The Tapestry of Truth
In the grand tapestry of existence, we often find ourselves tangled in the threads of our own making. We pull at the loose ends of our desires, unraveling the very fabric that holds our reality together. Yet, as Hall so eloquently reminds us, there is a greater pattern at work – a design woven by the hands of Truth itself.
Imagine, if you will, that each of us is a living, breathing thread in this cosmic tapestry. Our choices, our actions, our very thoughts are the stitches we make. Some of us create intricate patterns of beauty and wisdom, while others tangle and knot, creating chaos in their wake. But here's the miraculous thing: even in our missteps, we contribute to the overall design.
The universe, in its infinite wisdom, doesn't discard the tangled threads. Instead, it incorporates them, teaching us through our mistakes, guiding us back to the pattern we were meant to follow. This is the living nature of Truth that Hall speaks of – not a static concept, but a dynamic force that shapes and reshapes itself through our collective journey.
Consider the cell in our body. It doesn't question its purpose; it simply fulfills its role in the greater organism. Yet, we humans, with our gift of consciousness, often rebel against our part in the cosmic design. We seek to dominate rather than harmonize, to exploit rather than nurture. But as Hall points out, nature has its ways of bringing us back into alignment.
Perhaps the greatest illusion we've created is the belief in our separation – from each other, from nature, from the divine. We've built walls of ego, fortresses of individuality, forgetting that we are all expressions of the same universal Truth. It's as if we're waves in the ocean, asserting our uniqueness while forgetting we're made of the same water, destined to return to the same source.
But here's where hope shines through: every moment offers us a chance to realign with Truth. Every breath is an opportunity to weave ourselves back into harmony with the greater pattern. It doesn't require grand gestures or monumental shifts. It starts with the simple recognition of our interconnectedness, with small acts of kindness, with moments of quiet contemplation.
Imagine if we approached each interaction, each decision, with the awareness that we're contributing to this living tapestry. How would we treat the earth if we truly understood it as a living entity, not just an object to be exploited? How would we treat each other if we recognized the divine spark in every individual?
The path of Truth is not always easy. It requires us to confront our shadows, to challenge our assumptions, to step beyond the comfortable confines of our limited perspectives. But as we do so, we begin to see the world with new eyes. The very challenges that once seemed like obstacles become stepping stones on our journey of growth.
In this light, even our mistakes become sacred. They are not failures, but necessary detours that teach us invaluable lessons. The key is to approach life with the curiosity of a student, always ready to learn, always open to new understandings of Truth.
As we progress on this path, we may find, like Boethius, that Truth is not just an abstract concept, but a living presence that walks beside us. It comforts us in our darkest hours, challenges us to grow beyond our limitations, and reveals to us the beauty of existence in all its myriad forms.
In the end, the love of Truth is not about achieving some distant state of perfection. It's about fully embracing our role in the cosmic dance, recognizing that every step we take – whether graceful or clumsy – contributes to the evolution of the whole. It's about living with awareness, compassion, and wonder, knowing that we are both the weavers and the threads in this magnificent tapestry of existence.
As we move forward, let us carry with us the wisdom of Hall, the courage of Boethius, and the timeless insights of those who have walked the path of Truth before us. Let us remember that in every moment, we have the power to align ourselves with the greater harmony of the universe. And in doing so, we not only transform our own lives but contribute to the healing and evolution of all existence.
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I. Introduction: Boethius and The Consolation of Philosophy
- "Boethius, a magnificent person, came in a time in the history of Europe when the Dark Ages was a tragic ground for thinkers"
- "Before his death, he prepared a little work called 'The Consolation of Philosophy'"
II. Truth as a Living Entity
- "Truth is not a word, truth is not a doctrine, truth is not essentially a system or a school, but as all the ancients realized, truth is a living thing"
- "Truth is a conscious being and this being appeared to Boethius in the prison"
III. Ancient Perspective on Abstract Concepts
- "To the ancients and to the wise, these so-called things were actually beings"
- "The Greeks did not see the earth as a body alone. The Greeks saw the earth as a soul, as a living thing"
IV. The First Step Towards Truth
- "The first sincere, dedicated effort to live the life of truth brings truth to you and truth walks with you to the end of your days"
- "Buddha brings us the same point when he says that the journey to truth begins with a single step"
V. The Living Universe
- "Space is alive. Everything that exists is alive"
- "Everything is living and growing. And when the individual interferes with growth, he commits probably the most terrible of all sins"
VI. Natural Law and Consequences
- "Nature will never permit evil to survive. It will never permit the wrong to win"
- "Punishment is merely an effect, the cause of which is wrong. As long as that effect is wrong, its consequences must be wrong"
VII. Personal Growth and Societal Change
- "We cannot improve the world if we can't even save our own necks. We can't bring peace in the world if we can't have it in our own family"
- "The individual who has not transcended his own selfishness is a very poor candidate for reforming the world"
VIII. The Love of Truth
- "The truth we need is the inner truth of the love of truth, of the love of God"
- "There is no way of solving the problem unless we come and become aware of a strange and wonderful beauty as Boethius saw it in his prison cell, a radiant being"
IX. Truth as Victory
- "It is the victory, the inevitable victory of good over evil. It is the complete victory of faith over fear. It is a complete victory of virtue over vice"
- "Nothing can have victory over the inevitable victory of reality over illusion"
X. Personal Responsibility and Growth
- "Each human being is born at the potential of the perfection of truth within himself"
- "This personal growth he can start where he is. He doesn't have to worry about anything"
XI. Conclusion: The Reward of Serving Truth
- "You have served God all your life. You have been a good person and you are not going to be deserted in your gray hands"
- "The good you have done to others comes back as a radiant being to lead you to the peace and security that you desire"
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In the fifth century of the Christian era, a philosopher arose who has been remembered as the last one whom Plato might have welcomed into his school. Boethius, a magnificent person, came in a time in the history of Europe when the Dark Ages was a tragic ground for thinkers and most of those who had really important things to say perished. Boethius was one of them.
