Yield – Chapter Five

The symbolism of the New Testament

Yield – Chapter Five

Tony Crisp

It is morning and I awake to a trembling world. The whole earth, all things, are thin silk cloth shaken by the wind. It is nothing but a skin, a surface, moved by that huge reality living laughing and vibrating underneath. Am I trembling this day – or does that shake in me? I weep, it is so vast, so amazing, so wonderful.

Today, as I cut the bread for the children, I am not myself. No, I am not myself. A madness lies bustling and surging just beneath the thin surface of my being. It surges again and I tremble and moan with it. But it is not the black madness of men; it is the divine madness of Love, of Life. Only the bread knife holds me to myself. If I but let go, and let the moan of pleasure cry out, and fall, and fall, and fall, into that immensity and fall until there is no more falling – for we fall only in space in moving from one place to another; but here there is no beginning or end, no landmarks to pass or space to cover – then I will have gone wonderfully, ecstatically mad. I would be so mad I could love you; so mad I could give everything; so damn blissfully crazy I need never again hold on to anything, to anyone, to any moment, any past, any future – any – any – anything!

And I heard singing. It was glorious singing. It was God singing his everlasting love, singing the immensity of creating it all, singing song and laughter and life; and I mean, singing aliveness totally in every organ. And the song went on. I heard it as plain as my own voice. Every word was clear, as clear as the transistor could make it, because God was singing on the radio.

Then the surface shook again, and I knew it was only a great skin covering the one life, and we were all taking part in it. No one, no where, no time, sang who did not sing as God. No one danced, or fucked, or crapped, or did up their shoelaces, except that one life did it.

But I do not understand! I heard God sing on the radio. I don’t know – I don’t understand; I do not. I cannot convey to you my – what I want to say is – or do you somehow – what do I; maybe, maybe, or even how. I mean how? I mean, help me! Help me! I mean, didn’t you hear?

“And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, and James, and John,

and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves:

and he was transfigured before them. And his raiment became

shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can

white them.

“And, behold, there talked with him two men, who were

Moses and Elias; who appeared in glory, and spake of his

decease which he should accomplish in Jerusalem.

“But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with

sleep: and when they were awake, they saw his glory, and the

two men who stood with him.

“And Peter said to Jews, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here:

and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for

Moses, and one for Elias.’ For he wist not what to say; for they

were sore afraid.

“And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice

came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son: hear

him.’

“And suddenly, when they had looked round about, they

saw no man anymore, save Jesus only with themselves. And as

they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they

should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of

man were risen from the dead.” (1)

Now there was a woman in love, and she told me her story in great emotion. ‘I was in love,’ she said, ‘with a man other than my husband. Without any warning he went off, and I neither heard from him nor saw him.

“At first this was great agony, and I thought I would kill out

my love for him, because of the pain it gave me. This was a time

of torment; but somehow I came to the point of being ready to

admit my love for him despite the pain. I was ready to exper-

ience the pain, and had surrendered to my love.

“There grew in me during the following days a quietness such

as I had never before experienced. It was like being a clock that

gradually slowed and slowed until it hardly moved. And one day

it stopped. It was on that day I noticed something strange. I

looked out of the window because it seemed so bright, and I

wondered where the light was coming from. Then suddenly I

realised the light was shining out of myself. Everything seemed

to be lit up and shining with this light- everything(

“So wonderful was this experience that my awareness of

everything was completely changed. I could see beyond the

Outer appearance of things. At the time, the Korean war was

raging, and I had felt terribly upset by it. But now it was like

seeing it all as a part of a huge scheme, of a much larger exper-

-ience. In fact there was no evil anywhere. It was all right. Every-

thing was right. It was only us with our tiny viewpoints who saw

ugliness and wrongness, death and misery.

“The light as it poured through me also healed an illness which

had been with me for a long time. Somehow it changed my

body.

