Pride and vanity has many, many faces. Many are very, very subtle, and it is considered to be death because pride and vanity gets a person to come to a conclusion, to have a very exalted idea of the “self”. It is the nature of the Four Dual Basic Urges, of mammon. It is the ultimate ideal – “I know what ought to be.” One of the ways that we see this come about – pride and vanity – in a very subtle way is the developing of an orthodoxy. 

Whenever someone comes up with a new idea, he makes a discovery. And the older ideas, having their pride and vanity, usually attack the new arising idea as being a heresy, or improper, wrong, fraudulent, and what have you. Then of course, the founder of the new idea begins to demand tolerance, that he wants to be tolerated, that he wants to present his. And he screams against the evils of orthodoxy, and he points out how orthodoxy has been the brake on the growth of human understanding and of human well-being on the face of the earth. Always he can find that orthodoxy was the source of his difficulty; and of course, all others. He sees orthodoxy, which is to have a very set, exact, “we-know-this-is-right-nothing-else, any deviation from this idea is, of course, fraudulent, in error, is wrong, and evil,” and what have you. So, the newcomer always finds that his enemy is orthodoxy. 

However, it is interesting to observe that over a number of years the newcomer finally gains a certain amount of strength, a certain amount of followers, a certain amount of people who agree with him. Then, sooner or later the new one ceases to be concerned with having tolerance now that one has gained a certain amount of power. And of course, orthodoxy is a Second Force to him and so he had to work hard. He had to be diligent in his way, and he established something new. Now it’s well established, it’s beginning to be accepted by a great number of people – the general idea is accepted as being right.

Now we see the new one begin to form an orthodoxy. And that anything that is at variance with the idea that he has propounded begins to be considered unorthodox, begins to be considered an evil thing, a fraud, something that it shouldn’t be. So, pride and vanity has won again. He begins to defend all his new ideas and why there should be no obstruction to it. He probably will gain the ability to gain government support to protect his vested interests in the idea that has now become orthodox.

This has been observed through the ages in about everything. One of the obvious ones, of course, are the religious ideas. Someone came up with a religious idea and a certain means of teaching it. It was a religion, it was a School, it was teaching people. And they were profiting by it against the great adversary of the one previous orthodoxy, which was Second Force to the newcomer… and very wonderful that it does have that Second Force. But always, sooner or later, there is someone arises that has vanity. And it says, “This is the way it is, and there can be no change from this. This is the ultimate.”

The story is told that in ancient China that was the most advanced nation in the world, called “The Celestial Kingdom,” and that all the people were pursuing an understanding. And they had gunpowder when the west was still throwing rocks at each other. They had more sophisticated means of killing, supposedly. They had silk when the rest of the people in the world practically were dressed in skins or very crude, rough cloth. They had many sciences and understood metallurgy and were making ornaments of gold and silver. They had mechanisms that were saving of human labor. 

Then along came a man named Confucius and Confucius sat down to make everything orthodox – this was the ultimate. So, then it became: “Confucius says,” and that was the ultimate answer. This was the orthodoxy. The great Kingdom became static. And while they were still far ahead of any other nation, many of them who had no orthodoxy, sooner or later, came up to be even in their development, in their culture; and ultimately was passed on most countries of the world.

Various religious ideas have met the same fate. The Judaic religion was started out as that man would do what seemed right in his own eyes. They had judges who had no power to enforce their edicts or their judgments. But when two or more people were in conflict, they came to them and they, by their show of wisdom, made each see WHAT IS and that they really had no argument. Both went away feeling quite wonderful about the whole thing. The people began to be around them and observe these hearings and to observe the wisdom of the men called judges who were really Teachers of the time, that they could point out the real thing that was going on in people. But these ideas were put down and pretty soon they became an orthodoxy. And then they wanted a King so they would have something to defend the orthodoxy. And it became a sect, it became the prey of every power-seeking group in the world and was scattered abroad from far and wide.

