The Greatest Works of Joseph Benner. Joseph Benner
mist was only the effect of the Light of Truth being invisible to your human mind, whose intellect, like an imperfect lens, only befogged and twisted everything and made it appear as Real, keeping your consciousness continually busied with these myriad illusions of your Dream World.
Now the intellect is a creature of and wholly controlled by Desire, and is not, as many suppose, a faculty of the Soul. In other words, this mist then was the clouded lens of your human intellect, which, because controlled by Desire, falsely portrayed and interpreted to your consciousness every image, idea and impulse I inspired from within or attracted from without, during the process of My awakening your consciousness to a recognition of My Idea within ever urging for outer expression.
All this I did purposely, however, through the agency of Desire, in order to lead you consciously into the heart of Earth conditions.
While this false vision, inspired by Desire, caused many missteps and much trouble and suffering, and you gradually lost confidence in your Self - in Me, the Impersonal One within, in fact, you forgot Me, so that you did not know where to turn in your helplessness; yet it was only through your thus losing the memory of your Divine estate, and centering all your consciousness in these earthly conditions, that I could develop your human mind and will, and all your faculties, and provide your human body with the strength and powers that would enable Me to give perfect expression to My Divine Idea on Earth, which eventually must BE.
So, through your mistakes and troubles and sufferings, Desire for relief caused the Idea of Evil to spring up in your mind, and likewise when these troubles were not It inspired the Idea of Good.
To all appearances of things and conditions you attributed these qualities of Good or Evil, according to whether or not they satisfied Desire My Agent, in Reality My human Self, or You, in your human personality.
All these conditions and experiences in life which you entered into, and which when pleasing seemed Good, and when displeasing seemed Evil, were merely incidents created by Desire to quicken in you certain Soul faculties, which would enable you to recognize the Truths that I, within wished at the time to impress upon your consciousness. The apparent Evil was the negative aspect of the Fruit of the Tree, which always lured you on by its fair appearance and by the sweetness of the first taste to eat and enjoy to satiation, or until its harmful effects manifested and became a curse, bringing final disillusionment; which served to turn or force you back in humiliation to Me, your True Self, Who, through the new consciousness thus aroused, was then enabled to extract the Essence of the Fruit and incorporate it into Soul substance and tissue.
Likewise the apparent Good was the positive aspect of the Fruit, which, having pushed forth of itself into expression, through your recognition of and obedience to its urge, was now permitting you to enjoy its happy and natural effects, and to receive the outward benefits of My loving inspiration and guidance.
This you, who was being led by Desire through all these experiences, was only your human personality, which the Real you was training and developing and preparing so it could become a perfect instrument for Your use in the expression of My Idea, ever seeking to manifest Its perfection in the flesh.
All this You did, not only compelling your human personality to eat but to live on the fruit of the so-called Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, until you had seen and known all the so-called Evil, and from living on and with it had discovered in it the germ of so-called Good, plucked it, lifted it up, and turned it right-side out; so that you from that time on knew that Good and Evil had no real existence, and were but relative terms descriptive of outside conditions looked at from different viewpoints, or were only different outer aspects of a central inner Truth, the Reality of which was what You sought to Know, Be and Express.
During the latter ages you have been, as it were, gradually throwing off layer after layer of human consciousness, dissipating the mist or glamour thrown around your mind by the intellect; subduing, controlling, spiritualizing, and thus clarifying the intellect itself; until now you are beginning to awaken and to see, through the ever thinning remaining layers, occasional glimpses of Me, the one Great Reality, within all things.
All this time, You, the omniscient, Impersonal I AM of You, were consciously and intentionally doing all this; not for the purpose of getting the mere knowledge of earth conditions and things, as your Intellect has so loudly and authoritatively proclaimed, but in order that you might harvest what You had sown in the dim ages past, and could manifest My Perfect Idea on Earth, even as You are now manifesting It in the Impersonal estate, Your Heavenly Home.
You, remember, are the Great Impersonal I, Who AM doing all this, Who AM continually changing in outward appearance, but Who within AM eternally the same.
The endless flow of the Seasons, the Spring, with its busy sowing; the Summer, with its warm, restful ripening; the Autumn, with its bounteous harvesting; the Winter, with its cool, peaceful plenty, year after year, life after life, century after century, age after age - are only the outbreathing of My Idea as I inspire It forth through the Earth and through You, My Attribute, and through all My other Attributes, during the process of unfolding in outer manifest state the perfection of My Nature.
Yes, I am doing it through You, because You are an expression of Me, because only through You, My Attribute, can I express My Self, can I BE. I AM expressing My SELF.
I AM in You as the oak is in the acorn. You are I as the sunbeam is the Sun. You are a phase of Me in expression. You, one of My Divine Attributes, are eternally trying to express My perfection through Your mortal personality.
Just as an artist sees in his mind the perfect picture he wants to paint, but his hand cannot quite portray with the crude mediums of brush and color the true quality and effect he sees, so do You see Me within Your Self and know We are One, but always are prevented, by the imperfection of the earthly material of your human personality, with its animal body, its mortal mind, and selfish intellect, from perfectly expressing Me.
Yet, I created your body, mind and intellect, in order to express My Self through you. The body I made in the Image of My Perfection; the mind I gave to inform you of Me and My works; the intellect I gave to interpret My Idea as I inspired it to the mind. But you have been so distracted by the human phases of this body, mind and intellect, and their outer uses, that you have forgotten Me, the One and Only Reality within, Whose Divine nature I AM ever seeking to express to and through you.
The time is soon here when the outward uses shall no longer distract, and My Reality shall be revealed unto you in all the glory of Its perfection within You.
You, when I thus reveal My Self, shall not be more blessed than before, unless that which I have revealed shall become the Bread of Life to you, and you shall live and manifest the Life It reveals.
Chapter 11
Use
Now I have purposely not stated clearly all the how and why of these things; for I have reserved for you, when you call upon Me so to do, and are capable of receiving it, an inspiration from within with a far more comprehensive vision of the unfoldment and development of My Divine Idea, and Its final perfected expression, than is herein pictured.
If I were here to tell the real meaning of My many manifestations, before you were consciously capable of experiencing its Truth, you neither would believe My words, nor could you comprehend their inner application and use.
Therefore, as I begin to awaken in you a realization that I AM within, and more and more cause your human consciousness to become an Impersonal channel through which I can express, will I gradually reveal to you the Reality of My Idea, dissipating one by one the illusions of the ages which have hidden Me from you, enabling Me thereby to manifest through you My Heavenly Attributes of Earth in all their humanly Divine perfection.
I have herein given you but a glimpse of My Reality, but just to the extent that that which has been revealed becomes clear will more be opened up unto you from within, and far more wonderful than this now seems to you. For My Idea within, when It