 I ran in to see if the halo was shining or if anything had changed and I fly back and got on the bed real fast because I said, “Well, here it comes,” And, I laid there. Nothing happened. Well then, I was very bitter about this. “Well, gee, you know, what’s the use? What’s the use of striving? What’s the use of working to get something when it’s never there, when God doesn’t give to to one?” So, I relaxed. I went on my way. I forgot about it. And, I’ll say in a matter of about 15 days or something like that, I was lying in the same position and it hit. It may be, like in the Bible says, “Like a thief in the night, it comes.”We can’t control it. We can’t tell spirit how is should do or what it should do for us. We can only ask. We can only say that this is what I want with my life and I would want to be in this position of the enlightenment. And, by having it then, perhaps, I can serve my fellow man,And, I can do the things I’m guided to do by the ECK. But, when we pray for one particular thing we have to think of what this might be or what might happen to us if we do get it. Now we don’t want to be like St. Harnikar, one of the earliest Christian saints, who decided that he couldn’t die, especially by fire and he prayed to God that he could not die by fire because in those days that was one of the ways that they killed the saints. And, so they brought him out, his enemies, and put the package around him and built the fire and the rain came. And, he said, “See, God loves me. He put the fires out.” So, they shot him full of arrows. He didn’t ask God to be immune to death. He just said to God, “Don’t let me die by fire.

So, when we’re asking for something and we work ourselves toward one particular area then this is the area that it’s going to work. This is the area that it’s going to be given to us. So, when we work and pray for something then we must work and pray for the whole and not for the personal. Sure, our lives are filled with hardships, difficulties everyday. I know that. So is mine. And, the strange thing about it, don’t ever believe that anyone who takes up the spiritual path and goes out into the world to be a leader in the work, do not ever think that he is going to have a path of roses.

Editor’s Note: This is a partial transcription – 16:41 so far out of 58:38