Greater Works

Lillian DeWaters writing in 1946 published a book entitled, Greater Works. The title refers to John 14:12 which has Jesus saying to his disciples:

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater [works] than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. "

Those of you who know Greek know the English word "I" translates the Greek word "ego." Lillian speaks in her later writings of the fact that many of her correspondents were experiencing the "law of diminishing returns" on their investments of time and energy in "treatment" work. The law of diminishing returns is "the tendency for a continuing application of effort or skill toward a particular project or goal to decline in effectiveness after a certain level of result has been achieved." (Answers.com) It seems that when one has devoted considerable time and energy to the study and practice of metaphysics there comes a growing sense of recycling "healings". It is understandable to take the healing principles out of context, isolate them and magnify them and unmindfully make them the All-in-all. And this impasse in the growth and progress of the practitioner is seen as patients coming for healings until the practitioner finds him or herself in the "empty space" Love provides for the discovery of "nothing to heal and no one to do healing." Lillian indicates that this is a transition into the "greater works" demanded of Truth's conscious identity (Man) and asks what could be a greater miracle than all of Jesus' miracles including his resurrection?

Margaret Laird in her Laird Letter of Jan./Feb1980 answers: "Divine Intelligence is the unthinkable thought-force that intuitively becomes the perception of each individual in the knowledge that whatever is happening is happening perfectly. The Science that I am as conscious identity disposes of the intellectual perception of being something I am not. In this process the "conscientious me" full of re-volution, likes and dislikes,---becomes the "conscious I" with no complaints --- rejoicing always in the divinity of humanity. ..What disappears in the context of being Mind, in love with everything and everyone, is not the disappearance of anything but the appearance of everything as it is. In being my Self consciously, with no externality to dull vision, the sick, complaining, unhappy individual that I am not disappears."

This is the miracle of today.

Truly it is a greater work than all the miracles of Jesus even his resurrection.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your future plans. --Woody Allen

My wife Laura and I moved to the mountains. Here we are in 3 feet of Spring snow. Down in the left hand corner of this picture is our dog, Maddie. The day after we took this picture, Maddie died. She was 12 years old and had been the mascot of our blended family. Observing grief is interesting experience. I had been reading Lillian DeWater's book God is All (1928) in which she relates how she healed her dying canary by receiving illumination and inspiration. I wanted to do the same for my dog. With three feet of snow, I had lots of tiime for reflection and reading. Since I'm reading all of Lillian DeWaters writings, I found that she changed her position somewhere about 1940. She wrote "Light" (1950) as a companion to "God is All." Here she says: "The answer to the world's problems is not to be found in the healing of diseases or in the overcoming of wars. The deep significance of this hour is that we turn ou hearts from all else to God for direct light, vision and revelation." "To be at all we must be this One." "Spiirit -- the One I Am - the I or Identity of all---is Here and Now always the same - invincible, unchangeable, absolute."

Maddie the dog was more than appeared to human eyes. She was the result of work I did with Joel Goldsmith. I had a "mortal" fear of dogs since paperboy days. And reading Joel's message one cannot escape his theme of "there are not two powers, good and evil. Good is the one power." Gradually I overcame my fear of dogs and Maddie was my first dog. She introduced me to the wonderful world of love appearing as animals.

We decided to plant trees on our new property in her memory.

Across the Unknown

I took a couple of weeks off to read S.I. Hayakawa’s book, Language in Thought and Action. I think this is a very important book. My brother asked me once, “Don’t you ever read books newer than 1950?” Being a product of 1950’s to 1970’s American education when I read the pioneering works on scientific metaphysics I feel as though there’s a huge gap in my learning. Much of my research has been reading old books to fill that gap. One such book was Across the Unknown, by Stewart Edward White. According to Amazon, Stewart Edward White was a beloved author of Western adventure stories who devoted the last 30 years of his life to writing accounts of his wife's mediumistic explorations of the inner dimensions of life. His books are rightly regarded as classics in the field of spiritual growth.
When I read a book, only a few ideas really stick with me. Here is one from White’s book:
“The struggle of each generation is the interpretation of the whispered allotment of wisdom into the current vernacular. You are at a turning point of a great tide. Who is there to offer guidance in the age-proven technique of living, and yet point ahead to the regions we are appointed to explore? We arraign your generation for its failure to establish faith in the proven laws of living.” - The Invisibles