Then they came down to have the Ten Commandments. Now, the commandments were given to show man that he had many inner things that were in conflict, that he had a “self.” And while his certain aspects of self wanted to live by the commandments, certain other aspects of self didn’t want to. So, they were a challenge for self-Knowing. But they gradually became as something to put on a front with. Then we finally read of the Scribes and Pharisees having all their many rituals, how each of the rituals had some meaning. The washing of hands, instead of not only to be simple good manners and sanitary, it was also that it was to wash away the accumulation of the self, to be sure that the Awareness was clean and that it was without conditioning or suggestion from the past few hours; and that this was washed also. But it finally came just to wash hands and that became the orthodoxy. And people had to live by the new rules and regulations.

With Christianity came along the idea of baptism, of being washed from guilt, and from missing the mark, and carrying accumulated accounts against other people. That deteriorated into a ritual, and then the ritual began to be orthodox. And all the other ideas of the TEACHING, which was confession, surrender, repentance all became ritualized and then only had the ritual. And that was the orthodoxy and if anybody deviated so much as a little bit… 

Now, of course, when Christianity started, it was persecuted far and wide. Everybody was opposed. But finally it became power under Constantine the Great. Then it became ritualized, and the outward form of Christianity became only a ritual, which the ritual was supposed to do what it was a symbol of. And of course, men went on in their agony, and their misery, and their wars, their conflicts and their struggles because they only had the outward form.

Various brands of the healing art have come along. Medicine at one time was looked down on, was considered to be low because the church was supreme over it. But gradually they gained power. It then became an orthodoxy. Then came along a man named Hahnemann, and he founded Homeopathy. Of course, it was attacked by all the orthodox at that time. Then it became strong enough, sooner or later, that it could establish its own orthodoxy and it died. 

Sometime later came the idea of Osteopathy by a man named Still. At first, he demanded freedom of healing so that all things could be tried and that orthodoxy shouldn’t stamp him out. Gradually over a period of time, against tremendous odds of Second Force of resistance from orthodoxy, he developed quite a healing art system. Then, of course, he established an orthodoxy. Anyone who didn’t hew the line was considered to be a “mixer” – some kind of a fraud. And gradually it died and is only another branch of the general idea of the medicine. 

Along came the Palmers and set up the idea of Chiropractic. And they demanded, of course, tolerance. And they demanded that there be no stifling of their efforts by orthodoxy. But sooner or later, they gained a certain amount of power and established an orthodoxy. Anyone who didn’t hew the line was considered to be a heretic, a mixer, an evil person. And of course, it began to fall apart and is today a very weakling in the whole field of endeavor.

So, in everything that comes about, one sees the orthodoxy. Now the only thing that has not caught up in the orthodoxy is the SCHOOLS. They have been kept fresh and alive. Each person who teaches uses his or her own methods to try to transmit and communicate to those that they work with the fundamental of the experimentation techniques. There is no orthodoxy in the SCHOOLS. There is something that you can experiment with. You can experiment anyway you please. No one gives you the specific experiment. They give you a guideline. 

Now the School has operated under hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different techniques used by different teachers. To mention only a few, there was the study of chemistry wherein each thing was seen as a symbol. When two substances would unite, there was a new substance which was the symbol of the union of Awareness and X and a new man came into being. They studied certain things which were incompatible which could not be joined together. They also studied many things that, while could be joined together, were injured in some way or other due to contaminants. They found out that things that adulterated their various chemical seams would prevent the union of things, so they began to study the adulteration which was a symbol of the “self” which obstructed the union of Awareness and X.

So much study went on in these worlds using these. Other people, other teachers just as effectively used studying the courses of the stars and planets, showing that there is a general course of events that goes along, that man starts out far to the south, far away from the light, and gradually goes toward the light. 

They studied things like the equinox and all the other things, such as the solstice, and had understanding of these. These, of course, on the outward Schools deteriorated into things like astrology and so forth. But the School continued on under some other means of using some everyday principle, some everyday event that could be used as a parallel of which almost everyone can be.