He was sentenced to death, remained for years in a lonely prison, and was finally executed. Before his death, he prepared a little work called "The Consolation of Philosophy" and this has become one of the great classics of the world, for it reveals things about philosophy and wisdom that I find in no other writing either contemporary or later. Actually, we must therefore bear in mind that Boethius was a very devout scholar, a person of great personal integrity, who devoted most of his life to the search for truth and every little fragment of truth he found he served and tried to bring it to the attention of other people.
Therefore, we may say definitely that he lived in love of truth and he died in this consummation that his love had not been in vain. So we start with this problem by introducing a little part of the story of Boethius. It seems that in this lonely stone prison where he remained for some time before his execution, he was alone with his thoughts. He had nothing to help him or to guide him but his own inner life. He knew perfectly well that he would never be released. It was not day to day just when, but we knew that his death was inevitable.
So with these considerations, he had nothing to fall back on but his own inner life and realizing this and determined to live according to it, he settled down quietly to the contemplation of truth. And one night while he was contemplating as best he could in that stone cell the wonders of life and the wonders of the universe, a great light came into his prison and in that light appeared a magnificent figure of a woman, robed like Hypatia of Alexandria, radiant, hallowed, everything stupendous.
And she came up to him and she said, "I am the one you have served. Now you're in need, I will serve you." And she explained to him very definitely that all he had learned to help other people had created for himself a debt which truth owed him and that as long as he remained in the material world, truth would lead him, guide him, and give him the intelligence and the wisdom and the love to face the things he had dreamed of and believed.
As a result of that, his essay on the consolations of philosophy has become a classic. It was in this realization of the return of the good deed to the one who does it that Boethius became aware of something, namely that truth is not a word, truth is not a doctrine, truth is not essentially a system or a school, but as all the ancients realized, truth is a living thing. It is a creature itself. It is something that has its own being. It has its own life and its own death, its own beginnings and its own ends in an infinitude beyond our comprehension. But truth is a conscious being and this being appeared to Boethius in the prison.
And from this truth, he learned to live from day to day. He gained then the answers to all the questions he had asked. He gained knowledge of the distant places and the high places and the low places. He learned all the mysteries of space and time. He suddenly realized that truth was a great teacher, the one thing in life that knew the truth alone could lead man to perfection, and this perfection he had to earn by giving his own life to truth.
Therefore, we are able to follow some of the thinking of the ancients concerning the mysteries of life. We think of things today merely as objects. We think of hope as some kind of a word representing an emotion. We think of wisdom merely as mental penetration. We think of love as merely a personal emotion of our own shared by others, but still merely an emotion. But to the ancients and to the wise, these so-called things were actually beings.
Love was a reality. It was a creature. It was not merely a relationship. And from all the ancient and classical writings, we find that the Greeks, the Egyptians, and Persians, and nearly all foreign peoples have personified their virtues. When they think of strength, they think of a certain power. When they think of wisdom, they think of a person who is wise. And so the ancients created gods for every emotion, every thought, every attitude of the human mind.
Therefore, we have Jupiter ruling over one thing, we have Saturn ruling over something else. To us, these things are meaningless. We have a very different code. But to the ancient people with their mystical opportunities, these different things were realities. Hope was a being, not a thing. Hope was something that grew like a child in its mother's womb. Hope was a great moment of spending and veneration, like the individual of taking holy orders. All these things were part of a being and all great good things are beings. They are personifications or embodiments of principles, and they appear to us as a kind of language of symbolism, a language which enables us to share in the wisdom which they impart.
So Boethius in himself saw in the vision of the power of enlightened love the fulfillment of a dream, the dream of the ages. He was told by this radiant vision that had been that she had been with him from the beginning. The moment he dedicated his life to truth, she was with him. She would be with him to the end of his days and at the same time she would be with all others under the same conditions because no one walks through life entirely alone.
And those who have given themselves to unselfish service to others walk constantly with a radiant presence beside them, something that is going to guard them and protect them because they have deserved it, because they have earned the peace of inner life. They will have it regardless of what happens in the outer world. This was a great consolation to Boethius. It gave him the courage and strength to know that once one dedicates themselves to the service of truth, they will never again be alone. They will be with something, someone, somewhere who is ever and always waiting to help, waiting to use this truth that they have discovered in order to save them further punishment, further suffering, or sorrow.
So the wisdom that Boethius had assembled to teach others was now taught to him. It was shown to him conclusively that his dreams had not been fables, that his ideals had not been vacuums created by optimism or pessimism, that in reality truth is alive and walks with those who serve it. Regardless of how we view the matter, it is a beautiful thought, a very kindly thought, and a thought that gave consolation to this lonely prisoner doomed to die because he had tried to help.