“This light stayed with me for three days. Even while I walked

down the street it was with me, and I felt as if I were floating in

the air. And a voice spoke to me out of the light and said, ‘Do

nothing’, which meant I was not to make changes in my life

from any conscious effort except as it arose from the light.

-Then the light faded, and has not come since.”

Then she said, “The light said to ‘Do Nothing’, yet I cannot

bear living with my husband. I must get away – go somewhere –

do something. It said ‘Do Nothing’ “ – and here she wept –

that was six years ago, and I can’t bear it any longer.”

Many people experience this light flooding their being as they mature on the inner way of surrender. John Yepes tries to explain in the following words, and, like St Theresa, tells us its unimaginableness. “The way of proficients, which is also called the illuminative way, or the way of infused contemplation, wherein God himself teaches and refreshes the soul without meditation or any active efforts that itself may deliberately make.

“Now this is nothing else except the supernatural light giving light to the understanding, so that the human understanding becomes divine, made one with the divine.

“I entered, but I knew not where, and there I stood, not

knowing, all science transcending.

“I knew not where I entered, for when I stood within, not

-knowing where I was, I heard great things. What I heard I will

not tell; I was there as one who knew not, all science transcend-

ing.” (2)

And here a man tells of his confrontation with the ‘Light’, and the strange mood it awoke in him.

“But that night I felt more alive to myself than usual. A few days before, I had stood before the Light, and it poured love and laughter upon me such as I had not imagined existed; and I had sung to it, telling of my tender love.

“Now the mood was upon me again as I took the dog for a walk on the beach. And looking up I saw the night sky ablaze with stars. There arose out of me a strange cry, and I felt impelled to walk out on the beach away from the street lights, better to see the wonder of the sky.

“Standing thus in the shadows I again turned my eyes to the sky, and joyful laughter poured out from a source within me I know not where. And my body crouched as might a baby in a cot, and my face was frozen in an expression of childlike joy and amaze. With the laughter sounding from me, some deep mystery within looked at the deep mystery without, and I know not what they spoke to each other, only that I listened to their laughter.”

Charles Finney brings home to us another aspect of this immersion in the Light, the power rolling over us like waves of love. “The rising of my soul was so great that I rushed into the room behind the front office to pray.

“There was no fire and no light in the room; nevertheless it appeared as if it were perfectly light. As I went in and shut the door it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. It did not occur to me that it was wholly a mental state; it seemed to me that I saw him as I would see any other man. He said nothing, but looked at me in such a manner as to bring me right down at his feet. I have always since regarded this as a most remarkable state of mind; for it seemed that he stood before me, and I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to him. I wept aloud like a child, and made such confessions as I could with my choked utterances.

“I must have continued in this state for a good while, but my mind was too much absorbed to recollect anything I said. But I know, as soon as my mind became calm, I returned to the front office, and found that the fire, that I had made of large wood, was nearly burned out. But as I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul.

“No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not know, but I should say, I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart. These waves came over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, ‘I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.’ I said, ‘Lord, I cannot bear any more’: yet I had no fear of death.

“How long I continued in this state I do not know. But it was late in the evening when a member of my choir came to see me. He was a member of the church. He found me in a state of loud weeping, and said, ‘Mr Finney, what ails you?’ I could make no answer for some time. He then said, ‘Are you in pain?’ I gathered myself up and replied, ‘No, but so happy that I cannot live.’ 3

When the higher sense, now born in us, has stood in our inner wilderness and made us see our old values and fears in a way we never could have before, there comes upon us much inner light.

The mystics called it illumination, or enlightenment. George Fox spoke of it as ‘great openings’; some call it inspiration. We still have a long way to go, but now we are in conscious contact with our Unifying Principle. The Life Stream is the life energy flowing through us from our biological past. It is the energy locked in the seed. It is the racial and individual stream of memory. It is Jung’s collective unconscious. But in bathing in the stream, in bringing our higher sense, our Jesus, into this outpouring of our lower energies, they become a power to open us to the Light. This is the Light, or consciousness, of that unifying principle which links all things. It is the unknown level of evolution we have as yet not grown to. The reason the experience of the life stream opens us to higher awareness, is similar to the reason a plant opens leaves to the sun as life unfolds it.

