k rI think what we ought to talk about now, actually, is one’s own universe. You see, each of us carries with ourselves our own little world. And, we have another name for that and it’s psychic space. But, this own little world is our own personal world in which that we live, make our dreams, form our habits and live alone. Then we also have the large world in which we live that is with our families, with our environment, our jobs or the outer world. So, when one begins to think about life, you think about joining these two worlds together in a sense and yet keep them separated. And, there will be so many people who will try to be crowding in upon this personal world of yours because they want to sell you ideas. They want to give you something of their own.
For example, if someone who is in an orthodox religion will believe that you are not thinking right or doing right, they may come in, try to, and I say sell, and that’s the word they use, sell you on the idea or crowd you in your world in order to accept their idea. And, this is one of the problems that you will have in your own universe. Now, someone, not liking what you are doing may try to change you. And, until they change that world of yours, that universe of yours, that personal self of yours, then you’re free and you’re safe. And, this is what each of us must build. And, each of us must live in this world of ours and meet the outside conditions.
Now, in England, there used to be an old motto or an old saying which came off of the old law of Moses. It was something like, “Get married and get a home.“ And, all those who grew into the state where they had earning ability and, in those days, they started off at the age of 12. And, they weren’t marrying at the age of 12 but they were starting to work at the age of 12. The boy went to the father and the father taught him a trade or showed him how to meet the bumps of life. The girl went to the mother who showed her how to do the domestic work to have a home. And, they then, eventually, the boy and the girl, got married and they built a home. And, the home was the aura in which they put around themselves. And, this made for one world or for their universe.
And, this is the same with us today that this aura, or this universe, or this Self, is what we are building. So, we must begin to think in the terms, then, that if we go this far in, say a marriage state, then we have a universe in which that we build ourselves. And, nothing should come into this universe unless they are invited into it. Your problems are your own. You work out your problems. And the man goes out and he makes the living in order to maintain this universe or this home. And, they build this with themselves and eventually the first child appears and it becomes a triangle.
Now, the husband can leave the home and he can not come back or he can carouse or do any of those things but it still doesn’t break up the home as long as he doesn’t leave it permanently. But, the moment that the wife steps out of this aura and she goes out and violates the rules of the ethics or the morals, then the home starts cracking and breaking, And, she must come back and seal this aura around. And, it’s not until that she goes out permanently or she goes out by death or that sort of thing that the home will break down because she is the center of this aura within the home. Now, you must remember that, when the husband comes home at nights, she goes into this environment, which is called their respective universe. She must put him in a position and take care of him and polish him and shine him up and give him back his confidence, which has been torn down during the day, and it will be done to him. And, put him out again, the next morning, in good shape.
Now, this doesn’t mean the fact that we, ourselves, will not pertain to the home with the wife or anything. But, pertaining to ourselves when we, in the evening, withdraw from the world and enter into our own home or our own universe. We, then, must rebuild ourselves in order to face the world for our next encounter with it the next morning or any other time. Today there are factors that are breaking these things up, breaking up the homes. Now, one of these factors is the TV which brings the world right into the home. And, we, as individuals, do not realize that the TV brings problems with it because it brings screen problems or rather fiction problems, of screenplay, in which people say, “this is me” and project themselves into it and maybe magnify their own problems. There are others who come in with news of the world, which disturbs us and upsets us, and we lack that psychic or that spiritual drive to rebuild ourselves to go back out and meet the world again.
And, these things are sapping our strength as individuals so that we no can longer face the world and be up with everything that we have to face like, 50 years ago, we didn’t have these things. We came home. We read books. Or, we listened maybe to a, what they called in those days, the Victrola, which was a player machine with rigid patterns of thinking or music that would create a certain amount of thinking in it. And, then there were those other things, resting or working in the garden or doing all of those things. But, we were refreshing ourselves to go out. Fifty years before that, that was a different pattern of life.
But, today, we are all sitting on one another’s lap and we are crowding one another’s space. And, this is the thing which you are going to have to watch within your own life in growing up. That somebody else, outside your own family members, are not there and crowding you. And, crowding you to the effect with their ideas, on their thoughts and trying to bring you into line with their ideals. You’ll have to be very careful of this because, in your own worlds, you will have both the feminine or the passive traits, or you’ll have the masculine or the masculine traits within yourself. And, these will, at times, vary. Because there will be times when you’ll be very passive, even man or woman. It makes no difference in the species. Other times you will be very aggressive or forward in your nature. But, these forces will try to pull you down into the passive element or catch you at these passive periods and, then, by their own aggression, start beating and pushing their own ideas into you.