The Attenuation of Truth

Sunday, we went to a New Thought church service in a town near our new home, mainly out of curiosity since it was historical. The congregation was very small like its building and very old, like its building. We were easy to spot as “new” folks. They were very cordial. During the message from the minister my mind wandered to a question: How is it that the American Amish hit on 18th century Pennsylvania and their peculiar way of living as the true Way (orthodoxy)? Standing still in time, resistant to all social change surrounding them, their religious tradition's ideas, language and habits have given their community members an impervious and permanent sense of inner stability, of timeless personality. Preserving their religious beliefs they hand down their way of life from generation to generation and so from a scientific view fulfill the first law of nature --- self-preservation. Their way of life seems peaceful, happy and productive, especially in contrast to the paroxysms of social upheaval surrounding them. In fact, according to Wikipedia the Amish church membership is growing because mothers are having more children! The word tradition, incidentally, means in its original meaning: “handing down.” From the point of view of the majority of American society the Amish tradition has succeeded only in making the Amish themselves an “anachronism.”
As the "scientific Christian" minister went on with her talk, I wondered if I was witnessing the same phenomenon going on here. The congregation was “primarily for old women and their mothers” as my preaching professor had tagged a Presbyterian congregation near our seminar once. I wondered what my daughter, a bright, sensitive and caring career woman would find helpful in the old “scientific Christian” organizations. Are the ideas in these teachings helpful for her and of value to hand down to her daughters and is the goal of making them impervious to time, change and social upheaval what the pioneers of New Thought called the immunity of Spirit? Is that Divine Science? It seemed that the minister was answering questions that no one is asking.

The questions coming at my daughter arise from her environment which is highly production oriented. Her inner instinct urging her too see perfection within her is Truth, her divinity (Spirit) laying its claim on her, demanding a permanent perspective from which to view her now world, to discover "she is the world she walks through." Truth is no longer a "still small voice" as it was in the times of her great-grandmothers whispering to them when they went into their closets. When she goes into her closet it is to find the fortification needed to stand as a woman in her world. I wondered, is the public language the attenuation of Truth? Attenuation, not a word she would recognize, means the gradual weakening and disappearance of the catalytic agent in a homeopathic medicine. Is Truth, the catalyst, buried in today's indifference as the philosophers of today's language are claiming? If so, is meaninglessness inevitable?

But suppose the reverse is true and it is Truth attenuating the public language? Then what if "anachronism" means one who stands squarely in the now of today, but with vision coming out of the wide-open future and the Gospel of Truth today is science fiction instead of sentimental journey? What if the relics and artifacts of Truth are born into our environment as our children's children bringing with them the question of "Who Am I NOW?" "Who will live Me NOW?" "Who will hear Me NOW?" demanding that we answer them. Will my daughter hear her daughter's daughter giving her grandmother the eternal words of Truth out of the pure heartedness of her Spirit to speak to her daughter the Science of Oneness, the Circle of All before she is "born" so that her granddaughter's friends will exclaim, "Wow! Your grandmother was way ahead of her times."

Today, the word "sin" in the popular language means little more than eating something chocolate when one is on a diet. The religious organizations which perpetuate "sin" are crumbling away. Truth's attentuating power has reduced the concept of sin to near absurdity, an old trivial mistake, a primitive attempt to state a profound spiritual fact. Soon the meanings "sickness" and "death" will also be as silly because my daughter listening within herself, hearing her heart only, will hear her granddaughter laughing within at beliefs like sickness and death.

The Gold Standard

At the gym this morning I was watching an informercial on "six-pack abs". Having been a personal trainer in a fitness center, I wondered: when did "six-pack abs" become the "gold standard of physical fitness? When I was a scrawny kid in elementary school the national gold standard was The Presidential Physical Fitness Award which I never won. But it was the local gold standard that mattered more to me since this was the prize in the eyes of my peers. This involved climbing ropes suspended from the gym ceiling, climbing up from the floor to the ceiling. I struggled all through elementary school to make this great achievement, watching other athletic kids scramble up and down while I just hung there trying to figure out how to make this rope climbing thing work. I can still hear the strains of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" in my mind. It wasn't until late in the 6th grade that I actually made it all the way to the top. But --- to my horror instead of proud satisfaction, I looked down from this unnatural and dizzying height wondering about the newly discovered "other side" of this "ropes" paradox: now, how do I get down?