Certain others used the healing arts, and used the many things that they saw in the various symptoms of man and what they came about then. And the healing art at one time was a form of a School. But it gradually deteriorated on the outward form into an orthodoxy of healing. 

Then there were the Builders. They used the building techniques and the tools of building to show relationships, and to point out how things worked and what would interfere, how unusual things could come into being, how an arch could be made. All of these were some symbol of the New Man and of the tools he used to gain that estate as a New Man – using the same ideas, but putting them in a different frame of reference so that there is no orthodoxy.

Then there came the Storytellers. They told many stories and they sang little songs. They were called the troubadours. They taught over the continent of Europe for many, many years. On the outward side they were entertainers, or clowns, or storytellers. On the inner state, all the stories were understood for their inner meaning. And of course, the idea of using stories to parallel the inner meaning has been used through the ages as fables, as parables, as Teaching stories, as supposedly historical events. In other words, the story is cast around some actual historical happening, but it’s stylized to bring out the various inner points. Much as many of us are familiar with the great story called “Gone with The Wind” which had an actual historical setting in the Civil War South. However, all of us know that it is today only a fiction. But if someone should come upon it and didn’t know all the history surrounding it and what its purpose was in writing it might think that Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara were actual living people at one time or another. Of course, they were fictional characters that illustrated the general ideas of the time.

Then there has been Poetry. Most of us are familiar with the Psalms. There are many other brands of poetry. We’re also possibly acquainted with the Song of Solomon, which is a story of man’s struggle for integration to know himself – to be one. The spouse is called the Dusky Queen. And of course, many people have taken that as a historical event that that was the Queen of Sheba. However, it is a beautiful poem that is cast in the story of the man knowing self, and the union of X and Awareness. And there are many other forms of poetry around the world that all illustrate. Many are cast in the symbols of human sexual love, of eros – eros, the attraction, the union that brings about the New Man.

Of course, there are Servants and many ways of serving. People are considered to be slaves, and slaves did not always mean someone owned. It meant, at one time, only a servant who serves freely and gladly. And there are many stories about a slave master and a slave, a king and his slave, where the slave would not take over the kingdom even though it was offered to him. Because he saw that serving X was the greatest good for Awareness in all the world. And that is the way the union of X and Awareness comes about is that Awareness is a good and faithful servant. It does what it was supposed to do and does it with joy, without hoping for reward or escaping any pain. The servant, you know, the slave hopes for no reward because he’s owned. And he, of course, does not expect punishment as long as he does what he’s going on to do. So, without regard to pleasure or pain he serves. And of course, the story is told that the king loves the servant and so it went. 

And so most of us are acquainted with the story of Joseph and the Pharaoh, Pharoah of Egypt which is one of the stories. Joseph was a slave in Egypt to the Pharaoh; and the Pharaoh loved Joseph after a certain length of time and all the many things. Finally things get reversed and Joseph, I believe, was to have married the Queen of Egypt at one time.

And then of course there was the group known as blade makers – the Damascus Sword. There was the observing the change in the steel, from rough iron – pig iron – into going through various refinements and tempers, being tempered, being struggled with, being heated and tempered by being immersed in oil or water, or what have you so that this was representative of man in his delight with the TEACHING, but being constantly subject to Second Forces and that he continued on anyway. The great Damascus blade was the symbol of the completed man – the “perfected” man. And that each of the workers who worked in this gradually understood that the symbol they were working with in their hands and making the craftsmen of the great Damascus sword. And then later it was practiced in Spain and called the Toledo blade, which was a duplicate of it – another School, but using the same methods on it. So, no orthodoxy became established in any direction anywhere. 

The TEACHING is always to what the person, who has experienced all the way from confession, surrender, repentance, baptism, being a new man, seeing differently, experiencing GRACE, and AGAPE, and FAITH always can devise some means that he can use as a symbolic expression. 

Today, sometimes we may use the Picture of Man as a parable to show how man came into the world, what happened to him, how he gradually became a totally conditioned being. How by I awakening from among the dead conclusions, rises up like the prodigal son and goes to his Father and begins to be a servant, submits to being a slave and finds that a love, an understanding, a union takes place between X and Awareness. 