Actually, therefore, before his death, truth took Boethius through all the worlds of space, through the great realms beyond where he could not go himself. Truth showed him how right he had been in certain guesses and certain suggestions. Truth also told him that she had helped him to form these ideas within his own consciousness, that as long as he served her, she would stay with him and he would never be alone again.
Suppose Boethius, when the time came, passed on without fear or doubt and his little book has brought comfort and insight to millions of people in a world that he never could live to know about or understand. This brings us very definitely to the concept that we had for the discussion of the morning, namely truth as love, that truth is a being, a power, a quality. Truth is the most dramatic, dynamic way that leads to reality. But what is truth to us? How do we understand truth?
Well, probably we understand it very much as Boethius understood it. We understand it by a little effort to grow. We try to be a little better today than we were yesterday, and we'll continue to grow a little every day. But the first step that we take toward reality brings us this contact, this something that walks with us the rest of the way. The first sincere, dedicated effort to live the life of truth brings truth to you and truth walks with you to the end of your days.
This was the idea of the Pythagoreans and the Platonists. It was the result of the individual earning dedication for his own dedication. When we do a definite good thing, when we serve those in need, when we improve the nature of our own contemplations, we have made an important connection in life and once this connection is made, it cannot die. Once we become aware, once we have given birth out of our own souls to the soul of truth, that soul will live on. It will go with us maybe age after age. We may backslide and forget and lose and transgress, but once we have made a sincere effort to try, we have taken the first step to eternity. We have taken the first move in the direction of everlasting peace.
And therefore, it was quite proper for these ancients to think of love as the faithful friend, something that could carry on beyond all of the powers of the mind. The mind can be deceived, the body can be punished, but the truth in the soul goes on. Nothing can stop it once it has started. And the first good deed dedicated unselfishly is the beginning of the long road that leads to regeneration.
Buddha brings us the same point when he says that the journey to truth begins with a single step. The single step in the Greek system was the first absolutely unselfish dedicated effort to serve, the one moment in life when we outstrip ourselves, when we are bigger than ourselves and place a common good above our personal advantage. As long as we are selfish, truth remains alone for us and weeps.
The moment we are selfish in our thinking or in our actions or in our codes of life, we cut ourselves off from the eternal love which is saved for us in the wonders and mysteries of the mystic life. So if there is a certain period we do make this effort, it becomes as Buddha pointed out. After the first step, the second step is a little easier. But of course, all through the first steps and the second and the third, there is the pressure of outside forces. We are constantly under tension and stress and temptation. But as for the moment we begin the journey, there is something there standing with us.
When the good deed stands alone, as far as we can tell, it is standing actually in the presence of the principle of good in space. There is only one principle of good. It's not a principle of this being right or that being wrong. It is a simple actual adjustment within ourselves. It requires no intellectualism. It requires no vast store of knowledge or insights. It, but these may contribute to it, but it is a misstep from the selfish to the unselfish, from the dark into the light. And once man, the individual, makes this dedication, he is pressed gradually forward, so one step at a time, to the fullness that he seeks to possess in the fullness of his own maturity.
So in the story of love as truth that we have today, we have the concept of a standard of virtue, a standard of integrity that transcends anything that we know in our ordinary material relationships. I think model of the Greeks were very close to the fact when they began to personalize all of the principles and ideal forces of life. The Greeks did not see the earth as a body alone. The Greeks saw the earth as a soul, as a living thing. They did not see the sky as merely a great mass of stars. They saw it as a great mother brooding over the world. The stars in themselves were not just sparks of light or some kind of chemical explosions in space. The stars were beings looking down upon the world. Everything in the world was alive. Everything in the world was conscious.
We did not know that consciousness, but by certain growth, by certain development, we gradually reduce the distance between personal understanding and this larger value of life. Now much of this is symbolic, no question about it, but it is something that we have to give some thought to.
I remember a story that Ernest Thompson Seton told me about a meeting of the Boy Scout movement in Canada one year before he was still alive, and he was there and the young people from all over the area of United States and Canada were gathered in a large hotel where the meetings were to be held. And a little American boy and a little American Indian boy were in the same room together looking out of the window and it was snowing. And the little Indian boy said, "Ah, this is the great grandfather. This is the old one who sits at the North Pole and he smokes all winter and every time he empties his pipe and throws out the ashes, it's a snowstorm. All these sail you see of the ashes of grandfather's pipe."
A little American boy looked at him for a morning and he thought he was insane or something and said, "Oh, don't be silly. That's nothing but snow." The little Indian boy never did get the idea that snow is anything except the ashes of grandfather's pipe. And this is true in almost all ancient beliefs. All Indian peoples had beings at the root of life. All Chinese people had beings. Hindus had beings. Greeks had beings.
It is only in our modern scientific world that we transform these beings into scientific formulas of numbers and letters and try to bestow upon these formulas the interpretation of the mysteries of life. You cannot follow the scientific method we use today to find the secrets of anything except the most transcendent material objectives.
Actually, the answers to all the riddles of knowledge, the source of energies, the source of life, of time, of light and darkness, of good and evil are all formulas of vibratory rates, and they are all alive. Everything has some kind of life in it. It is in the stone. It is in the star. They are tied together by a tremendous unity.