Our biological or life energy alters the functions of our being, developing them. This growth or development brings them to a higher level of function, which makes us capable of a new awareness.

How do we come to it? The higher principle, Jesus, leads us slowly up the mountain of higher consciousness. Gradually, through our surrender, we are inwardly led to wider and wider consciousness. Up and up we go until we see things spread out before us, and the infinite breaks upon us as dazzling light, as understanding, as knowledge.

This Light is that which lights everything. As the Unifying Principle, or Life, it is the essence behind all things. When we contact it consciously at this part of our journey, we begin to have a universal view of things. No longer are there religions or gods. There is only one religion with many facets. There is now only one God, seen from many views.

In an inner sense, there comes converse with Moses and Elias, Buddha and Lao Tzu, with Mohammed and Krishna. Not that we are necessarily aware of confronting these great souls, although some do, but what they taught, even if we have not read of them, or heard of them, begins to emerge in our life and work. Why? It is because we are beginning to drink at the same source – the one source. Perhaps we live it differently; perhaps we word the ideas in our own way, but we and others can recognise the similarity.

Peter, James and John are Faith, Hope and Love/Charity. That is, power or human will; wisdom, or human understanding; and human love. These have to sleep before the divine power, wisdom and love can come through us. Remember the words, “I said to my soul be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love for love would be love of the wrong thing. And there is yet faith. But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.” (4)

So our hope, faith and love are silent in our waiting for the inner light, the Spirit of the Unifying Principle to guide us. In this way we come to unify our life with the whole. Our silence, our doing nothing from self; doing nothing from just our human faith, hope and charity, is our act of certainty, our act of commitment to the God within us.

When our inner Peter, James and John awake to this inner direction in an actual experience of it they are often afraid. They seek to build a memorial, to commit it to memory and veneration, but to actually do its bidding is difficult. It often runs counter to the opinions and contents of our own personal and limited love, wisdom and power. To our love it may say, ‘Give of yourself to these my children.’ But our human love replies:

‘What if I get entangled with them sexually; or they misjudge my motives, or they spurn my affection?’ The Light says ‘I will watch over you; and it matters not if your pride is hurt a little.’

To our human wisdom the Light may say – ‘Go and say what I have told you.’ And our human intellect replies ‘Many people do not believe these things. Some of them are not in line with the findings of current research. Much of what you say I do not properly understand, and I have little cleverness and education to argue with greater minds.’

And the Light says ‘Am I not the Light that lighteth all men? Do I not know the secrets of my own creation? Perhaps I do not tell you them all, but enough is given for you to meet with men and do what I wish you to do.’

To our human power, the Light says ‘Go, and unite your will with mine, thus doing my bidding and accomplishing the task I give; which in the doing also satisfies you’. Replying, our human strength says ‘But these tasks are too big for me.’ Then the Light says, ‘Perhaps they are, but did I not build the Universe, and are you not now working with me, and I through you? Go then, and be not afraid, for nothing is impossible it I so will.’

While it may have happened that during our period in the wilderness we became inactive for a while; or did not seek to teach, help, or heal others, – for we had no God-given authority or direction – now that direction is given and we go out to do what is bidden.

In reaching this point our disciples are gathered, for the attributes of our soul are focused on the direction given by the Jesus within us. Thus our faculties, such as Thomas, our intellectual doubt; Nathaniel, our imagination, are brought to a common direction instead of inner conflict. As Jesus says, ‘Let thine eye be single and the body shall be full of light.’

