Transcription
[Music] Plato said that a country is best ruled when the best persons rule. The uh, human being is best governed when the best part of himself leads. Now, some think the mind is the best part, others the emotion, some the physical body itself with its resources. But all of these finally come under the leadership of that which dwells within the body, within the emotions, behind the mind.
What is this basis of reality? How are we going to reach it? How are we going to challenge it to come out of its strange aless so that it can become available to the person? One thing we find out immediately is that this search has to be personal. There is no possibility of communicating this reality in ways necessary to solve the problem of the individual, except that it be given to the individual with his particular problem.
So we have to try to find out how to reach the opening of the inner life so that something superior to mind can become the ruler of mind and use the mind, the emotions, and the body as an instrument for for the fulfillment of a sacred purpose. This we have to try to discover in one way or another.
In ancient times, there were various doctrines that were developed very largely for the purpose of bringing the individual into contact with his own higher nature. That there were teachings that taught him to rise above the even the highest aspects of his own mind into an immediate and intimate experience of reality.
One of the first things that we are told in ancient scriptures is the simple line: "Be still and know that I am God." Now, I think perhaps this is one of the most important statements in connection with man's religious life. The problem of trying to be still. Now, when we think of still, if we are bound to material things, we will simply say that the individual does nothing. That is not the answer. That is not what is intended. Intended only to become part of worship.
When the individual seeks the ordinary, he can read a schoolbook or attend a class. When he seeks to know the mystery of his own inner self, he cannot storm the gates of heaven. If he tries to get into this sheepfold, which was the old name for religion, it by any way except the proper gate, he is then a thief and a robber. Therefore, the ethics, the morality, the integrities involved have to be kept in mind at all times.
To be still, to the mystic, means to be free from the involvements of mind and emotion, and free also from various physical symptomologies that may arise, in order that he will be permit that which is truly the over self to be heard. The still voice, the small voice, comes to the individual who stops talking long enough to hear it, and that is very rare, even in religion.
The problem always is that we are trying desperately to decide for ourselves on mental, emotional, and physical levels, those problems, decisions which can come only from something superior to what we now use. We have to some way break into that mysterious realm that has been called intuition or the extra-sensory band.
To be still now, for us in this particular world in which we now live, is seems to me, is to cease doing that which is not necessary, not right, and not good. The individual must choose sometime to clearly face the fact that he cannot be right if he continues to act wrong. That there is a a relationship between conduct and consciousness. There is a relationship between our material personality and that mysterious locked over self which we are seeking to understand.
Therefore, it is very necessary to be still in the sense of recovering from all of those intemperance of attitudes by means of which the normal growth of the consciousness is delayed or disposed of entirely. Therefore, if we want to really understand this, we have to begin the process of ironing out ourselves, to get rid of those things which interfere with the natural mistakes of life.
I mentioned that one day to a man who came to see me that if he stopped all these various attitudes that he had, he'd be better off. He seemed quite unhappy and a little indignant. Well, he said, if I stop thinking about all these mistakes, I'll have nothing at all to think about. Well, that probably is true, but it is possible to imagine that there might be some things to think about that are not mistakes, if we give any ground for such thinking.
If we are willing to gradually iron out the impulses and intemperance is with which we have burdened ourselves for thousands of years and brought with us in any sequence and rebirths that happens to us. Supposing we say that the individual who wants to get better is trying to grow because the present condition has become intolerable. The person is not satisfied as he is. He is not satisfied in what he has been, but he does does not know how to carry himself into the future without dragging the shubble with him. He's tomorrow is just another day in which to worry about the problems of yesterday.
This whole problem of the continuity of a compound attitude has to be broken up in some way. The person has to be able to be quiet without unhappy thoughts coming. He must be able to be relaxed and think without thinking destructively, critically, or in some way detrimental of all concern. And if his thinking is so bad he can't stand it, he has got to learn to get over the instinct to take a drink or something and forget himself.
The individual trying to forget himself is really telling us he's trying to forget a personality that is impossible, and there's no way of getting away with it except by outgrowing it. Now, some who undoubtedly have been able to drink themselves to death and hope by this means that they have accomplished everything that was necessary. While these people, these people belong in the believe in the s in the kind of life that we are generally living. They will feel they have got released, but to the deeper thinker, they have solved nothing and have escaped nothing. So that the problem becomes again: cure it now rather than face it later.