So Boethius went out with the vision of the wonderful lady of light to gaze at the content and contemplate the space around him. He saw it filled with life, not with dead atmosphere, not with just earth and air, but filled with living things, beautiful things, wonderful things that surrounding man and all of his knowledge and thoughts and his ignorance also is a world of living things that he can't even see, as world he doesn't even believe in, but a world which affects him every day, a world which moves in upon his moods, upon his attitudes, a world that punishes him when he is selfish, a world that praises him when he is right. And he will recognize that in a mysterious way there are forces in that world which will guide him to his proper destiny if he will keep the rules.
Each individual must live the life if he would know the doctrine. And when he does so, he realizes that the life that he is going to contact is not simply energy. It is not just a thought floating around. It isn't even a mentation in the mind of God. When he keeps the rules, space is with him, time is with him, eternity is with him. Little by little, the purpose for himself is fulfilled and the time will come when he likewise will be a unit of conscious energy in the great fields of universal life.
So we all have not only this type of thing, but we also have to look around us to see what's happening. We look around and we see today the problem of air pollution. With that air pollution, thousands, millions of things die. This air pollution is against the rules. Therefore, nature will never support it and nature will continue to punish it until it corrects its own mistake. Nature will never permit evil to survive. It will never permit the wrong to win. There will be moments of apparent victory, but they will be followed by years and centuries of terrible defects and disasters.
Everything that we have around us lives in a sea of truth, lives in a vast organism that is based upon infinite wisdom and infinite love. These are the ruling powers. The universe is not neutral. It is not simply space. It is not things moving floating around in the vacuum. It is not formulas that can be put into letters and numbers on a scientific blackboard. Space is alive. Everything that exists is alive. And while we are growing on one level, somewhere else another thing is growing. While we are adding to the wisdom of our own mind, something else is enriching every cell in our bodies.
Everything is living and growing. And when the individual interferes with growth, he commits probably the most terrible of all sins. He, when he tries to block growth or becomes indifferent to it or denies it, he, that in that moment, he places himself in the position of being punished. Now punishment is not going to be eternal damnation. Punishment is not going to be something which is irreparable. But patience and virtue must take the place before punishment is completed. Punishment is merely an effect, the cause of which is wrong. As long as that effect is wrong, its consequences must be wrong.
And what are the basic rules of this mysterious being, this infinite good one whom we all worship under one form or another, or most people recognize under the general term of God? What is the law of this being? The law of this being is love. The law of this being is that in all matters, an infinite tenderness guides erring life back to its source and forward to its perfection. These things the ancients recognized. We don't recognize them very much anymore.
But when something goes wrong and a great disaster occurs, there's a reason. A disaster is never something that is an accident. And no disaster is such that it is irreparable damage. There is nothing in life that is real that can be destroyed. The lowest, most imperfect of all entities must have its growth, must have its place, and must have its chance to win. And it is the rule of nature under God that all things shall win. There is no loss. There can never be. There is only delay. There is only a moment of pause in what might otherwise be a great and glorious mission.
So Boethius went forward and went out and paid to the state the debt which it had created. But he no longer feared like the state. He no longer feared the world, but he knew that the world itself was good and these little tyrants who arise live for a day and disappear. And in the great passage of things, each of us in our own way must discover our own eternity. Each of us must realize for himself the eternality of the scheme and plan to which he belongs. We must begin to realize that we were not born when we come here. We do not dieCertainly. Here's the continuation of the formatted lecture:
We must begin to realize that we were not born when we come here. We do not die when we go. Everything in life goes on in life. There is no dead spot anywhere in space. Everything is filled with life growing, unfolding, and as we look out upon it we can see as in a meadow the vast flowering and the vast shooting of a great vegetation. And over it rules Flora, the goddess, the goddess of the harvest, the goddess of the flowers, the goddess of the herbs. She represents the very principle of the values and powers which the plant kingdom embody. In other words, the plant kingdom is a being growing up. It is not a place. It is not a series of wild seeds that we know nothing about or the plants that die and never come back. The plant kingdom is an entity, a living thing. It has its comings and its goings, but its eternity is never questioned. It will go on and if it is abused and perverted and corrupted, it will remain to correct these conditions until they are corrected. And anything which consciously and intentionally destroys these growths or tries to frustrate them will find that his own ignorance becomes a terror to him.
The individual who tries to kill something is an individual who will then become frightened that he himself will die. And he was wrong when he thought he killed. He was wrong when he thinks he will die. All things are part of a plan so much bigger than we are that we can't even contemplate them. That this greater reality is in a sense our only security. It is the one thing that cannot fail.
Public politics may rise and fall. They are also entities and we find that someone talks about the dangers of the capitalistic system. The capitalistic system is an entity. The Greeks and Romans knew it under the name of Pluto, the god of wealth. And the god of wealth is also a divine being. And the god of wealth has to grow and outgrow its own possession of wealth by outgrowing it through all the creatures that it is fashioned. Therefore, wherever wealth is, it must be outgrowing itself. It must be changing into something better because it is alive. It has a continuity of consciousness and it can never rest until wealth ceases to be a danger to any living thing. Everything is growing towards its own perfection and its own immortality.
As we go a little further into this rather complicated situation, we realize that all over this earth there are religions, many different faiths, many different beliefs. So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind. But religion finally is one being, and that one being is what nations of the world have called God. Religion is the life blood of God. It is part of this tremendous power whose body nature is and God the soul.
