“I am not influenced by the mere formal actions of men, or by empty sacrifice. Lighted lamps and candles, days of fasting and self-mortification by man cannot sway Me in his favour. I am not to be bribed, for I am God. He who handles fire carelessly and gets burnt cannot blame the fire, neither can he who goes into swift waters and drowns blame the waters. There are laws, the violation of which brings retribution in its train. They who by their own deeds bring pain and suffering upon themselves cannot blame Me for what ensues. These are the effects of the lesser laws which are easily understood, but above these is the Great Law which is not so incomprehensible. Under this the link between the deed and its effect is not so apparent; men bring down calamity and suffering upon their own heads and blame Me, when the fault lies with them and the cause is their own misconduct or misconception. Men reap as they sow and I am the Fertile Field which takes no part in the sowing or the reaping. Man is his own master and the lord of his own destiny. He cannot expect help from any great power, unless he himself expend effort to contact such power or be deserving of help. Everything a man is or becomes is the result of his own striving and efforts, or his lack of them. I made man to be a man, not a mere puppet or nurseling. I am the God of the Law. I am the God of the Stalwart”.
“Man is the heir to divinity, and the road to divinity is spirituality. Man cannot become spiritual except through his own efforts and striving. He cannot achieve it by being led by the hand or through fear of punishment, nor by greed through anticipation of a reward. He who enters into his heritage of divinity will be no weakling, he will have trodden a hard and stony path”.
“Man has two ways of knowing Me. He can know Me through his own spiritual awakening or through the continued revelation of moral law and divine purpose by My inspired servants. To know Me through a spiritually awakened self is the way of certainty, but few can suffer its austerities and disciplines”.
“When the spirit of man is unawakened he cannot know the great self within him, of which he is a part. Not knowing his true nature and unable to see clearly, he is blinded by material delusions. Would not the creatures of the night, which never see the sun, deem the moon to be the most brilliant light in the sky above? So it is with the man walking in the darkness of spiritual unconsciousness, He says, “I am the body and the body is my whole being”, and in the delusion of that belief he becomes ensnared in an existence bound to matter. Like the creatures bound to an existence in the night, which cannot know the glories of things flourishing in the brilliance of daylight, so it is with men bound to the darkness of spiritual ignorance”.
“As a shadow in the night is mistaken for an intruder, or a mirage is mistaken for a pool of clear water, so does
the spiritually immature man mistake the material body for the whole living being. As the shimmering heat haze appears like solid water, so does the outer body appear as the whole being to the spiritually unawakened. As, to a man in a moving boat, another boat lying still on the water will often appear to be moving while he himself seems to remain still, so the unawakened spirit is deluded by appearances, seeing the mortal body as a whole being. When in fact the clouds are flying overhead, it appears as though the moon itself is speeding across the Heavens, it is only the knowledge and experience we have of the skies above, which tell us this cannot be the truth. Thus it is with the spiritually unawakened man who, in his ignorance, thinks the mortal body is the whole being, and, having no knowledge or experience of the spiritual region, is deceived. In fact all the beliefs of man which hold that the mortal body is the whole being are generated in the darkness of ignorance. A man may be wise in the ways of men, but completely ignorant and unaware of the higher, more glorious things which are revealed in the light of the spirit”.
“The man held in bondage to delusion says, “If mere be another body, a part of me of which I am unaware, it cannot be real, neither can I know it. My eyes are infallible guides, seeing things just as they are, and any feelings I may experience have their origin within my mortal being. I am the child of my body”. This man is deluded, like the creatures of the night, or as the man who sees a mirage. Are the eyes which see mirages totally reliable? Motes swimming in the sunbeam are unsubstantial things, yet things such as these are the bricks of man’s body, the eyes making them appear solid and substantial, the unreal for the real, his mortal body for his whole self. The deluded man ignores the spiritual part of his being and its needs. He cherishes the mortal body, gratifying its desires with earthly pleasures. Like the silkworm, he becomes captive in a cocoon of his own making. The man who lavishes undue care on the mortal body displays his own spiritual ignorance and inadequacy. To be free from existence in the darkness of ignorance, to know the glory of life in the light of spiritual consciousness, a man must first awaken his spirit, in this way alone can he become aware of his true nature”.
“Ask yourselves, “What am I? What is real within myself? What comprises the whole man? Can it be that I am truly no more than this fleshy thing, the petty, immature, unstable being balanced between futile unearthly ideals and carnal cruelty and lust? Or am I something greater which is undiscoverable by mortal senses? Am I really akin to something divine and glorious from which source alone could have come the ideals and virtues which transcend the mundane needs of earthly existence? ” Ask yourselves, in the solitudes, and perchance you will not go unanswered. I am the God of Silences”.
“The words of men are inadequate to express just what man really is, the knowledge of his true nature is beyond the understanding of the unawakened spirit. The inheritance within the grasp of man is without limitation, for it is the totality of all things. Man has not been misled in the hope and belief that the seemingly mortal is in fact immortal. The spirit does not mislead men. They are deceived by their own eyes, they are misled, so they are unable to see things as they are in reality. All that men see and experience throughout earthly existence is veiled in illusion. Man may think his eyes reveal things as they are, but no mortal eye has ever beheld a thing as it actually is. It appears to man through the coloured distorting glass of his own mortality. Spiritually, men as a whole are little different from the madman who builds himself a kingdom from the fabric of his imagination. The flowing life existence about him is seen as a distorted image, a distortion which his own defects have imparted to it. Yet it was meant to be thus, for man is surrounded by the conditions meet for him. It is for man to discover why this is so, and in discovering he will find himself. I am the Truth, I am the Reality”.
“This earthly life, which I have given you, should not be viewed in its minute aspect but in the light of infinitude. All the suffering and disillusionment, the futility, the forlorn hopes and wasted efforts, the oppressions and injustices are not without a purpose. That purpose is beyond anything man can understand and infinitely greater than his conception can grasp. The truly awakened man, alone among men, can have any insight into life’s end and goal”.