So, here you have to be careful. You have to be watchful. You have to be both the guard man at the gate and also the king in the castle. Because if you don’t watch, such people will be under your guard and you’re accepting their ideas. And, this is why I always said, in the beginning, for the first two years or so, I suggest to you, but I don’t tell you or order you, but not to read too much in other fields until you lay, yourself, down a good foundation of ECK. And, when it’s become strong within yourself, then you can start reading and you can look at other people’s ideas. You can examine them with an altogether different way or viewpoint. Because you know and you are accepting them from the ECK viewpoint, which is the overall or the hold. And, then you begin to see, you can pick the flaws or you can analyze it.
And, you can do all of these things exactly as they should be done and you are doing it with an impartial mind. So, this universe that you are going to live in is your universe. And, it’s been built within you ever since you were a child. And, also the past things, the karma and all of that which is brought in from all the other lives, is also into this universe. So, you must all consider all of these things. And, if you want to call it your aura or living within your aura, then you must look at it from a standpoint that here is my home. Here is myself and no one is going to crowd this space. Sometimes, it’s called the psychic space within the individual.
And, if you will notice that in a large family, there’s, sometimes, the 2nd or 3rd child or the last child in the family who always seems to be the one who doesn’t get the love of the mother or the father or that. And, they are always crowded. They are crowded out or they are pushed in on their space and they are the ones who are the troubled or the troublesome children within the family. And, because that they are being squeezed sometimes within their space, when there are children under them and there are children over them and, when this happens, the parents do not understand and say, “Well, what’s happening here? We give them everything in life. We give them love. They don’t suffer from the lack of food. They don’t suffer from the lack of clothes or companionship and everything and, yet, on the other hand, they are giving us trouble and this is the problem.”
Now, there’s a very interesting analogy that I could give you here. That if you put a man in prison and you put him in prison for some time, the authorities say that he has to go to prison for 5 to 10 to 25 years, he can adjust to this because he’s living in a space here within a cell. And, this is all his own little home. Everything is right there. But, if he was told that he’s going to be living in a desert or an island where there were no other people, he couldn’t make it because of the space that he would have to contend with. It’s reverse. Now, he’s contented with his space. And, he’s out in all THIS space and the man goes crazy from living in space rather than going crazy from living in confinement.
Then, sometimes, you got the reverse case of a man who cannot live in this close confinement but he can live in this large space. And, it depends upon the way his mind works a great deal and the way he can see life in the terms of space and time.
Now, there was a very interesting story told about Gandhi in the early years when he was being quite a thorn in the side of the British government in India and he would be arrested and he would be put in jail or prison. It wasn’t jail, it was prison. And, instead of giving him into a regular cell, a very strange thing they would do to this man. They would put him in a silo or a round prison. It had no corners, nothing but round. And, they had a very subtle, psychological idea here. That the man could not stay in a cell like that without becoming insane because his mind would go around in circles and his thoughts would revolve inwardly and introvert him. And, introvert him to such a case that he, eventually, would go insane. Well, Gandhi was smarter than that. All he did was fix in his own mind certain imaginary points within this round cell as if were a square and put his mind on these points. See? Now, the average man would not have done that. The average man would have gone what they call, stir crazy.
But, on the other hand, if we’re in a room of this nature, we fasten our attention on points like the corner of the room, maybe the ceiling, maybe this or other things that keep us in balance. But, when we’re in space, we don’t have that. And, if a man is put out into space in a desert or out on an island where he is surrounded by all this water, he has nothing to put his mind upon. And, therefore he goes out of his head because he cannot adjust and fit himself to these points. And, this even goes with animals. Animals, if you put them in an experiment that has been with psychology, they will do and react in the same way.
And, of course, this is one of the things that the dictators soon learned in handling people. That getting the mind out of balance is that which is in their favor. If they have a person who is harassing them in some way with revolutions and they capture him. They don’t kill him because he becomes a martyr. They put him in cells of this nature and they do all these sorts of things to him. After a while, why he goes crazy. And, then they release him and he goes out and he tries to communicate with people and he can’t do it because they’ve already got him tagged with the public as being insane. And, no one in society wants anything to do with an insane person.
But there’s always a statement said, “There are more people outside of the insane asylum who are crazy than the people on the inside.” So, we wouldn’t have enough space to put all those people. Have to keep them on the outside.