When our faculties are surrendered to the service of our higher awareness, then truly the Light begins to shine through us instead of being scattered abroad. In what way does it come through us? It is dangerous to answer this question lest we seize upon the answer and decide this is how we will serve the Light. The Light will show us all in good time, But for some there is given the task of being a better parent – to others to sink their life and love more fully into the work they are already doing – others are directed to speak or write – some find song or music flowing through them – others dance – while a few have a wealth of love or wit to give, Our direction is as varied as the diverse activities of mankind: more so, for God has even greater imagination.

Rebecca Beard, who spoke of her illness being healed, says of her years of stillness in the ‘wilderness’ and their culmination:

“There came a night when the teacher (her inner teacher who

came during sleep) took me through the open space at the back

of the garden. We walked to a very high place where we could

look over the whole world, or so it seemed to me. Here I was

told many things. It was here I lost all sense of separate national

feelings. I became one with every nationality. It was more than

a surface sensation for I can honestly say that today I have

absolutely no feeling of difference with the Negro, with the

Chinese, with the Japanese, or with any other foreign people.

“Through some former discipline, Wally, my husband, evi-

dently had come to the same point of development at which

I had arrived. Most naturally our new expression had to do with

healing, since our work for years had been with those who pre-

sented physical problems.

“Sometimes we say of people that they have the gift of

healing in their hands. Perhaps it would be more exact to say

that their complete relinquishment makes them more open

channels for the healing flow of God’s power to move through

them. So we went forward in healing work beside the beds of

pain, Wally laying his hands upon those who were ill, while we

both prayed.” (5)

The Love, the Wisdom, and Power that now begin to flow, if only gently, through our life, is difficult to describe. It is no exaggeration to say that no matter what else we may have experienced in life, nothing can compare in wonder, mystery, power or adventure with what now occurs to us. The divine life begins to manifest through our activities, and it is difficult to stop ourselves, each day, from saying, with as much love and tenderness as we can find within us, ‘God, I love you. How can I thank you for all you give me. How could I ever have known your love was like this? Why, oh why did I ever turn away? Please forgive me – please!’

W. J. Macmillan, a great healer, describing one of his early experiences of God’s power flowing through him, says, “I was on the lawn playing with the children. A white-faced maid came running to fetch me. Ruth wanted me at once. I rushed into the sun room. There was Ruth sitting in a chair obviously fighting for control. She had spilled burning grease down her left leg. I must do something to help her at once. My first reaction was an absolute refusal. I knew nothing about burns, but it was only too clear this was a very serious one. I asked if the doctor had been sent for. Ruth replied no, that she could not bear the pain for the length of time it would take him to reach the house.

Again she insisted I must act. “I couldn’t bear to watch her suffering. Almost before I realised how frightened I was I had begun to treat. It was a repetition of the two previous experiments. Though the wound was deep she did not feel more than a slight discomfort as I touched the raw flesh. By the time the treatment was finished new skin had formed over the wound. This began to appear as I was doing the passes. Afterwards she went up to her room to rest. But she felt no great discomfort again, and in a few days the burn had healed without leaving a trace of scar.” (6)

When we wait in our wilderness, amidst the turbulent urges from our past, we wonder whether God’s direction may never come into our life, urging us into Galilee. Maybe there is no God? Perhaps the mystics waited in this hell of a place so long they began to imagine a light, a divine voice, a prompting? But no, be not deceived. When that touch comes, when that voice speaks, it is as definite and real to you as the hand of your friend, or the voice of your neighbour. It is as easy to recognise too. You do not have to rush out to heal or preach or sing or aught else, without that seal of approval, as many do. Neither are you wasting your time. For there is a season for all things, and though you dwelt in silent waiting for years, as many do, much is accomplished within you during that time.

So many do not wait, but start to do what they hope is God’ bidding. If the task is before you and your help sought, that is different. But many go out and seek people to heal, or teach, I And often they fail and wonder why. But when God directs us, even though we be ill-equipped in ourselves, God does not mock us, the work we are given we can do.

And here begins, as the fire of life burns through us, the work of healing. This healing work is for all of us. I speak not of healing others, but of the healing taking place in self.

