In this discussion we will discuss, “What is a Spiritual Body?”  In our last week’s discussion, we talked about and referred to a Spiritual Body.  Now “Spiritual Body” is the frame of reference through which one experiences.  Now, the Awareness has a frame of reference.  Sometimes this could be called memory or it could be called experiencing.  And it’s probably much better that if the Spiritual Body is sound that it’s based on experiencing.  If it is unsound it is based on “concepts.”

Now what one sees as true, as we have said, is “what is.”  So let’s take a sheet of paper and we will draw a horizontal line that says, “what is” or “what is true” as I see it.  What is true as I see it—What Is.

Then let’s draw a vertical line on the same sheet of paper, but not intersecting, which says, “what I see as valuable, good, worthwhile”.  Now, if these two lines do not intersect, there is no action because X brings about all action.  Now, if one’s frame of reference, one’s Spiritual Body, is concerned with “what ought to be” these two lines do not intersect in many, many areas.

Now in certain areas, obviously, one sees what is: the temperature of the room is cold; it would be good for it to be warm – or valuable – so one then turns up the thermostat.  So the two lines intersected.  What is and what is valuable, good, worthwhile has now intersected.  And at the point of intersection is the word “Action.”

So suppose on another sheet of paper we put two lines intersecting in the form of a cross: what is true, and what I see as worthwhile, valuable, or as we would ordinarily say, “good.”  And these two lines intersect and where they intersect, Action by X takes place.

Now, a Spiritual Body – which is one’s frame of reference – wears clothes.  Now if the Spiritual Body is only concerned with what is, then it is considered to be clothed in leather or in animal skins or in some other coarse material.

So suppose we draw an oblong-type figure, something like an egg-shaped, and we put over it “What Is”.  And around the outside of it, we put some kind of clothing – some wavy lines will represent its clothing.  Now it’s clothed in the actual literal fact of “What Is”, but it does not have a department in it that has “valuing”.  This is only the factual – the intellectual level of seeing what is.  It sees some things as “true” and it sees some things as “false.”

Someone comes up and tells you there is a lion outside your door, you would probably say it is false.  If someone told you there was a dog outside the door, you might accept that as true.  But in either case, there is only “What Is.”

Now in another similar shaped figure, we will put “what ought to be” or values.  We’ll put the values.  Now, in this one comes all of the “what ought to be’s”.  And the other one is what is true and they are separate.  And nothing really begins to take place because X does not operate on it.  And the Awareness is clothed in facts, and the other circle, egg-shaped circle, is clothed in ideas or concepts of “what ought to be”.  And much of the clothing of the “What Is” is clothed in the idea of “what is”.  We have many ideas that so-and-so exists without being aware of it, without having experienced it, without having really experimented with it.  We accept many concepts as being fact.

Now to build a healthy Spiritual Body, we will take the cross we made where it has “Action,” where the two intersected, and we will draw the great egg-shaped form around it.  Now this is to be a new Spiritual Body.  Now some of the things within this has already been experiments.  As we said, we see the room is chilly to the temperature for the comfort of the body, for the well-being.  And we see it would be – that’s “What Is” – and we would see it would be well to turn up the heat.  So this is accepted.

Now in all the ordinary, everyday affairs of the work-a-day world, the business world, the earning of a living, there is many “What Is” and many things seem “good”.  And so we can function fairly well in these areas.  It is in the areas of interpersonal relationship that this begins to break down.  This is where one has all one’s difficulties is in the world of inter- and intra-relationships.

Now let’s begin to put into this one with the cross inside of it, the things that we see as both “What Is” and as good, or valuable, worthwhile.  We’ll just use the term “good.”  I see what is and what’s good about it.  Now this is all the things that one has learned and has become an aspect of the “personality” which has to do with earning a living, keeping the house, keeping things clean, keeping things decorated, keeping the lawn mowed, keeping the surroundings neat and clean.  Now, we’ll find that all of these are worthwhile.  It knows how to drive a car carefully.  It knows how to type, we’ll say.  It knows how to play a musical instrument – all of these things that the personality has learned which will be worthwhile.  So obviously, they will be added into the new Spiritual Body.

Now, if we wanted to we could see these two elements that were not together – the two egg-shaped parts that had no cross in them – one of “What Is” as we see it and which is fine, and that’s the only way we can see it; and then the other one what we see as good, which is mostly concerned with ideals of “what ought to be” in interpersonal relationships.

So we have possibly one fragmented Spiritual Body and one that is workable in the everyday world, but not in the spiritual world of the interpersonal relationships and the intrarelationships, which is the things that goes on within one.

When the Spiritual Body is in these two separate elements, it is referred to in the material that is written on the Science of Man – on the long, long years of study – it is referred to as a “blind person.”  In other words it doesn’t see clearly.  It may see what is, it may feel what is, sense what is, but it cannot see that it is “good” – regardless of what happens; that it has value.  So it is considered to be blind.  It obviously produces inadequate function, or reports inadequate things to X – or nothing at all – so it is considered to be crippled.  It is paralyzed.  It can’t function.  It can see what is but never gets up to do anything about it because it doesn’t see the value of it.  It only sits and complains because things are not what they “ought to be”.