Well, I’m trying to say this to you is because you are going to run into problems of this nature. Many, many people will try to tag you as being oddballs and out of your head and all that sort of thing because you believe something that they don’t. The first thing that you can say to people whom you have approached, or who approach you, on the subject of Eckankar and can give them a better understanding than anything else, you can say, “This is the major field of revelation.” And, they know what the word revelation means. Because, then, they will start comparing it with what St. John had in the Books of Revelation. And, that is not getting us tagged or putting us in certain areas of religions or anything else because this is going to be a word that they know. Revelation can cover many wide, broad aspects of this field. Some people even tag it into mysticism. And, yet we are not really a mystic because we go beyond what the mystics do. The mystics are really working on the 4th or the mental plane. And, anyone who wants to work on that field is alright with me, but here is the field where the big arguments and the qualms come about within people.
Of course, we are far better educated than we were a hundred years ago. And, we have a much better understanding and more sophistication of life than we did in those times. But, on the other hand, we are working, mainly, in this unconditioned area of life, where these people come to this mental plane and they can’t get any further because they have qualms. They argue about it. They ask questions. They chew over issues. They do all of these things because the mind will not let it go and the mind must have an idea to chew on. And, they grasp it and they’ll work it and they’ll throw it and they’ll shove it and they’ll do anything in the world, but the minute that we’ll forget this and start moving above the idea state, then we are in the field of revelation or working with this unconditioned force called ECK.
And, by that, we begin to see, then, that people who are big question askers, they won’t only ask you about ECK, but they’ll run over to some other place somewhere else. And, they’ll run over in the Baptist church and they’ll say, “Now, tell me all about the Baptist church.” See? And, they will talk in this manner with them and start the same questions in a different form with the minister there, asking him the same questions all over again with a different face on each one of them. They are going to do this because they have not got above this mental area.
And, there is one saying about all of this, “That if you believe, you believe.” And, you don’t have to be sold on the idea. But, if you don’t believe, there is no need of trying to prove it to anyone. So, you might as well drop the subject because they won’t go any farther than what they are, here and now. And, this all lies within the mental area. And, anyone who comes with a long list of questions to ask you, well, you might as well stop right there because what is there to say to him? What is there to answer? There isn’t anything to answer. Because when you get through with this long list of questions, he’ll be back the next day with another long list of questions. And, this will go on forever and ever. If you want to take up the time and energy to answer all of them, alright. But, you might as well stop in the beginning and let him go out and do his own thinking. Then, one day, the light will all burst through all of this and he will suddenly think, “Gee whiz, you know, all of this thinking that I did was worthless because it has proven itself by the experience I’ve had.”
And, that’s all he needs is the experience, the revelator. And, the experience IS the Revelator. And, until he grows into this, he is not going to have any idea of what we’re talking about. Well, I used to have these things and I had them for time and time again. And, they would run up to me and ask me all the questions, “Well, do you think I’m going to die next week?, up to the point, “Is Russia going to drop the bomb on us?” And, what’s the use of telling them. See? Because the whole thing, here, is the fact that you are feeding them with a spoon just like a child. And, they can go the rest of their lives being fed with a spoon. Or, you can stop right now and say, “You walk out on your own feet and think it out yourself.” And, one day, they come back and say, “Hey, you were right about this.”
I remember some fellow down in Atlanta, Georgia. And, he, one day he came when I was down there a few years ago, and he came in and he said to me, “Now, look, I know several great Masters and why can’t I get two of those Masters, whom I know very well, and put one on each side of me and with you in the back of me. And, why couldn’t I get into heaven that way?” I says, “There are, altogether, 3 different paths and one might take your right leg and take it up. And, the other one take your left arm and I take your head, and there wouldn’t be anything left.” And, you know, he went off and thought about that for a while. And, the next day, I saw him as I was checking out and he ran out and he says, “Hey, you know, you were right about that. Only one Master can take you into Heaven at a time.” I says, “That’s true.” And, I says, “How did you figure that out?” Well, he says, “I thought all night on that.“ Well, alright with me.
But, this is the problem. These philosophical problems can drive one crazy if you let them do so. Because he can get a problem in his mind. And, I’ve seen people go almost, in trying to work out one problem in their mind, it off-balances them. Well, in the first place, let’s come back to one thing. We have to live in this world anyway, regardless. So, why should we let such things bother us? You know, why force ourselves to be put in a position where a philosophical problem about getting into Heaven would worry us crazy? When we have to go out here and, actually, nobody else is going to take care of us, we have to earn our own bread and butter, And, nobody else cares whether we do or not. So, we might as well go out and earn our bread and butter and let this thing be worked out because it will be worked out. And, the less pressure and the less pushing you put on such ideas of this, well, the greater that the idea comes in its understanding, for an idea is a very passive sort of a thing. It will pester us and bother us as long as we don’t pay any attention to it. And it will reveal itself to us.
