CHAPTER 17 AWAKE, O SLEEPER
CHAPTER 17 AWAKE, O SLEEPER
In the Book of Ephesians we are told to "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light." This awakening and rising comes about through an inner development, for the Bible is your autobiography. It was you who inspired the prophets to record their visions. And it is you who will fulfill their prophecies in a first person, present tense experience. As you read the Bible, get your mental teeth into it. Study its message, and your understanding will go deeper and deeper as you travel through life.
The Bible teaches self-help. Do not look to any leader on the outside, only look to self by turning within. If anyone offers to do for you what you can do for yourself, reject their offer and turn to Christ, God's creative power in you, who is your life, your light of the world. By changing your thinking, Christ will change your world.
The "earth," spoken of in scripture, is the "mind of man." It is in this psychological earth that the idea of the kingdom of heaven was implanted. While in the state of sleep, false doctrines have crept in. Called tares, they grow with the wheat and will be harvested; therefore, you must become selective and clear the weeds by killing every belief in a power outside the mind.
The man who is rich is complacent. Satisfied with his social and financial positions, he is not hungry to grow. If you are complacent, your life will not change, for you will not be hungry or thirst for a higher level of awareness. You and you alone know whether the hunger has come upon you or not; but you have not begun the work you gave yourself to do until you begin to uncritically observe your thoughts. And when you do, you will discover that you are not as truthful, honest, or courageous as you thought you were.
Tonight, select a future upon which you want to work and tomorrow, be watchful. Question yourself by saying, "Am I keeping the tense? Do I want this? Is that the way my friend wants me to see him? Am I limiting myself?" Then act in your imagination, for imagination is passive while asleep and allows that which is false to take the throne. Watch your thoughts. Reclaim your throne and consciously allow your human imagination to rule your world!
Your human imagination, once activated, will awaken as a little babe. Born in violence, in a manger where the wild beasts eat, it will grow in wisdom and power as the outer you will, become passive and powerless. But, you must be watchful and vigilant of your thoughts in order to bring the outer you into passivity. Only then will you know what it is like to be in the world but not of it. The purpose of this teaching is to awaken the Christ who is asleep in man, dreaming different states into being, and bring him to the conscious circle of humanity where man is self-aware. Once you are aware of your true self, you will no longer condemn sleeping man. You will know they are machines, automatons who do not know what they are doing.
Your desires are not subjective, intangible things, but solidly real. Begin to awaken the Christ in you by clothing your subjective desires in objective reality. I promise you, the day you do this, they will become facts in your world. Have an aim that you will not lie to yourself anymore. Work on this feature within yourself. Become extremely observant and honest with yourself and watch the energy that formerly moved into negative states, flow into your greater aim. Perhaps your aim is to become a great teacher, not because you want to impose your will upon others, but because you want to awaken in others what you have awakened in yourself. The awakening begins when you feel a separation; a division of the natural and the spiritual imaginative you to which all things are possible. It is this spiritual you that clothes your subjective state in reality.
By changing the feeling of "I," you can direct your life internally and escape the prison of your present state regardless of what it may be. By thinking from the point of view that the problem is solved, you move from the problem to its solution. This change of attitude is called the Be- attitudes. In other words, you are "being" what you want to be by assuming that you already are it. When you know what you want, consciously clothe yourself in a new concept of self by extracting your "I" from the evidence of the senses and placing it in the place you want to be. By this assumption (or be-attitude), you have journeyed from one state to another. "And I, if I be lifted up, I draw all men to me."
Once you have lifted yourself up into the new states abide there! Do not come back to the testimonies of your, senses, but remain in your desire until a different world is established. Every change in the feeling of "I" automatically produces changes in the external world; therefore, you must learn to die daily to your old beliefs. The statement, "Those who lose their life for my sake will find it," means letting go of all that you now consent to. If you lose it, you will find your "I" reclothing itself on a higher level of beings; thereby causing a new expression in your world.
When you go in a new direction, the journey is made in the mind. A physical journey may follow, but the journey must be made on the inside first. Where you are, is what you psychologically are at that moment. An enlightened being lives on the mountain top and the human imagination, when completely controlled, is personified as a being called Jesus Christ.