So in the problem of getting started on this inner search, we have to tr to find out that nature in its own way, our natural compound is essential, cooperative. The body with all its natural functions is really a pretty good creature, considering everything. It has laws and rules which, if we keep them, it will keep us as long as possible. It also has rules that we cannot break, and the moment we begin to reject our responsibility to the body, we're in trouble.
We get so interested in what we're doing mentally and emotionally that we wreck the body, and because we have wrecked the body in accomplishing a large personal fortune, we then feel that the wreckage was worthwhile, but it isn't actually. Therefore, the first laws that man faces are obvious to himself. He faces them in his daily living, but he has learned to carefully ignore the findings.
He also has developed a new escape which our ancestors really didn't have, namely that if he couldn't get out of the trouble himself, he get hire someone else to get out of it for him. But it's just as difficult to have another person solve your problems as to have another person eat your food and you'll be nourished by it. You can't do these things.
So we have now the complex situation of people who want to grow but have already stunted their own growth badly. They want to be better, but they do not know what to do with the mistakes that have accumulated. I think the old mystics had the perfect answer for it. They simply said: "Be quiet and know that I am God."
Now, this wasn't a theological type of definition. It is a definition based upon the concept that when we cease to build our own mistakes, when we cease to fashion a giant monster out of our own intemperance is, and relax, all of these evil things simply fade away for lack of nutrition. But they will not fade as long as one drop of nutrient is available to them. As long as we continue to have unhappy attitudes, we are not going to solve the mystery of our own inner consciousness.
Actually, the way of life physically that gives us the maximum probability for years is the same type of discipline as that which is necessary to the mind and the emotions so that they will fulfill their duties as perfectly as possible. When the emotions are quieted down to simple, gentle, real values, the emotional nature is protected. We have no likelihood of trouble with some of the internal organs of the the endocrine system, which have particular control over our emotional content. We will not kill ourselves by false feelings anymore then we will kill ourselves with bad food.
When we go up again to the third one, we have the mind. If the mind is used as it was intended to be used, and that is for the common good, for the advancement of everything that is real and valuable in life. If the mind could be released from the terrific pressure of self-interest, if it could get away from all its scheming on how to defeat a brother and rather simply quietly work out how to help him, all things would be much better in the mental world. There would be much less mental breakdown, and we would not be suffering from too many cases of senility. It is the misuse of the mind that gradually changes life into a dismal uh dwelling for the individual.
So in each of these levels, there is a natural law. Each of these creatures has its rights and privileges. Each level of ourselves has its inalienable needs and corrections. They're all here if we want to use them.
Now, a lot of people have been perfectly willing to support religions industriously. They have been willing to make pilgrimage. They have been willing to do all kinds of penances uh to remove some guilt mechanisms within themselves. And at the same time, even though they live a pretty fair life, this great experience of projection into something higher has not occurred to them. It largely, it's a result of not being able to quiet the separate levels of our consciousness on their own levels, and then quiet the relationships of them to each other.
In other words, if the mind and emotions are locked in conflict, they're in trouble. Wherever there is conflict, there is a kind of destruction. There is a false motion. Wherever there is an obstruction, there is a decay of values, a disintegration, an infection in which something becomes sick. All selfishness is sickness, no matter what you want to call it. All jealousy is sickness. These things are just exactly as serious as sicknesses as are the ordinary physical ailments which we may or may not be able to cure.
This problem, therefore, is to get rid of the sickness arising from the misuse of powers, faculties, and principles within ourselves. Unless we're able to do this, we're going to stay right in trouble, just the way we are. But the worst part of it is, we may be a good church member while we're in this problem. It has never occurred to us that religion demanded anything more of us than allegiance. It was like a parent who demanded that the child obey, but did not necessarily contribute to any enlightenment in the purposes of obedience.
The uh, the religious association which washes away sins with baptismal water has not gotten to the point where it realizes, or where people realize, that they have got to wash their own sins away, all too often with their own tears. So there is time to get at some of these values directly.
If the person wants to be born again in the theological sense of the word, it isn't that he simply accepts your religion. To be born again means to not make the same mistakes again. It means to clear the slate. A new birth means to start out with a fresh, clean, honest mind without carrying anything from the past. Everything that is detrimental must be left aside.
Now, th of this is something more, though, than just keeping the morality straight. It is part of this business of being quiet. Every agitation, every intensity of negative attitude is dangerous to the inner life of the [Music] [Music] [Music] person. [Music]