So this is a being that we deal with. Religions are evolving. People are evolving. Institutions are evolving. Everything that is born grows, and when its maximum growth has been achieved, it slowly disappears to give rise to a new embodiment of itself in something higher and better. We are desperately concerned today about the future of our world and from a standpoint of our physical existence we are well justified. But let us also remember that as the Greeks realize, our world is alive. Our world is a great being crawling through space, passing through the solstices and the equinoxes and passing through the arches and ways of heaven. Our earth is alive. This again we have forgotten.
Therefore, when we exploit it as we do, we forget the troubles that we cause for ourselves. Our earth is a very benevolent mother and as a mother earth it is worshiped and recognized by most of the faiths and religions of mankind. This earth is a wonderful and gentle thing, but when we begin to exploit this, we recognize that we are doing an evil. We are trying desperately to corrupt something that cannot ultimately be corrupted. This kindly mother becomes the stern parent when we abuse the powers which are given to us. These powers must punish us because in the final end, if you do not punish when it is necessary, the end of the ultimate victory cannot be attained.
So we have an earth now that is worthy of our consideration, not simply because it is a heap of dirt, not because it is filled with earth or covered with plant life. An earth that is alive as a being, an earth which is worthy of our love, worthy of our tender support and constantly needing our agreement with its own laws. Unless we keep the rules of earth, earth cannot keep our rules. If we do not give opportunity to all the different forms of life that exist here, these forms of life become shadows and become negative factors endangering our survival.
Yet there in nature there is not one single force that is angry. Nature has never known anger. That is something that the human being has developed. As a kind and loving mother, we would chastise the child but never to destroy it, only to help it to attain to its own maturity. So when something is wayward, we set up problems to bring it back again into patterns. And to do that, the world was given all forms of educational help. We were given the wonders of nature and the final textbook which, as Lord Bacon pointed out, is written in the stars and in the elements and in the earth.
Paracelsus also tells us that there are three great books from which man can learn the mysteries of life. The first is the book of God, the second is the book of nature, and the third is the book of the human soul. All these things are the source of instruction, but we have to accept it. Now if we do not accept it, it doesn't mean that a great tyrant is going to come and attack and destroy us. We are not going to be downed by evil. We are going to be corrected as the only way of restoring good. There is no loss. There is no problem of things being destroyed. There is only the problem of the individual being tested according to the degree of enlightenment which he has attained.
Nature does not expect imperfect creatures to become perfect in the night. He does not expect all the mistaken laws and rules of existence to be corrected in a single day. But nature demands that individuals every day keep the best rules that they know, that they live according to the convictions that are the best for them and which they have gained over experience and time. In the course of living, every individual has experiences. These experiences either can be developed into a new level of personal development or they can be resented and can be discarded as evil simply because they fail to gratify us.
But there is in nature no evil force. There is in nature no forgetting of good. All things are fulfilled by the very vibrations by which they call for or cause. Everything flows into everything else in a perfect rhythm of purpose. Therefore, there is never a moment in which we are not given the opportunity to grow. That we are forgiven for our mistakes if we did not know better, or is there a moment when we cannot correct these mistakes and go on to something higher and more noble.
It is a great school, so to say, but the teachers are alive. They're not books. They are the very living essences of nature itself. They are part of the eternal process which provides nature, provides the human being with the mind and the heart and then bestows upon the mind and the heart the secrets of survival. Therefore, this is all part of the idea of the fact of the love of truth, the love of the way it really is, the way which we can see if we are able to climb out of the slough of our own despond, if we can rise out of the ignorance with which we have locked ourselves. We can begin to see over the edge the thing which was beyond. And when we do that, we will grow a little and as we grow a little, the problems will become less.
So Boethius went forth to die perfectly content, realizing that he lived in a world which not only he had helped to create and improve, but would continue to serve him, love him, and care for him until he ultimately attained perfection. Everything that tries is rewarded for trying. Why and how? Well, if no one tries, nothing tries unless it has a vision of something better. It may not know how to attain that something better, but if it is willing to try, it means it grasps the possibility of improvement.
The moment the individual grasps at this moment of realization that improvement is possible, he begins to grow. Now he's been the first time he has this realization. He looks around, he says to himself, "Yes, I think I'll be a little better than I was. I'm going to correct some of my faults." So he goes out and the first day he's out, he had a little trouble with something and he gets irritated. Then a little later something else comes along and he's a little more irritated. And gradually this one moment of enlightenment fades out and he's back again in all his problems and all his miseries.
So this may happen many times. There are false starts, well-intended but not supported by sufficient energy, sufficient libido to survive and amount to anything. But ultimately, the effort to grow will produce a fair start. Most of the starts that we have in modern times have arisen within religion. While there are many backsliding and falls in religion today, there is also a great effort to grow spiritually a little. And dedication to religion, dedication to the service of our brother man, dedication to love of God, dedication to the recognition of the great power of redemption in every religion and faith of mankind.
When we begin to get this feeling, pretty soon it reaches a point where it doesn't go away entirely. Then we do something very foolish and we are sorry. We are actually embarrassed to realize that we couldn't do better than that. Well, this embarrassment is beginning of a gradual growth in which ultimately we are able to make such advancements as our general condition will permit. We are able to be a little less angry because we've now discovered a way to pacify these situations. We will be a little less selfish because we have begun to realize the needs of others. We will become a little more content when we realize the blessings that we already have.
And little by little, this grows until it creates an atmosphere of belonging to a growing world, that somewhere in the invisible planes of things are the powers that move all things to the fulfillment of their natural destinies. Little by little then we get to be little better people.