Any act, thought, emotion or passion out of harmony with our own wholeness is sickness, or contributes toward it. When the Light begins to flow through us more freely, our real work of healing and teaching takes place. For every healer is also a teacher; and every teacher worthy of the name is in some way a healer. So, the ‘gospel is preached to the poor’, if only within us. The poor are those who lack Life, are without or incapable of Love, and have no Power to grow in spiritual stature. The poor are the people who bemoan their fate; or those who can see nothing beyond the material objects of the world; or who feel life lacks a purpose and a wonder, for they are all without spiritual riches.

The ‘broken hearted are healed’. Jesus within tells us that only when we rigidly demand that love must come to us from one person in one way only, do we experience pain and desolation in our relationships. The sensualist may demand love must come only through the physical sex act; the heart-centred person may demand love must come only through the affections, and through just one person of their choice; the intellectual may demand that love must be a shared experience of ideas and concepts. In this way they shut the door to their own wholeness.

Love can come from a child reaching its hand to us. Love can flow between two lovers, skin to skin, wet with their own exuberance. A dog’s shining eyes call out love to us if only we listened. A flower casting its perfume on the air – an author giving himself to us in his words -an artist, a musician – all creators, shower us with their love in their own reproductive acts. A husband who stands and irons, or holds the baby for us, is giving us as much love in his way as the one who caresses the breast. The teacher loves us by being there day after day.

So too the dentist, baker, doctor, coal-man, they all give us as much love as they are capable of releasing and we receiving. We only lose our loved ones in death by insisting they must love us exactly as they did before. The woman is a fool who insists her husband must love her in the same way as her new-born babe. So too are they fools who insist on those out of the body loving and being present in the same way as those in the body.

But Jesus shows us how to open our being to Love as it exists in all its phases. Jesus ‘preaches deliverance to the captives’; for are we all not captives of social rules, fears, environment, education and the many other prisons?

The ‘blind are healed’, for we may be blind to the fact that Life constantly upholds us. We may not be able to see the wonder of our birthright, and our destiny as God’s children.

Sightless, we will deny that a great love and life are behind all the visible universe. Blind, we may treat people and animals like ‘things’, ‘objects’, denying they have the same Life in them as we have in ourselves; denying they have the same feelings, destiny, awareness and need for love and encouragement as we have ourselves, in whatever degree they now show it.

The inner Light sets at liberty those that ‘are bruised’, for the events of our life, and the pain, or even agony, we may have experienced, often imprison us. Jesus heals these pains, releasing us from the influence of them. He preaches the ‘acceptable year of the Lord’, showing us that NOW is the time to claim our heritage; to start our journey from the swine pens to our Father’s house; to lift up our hearts and rise to our own possibilities; to yield to God’s influence.

What of the great healings? Are we all to be healed of leprosy fever, as was Peter’s mother-in-law; paralysis; palsy; a withered hand; an issue of blood; deafness and dumbness; or to have demons cast out and be raised from the dead? Yes, we are.

Leprosy is our unclean lusts and desires, our thoughts full of filth. Such filth and lusts are only misplaced life energies. Earth from which wholesome food grows, is called dirt when it gets in a wound. So our emotions and thoughts, when used in the wrong way, or out of harmony, are capable of giving us an unclean soul. Jesus heals by denying nothing, but giving each its place.

A fever is our emotions when we live at ‘fever pitch’. It is the inner heat of passion and feelings when these are self-centred rather than self-sacrificed; when we are impatient and judging. They are the great burning emotions we have blown into a furnace from an ember by nursing our wrath; grieving an injury; magnifying a slight. Jesus heals by bringing a wider view to our life, and showing us the result of our actions.