Now, this works in interpersonal relationships.  And many people, it works in their everyday workday world.  They’ll talk about wanting to do something, but they never get around to it.  They’re going to do it tomorrow or some other time, but tomorrow it doesn’t look any more worthwhile than it did today.  And still so nothing goes on and done.

It is referred to as being naked. It doesn’t have sufficient ideas with which to work with. It has no real concepts. It only has rags and tatters of various and sundry second-handed, passed-down ideas as to what is and what is of value, and it doesn’t have anything of its own. 

It has not experimented, has not discovered for I what really is workable, what is valuable.  It hasn’t seen what is good, so it is considered to be naked.

Now, if it is beginning to really want to have something to work with, it is considered to be “hungry”; and, of course, the idea is to feed the hunger.

Now, this is what we are working at – is it not? – is to feed a hungry Spiritual Body so that it may have strength and it may grow. And we are trying to clothe it, are we not? And we’re not clothing it with second-handed things – something the speaker says – we are clothing it with experimentation, something we can see for I. I have looked, I have experimented with it, and I see for self. We’re healing a crippled Body, a crippled Spiritual Body. How are we healing it? By giving it truth and light. We are restoring the blind because one is beginning to possibly work at seeing what is and what is the value of what is. Then one is no longer blind. One is no longer crippled, or paralyzed, or naked. It is beginning to have ideas to experiment with, which makes wonderful clothing.

It is beginning to get understanding; so then it has shoes – shoes meaning in the various symbology as “that which one understands”.  You know, the feet seem to be the foundation of the earth – the earth being the human body.  So there is beginning to be an establishment of a firm foundation, a clothing, and something to experiment and work with. 

Every time one experiments, one has made oneself an article of clothing.

We read of one article of clothing that was woven in one piece without seams. In other words, it wasn’t patched together by bits and pieces. It was all from experimentation and discovery for self.

Now there are many that are satisfied with their split apart body, their split apart physical body. They’re satisfied with it because they have managed to paint themselves a very lovely picture that really doesn’t exist – an imaginary one. So they gaze upon this imaginary picture and say, “That is I,” when nothing in reality is anywhere near that imagination. It is as though a very unbalanced featured person found a beautiful portrait and hung it up and said, “That is I.” And that would not quite be.

So one with Vanity is quite pleased with the present state. Obviously, one will not look to develop a Spiritual Body. One doesn’t even experience the physical body, they are so carried away observing the physical body and all the imaginary picture that is painted up of the “self.”

So Vanity interferes in one building a Spiritual Body because before one sets out to heal the blindness,

heal the crippled or distorted or paralyzed, to get clothing for a naked body, or to get shoes for the barefooted condition, or to feed the hunger, one must realize that these conditions do exist.

Vanity always says they really do not exist. “I already am in a pretty good shape. I’m a pretty wonderful person. I know what’s good and I know what’s bad. I know what’s right and I know what’s wrong. And I know what ought to be and I can see what really is and I know what ought to be done. If everybody would just straighten out and see things my way, then everything would be wonderful in this world.”

That is Vanity.

And Vanity is the great obstruction to one’s building a Spiritual Body because one is entranced or enthralled with the imaginary Spiritual Body, the imaginary qualities, the imaginary truth that one is aware of. It imagines that “truth” is any number of things, whether it is even an ideology that one has gathered up and identified with that says, “That ideology is the truth, the whole truth and that’s it, and I would prefer the ideology,” rather than to look at “I” and to see what kind of state one really is in.

Now, for a number of weeks we have been observing the “self.”  We have seen it’s divided. We have seen it is paralyzed. We have seen that its ideas are from here and there – and bits and pieces, that it is really clothed in rags. “Clothing” meaning the ideas with which it works, many of which are in complete opposition, many of which is trying to put a new patch in an old garment. It has every conceivable thing.  It is in a state of poverty. It is in a state of dis-ease, meaning not at ease. It’s in a state of conflict.

But in spite of all this, one can build such protection of that false picture that one is in a constant state of defense, of defending this old Spiritual Body that is crippled, that is blind, that is clothed in tatters and barefoot –it has no understanding. And in this, one is not hungry. And if one is not hungry, one cannot be filled.

All the food in the world could be available but if one says, “I won’t eat that because I’m already well fed,” and one may be fed on pseudo food. One may be feeding self with Coca Cola and candy bars, or potato chips, or some other junk food and there is plenty of junk around. One may say, “I already know what is truth and I know what ought to be.” Then one has vain, one is in a state of Vanity and then one begins to defend that by trying to prove that their ideas are correct. 

They will quote books, and they will quote authorities, but they cannot quote actual experiences.

They may quote some emotional upheaval they’ve had one time or another, and they have interpreted always as to put themselves in a very good light. They really didn’t understand the picture.