Now there comes a time when we have to make a decision or two because most people are not ready to make a major step away from the familiar. But they are able to do something better. They have been able to straighten out a broken home. They have been able to solve a family feud. They have been able to visualize a better use of what they have. All these things help. And little by little, the individual grows. And the moment he has made a few growths like this, when he has been able to forgive an enemy honestly and completely, when he has begun to be able to prevent an extravagance which he knows he should not have, when he is able to live in his own life without neglecting his children, all these things come little by little until he gradually tries to put his own life in order.
The moment he makes this effort, the moment he tries to put his own life into a better social, psychological condition, in that moment, truth comes to live with him. The radiant being takes up its abode in him and will be with him from then on until he makes the ultimate adjustment. It will take him through tragedy without breaking his spirit. He will go through hardships but will not recognize them as evil. He will do all kinds of things because within himself there is a great dawning coming. There is a moment of realization of something better, something nobler, and he sees that the things he has objected to and the things he has rejected, these things were false to begin with, but he didn't realize it.
For when the time comes, he will discover that this truth principle within himself becomes the final censorship. Now this censorship will never be excessive. It will never demand more of any individual than he is capable of getting. It does not expect perfection out of the individual in this great universe in which perfection is beyond the guess and beyond the thoughts of stars. But it does mean that little by little, he will begin to organize his own material pattern.
Now as not only this is going to result in the beginning of genuine worship in which religion becomes a significant fact, but it will be a very quiet moderate religion with no pressures, no compromises, no criticisms, no conflicts. It will be a gentle faith, recognizing that the more of the internal comes out, the better the external will be.
Now in a moment like this, we'll come across another entity worth mentioning. There is another wonderful being that we all have intimate contact with and which most people do not understand, recognize, or serve adequately. This other wonderful being is our own body. We have a body over which we rule as lord and master, and it can be that this body becomes a slave. It is not given proper attention. It is misused. It is victimized. It is allowed to suffer merely to the gratification of the mind that dwells within it.
Now truth will never permit the misuse of energy. Therefore, this body which is our house for a time has laws and rules that must be kept. And furthermore, it is alive. We know the body is alive. Every cell is alive. Every part of it is a life. And yet very few people have ever tried to realize how the human body accumulates around a degree of unfoldment which we call the personality.
Anyway, this body is our own particular living sheath, our completely personal organism. It is the first empire over which we can have dominion. It is the first nation we can govern. It is the first form of leadership that we are able to bestow beyond the leadership of our own minds. And the law would be very simple that we have no right to try to lead or conquer others until we have conquered the flesh. We must accomplish in ourselves the leadership that we expect to bestow upon others. If we want to see a better world, we must begin with the self. And in very many cases, the beginning of a better world is a healthy body.
The individual must go out of all these different things, fulfilling the law, meeting the responsibilities, beginning and ending according to a power and wisdom greater than our own. But in all things, in patience and acceptance, keep the rules and learn the lessons of the day.
Now each embodiment we have, according to Plato, is a day. It is a day in our own growth. It is the day we go to school to learn something. Now we look around us today and we realize that as a school, our daily life is not much of a success. We do not have a discipline to take care of us through these years of growth by which we must finally reach our own adult physical years.
So nature depends upon this problem and gives a certain ultimatum to face it with. Nature gives us the rules, and when we do not keep the rules, nature gives us the example of the broken rule. And one of the most beautiful and wonderful displays we have today is this great tapestry of broken rules. Now everyone is worried about these broken rules because they are a danger to us, but we have not worried enough yet to correct it. We are still trying to play hooky in the school of life. We are still convinced that we are here to have fun, to have wealth, to have influence, to become famous. And as long as we do that, the great genius of truth will not be with us.
When any ambition is false, it is not sanctified and it is not fulfilled by the laws of life. Whenever we have an ambition that is contrary to good, that ambition will ultimately destroy us. Whenever we forget our relationship with other living things, when we forget the brotherhood of life, if we forget the parenthood of life in these factors, we begin to sound out our own troubles.
This is being very clearly indicated today because Boethius is not here to express it. Maybe he is, but he was not able to live then to continue into the change that followed the Middle Ages. But we know that the rules of life that we have broken have put us exactly where we are now.
Now the question still remains: how does it do this and why? Why is it that when we support the wrong thing we get into trouble? That is because there is a rule back of it that tells us what the right thing is, and that rule is immutable. If honesty is a universal law decreed in the infinite pattern of things, no individual human dishonesty can survive.
Now by saying survive, it doesn't mean that individual or personality will perish, but it means that the goal or the attitude will have to change. There is no possible way in which evil can achieve rulership over the world. The battle for the struggle for this control grows more violent every day. The greater the ambitions of the individual, the more terrible his mistakes will be. The more desperately he tries to escape the consequences of his own conduct, the more desperately those consequences will close in around him. He cannot escape them because there is something in life that says he can't escape them.
And the symbol of that something in ancient times was the great mother of mysteries, the great mother of the world. For all physical creatures are under one motherhood, the motherhood of the mysteries, the motherhood of the virgin of the world, the one, the motherhood of the mother who remains a virgin forever and bears children unto the eternity of things. All these wonders and mysteries are very simple, but the great mother of the earth is the great mother of the mysteries, is nature itself, not as a blind force run by physical means and few chemical symbols to tell what it is, but a living vital force that dreams, thinks, hopes, prays, does everything necessary to bring home the wayward children.
