One of the things that the world seems to continually suggest to one – that one has already achieved whatever one needs to and that everything is rather easy. In other words, we think when we have achieved a little, that that is all there is to achieve. However, the Kingdom of Spirit is untold riches that continues to unfold as one works. The idea of work is continually stressed in all of the Teaching – of doing something worth the material one receives. In this age of intellectualism, we are quite prone to take some idea and because we think about it, we feel we have understood it, and that we have used it and that we know about it. However, only as one experiments with something – one works with it, one spends time and effort on it, and finds out for self its value – does anything really worthwhile, lasting, that aids the development of the spiritual body and the growth of that body, really come into being.

We will read a parable. It is from the Book of Matthew, Chapter 25, and starts at Verse 14 and continues through Verse 30:

“For it is like a man going abroad who called his servants and handed over his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another, one – to each according to his particular ability – and then he went on his journey. And he who had received the five talents, went and traded with them and gained five more. In like manner he who had received the two gained two more.  But he who had received the one went away and dug in the earth and hid his master’s money.

Then after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came and brought five other talents, saying: ‘Master, thou’st did hand over to me five talents. Behold, I have gained 5 others in addition.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. Because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many. Enter into the joy of thy master.’

And he also who had received the two talents came and said, ‘Master, thou’st did hand over to me two talents. Behold I have gained two more.’ And his master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will set thee over many. Enter into the joy of thy master.’

But he who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Master, I know that thou art a stern man. Thou reap where thou has not sowed and thou gather where thou hast not planted. And as I was afraid I went away, and hid thy talent in the earth. Behold, thou hast what is thine.’ But his master answered and said to him, ‘Wicked and slothful servant, thou dost know that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I have not harvested. Thou should, therefore, have entrusted my money to the bankers; and on my return I should have at least got back my own with interest. Take away, therefore, the talent from him and give it to him who has the 10 talents. And to everyone who has shall be given, and he shall have an abundance; but from him who does not have, even that which he seems to have, shall be taken away. But as for the unprofitable servant, cast him forth into the darkness outside where there will be weeping and the gnashing of teeth.’ “

Now, obviously, this story is about something given to someone, the three different people, something of value – that a master gave to his servants something very worthwhile to see what they would do with it. He used the symbol of money. Money is something that even the world considers to be valuable, and that will acquire things. So he gave to em accordin’ to their abilities. So one man had been workin’ hard had a certain amount of ability and he gave him five talents. 

Now let’s see what something of these talents could be in relation to the Teaching and to the understanding of man and his own growth. So first off, we’re all given the idea of “self-knowing.” But the first thing under that is “dis-identifying.” 

So we’ll say that was what the man who received one talent received – he received the idea of dis-identifying from the self – to be aware of the self without trying to do anything particular about it, but just to being aware of the self. 

The man who received two talents, we’ll say, received the idea of dis-identifying and of observing unpleasant emotions in action and how they come about; how the conflict starts within the inner state of the conditioned man, between “A” and “B.” We could see how that one would be. 

We’ll say that the man had five talents, was given five talents, not only was told about self-knowing, but he was given the idea of Dis-identifying. And he was given the idea of Observing the Unpleasant Emotions, the conflict between “A” and “B”. He was to observe the Accounts Receivable that everybody builds against everybody else and builds up a terrific burden that everyone has. He was given the idea of Observing Expectation and seeing that everyone expects on the ideal. And he could see The Vicious Cycle. And that he was given observing temptation. Now he has five talents, something to work with. 

Now, the man who received the five talents worked with these ideas he’d been given. He applied them, he observed them in action, he spent his time on em; and, of course, what he had became of twice as much value to him because he had now experimented. He had the ideas and he saw the good of experimenting with these ideas. So he had seen What Is and he had seen the Value of What Is. So he now has ten talents.

Likewise, the man that received the two talents applied them. He worked with them, he studied, he observed, he made notes, and he gained twice as much value because he had something given to him of value but he applied it and now it was worth twice as much to him. 

But the man who received the one talent, observing that the teacher didn’t seem to have any full-time occupation, so he figured he had some magic means of acquiring his needs. And that he thought he was a stern man because he only gave him one talent; he, no doubt, felt he was misjudged because the Vanity and Pride stood up and said, “You should have received more. After all, you’re every bit as good as these other guys. You are quite as capable. You are quite as grown up. You have been around for as long as they have.” 

But nevertheless, the master seemed to feel that each one had a certain capability. It says he gave the talents to em according to their several abilities. The one who received the one talent did not work with it. He buried it in the earth; he dug a hole. In other words, he stored it in the intelligence center and he could remember it and recall it and play it back on command. So he buried it; he didn’t do anything with it at all. He didn’t experiment with it. But, now, he remembered it and he knew exactly how to recall it, regain it, and bring it up to his hands again.