As long as you are violent, you are asleep. Awaken the spiritual you by watching your actions and reactions to life, and you will lose your impulse to retaliate. What happens to you here is not important, but how you react to what happens, is. Your reactions define you. They tell you where you are, for you attract life in its most minute detail.
The Bible does not teach reincarnation. Its central teaching is the rebirth of consciousness into ever higher and higher levels. You must be born by water and spirit, not water only. Except a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter the higher level of being called the kingdom of heaven. In this series of lectures, you have received psychological instruction as to how to go about working on yourself. Your mind has been washed of certain errors, baptized and born of water. But, unless this truth is applied, you will not be born of the spirit.
The word "Mary" means "water." Christ, the "I" in you, is born of water and of the Holy Spirit. The outer you cannot receive instructions. He is literal and takes things literally, thereby receiving nothing but stone. The righteous man, however, is conscious of being the man he wants to be, while the foolish man steals from himself by not claiming his desire. Every time you see a man less than what he wants to be, you have robbed him of The state necessary to externalize it.
Be not as the heathen who, by vain repetition hopes he can get the ear of God. Rather, when you pray, go within and close the door, and your Father who hears in secret will reward you openly. You have but to change the feeling of "I." Close the door to the outer world and feel yourself into the state your friend desires. With a planned program, see him and talk to him from the premise that he is that person already. Keep the door of reason and logic closed and walk in faith that what you have heard and seen, in secret, will be rewarded openly, and it will.
The Bible was written by the conscious circle of humanity. (This circle you enter at the moment of wakefulness.) Not composed by men, the Bible is divine instruction with limitless interpretations. It is a test in the development of your understanding and, as you grow, its understanding deepens and deepens.
Although man wraps himself in conditions (states), the being he really is, is I AM. Anything man will consent to, he will manifest in his world. Can you accept as fact what your reason and senses deny? Or must you always bow to reason's dictates? The same consciousness that produces health, produces sickness, wealth or poverty. Whatever you agree to be conscious of, whatever you affirm as true, you will manifest.
When you know the spiritual being within you, you will assert the supremacy of imagination and put all things subjective to it. All knees must bow to imagination. "Behold! We are transformed into the same image." Can you behold a given situation and make it so natural that you are transformed into its image? You can when you, all imagination, feel the naturalness of the image you behold.
Divinity is not divided; therefore, everyone is but a projection of the one. You are told to love your neighbors as yourself, for there is no other. Sanctify self, not another. Working on others will not change them; only by changing yourself will the others change. Seek confirmation of your ideas and you are not growing. All textbooks are manmade and uninspired from on high. Stick to them and you will remain on their level. Believe in self! Trust your human imagination and you will grow in wisdom and in stature and, as you grow, you outgrow your former beliefs.
My ideas regarding the historicity of the Bible are not original. The Encyclopedia Biblica was published in 1888. Sponsored by Oxford University, it took twelve years for one hundred and twenty-seven brilliant minds from all faiths to complete it. These men, who knew the ancient tongues, after intense research came to the conclusion that the Bible, from cover to cover, was mythological allegory. Another wonderful book is Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Published in 1860, it is made up of four volumes. They discovered that the writers of the Bible used a phallic frame to which they attached their psychological truths. "And when their eyes were opened, they knew him." To know, is to have union with and become what is beheld; therefore, he vanished from their sight when they knew him.
In the 3rd Chapter of 1st John, he tells us, "See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God, and so we are. The world does not know us because it does not know him. As God's children, it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who hopes in him, purifies himself, as he is pure."
We are God's children, destined to be God himself, and God creates everything he, individualized as you, consents to. Therefore, resolve only to hear what is good concerning yourself and another. If you adopt this attitude, everything that enters your mind will contribute to a noble life and you will discover the joy of feasting on higher states.
When a man dies, it is an expansion into a dimensionally larger life. If you have not awakened here, you must start awakening in the fourth dimension. Climbing a multitudinous dimensional time block, you ascend by reason of your ability to function in a dimensionally larger world. And each dimensional world is contained in a dimensionally larger world; in turn that world is contained in a still dimensionally larger world without end. But, remembering the love the Father has given you, test him, knowing that everyone who hopes in him, purifies himself as he is pure.
THE END
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