There’s many ways as one can find – there is no limit to the ways one can find a parallel. But under no circumstance does any orthodoxy arise because before one could be able to find some means to be able to carry the parallel and not make the parallel into the orthodoxy and confuse the symbol with the real thing, one would have to see a certain amount of pride and vanity long enough that it would be destroyed. It says in the scripture that the last enemy to be overcome is “death.” And pride and vanity is considered to be “death”. So, the very last enemy that man has is pride and vanity in whatever form it may take. And ever they get more subtle, ever they can convince that this is for the good of the people, that we will not allow them to deviate.

It is much like the story that is told that long ago when all the souls were formed, that Lucifer, mammon, came out and told his story as to how he would return them all. He would force them to, he would give them no opportunity. In other words, they would be instinctive creatures like cats and dogs. The Great Messiah, the other brother, came out and told how he would do it. He would allow them to have the opportunity to evolve under their own power back; and he would not guarantee them all back. 

Of course, the latter method was used and we do experience it. But we do see that many of the people who claim to follow the Christ are trying to practice it by Lucifer’s method of making it impossible, wanting to control people, make an orthodoxy so that they will have to be good – but not CONSCIOUS. Of course, this is being caught in pride and vanity, forming some sort of an orthodoxy that certainly vanity and pride in the person who formed it said, “This is the way; it is for the good of the people.” And you know, no one can do anything unless they feel it’s right, proper or justifiable. But by pride and vanity, can make almost any atrocity seem as for the good of the people. And that force, and coercion, suggestion and everything is in order as long as it‘s for the good of the people.

You see, under AGAPE, the Kingdom of Heaven, there is consideration, there is harmlessness, and there is a contribution. But there is no force. And there is no doing good. There is only being harm-less. And of course, to try to point out to a person or to try to convince them that they are not responsible, and that somebody else should do, and they should believe and do as they are told by their authorities is to attempt to take away their responsibility. This possibly is the greatest form of harm that is done. 

You see, whenever we begin to protect people, take care of them – we are not talking about doing something for them when they are rendered incapable – but as long as they are up and about, they’re not in the state the man was in the parable of the Good Samaritan, but that they are capable… they may be lost in their way, but that they are still capable – to give them “help,” to do “good” for them is to treat them as though they were not responsible people. And to treat anyone as not being responsible is to further put them in bondage. You know, most every person wants to be free. Freedom, of course, is FREEDOM TO. But on the other side of the coin of “Freedom To” is RESPONSIBILITY – being able to respond.

The more we treat a person as being able to respond, the more we can let them see for themselves that they are able to respond, and that they take responsibility for their evolvement. We can give them a roadmap or we can give them some tools, but they have to use the tools. It is as though a man said, “Here is a field and here are some tools.” And the man could go out and earn his own food from the land with the use of the tools. Or, you could just give him the food, which would look so much better and would probably gain one so much more approval than if you treated the man as though he is responsible: “Here’s the tools, you may use them. They’re not yours, they’re loaned to you. Here’s the field. It’s not given to you; it’s loaned to you. Now it’s up to you to produce your own food.”

This is the way we all are when we come to the point of being aware of the self, to evolving into a new person, to experiencing rebirth, to experiencing the spiritual experiences. Only counterfeits can be provided by emotional settings. Only counterfeits can be had by telling people that, “You have this because you have been dipped in the water or someone has laid their hands on you.” It still has to come from within from one’s own experimentation. 

As one does this, one is treating everyone, including this one, as being responsible. And one isn’t building an orthodoxy because each has to go the Way for self. It is not something that says, “Do this, and this shall happen to you. Do this and believe this and you will have so-and-so.” It is finding out for self, and there are many ways to run the experiments. 

We have named only a few of those experiments. There have been hundreds and hundreds more. And possibly as we begin to look, we can see, possibly, these experiments being run in ways we never dreamed of, wherever we look.