Then one day the master returned and he kinda checked up as to what they had. So the man who had received the five talents demonstrated that he had experimented with them and that he had something twice as valuable. And the master said to him, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Faithful means that he stayed on the job, he continued. It is used much in the same way as the word persevere is – continue. Regardless of what, he keeps on using it. Even though he has understood much, he continues to use the five talents. He traded with them, he acted upon them, he worked with them, and he had five more. The master praised him for being a faithful man – a man who stayed at the job. And he said that he had been faithful over these few things, he could enter into the joy of the master. In other words, he begin to experience the real things – he begin to experience being a new man. He experienced love – the joy of the master.

The second man who had received only two talents, two things, but he had worked with them and diligently applied himself. He had experimented, he had observed, he had made his notes, and watched them in action and saw them as valuable and put his time on it and continued. And he had, of course, changed his two talents into four. He had something twice as valuable also. And he was praised for being a good and faithful servant and, it said, passed into the joy of the master.

So you see, it’s not how many things that one does, because as one does any one of the ideas of the Teaching and really applies it, it opens all the doors just the same. 

One can work with five things at a time and some can only work with one thing at a time. Some can work with two things at a time. Each of us has our own separate abilities. And being separate – no two people alike – we are perfect as we are for the amount of ability we have and it seems that it has much the same effect. 

Now, the signs to following the story, that if the man who had received the one talent would’a made two out of it, that he would have been told that he was a good and faithful servant and enter into the joy of the master. But you see, he was very weak was why he was only given one talent; he could only handle one thing – his weakness, which was Pride and Vanity. You see, he attempted to build a picture of himself as a prudent man who was capable of judging the master. His vanity showed there. And then he defended that the thing to do was to be safe, of course. So he had hid the money and he brought it back. He recalled the idea and said, “Here it is,” but he had not worked with it, he had not experimented with it, so he only had the idea. And the master was not very kind with him, was he? He said he was a wicked and slothful servant. He was lazy and he was wicked because his inner state was full of pride and vanity, and possibly greed and envy because the others had received more. 

But at any rate, he had done nothing – only bury it in the earth. He had dropped it in the memory center and he was able to recall it and say, “Here it is; you see, I still remember this idea,” but he hadn’t worked on it, so he had not increased its value within him. He had not seen to apply it, to build a firm foundation of his own experimentation. And he was called a wicked and slothful servant and it said to take away even that which he had, and give it to the one with the ten.

So maybe the one with the ten received one idea that this one man had been given that the other one hadn’t even really worked with yet. But it can be assured that the man who worked with the idea begin to work on whatever it was the one had – that he only had the one talent. That talent he took and begin to work also. Possibly it was to begin to observe Pride, Vanity and greed within self. Apparently that was what the man required and the Master was the one who could recognize their several abilities, and so this was the one he could most work on – if he did. So he lost even that which he had and it said cast him into outer darkness. That means he was thrown out of the school. 

Now, in real everyday existence the man threw himself out of the school because he didn’t use it. So he begin to lose even the ideas because the ideas will not remain with one unless one sees the value in experimenting with them. One sees the ideas, can read them, can listen to them, can hear them many times over, can repeat them whenever one wants to. One can dig em up out of the earth and repeat it or quote the idea, may use it as kind of a catch phrase somewheres, but all of that is only burying it in the earth. It is not experimenting with it, it is not putting it into use, it is not putting the value on it, it is not seeing it as something valuable that can be increased in value by applying it, which is being a good and faithful servant – one which takes it and works with it. 

You see, in being a servant, one serves something. Now, one serves X first by being an objective observer of the self, observing “A” and “B,” and mammon and their continual effort to control and take over the household. So first, one serves X by being aware. Second, one serves X by serving the Teaching, by valuing it, by putting it to work cause then one is increasing the value of the Teaching – the talents that are about. Otherwise, they just remain as the man who had the one – he buries it in the earth and he doesn’t work on it.

The other one is that man works for all Life and he serves Life whenever he evolves cause the nature of Life is for a new man to be born. Man, as he’s born on the earth, is raw material for the Kingdom of Heaven, not for mammon. 

So one has three levels of work that one would do. One would act upon it because one sees the value of it in the various aspects of life. One sees that the various material is valuable, the Teaching is valuable. And then one sees it as “talent.” 

A talent was a piece of gold money that was worth in present day inflated currency about $90. So one man was given $450 if we were talking about literal money. But, no, we’re talking about something of value – a bit of Teaching. And they valued it, applied it and put it to work. But the one man who didn’t use it, of course, soon lost any meaning of the work. He soon lost seeing any value at all in the information he had received because he did not apply it so he could not experience its value. It would double in value if he experimented with it. But if one doesn’t experiment with it, it is soon lost or taken away.