That something which knows that the problem must be solved, that they can never be allowed for evil to survive, that never can ignorance prevail, never can violence destroy peace. And in the process of doing this, nature finds the individual unfortunately lacks the internal resources to make the proper decisions. He cannot say to himself, "I have told a lie and therefore I must correct it." The individual that tells the lie thinks he gets away with it, and then a consequence sets in that hurts him. And this consequence that sets in is the only way that he can learn not to lie.
He cannot be expected at this time to come to the moral solution all by himself. If he does come to that solution, it is because he is already on the road that leads to light. He is on the way to something better. But for most persons, responsibilities must be evaded. They must be avoided in every way possible because they interfere with the smooth passing of a useless life. But that is the problem. There can be no smooth passing of ignorance. There can never be a success built upon stupidity. There can never be a peace built upon violence. They can never be a wisdom based upon a principle of ignorance. All these things have to be worked out in their own nature.
Therefore, we are all concerned every day with the world around us. But the great mother of mysteries is with us. She is brooding over us now just as she always has. She is the one that is constantly waiting to bring the wayward children back again to the rules and she will never stop until they come back. No one will ever be permitted to be a truant. Actually, the truant will hate punishment. The dope addict will hate to be prevented from gaining his justification or his phase from the narcotics. He will try everything he can and will hate the laws that prevent him from doing what he pleases. But above the laws that will make us do what we please, there is a great law that tells us we must do that which is right. And in this way we gradually discover that there is a universe of intelligence, a universe of wisdom, a universe of good, a universe dedicated to the service of eternal truth and really dwelling forever in the presence of the divine being.
Therefore, if we go along a little as Boethius did, we may come to the gate that leads out from this life into something else. But when we go through, we will make the discovery that we have not been cast again into shadows, but that the light in ourselves, if it is there, will never leave us. And no matter what happens from that time on, truth will prevail in us and that means that peace will take over.
Now if truth prevails in the average person, let's take an example, a very concrete one of just how it operates. Supposing truth in the patient in consideration is a problem of maintaining the health of the physical body. This is something that is very significant today. A physical body in a sense is our child. Each person has a body that is a kind of psychological infant with which he has been endowed and we must train this body to serve him or else he must relinquish his leadership and let the body take over. If the body takes over, he's in trouble. But he sounds, he doesn't know he's in trouble because if the body is gratified, the rest of him goes to sleep. But the real fact of the matter is the body has to be brought into harmony. It has to be disciplined.
Now when the body is brought into discipline, it is said to be healthy. When the soul is brought into discipline, it will be said to be healthy. When the infinite in man is brought into discipline, then the universal being is healthy. Every compromise that destroys the leadership of the superior over the inferior is dangerous and must be carefully avoided.
So we know from every experience of living that we can and do have the power to change things, to make them what they should be, to accomplish that which is necessary for the common good and for our own good. But before we settle down to the creature processes of changing the world, which we're all much interested in at the moment, we should give a little thought to changing ourselves. Because actually we find this world is very hard to change and we become more and more disillusioned as we see nation after nation breaking the peace, country after country exploiting other countries, and it looks very terrible.
But if we look down from the heights of those things into private relationships, we find peace people after groups out to destroy each other. We find exploitation. We find the effort to dishonorably accumulate at the expense of others. We find the broken home and the broken heart and the broken body. So that we know that the great change that is necessary, we have not even been able to make it ourselves.
Little by little however, we have an answer to this. As their health problem goes along, we suddenly learn that there are ways that health can be improved. But improving the health therefore mainly always a discipline. We have to do some things differently. We have to sacrifice some excess in order to achieve moderation. We have to do something right in order to not nullify that which is wrong. So we discover that the only true discipline can we bring ourselves back into harmony. And in the moment we come back into harmony, the mysterious power of nutrition, which is another being, another radiant character, that nutrition can take over and do properly for us.
All the gods of antiquity must manifest through discipline. The bodies we think of wisdom, it's only possible through a disciplined personality. Wisdom in the keeping of the foolish one is folly. We know that there is only one way to achieve courage and that is to be dedicated to a cause worthy of courage. If we try to use courage to defend negative things, we rehearse some more. Everything is there to challenge, but nothing is there to hurt for the reason of destroying us. It is because it is the only way to prevent us from destroying ourselves.
Now if we look around us in society today, we see the problem that is coming everywhere at this time. We see the problems of space, of housing, of food, of health. All these things we see very definitely. We realize that something has to be done about them. So we start trying to plant trees. We try to find ways to purify water. We try to find ways to cleanse the earth of the pollutions and problems that we set it. We find to try to find ways to control a population, prevent the destruction of natural resources.
Let us for a moment turn all these things back into ourselves and realize the reason that we can't solve the problem on the outside is because we haven't solved it on the inside. We haven't made the contact which make it possible. When Boethius was given the presence and vision of the saintly being that came to serve him in his sorrow, he gave us just an account of a wonderful discipline, a wonderful courage against circumstances.
So if we want to do any of these things on the outside, something must come to us on the inside. We cannot improve the world if we can't even save our own necks. We can't bring peace in the world if we can't have it in our own family. And how can we declare the ambitions are false when we can't stop using narcotics for our own pleasure? All these things come back as Plato tells us, and as the whole philosophy tells us, is all of these great changes can only come when the human being arises to meet them.