But, once we start chasing it, it’s like a boy chasing a girl. Out of the fun of it, she’ll let him chase her. But, this is true. See? The idea, of itself, or if you want to put it as the light of God, it always eludes you. And the more we chase it, or the more we pursue it, the faster it will run. But, once we sit down and be still and leave it alone, it comes to us. And, this is what we should do with all these things that start pressing themselves in on our mind, is to leave them alone and let them reveal themselves to us. And, this is the trouble with too many people that are in, especially who are coming up now, the younger generation. They have been somewhat like the older generation, also, of them. They are not alone in that, they have been oversold on the ideas of metaphysics and occultism. And, it’s coming back, revisiting us again.
So, we don’t want to get into that position to let it sell us. But, we want to be in a position of controlling it so that when the idea comes, we can take control of it. And, I hope that we all can meet this sort of a standard. I know that all of us won’t. But, when we can, we’ll wake up some morning and we’ll look back and say, “Well, Holy ECK! How in the world did I ever go through all of this sort of thing and all of this struggle and all of this to get what I wanted?” You’ll be like I was about 15 or 25 years ago or maybe even longer than that. I don’t even remember now. But, the fact is, I determined I was going to get what’s called today, the cosmic consciousness, and it’s only a mental phenomenon. And, I’d read all about the light and that sort of thing coming to people and all of that. And, I said, “I’m going to try it and see what it is.”
So, I went through all of these rituals and all this sort of thing, determining on a date when it was going to happen. See? I says,” It’s going to happen 12:00 Sunday, August, maybe the 5th, maybe something like that.” And, I got myself all prepared for this. I prayed. I went through all sorts of rituals. I made pentagrams and all that sort of thing, you know. And, then I went in that morning about 11:00 and lay down on the bed and said, “Well, here I am, Lord.” So, I got up every few minutes and I’d run in and look in the mirror in the bathroom and see if anything happened. Well, 12:00 went by and nothing happened. See? Oh, I was quite disappointed in there. I says, “Well, I prepared myself with everything to be done about this.” And, I thought, “Oh well, alright, this is another one of those hoaxes that are practiced upon people.” So, I went off forgot about it. And, about 10 days later, went BAM! It hit me. I relaxed, I gave up the idea. I quit. I said it wasn’t any use. It wouldn’t work. Then, when I gave it up, when I quit pursuing it, when I decided that it wasn’t worth the problem, or the trouble I would have to go through to get it, it hit in a relaxed moment one day, lying there on the bed. See?
I thought, well, this is actually the answer to the problems of that nature. And, when we are working in the field of soul travel, this is the answer to the field in soul travel. Because, then, we’re working in a relaxed state. And, we are working in a state that, “If it happens, good, marvelous, but if it doesn’t, why should we say to ourselves? ‘Well, I’ve failed.” That isn’t true. It’s just the fact that maybe you’ve worked too hard to get this. And, what you should do, is do all of the exercises, and everything very relaxed, very easy and very gentle. And, it begins. Then, after a while, you’ll see how gentle it does work. Then, suddenly, you find yourself standing out here or sitting way out here on a plane looking at things in this wide space and looking at it from the whole, as I was talking about it last night. So all of this must work into itself, and this is the way that you should do life. That, if it comes as we want it, “Well, happy.” If it doesn’t, there’s no need to be disturbed over it because the opportunity comes back around again.
And, this is our big trouble, that we set our minds into a rigid pattern, saying that it must be like what we expect it. We hope that it will be and we want to be this way and when it comes, the opportunity comes again, we don’t recognize it. But, then again, it will come again for us, And, again, until one day we will recognize it and, say, ”Well, this is wonderful! It wasn’t the way that I expected it but it happened.” So, with that, I am going to say, and I’m closing out the talk at the present, I’m very happy that all of you people came. I’m sorry that I didn’t get to see you all individually to talk with you. But, this is one of the facts of life, that you don’t. But, anyway, I am with you always and my presence is with you at all times. So, that should suffice all of us until we can get together physically sometime. Thank you. May the blessings be.