Now we will attempt to study the world and what happens when one uses the ideas of the Teachings.

Now, the Ideas of the World as we saw – and which you have been experimenting with and checking out to find out for yourself if this is what makes up the world – is four ideas:

The idea that there are “Ideals” of what ought to be and what should be, which is different from what is;

That there is the idea of “Self-Improvement” to bring about the ideal; And that there is the belief in “Signs and Wonders and Demonstrations” that… signs that one has achieved some self-improvement, that one has come closer to realizing the ideal.  Which may just happen some week:  one feels pretty good and of course that is accepted that the positive thinking or whatever other means or that one has been tolerant of other people so things were better.

And then the fourth one was Blaming, which is to find something to blame when the ideal isn’t realized.  And of course, the signs and wonders is to take credit for it when something like the ideal happens to one’s existence.  

Now, the Teaching starts off with four ideas.  These ideas are very precise – the Four Ideas of the Teaching.  The first one is SELF-KNOWING.  We have been working at self-knowing since we started several weeks ago… knowing the self, without condemning or justifying, without trying to improve it – just to be aware of the self, to be aware of the conditioning, to be aware of the automatic, mechanical behavior of the self and of the split in the self, the contradiction in the self.  “A” going one way to gain the ideal and “B” going another way to gain the ideal and the war that’s experienced between those two, the constant conflict which is called “thinking”.  Now, it says, “self-knowing”, not self-knowledge.  So self-knowing never ends; it is always observing everything and reporting accurately to X.

Now, the next idea of the School is FAITH.  Now, Faith does not mean agreeing to some ideology or some belief and it does not mean strong belief.  It means the ability to make up the mind.  Now, some time ago we saw that there is seeing what is and seeing the value of it.  That is to make up the mind and then X always operates upon that.  Whatever one sees as true or the fact and sees the value of whatever one saw as true or fact, then there is an action which is known as Truth.  Somewhere it says, “Where two or more are gathered together, there I am in the midst”.  And of course these two are where there is “Value” and “What Is” is joined together in the form of a cross.  Then whatever one sees as being true and sees the good in that or the value in it, the worthwhileness of it, then there is action upon it.  And that is faith in one level.  We will discuss another level of faith another time.  But that is the first level of faith.  One cannot force faith.  It is something one experiences and it depends upon – that experiencing depends upon – having self-knowing from moment to moment.

The next idea of the Teaching is GRACE.  And “Grace” is somewhat defined as the recipient of undeserved goods or gifts.  And, of course, all things that are seen as worthwhile are recognized as the gift of X, that X does all the work.  That it is something one experiences, and it’s not something one can do or say, ”I’m experiencing, or I am gaining Grace” unless one is giving undeserved goods.  But you’ll find that is very difficult, if not almost impossible.  So the recipient has seen that one has tremendous gifts.

You know, we are all very, very rich if we stop to think of it.  Now we won’t experience it from this, but let’s take a look.  What would you take for the gift of sight?  You can see things.  You don’t know how it works.  You have no idea how two little pieces of human flesh pick up and record impressions.  And that those little ones don’t see; they’re only the cameras.  Somewhere sees within and throws a picture up for Awareness to experience.  What would you take for that?  Would you take a $100,000.00 and let somebody have both the eyes, or cut the nerves to the eyes?  Would you take a million?  Would you take twenty million?

What would you take to have someone destroy your hearing, the ability to hear – that great gift of picking up sound waves and transmitting them into intelligent sounds and thoughts and conceptions and viewpoints?

What would you take for the ability to sense touch?  What would you take for it?

And above all, what would you take now and let someone take your life, destroy the existence, and have the body for experimental purposes five years and three days from now?  Would you take a million?  Twenty million dollars?  Would you take a billion?  You have it all you want for five years and four days and then it ends.

And have we done anything to receive these great gifts or are they undeserved goods of various sorts that we have?  That is somewhat the conception of Grace.  You will experience being the recipient of Grace someday.  Right now we can only intelligently see what it might be.

The fourth idea of the School and of the Teaching is AGAPE, which means and translated into the English word, “love”.  However, there are four ancient words translated into the one English word “love”.

The one word is “PIA”, which means children.  So one has feeling towards children, towards family.  So one has that love, but so does a dog.  So does many other mammal creatures.  And we don’t know about the others, but we can observe the mammals have this love for their offspring.  And so they have Pia, along with the human being.  And it is something that just happens.  It doesn’t come from any effort or anything else.  It is just a child is born and you have an urge to protect it, defend it and care for it.  That is Agape… pardon me… that is Pia.

The next sort of love word that has been translated into the English word ‘love’ is “EROS”.  It is the mating attraction and it, too, just happens.  And we also see it in other mammals, and possibly all sorts of other creatures, sub-mammal.  It just happens.  It is the mating instinct or the mating desire; it just happens and it is shared amongst many living creatures.

And then there is simply approval.  It was from the word “PHILIA”; it means I approve of you.  Or I approve of a piece of furniture.  One says, “I just simply love that piece of furniture”, meaning they very decidedly approve of it.  Or, “I simply love that house.”  They approve of it.  Now, apparently all sorts of living creatures have things they approve of and things they do not appeal to their taste.  So they have Philia also and that definitely is with their associates.