To be paralysed is to be unable to act or move in life because we have a guilt, shame or conscience which paralyses. Not realising or wanting to accept how we relate to the Life force, our actions against others, in word or deed, literally wound ourselves. The attitude of mind we use to hurt or speak ill of someone acts as a block to the flow of our own life stream, paralysing many of our functions. ‘For whatsoever ye do unto one of these, ye do unto me!’ The emotion we wield to injure another, turns in on our own life-giving stream and likewise wounds it. Thus Jesus heals by saying, ‘Your sins are forgiven you – or – take up thy bed and walk.’ Life itself is the only thing that can forgive us the injury we have done it – and Jesus in us is the mouthpiece for its love and forgiveness of us.

Palsy is a symbol for a disturbance of the natural function of the life stream in us. Such movements occur sometimes when a past event has shocked or hurt our nervous system; or when we have held on to a grievance from being deeply hurt or shocked physically and emotionally. The act of holding on to our hate, malice, or judgement of someone who has caused the injury or was not there to comfort us when we needed them, cause the pain itself to become built into our soul. This pain disturbs the action of the life stream in its normal expression as love, sensation of well being, physical strength, creativeness and spontaneous inner wisdom. Similarly with a withered hand, for this represents our inability to act creatively, or to give and share ourselves with others – to give others a ‘hand’ that supports,

encourages or carries their load. Maybe our physical hands are fine, but how are the hands of our soul?

Many of us may also have, within our soul, an issue of blood. To bleed is to lose our life fluid, our physical life. To bleed from our soul is to lose our life force, in this case from the genitals, through misuse of sexual feelings, or of the creative function of childbirth. To give ourselves sexually when our inner feelings tell us to refrain; or to use abortion as a means of killing Life in us expressed as a baby, is to wound our soul and cause it to bleed. But Jesus comes, as he says, not to condemn but to redeem. Not for the saved, but the sinners.

Most of us too, are deaf and dumb. For though God speaks to us in our dreams, through our sense of beauty, through our love, the seasons, plants, and all visible creation; and if we are unwilling to hear him calling us through these, he yet speaks to us through men who witness God’s presence in their own experience; through books, music, poetry and all our devices, yet we shut our ears. And if we do hear, we often choose not to act as yet another voice through which God can sing and talk.

Can you deny that your soul is sick unto death? Does it not have many of these soul sicknesses, or perhaps even more? Is your soul even dead within you?

A woman, told that God speaks to us through our moments of uplift or beauty said, ‘But I never feel that way’ When streams of living laughter, wisdom, beauty and creativeness flow through us, our soul is alive. Lacking these, our soul is indeed dead, and Jesus can raise it from this death even as was done with Lazarus.

Even if your inner voice shouts within you that Love, Light and Life can transform and heal your being you may prefer to believe otherwise. Yet you do so despite the failure which the worldly life demonstrates every day with its criminality, wars, dissatisfaction, meaninglessness and destruction. You are truly, like so many of us, deaf, dumb and blind to the proof God gives us every day. As soon as you allow the inner Light to illuminate you, all this can be changed, sometimes in the twinkling of an eye.

Starr Daily, a convict who discovered this for himself, the hard way, says. “I recall a time when I was being held in jail on suspicion of burglary. For two days and nights I had been subjected to ‘third degree’ police methods in an effort to torture a confession out of me. My head had been beaten with a rubber hose until it resembled a huge stone bruise, swollen beyond human shape, my face black from the congealed blood beneath the surface. Lighted cigars had been pressed against my flesh. I had hung for three hours with my wrists handcuffed over a hot steam pipe. My arms had been twisted behind me and my elbows beaten with black jacks until the bones felt crunchy. Heavy heels had ground my bare feet against a concrete floor.

On the third night of this I was at the end of my endurance. “Again I was dragged into the torture room and sat down within the semi-circle of twelve big detectives. My previous sustaining energy of hate and anger had dwindled into a dull sense of indifference. I was alarmed at this new state of affairs. For I had learned that pain could easily be assimilated if sufficient hatred could be thrown against it. I did not want to weaken. Death was preferable. But could I stand the pain without the sustaining force of hate?