There is an old story about a man who wanted to see the Christ. So he hoped to be able to do it in his present state of conditioned being. So the “self” wanted to see the Christ. So after long and diligent effort, he finally had a vision, a vision of the Christ completely surrounded by flames. Of course his frame of reference was seeing the Christ in hell because his frame of reference says hell was a place of flames and he saw the Christ in it in his vision. Of course he was quite disturbed by this vision. So he went from supposedly authority to supposedly authority to question as to what his vision meant. And of course all were at loss to explain his vision; they kept telling him that it must have been a false vision. 

But to him it was the most real experience of his life. Because when one has some sort of an emotional vision, one has nothing else to distract from it. If one is in a room and looks at a table, there is many other things in the peripheral vision. But in a vision or a state of one form or another – which is fairly easy to get oneself into – there’s only one thing in sight; and, therefore, it feels to be the most real of all things because there was no distraction.

This man continued his search. Finally he was sitting in a park, very dejected and very miserable. This vision was ever fresh in his mind of the Christ surrounded with flames. He was evidently in hell. What could this possibly mean? Was it possible that the Christ had been a false teacher? Was it possible that the whole thing was an illusion and that Christ was as his crucifiers said he was – a man possessed with a demon and an injury to the whole people? Was all the teachings of the Christ in vain? He was sitting, really doubting and struggling and beginning to somewhat doubt his vision. He was really hungry. 

Whenever a person is truly hungry to be aware –not to have their preconceived opinions verified –

but to be truly hungry, to truly want to know, something always appears to clarify.

A man walked up that seemed to be no more than another person who sits in park benches. And the man told him of his agony and of what he had seen. The man that came up and sit down said, “Look, Mister, a vision is not the thing. A vision may be a teaching, but it’s not the thing. You did not see the Christ and you did not see the flames. You saw a vision and all vision must have a meaning. And the meaning is that those flames are what you have to go through to burn up your many misconceptions to be cleansed before you can even approach where the Christ is.”

You see, we most all think that we can approach the Christ Consciousness in the state we are in just by improving the “self.” We don’t realize we’re blind spiritually, that the Spiritual Body is blind and crippled, paralyzed, that it is naked or else clothed in ragged tatters, and that it is barefoot and so we’re never really hungry. 

But when one is truly hungry, one can begin to find. Help comes from many areas. Teaching appears everywhere.

So the Teaching is always available. The food is available when one is truly hungry – spiritually – and then the Spiritual Body can begin to grow. But Vanity says, “My Spiritual Body is in a very great shape,” and Pride defends it. And if we could just have more of the things of mammon, everything would be wonderful. This is to have a sick Spiritual Body. 

So the command is:  Heal the sick.  Open the eyes of the blind. Raise up the crippled. Clothe the naked and feed the hungry. 

And when there is a hungry one the food is available.  There is someone to open the eyes.

Now, when that command is, it is first that man’s job is to do that for his Spiritual Body. One always starts where one is. There is the story that a man that had a beam in his eye, a big block of wood, was trying to tell another man about a little speck in his eye and tell him he should get it out.

You see, the first one we heal of blindness, the first one we feed, the first one we clothe, the first one that we raise up from paralysis or from crippled is the Spiritual Body within self. 

And this Spiritual Body has been distorted by conditioning. It has been mistreated. It has been paralyzed. It’s been rendered in conflict, a palsied or a spastic. It tries to go “one way” and another one says “no”.  So we have clothed in bits and tatters, and we have not experimented.

So starting now we will begin to experiment. We have somewhat of a picture of the Spiritual Body. The one with a cross in it and the egg around is the one that the Great Teacher said,

“Take up your Cross and follow me.” The Cross meaning what I see as true and what I see as value of that which I see is true.

As one follows the Teaching one will see many values that one did not see before and the Cross becomes more real, and more symmetrical, and more perfect, more completed. You see, that most of the time what one sees as true is a horizontal bar and what one sees as good or valuable or worthwhile is the vertical bar – but they do not cross. So one does not have a Cross then. And everyone must have a Cross or there is no central theme of the body. 

You see,  a Cross is the symbol of the human body and the human being on the inside –the symbol of the Spiritual Body.

And everything else must be attached to that Spiritual Body – the Cross. The vertical arm: that which is good, valuable, worthwhile, what I see as a treasure. And that which crosses it as what I see as true.

One of the things one starts with is to review all the Teachings and see how much of it one sees as true as describing “What Is.” One will see that much of what it describes is really “what is” if we have done the work. If we have done the work, we will also see that it is extremely worthwhile, valuable and it is really the good – the Light that throws light on all things… that removes the darkness because a light is now shining in that area which was dark – the Spiritual Body that was blind.

We will continue to observe these things all this week. We will see how many things we see as just being what is or fact; and then we will see how many other ways we don’t see that it is good. 

We don’t see the good in that which we see as being fact or as true. Only when we have united that fact and the good of that fact is there Action. And that is what is called TRUTH.