And then there is that fourth word, the one that’s used in all esoteric literature.  It is called love in the English translation.  But it is referred to as “AGAPE”.  It has also been translated into English as “charity” and it has nothing to do with caring for the poor, even though that may be one small aspect of it.  Agape means to see that what everyone is doing – including self – ever has done or ever will do, that at the moment of doing, it seems either right or proper or justifiable.  Now as long as one is conditioned, much of the behavior is because one sees it as justified.  “He did thus-and-so, so therefore I can do so-and-so.”  To the enlightened person, the one who has practiced self-knowing, who has experienced being, never justifies any behavior or any attitude.  One simply sees “what is” at the moment seems right or proper because of the situation of what is and what is the value in it. 

So Agape is understanding the other person.  It is understanding the “persons” one has been – all the conditioned states.  One has love, Agape.  It has also been called “one has charity”.  I think it was the writer, Paul, one great teacher, in addressing some communications to his students, said that even though he did all the wonderful things in the world and had all manners of gifts: even the gift of healing and he had the gift of prophecy and could foretell and speak out great truths; and that even though he practiced all manner of giving, such as even giving his body to be used for research or for being burned up as a sacrifice, that if he had all these things and he could speak in the tongues of men and angels and could speak every known language in the world; that even if he had all of that and did not experience Agape, he was as tinkling brass – a worthless little tinkling bell somewhere, some little ornament that hangs in the wind to chime just for amusement.

Because without this Agape, without experiencing it and really having all the way of living it, experiencing it, being it, one is as nothing.

Now, self-knowing is the one thing the person can do.  The other three ideas are something that one experiences as an outcome of self-knowing over a long period of time and over a  period of valuing.  However they’re the very fundamentals of the Teaching:  Self-knowing, Faith, Grace and Love.  And that love is not the love of the world, which is tolerance.  And Grace is not having something to say when things didn’t go well, “It is the will of God”.  It does not say that God is a capricious being.  And Faith is the ability to make up one’s mind, the ability to see the fact and the value of the fact without any clutter of what ought to be, or what should have been, or what should be, or what is the right thing.

It sees what is, with what Light it has, and sees the value of it with what Light one has.  As one continues self-knowing one is having more and more Light.  The self was completely dark, was an unexamined, unexplored area.  And with using self-knowing, self-observation, one has thrown a Light on that self that is constantly trying to be non-disturbed and is in a conflict as to how to gain that with the various methods that is achieved – such as complaining or pleasing or putting on a front or blaming, or what-have-you.  This is beginning to throw a Light into the self.  So the more Light one has, the more one experiences various things.

Now, the first thing that one experiences – and this is called the Spiritual Experiences – and the first Spiritual Experience – the one that really starts one on the way to being a new person, to being a “New Man” – is from self-awareness.  The first one is called CONFESSION.  It has nothing to do with go telling someone where you didn’t fit some ideal.  It means to confess to X, and only to X, by self-observation.  I is observing the self and reports accurately to X what is going on.  This is Confession.  It recognizes that the self is in a state of conflict.  It confesses or reports what is there.

The next spiritual expression that one [he corrects himself] experience that one may experience is that of SURRENDER.  Surrender is to surrender the will of the self.  The will of the self is to be non-disturbed and to set up ideals.  And “I” has been very identified with it and there is a very great temptation for I to identify with this ideal of being non-disturbed.  But as one continues in self-observation, Confession takes place.  And ever time one sees something that’s going on in the self, one is experiencing Confession.  Then there is a surrender of the will, of the urge to be identified with mammon, the non-disturbance idea – the ideal of the world.  One surrenders one’s attachment to the world.  It is not an act of will.  It is an act of self-observation that results in an experience of surrender.  You know, we all think we can do many things.  We think we can walk.  But actually, all we can do is see a place to walk to and the value of walking there, or the good of it, and X does the walking.  And it is the same thing in these various spiritual experiences, the first of which is Confession, the second of which is Surrender.

The third spiritual experience one experiences is REPENTANCE.  Repentance is from a Greek word meaning “turn about” or “about face”.  One has been tempted always to identify with the self, with the ideals, with the world, in other words.  And one sees the fallacy of that.  One has been serving mammon and one sees suddenly the value of serving X by observing what’s going on and reporting it and of valuing.  And one begins a growth of the inner being.  I begins to grow and establish a Spiritual Body.  Where heretofore it had a distorted body that was given to it, you might say… that it had picked up here and there in bits and pieces.

So, one has turned about.  One has ceased to serve mammon and sees what is as being that one is the Awareness Function of Spirit and sees the value in being aware.  When one  experiences Repentance, one finds that self-observing, self-awareness, is almost continually – that it does not require an act of will as it did when we started.  One sees that it is really the only true value is to serve the “King”, X.  And one has experienced Repentance.  Now any effort to do that on one’s will is only a bit of Vanity sticking around.  And it can’t be done, but it can be experienced.  One experiences Repentance.