Somehow I did. It didn't take me years, but only minutes. I decided then that there might be other gold standards I could aspire to, so I went into a life of Art instead of Sports. 25 years later I was a personal trainer in a fitness center training folks to climb "fourteeners".

Today, in science, the gold standard is not "results" like six-pack abs nor information in infomercials. (And besides, did it ever occur to you that those fitness models pictured in the ads had the abs BEFORE they had the program or device claiming it bestowed perfect abs on them?) The gold standard in science is the double-blind (placebo) peer-reviewed journal published experiment. In science, failure is as illuminating as is success. As many experiments are constructed in order to "disprove" an hypothesis as there are those designed to "prove" one. A genuine scientist does not go to television and its "results" for his or her best data but to the scientific community.
This all made me wonder, "What is the gold standard of Scientific Spirituality?" For me, the word "scientific" means that I cannot entirely discount the role of intellect or reason in the unfolding of my understanding. I read books. Reading is not just about awareness. My awareness alone doesn't read the book, reason is involved and acting. My trained intellect interprets the books I read as I read them, but I am aware that my reason is always overshadowed and foreshadowed by my intuition which is listening and watching and waiting to insert itself at unexpected and surprising moments. What is the genuine interpolation (insertion) of intuition and what is spurious? How is the spiritual fact discerned unless its meaning bestowing power enlightens reason which unfolds from "faith" (doubt) to "understanding." When an understanding unfolds, a doubt is put permanently behind me.

"Faith" is the rear guard of reason, that is, it is the commitment I myself make to the Truth of Being as my primary fact. It is also my goal of living to live freely the I am that I am. For my reason to become "correct" my intuition must be "clear". Science is a standard which includes both --clear AND correct. Divine Mind speaks the language, the dialect or dialectic of my own understanding; it is recognition and acknowledgement, insight and intellect functioning in unison (harmony). I cannot make sense of Reality or Truth in any other way. So "faith" is a promise I make to myself and I myself keep. Just like "six pack abs".

When I discover that I have been had by the infomercials and realize that my closet full of fgadgets, formulas, packages, programs, recipes, mantras, and rituals will never produce "results" unless I produce them, if I am not committed to myself, The Whole, then I will not see my way clearly enough to follow it. Becoming aware as God-- as Being fully aware of Itself alone I feel the built-in Reason for reason. This Insight or Light within me enables my reason to steer my own inner tendency of "projecting". When I am into a not possible project of becoming that which I can never be, giving all my energy to making it seem so, my intuition deserts me. I may gain the world but I forfeit the Soul. Suffering tells me I cannot get "there" without all of me --imagination or reason to make sense of my experience and intuition or insight - which alone satisfies reason. Considering a bird flying, which wing can it do without?

Talking the talk, walking the walk, are no longer standards of spirituality --- flying is.

"Mind must have conscious identity to be Mind. This is the Reason for man and is the Principle by which he lives, moves, breathes. Originality, wit, humor, versatility, spontaneity, joy are characteristics of Mind. They are Mind Itself and not mere qualities. The substance of Mind is Spirit, and Spirit is Love and Love is Infinity—omnipresent perfection. “Being is infinity, freedom, harmony and boundless bliss. This is the Science and the Reason we say, “Be and by being heal the sick." --Bicknell Young