The humanity is an entity, one human being. This human being is made up of now pretty close to six billion separate human beings. They are like the cells in a human body. They are part of one constitution. Over this one being is a being as a unit. Humanity as one. This we find in the great mount of the Zohar in Kabbalism. We find this one great being, and this great being's health and everything depends entirely upon the use that is made of the resources which comprise this great figure.
We have to use these resources correctly. We have to solve the problem. If we wish to have peace, we must make one humanity. If we do not wish to be divided, now if we continue to wish to be divided, we not only have the problems of society but we have the problems of ourselves. The individual who has not transcended his own selfishness is a very poor candidate for reforming the world. It is necessary for each person to recognize that he must make a personal contribution to the integrities of things. He must become aware of truth. He must become aware of what truth means.
Not that it's a formula to write out and recite. Not that it is something to be listened to in church. Not as that is supposed to be in some scholarly textbook for the advancement of science. These are not the things. The truth we need is the inner truth of the love of truth, of the love of God, of as truth deity recognized in the manifested form of the infinite parent also always solicits us for the good of its children.
We must think of the faiths of men as being the gateways to conduct. We must think also of all the dreams and hopes of the ages and realize that they cannot be fulfilled until the individual loves truth better than he loves himself. There is no way of solving the problem unless we come and become aware of a strange and wonderful beauty as Boethius saw it in his prison cell, a radiant being. We can call it peace. We can call it wisdom. We can call it love. We can call it whatever we want to call it. But it is a radiant power that blesses dedication, that rewards definite effort to perfect and to fulfill. It is something that can take over the life of the individual when he is no longer willing to dedicate that life to the fulfillment of these private ambitions.
So with all these points, there is this wonderful opportunity that comes in which Greece has noted and which is the love of truth. Now love is a very careful word. Love to the average individual is a very physical word. Life and love to the theologian is an emotional experience. Life and love to the philosopher is an intellectual experience. But beyond this is the simple direct fact of the love of truth, a love it does not require rationalization. It does not require scientific proof. Does not require anything but the evident fact that if we love peace, we will serve it. And if we serve peace, we will have peace. That if we serve in love truth, we will dedicate ourselves to truth. We will correct the curriculums of our schools. We will add knowledge to the courses necessary to instruct the young. And we will put ideas and principles ahead of profit and private enterprise.
These things are the transformation of the love of truth as we know it today to the love of truth as it must be, a dedication to the fulfillment of the works of truth. Now these works of truth are not simply strange things floating around in space somewhere because truth is, as Boethius has found out, is a kind of being. It is something that lives but never dies. It is born but never ceases. In other words, it is almost actually another name for the human soul. But whatever we call it, it is the victory, the inevitable victory of good over evil. It is the complete victory of faith over fear. It is a complete victory of virtue over vice.
And it is achieved because it is potentially possible to the individual and each human being is born at the potential of the perfection of truth within himself. There is nothing that can prevent the individual from attaining truth except his own reluctance to improve his ways. Now it's possible for him to realize that some of the truths that he must ultimately know are now beyond him. He's not going to be able to be perfect at the moment. He's not going to be able to be perfect as his father in heaven is perfect. But he is going to be able to move forward step by step in a dedicated search for reality.
The moment he starts these steps, the moment he begins to take an effort to direct and vitalize his own integrity, the journey towards the reality begins. And in that moment, the shining being of truth takes his hands and will lead him to eternity. And nothing can interrupt it. Nothing can prevent it. Nothing can have victory over the inevitable victory of reality over illusion.
We have lived for a long time in illusion and some of this illusion we call learned knowledge. We think of science as very wise. We think that science is solving all of everything. We think that Einstein was incredible when he found the formula for the atomic vision. These are not the truths we need. These are not truths at all. They are struggling with the misuse of universal potentials. The atom, the still, all these things are each of them a unit. Each is a truth in itself and it must be treated as one. It must be recognized and if we wish to advance things, we must work together to make these various parts work together well in us.
If we can make the cells of our own body cooperate, we have health. If we can make the various forms of knowledge to cooperate, we will have peace in the world. These things are part of our destiny. These things were well known to Plato and Pythagoras. They were well known to the foreign and eastern nations and everyone has realized that it is impossible to solve our present problem unless the individual himself moves from a theoretical standpoint since he says simply about talking about how things should be done to the dynamic experience of personal growth.
And this personal growth he can start where he is. He doesn't have to worry about anything. What is his problem at the moment? Well, maybe it's a need of a job or perhaps it is domestic difficulty. Perhaps it is a way with child. We do not know what that is, but if whatever it is, if at this time he has not found a footing in a pattern for his own permanent growth, that problem which he faces today must become that footing or one of its equivalent. It must be something done by the individual himself to prove a sincere dedication to advancing the cause of common good.
Once he makes one statement, the seed is planted. And once the seed is planted, it will never die. It believes one good deed leads to others. One bit of wisdom leads to greater wisdom. One constant concept of the divine love of the god for man is fulfilled in the divine love of man for god. These things are all part of it, a wonderful mystery, truth and a mystery, love and wisdom in a mystery. All these things we have to face as coming to us in the course of years.
So we can wait, wait in our own way for the radiant woman who comes to the prison cell and says, "You have served God all your life. You have been a good person and you are not going to be deserted in your gray hands. The good you have done to others comes back as a radiant being to lead you to the peace and security that you desire." Under those conditions, things will get done in a reasonable length of time.