When one has experienced Repentance, has experienced Surrender, and has experienced Confession, one then experiences BAPTISM – baptism with Light, a baptism that is a cleansing that cleans the heart.

You know we talked one time that says that out of the hearts of man proceeds all manner of things that defile the man.  And that only those of a pure heart and a clean heart could see God.  One experiences the heart being cleansed, cleansed of mammon, the struggle towards the ideal of being non-disturbed.  One experiences being washed of the urge for self-improvement on all the six levels.  One finds one washed of resentment.  And one finds one washed of all these Accounts Receivable against everone.  One is washed and the heart is clean.  It is not something that can be done by being dipped in water or any other substance.  It is one experiences it as one is being obedient to X and is practicin’ self-observation.  And it follows closely behind Confession, Surrender, and Repentance.

When one has undergone and has experienced these four great spiritual experiences, not tried to do them artificially by an act of the will which is only Vanity, then one is a “New Man”.  One started being a New Man when one began to observe self.  One awakened and begin the task of self-observation, which has led to where we are discussing – a New Man.  And the New Man really sees everything different.

He sees obstructions as valuable.  He sees discomfort as valuable information to allow him to check up as to where he might be in a state of stress, whether from the Environment, from Inner Feeling, or from Activity or Nutrition.  But he sees it as a signal, as a speaking of X that he is being talked to.  And rather than try to numb his sensibilities so that he could no longer hear X talk, he is very thankful.  When there is any obstruction, which we have referred to as Second Force, any resistance to his expectations, he is immediately reminded that this is of great value because it has been making him expect again towards the ideal; we see that he was about to be drawn towards it.

And as he begins to be in this state, one sees everything as being some degree of Truth.  Everything is what is.  And then he sees it as having some degree of value.  Certainly some things are more valuable to him at the moment than others.  Another one may be more valuable at another moment.  And he reports moment-to-moment what is, and what is the good of this particular “what is”.  And this brings about an entirely different state of being.

He has a different attitude now, an attitude of being thankful, an attitude of appreciation, an attitude of being at-one with X, as being truly an expression of X, being the Awareness Function of X.  And he sees all as what is, as being true, and all of it as having value.  So the cross is always there and appropriate action takes place for it.  He has the attitude of being thankful, of glad, of pleased, of being a privileged being to have all these great privileges.  This of course brings about a different behavior.  There is no conflict, no struggle with his fellow man.  There is no struggle within because there is no conflict within.

He’s been washed of that and he’s seeing everything without the conflict.  It is not something one can do.  One experiences seeing differently.  And of course as one sees differently one experiences a new attitude and one experiences a brand new behavior.  All is new.  The old has passed away and man is a new creature.  And he experiences of course a whole new state of being, a state of Vital Interest or above, somewhere along the way.  Everything is interesting.  Everything is vital.  And there isn’t anything that he sees as bad, wrong, improper, unjustifiable.  He merely sees what is right and proper for the moment as to what is and what is good or true, what is good or valuable about it.  And his whole state of being is entirely different.

So, he experiences a new state of being.  This new state of being is the experiencing of Agape.  That is experiencing love, understanding, both of what he formerly was and of what everone around him is, and what’s going on in every relationship.  This is being aware, awake, and is understanding it.  And there is no sense of criticism because criticism, one has to have the ideal to compare to.  Did you ever stop to notice that you cannot disapprove of anything? You cannot criticize unless you’re criticizing something not fitting an ideal.  So then one is in a state of love and it is expressed as consideration for all beings.  To be considerate is to see what is going on and see that the person couldn’t be doing any different, that what they’re doing they feel right, proper and justifiable; and one would treat them accordingly.

One is harmless to all beings.  One doesn’t try to help, which is to look down on.  It is very easy to go out and be a “helper”, try to raise people up to some ideal.  But it is much more difficult and requires considerable Awareness based on long periods of self-observation – and continual self-observation – to be harmless.  To be harmless is to consider that everyone is capable and never treat anyone as though they’re incapable of at least being aware and one treats them accordingly.  One can experience being harmless.  One cannot figure it out with logic and reason.

And then one makes a contribution.  Because one loves all and all life; one understands it, there is a contribution.  At least there is a contribution to a pleasant, harmonious mood, which is a very considerable contribution, the contribution one experiences by observing that it is the natural outcome of Agape.

And then one experiences Grace and one experiences Faith. Then one is understanding the Teaching.

One is the Teaching. One has seen it by experimentation and one has seen its value.  And then one no longer uses the Teaching, but IS the Teaching.

We will continue to observe self.  We will also notice as we experience these various spiritual experiences, we’ll experience being a New Man.  Now the New Man grows, like everything else in this organic world – it grows.  And being in that entirely new state of being, which has been referred to as a new world, or a new heaven, or a new earth, or the Kingdom of Heaven, it grows also.

You know, the Christ said that while John the Baptist was the greatest of men born of woman and the greatest of men in the world, he was less than the least in the Kingdom of Heaven.  So one can grow in the Kingdom of Heaven.