"You are radically relying on Truth when you believe only what you find within yourself as understanding. The night of dualism is far spent. We are learning to know ourselves and to demonstrate the human and divine coincidence as the individual perception of Truth. This is the reason for the writing, as well as the reading, of this book. When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears. All doctrine and dogma for the identity of Truth are constantly being outmoded by Truth unfolding form the withinness of consciousness. The evolution of consciousness does make the dogma wrong for the identity of Truth in the age in which it appeared, but makes it obsolete for the succeeding age. Consciousness or conscious (37) being is Mind—a ceaseless disclosing of Reality. This is the Reason that I am. In an earlier age Meister Eckhart said it this way: “Everything that is has the fact of its being through being and from being.” Being is ceaseless awakening to Reality. It is the discovery that nothing exits external to our being, either to gain or lose.
Mrs. Eddy was not the first to identify Mind as the ordering Principle of the Universe, original and individual. Plato regarded Mind as including the forms, the universal ideas which are the Reality (structure) of all things. He, however, considered Mind transcendental, and its ideas as ideals separate from sense phenomena. What made Mrs. Eddy’s vision unique was her recognition of the indivisibility of consciousness and her identification of Mind as the all-pervading substance or energy which constitutes existence. “One infinite God (Mind, Good) unifies men and nations constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars;" --Margaret Laird

Today -- healing is no longer the gold standard of scientific metaphysics and mysticism. Stopping wars is.

I pulled a book off my shelf called, A Brief History of the Paradox, by Roy Sorensen who is professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College. In the frontispiece were these two quotes: "There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray: one concerns the great question of the Free and the Necessary, above all the production and the origin of Evil; the other consists to the discussion of continuity and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements
thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. The first perplexes almost all the human race; the other exercises philosophers only." --Gottfried Liebniz, Theodicy

"Here and elsewhere we shall not obtain the best insight into things until we actually see them growing from the beginning." ---Aristotle, Politics

In the unfolding understanding that we are, we find ourselves confronted by a series of paradoxes. Paradoxes are riddles seducing us into attempting to solve them. The oldest recorded paradox is presented by the Greek Philosopher Anaximander and is the riddle of origin. Most popular version: "Which came first? The chicken or the egg?"
Intellectually, the problem can be solved by taking one side or the other. Chickenism or Eggism, let's start a new movement, maybe an institute. While this may seem to be a solution to the problem and ends the impasse and we proceed, it is no solution, our understanding-level recycles itself behind intellect's back and reappears "in fairer form". Now we are confronted by The old Paradox in a new form. Paradoxes can be "dissolved."
Of course, Margaret Laird's presentation is: "The human is human because it is divine and not human." We are the Paradox living our own divinity unself-consciously as another as understanding unfolds to us that we are our own divinity self-consciously living our Self.

"Understanding is the Lord that takes care of everything. Let understanding—the Truth of being—your own divinity or God-self, deal with the problem and it becomes no problem. This understanding is the Lord building your world in complete command of every situation. The all-knowing Mind is the intelligence, the Love, that disposes of the need for a problem or catalyst. The name which conditioned thinking or ignorance gives to Reality, the Good, is the Reality in finite form. The attempt through human effort to make conditions better and mankind happier, proves abortive and frustrating since the human is human because it already is divine. Treat sickness with 'the right apprehension of the truth of being' and you treat it with Love, which evaluates it as a Health experience."

"We cannot imagine what life will be like as the idea comes into clearer focus that everything seen, heard, felt is functioning Intelligence—one’s own Self-fulfillment or actualization. In all destruction, construction is the destruction, in matter, Mind is the matter; in body, Soul is the body. These paradoxes state the Absolute or Science. Since the human is human because it is divine, my divinity makes all decisions for my humanity. The CSt, therefore, is unafraid even when what he calls himself and his world is threatened with destruction. He realizes that such appearance is simply not seeing clearly and that in reality a new world of peace and plenty is forever in the making. CS lived as Science, as discernment, translates matter into Mind and error into the language of Truth. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote “Matter and Spirit are two distinct aspects of one single cosmic stuff.” The truly religious man is the man whose daily living is his religion. Everything he does, he does by being conscious identity, and therefore everything he does, he enjoys and appreciates. He does not consider that going to church, praying, or reading a holy book are any more religious in nature than going to his office, doing housework, playing tennis or enjoying the theatre." - Margaret Laird, Christian Science Re-explored.

I would revise de Chardin's statement to read: "Matter and Spirit are and are not simultaneously two distinct aspects of one single cosmic stuff." When we think "we have it" we don't and it has us.