THE WAY TO THE KINGDOM. Joseph Benner
and “The Law is the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ” Jesus Christ is the capstone of the pyramid. But it often happens that He is “the stone that the Builders rejected, the same that is become the head of the corner.” The capstone itself being a perfect pyramid, Christ thus is the Apex, the Zenith, the Essence of all that lies beneath.
It shall be even as Jesus said: “He that falleth on this stone (stumbles against this truth—fails to see Christ, not merely as the Master and Teacher, but as the God-Self of every man) shall be broken to pieces; but on whomsoever it shall fall (or who shall fail to accept or admit this truth) it will scatter as dust.” For Christ is the actual life of humanity— The Light that lighteth every man, consequently they who repudiate Him, and consider and teach that He is only a Master among other Masters, remain in darkness and wander far from their Father’s house.
Theosophy, Rosierucianism, and other similar movements brought to the modern world the vision of Brotherhood. And for what purpose? It is claimed, to awaken men to their real mission on earth and to prepare them for HIM WHO IS TO COME,—for the Christ who promised to come and redeem His own.
But can you not see that not until He has been born in our hearts, has grown and thrived, and become matured in our lives, can He appear to our consciousness and can make Himself known as He Is—“The Light which shineth in the darkness” of our human minds, and which He will illumine so we may know that our minds are really His Mind, are God’s Mind shining within us.
Ah, dear comrades on this journey through life, all the vast past—all the many eons through which humanity has struggled—has been an evolving, a growing, a preparing and fitting of us for this very day and age we have now reached. The Christian Era was the final stage of our training. God, our Father, Who is responsible for all, Himself sent His Holy Spirit, the Christ, down to earth, taking on a human form, purposely to prepare us by direct teaching and example what was necessary for us to find our way back to His Home and to enter again into His Eternal Kingdom. Therefore Christ—Christ within us is our highest Teacher, and the sole Authority for every man—for He is “the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”
There is much said in the different occult teachings of two paths to God—the path of the occultist, and the path of the mystic, or the way of the head and the way of the heart. Yet all great teachers say that the way to Divinity is the way of Love; and surely, the way of Love is the way of the heart. But the Love that leads to God is not the intellectual concept of love that occultists speak of, but is God’s Love in the heart—the Christ Consciousness there—which cannot be simulated, and which all those in whom Christ has been born and lives know and show forth, and they can never be deceived by a substitute.
Gautama brought the teaching of Divine Wisdom and Compassion to develop and prepare the mind of humanity to comprehend God’s Love. And even as Gautama came first and brought Wisdom, so Jesus followed and brought us Divine Love to join with Wisdom and give us Understanding, thus completing the Divine Union in Christ of the twain that in the beginning were originally one.
We might say Gautama was the manifested Mind of God and Jesus the manifested Heart of God, God having evolved the mind of humanity to the point where it was now ready to know Him in the fullness of His Nature; so He showed Himself to us in the person of Jesus—His Beloved Son—the Fruit of His Divine Love—the First-fruit of them that slept.
If you are able to receive it, you will soon have done with all intellectual teachings, and you will be interested only in those brought to you by the Loving One within, that He may point out to you the laws and truths He wishes you to know, thus recalling to you the knowledge gained in the long, long past. For if you can realize it, it was through many past, long forgotten lives, extending over vast eons of time, that He brought you to your present state of unfoldment; and therefore in your soul there is much knowledge at present hidden from your brain mind that soon He will uncover to you.
But before that can be, a far more important matter confronts you—the finding and knowing of Him, your True Self—the Christ within you, so that He can reveal to you these and all things, when you need to know them. Throughout this eon He has spoken from the heart of every awakened soul—
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, and all things else will be added unto you.”
Christ has been the Great Mystery of all ages. Once you comprehend Him you can know All, for all mysteries lead to Him, and He is the solution of all. All the Prophets of old foretold His Coming. The story of Moses and the children of Israel; the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,—all are parables telling of Him—the Lord Christ, to prepare us for His Coming. Likewise the ancient religions of India, Egypt, Chaldea, and Atlantis ever held forth to the humanity of their days the sacred Mystery of the One we know as Christ. Verily He is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End of all things.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.
“All things were made by Him (the Word); and without Him was not anything made that was made.
“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.”
Read and meditate on the above and with it the remainder of the first chapter of John, especially up to the 19th verse.
MEDITATION
With many meditation seems to be quite a problem. Some deem it a task and approach it with hesitancy and some reluctance, because of strain in previous attempts, or of not getting any apparent results.
Others think they cannot find the time for regular meditation. It is not so difficult to find the time; meditation can be made part of a well ordered life as easily as can any other factor. System, that manifestation of the harmony and rhythm of the universe in the affairs of men, will provide the time and the way, if given the opportunity by your earnestly desiring it.
True meditation is the simplest and most natural thing in the world, because it is but a retiring into the quiet of the soul, a letting go in the mind of all outer things and relapsing into a peace and a rest in which the Spirit can come forth and speak to the mind. If you only know it, many times a day do you meditate—when your mind dwells upon things in which the personal self is interested. When that part of you is really concerned about a thing, your mind automatically obeys and dwells upon and ponders over that thing until its interest is appeased (worrying, being anxious, grieving, and such are all negative, unconscious meditation).
Thus you can see that meditation is natural and in no way difficult. It only appears difficult because the human mind, which has been accustomed to having its own way and to thinking of only the personal things in which it is interested, rebels against restraint, particularly when required to think of impersonal and abstract things that you are interested in and wish light upon (purposeful thinking is positive and conscious meditation). We will try to indicate more clearly what we mean.
In “The Impersonal Life” you are shown that it is really God who is living in your body and is your Real Self, and that you are of no importance whatsoever, either to yourself or to the world at large, until you recognize this great truth in a more or less conscious and intelligent way. This of course is not easy to grasp by a mind that considers you and itself separate and apart from God.
Now consider that the life that grew you and is living you is the same life that is growing the grass, the flowers, the trees, the animals and all humanity, and is so wise and powerful a life that despite every obstacle it develops all to the maturity of that which it is their destiny to be. Did you or anyone of these others have any conscious part in the direction of or actual process of such growing? You know that you did not, and you know that this life and intelligence and will doing it all is God—Who is All and all.
Now try to realize that this life that is growing you,