‘You’d better open up and come clean,’ the Chief informed me. ‘If you don’t you’re gonna get the works. Y’understand?’

“I continued to sit in stoic silence, expecting the worst, and wondering if I would be able to take it. It was the show-down. Unless I broke, my life was not worth a dime. I knew this as two of the detectives stepped toward me. Then a strange thing took place in my consciousness. All hate and anger were gone. The vague sense of indifference vanished. And in an unbidden instant, there welled up within me an overwhelming compassion for these men, for their pathetic ignorance, their undeveloped souls, for the pitiful condition of their minds and hearts. And as this strange sentiment reached a high peak of intensity within me the Chief spoke, and what he said constituted a minor miracle.

‘Don’t hit him again’, he barked, ‘take him back.’ I was returned to my cell, and for the remainder of the night was under the care of a doctor. The next morning I was transferred to a private hospital, where I lived for three weeks. Every day a number of women came to see me, bringing flowers and other gifts. It was all quite mystifying, and the nurses’ guarded explanations did not clarify the mystery. These women were the wives of city detectives. I could not figure the thing out. I was only a friendless, unprotected criminal. They had no reason to placate me with gifts and attention because they feared what I might reveal. I was told not to worry about anything, that all bills would be paid. Nor was I returned to jail on being discharged from the hospital. Instead I was given an envelope and told that was free to go. In the envelope was no word of explanation. Only five crisp, ten dollar bills.

“It was not until twenty years later, twenty years filled with crime and punishment, that I was able to see through this mystery, and to know the power, because of which my life had been spared and this odd consideration shown me.” (7)

What was it that finally showed Starr Daily the power of Love? It was Jesus! He says: “I re-entered prison for the third time with sinister ideas. Three times I tried to fight my way to freedom. The first two times were of the ‘Lone wolf’ variety; the third involved group action, destruction and physical violence. Our plan was to cause a mob riot and during its height to seize the deputy warden as a shield and hostage, then under threats of death force him to give the order that would open the gates.

“The plot was discovered and I was sentenced to the dungeon. The average time for a strong man in ‘the hole’ is fifteen days, at the end of which time the doctor ends the sentence. This time came and went. Finally, I collapsed. I seemed to be sustained by hate alone as I lay inured in the lowest hell earth had to offer.

“Yet as I lay near death on the icy floor of the cell, a strange new thought came to me. I realised that I had been a dynamo of energy in everything I had done. I began to wonder what would have happened if I had used my powers for something other than destruction. It was to me a completely revolutionary thought!

“What then followed is difficult to describe. I first began to dream disconnected dreams, then they took on meaning. These dreams were the same I had as a child – beautiful dreams of Jesus Christ, the man I had tried to avoid for many years. He paused near my side and looked down deep into my eyes as though he were trying to penetrate my soul. In all my life I had never seen or felt such love.

“Then I seemed to see all the people I had ever injured directly or indirectly, or who had injured me. I poured out love to them which seemed to heal their hurts. Then we were in a great auditorium and I spoke of love to all the people. I seemed to be assuring myself at the same time that I was awake and that I would never forget these words flowing over my lips.

“When I consciously returned to my dungeon environment, the state of my mind had completely changed. The cell was illuminated with a new kind of light – the light of my own redeemed eye. Before that experience, I was a callused criminal; after it I was completely healed of my criminal tendencies! As a result, the prison doors swung open five years in advance of the time set for my release.” (8)

“This Light, Life and Love that heals us, is everything that sentimentalism is not. In its practical application love is as precise and scientific as mathematics. Without it there could be no universe, no cell, no organisation of any kind. Because love is the only integrating power in existence. It is all that can establish order out of chaos – or maintain order in chaos.