So in the parable, it says it was taken away. Actually, one loses it and one is no longer in the school. Even though one has all manner of books on the subject, even one has all manner of material available to one, if one does not apply it and do the various things that are suggested that one do with the Work – make notes, observe it, put it into action where it becomes valuable, one sees the value in it – then one casts oneself out of the school, one outside the school, outside the area where there is information. One is cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

Now, that’s not too hard to understand what is. One is not talking about some pit beneath the earth or some mythical place called “hell.” One is talking about the world, the world of the four ideas: the ideas of Ideals, the idea of Self-improvement, the idea of Signs and Wonders, and the idea of Blaming. So there is darkness. One doesn’t see any value. One is struggling towards an illusion, which is a dream.

And in a dream one is not seeing what is around one. One is seeing a picture in one’s sleep – the ideal. And then, of course, there is the gnashing of teeth because when there is blame, what goes on? The gnashing of teeth is used as a symbol of contention between people. If you have ever been around certain types of farm animals or wild animals, you know that when they feel that something has interfered with them, is to blame with their being disturbed, they begin to gnash their teeth, which says, “I’ll bite you.”

And so, of course, when we blame someone, we have the idea of “biting” them, causing them pain in some way or other to make them pay the account we’ve just established against them. And, of course, when we do this we are in outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth because every time one feels one has not received one’s due or has failed in achieving the ideal, one is disappointed, which is called “weeping.” And of course some literally do; it’s their form of complaining which is supposed to get them their way. If somebody is weeping, somebody usually is made uncomfortable that because weeping generally tends to make other people feel guilty – those that are conditioned around them. And so “where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

So as we see, there is more and more reason that it has always been around, that the Teaching by itself can be taken away or lost if it is not used. But when it is used, it doubles in value or possibly many times increases in value. Some other places says thirty-fold, sixty-fold, a hundred-fold, but at least it doubles in value because we have seen the truth of it, we’ve seen the facts involved, and we have experimented with them and found the value of it.

So in this particular effort of applying, let’s write down us on a sheet of paper the ideas of the Teaching that I have worked with this week. And let’s work with various ideas. We have been given at least five talents and possibly a few more.  

We have the idea of self-knowing, being aware of the self as an object. We have seen to dis-identify from it – that I observe self, John or Mary, that I observe the unpleasant emotions and how they arise as a conflict between “A” and “B,” each saying this is the way to gain the ideal to serve mammon. We have to observe also the Accounts Receivable that has been added up against all those people that you blame when one didn’t achieve the ideal. Now, as we observe these we can observe that if it comes in self that we’ve really looked at it, or if we are watching it in all the people that we might come in contact with in our day’s activity. All through the week, we will see people building accounts. And seeing it somewheres else is not to blame it or not to justify it, but to be more aware of what goes on in the world. 

It is to be more aware of relationships, which is to arise to a state of being called that of the Artist and the beginning of Objective Consciousness. It is also to be aware of the internal considering, whether one is considering how other people feel, how other people are getting along, how they can be approached, which is one of the aspects of Agape or Love. Considering, thinking about, looking from the other’s viewpoint to understand them and their communications, or whether one might be considering, “What’s in this for me? How did this happen to me? Why did this ever happen to me?” 

And one might observe the expectation cycle as to where everything is based on an expectation. We’ll observe these not only in the self, but in all other people that we come in contact with. It gives us a much broader viewpoint. It begins to see relationships between the people’s disorders and their expectation. And we may also begin to observe temptation, and that we definitely can observe in the self because we are never quite far away. Always mammon is on the job and we hear it from a thousand ways. So we might observe how we work on that and what we see of it.

Now we certainly can observe mammon’s three great powerful steam engines that he uses, or his jet engines: Pride, Vanity and Greed. And we might observe what kind of ideals that we hear. We might observe ideals as we see that sometimes they’re suggested to us and we see other people totally identified with an ideal. We begin to understand the world in which man lives. And it is as one observes this and becomes acquainted with it more, makes some notes about it and sees relationships, this is working with the ideas. This makes it much more possible for one to be able to aid those many questioning people that one sees. Without having this awareness from every section of life – not only from within, but from also all those about us – one really doesn’t know how to work with people who come asking. And they are beginning to come asking. And one does not know how to do, one will fall back on… if one isn’t working with it, one will fall back like the man who had one talent – take it out of the earth, replay it as a bunch of words and that really sounds hollow because it does not have the double value of having applied it.

You see, a person sounds altogether different when he’s quoting something he doesn’t understand and when he’s working with something he or she has experienced for self. One it rings with value like a fine piece of gold, or silver, or a piece of beautiful crystal – it rings. But when one has not experienced it, one has only played the words, it sounds dull like lead, Babbitt Metal. It is then base metal. 

And you see, one of the great efforts through the ages has been to change base metal into gold. And its only way that base metal can be changed into gold is by working with it. Of course, the alchemists had some long complicated formulas, but you see all that formula was, that the man worked with it. So we can work with an idea, which is still lead until we experimented with it and then it becomes gold. And this, of course, is the story of the talents, increasing in value from five to ten, and two to four, and one, which was not used and remained lead.