Love is to grow into oneness with God. “With the light of Love to guide us, the idea of seeking God fades on the film of our consciousness, and we know, then, that this idea, long held and fostered by men, is as false as the beard of Hercules. It is God who is doing the seeking. It is God who stands at our door and knocks. When we consciously and deliberately set out to seek God, we are simply being annoyed by God’s seeking us. His incessant pounding on our door irritates us, we try to escape from this friction and annoyance, and we call this ‘seeking God.’ We go to church or a lecture hall, or we drop a coin in the hand of a beggar, or we join a charitable organisation. And the more we seek the further we drift from the real consciousness of God’s presence, for we stifle His voice and dull the sound of His knocking. God is the Supreme Shepherd and it must forever be the logical procedure for the shepherd to seek his lost sheep, and not for his lost sheep to seek him.” (7)

Besides starting the process of healing in us; besides leading us beyond national prejudices, beyond any one religion or viewpoint, the Light leads us now beyond the limitations of our own individual consciousness. Gradually, and in a meaningful way, God shares with us the souls of others, when we am in a position to help. In our times of quiet, we are shown the inner thoughts or conditions of those we am in contact with, but only when helpful to us or to them. Or else our presence or consciousness travels to them to support, comfort, heal or teach.

Talking of his wife, who was dying of cancer, a man told me: “I had risen several times that night to watch over my wife and attend to her needs. I did so again, and saw to my astonishment, the form of a friend, kneeling beside the bed. Gradually it faded; but later I learnt that this woman had been kneeling at prayer, just at that time, asking God’s help for my wife.”

Another man says, “In my periods of quiet, when I sit silently, not reaching out or trying to get anywhere, but simply being open to anything God may wish to have me know or experience, there occasionally arise distinct impressions. Sometimes these are symbolic images, such as when I saw a friend mending an undergarment, and knew it meant she was mending an inner injury to her emotion. Or when I saw an acquaintance banging on a brick wall of her house, when a little to the left was a doorway she could walk through, and knew a difficulty had arisen in her life, but before her was an open way to walk through this problem. Other times there comes a feeling of being in contact with the person and his mood. Then God and I take up the person’s burden and help him. In other words, I do with another’s burden what I do with my own, I hold it out to my Father who strengthens me, and tells me what is best to be done.”

At times, like Jesus at the well, we are given an understanding of a person’s whole life, in order to help him more fully. But none of this comes through attempting to force its development, nor does it come to him who has not learnt how to use it wisely.

For apart from knowing the soul of another, each of us in some measure makes contact with the mind of God, which holds in it memory of all things. Thus it is that Jesus talks with Moses and Elias on the Mountain, for they represent all that has been learnt and accomplished by the soul of man in the past, in all ages. In this way, such men as Cayce and Steiner were able to diagnose sickness in people they never met – from afar. Or unravel their past. Or tell of previous sojourns in the body. Or talk of history through seeing it in the Universal mind of God.

No baby can’ reach manhood by seeking it, only by going along with the inner processes of growth, in patience and harmony. So too – we cannot claim these abilities harmoniously

except by going along with Life’s activity upon us, and growing in spiritual stature. Then there is no seeking, there is only becoming. There is no grasping, only having. For this thing is grasped only with open hands.

Then “I saw before me a low mountain overlooking the plains of Syria. Shepherds were herding their flocks on its slopes. Near the summit, Christ stood with His disciples gathered around him. As He spoke, I listened as intently as did they. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ The meaning suddenly became obvious for the first time. The sad, depressed, and despondent would, in their misery, seek God; urged on by sorrow within themselves, they would continue seeking Him until their lives were indeed made rich and their souls filled with joy; thus would theirs be the kingdom of heaven within, where Christ had repeatedly told us it would be found.

“Now He was saying, ‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.’ I realised that He was not referring to milk-sops or self-imposed martyrs or masochists, but that the only way one could be truly meek was by first accepting himself as a marvellous part of God. Once the God-self was recognised and appreciated, all need for arrogance and egotism was gone. It was the necessary acceptance of our God-selves which allowed both meekness and inheritance of the earth, meaning the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven within ourselves while we are still on earth.

“As Christ continued speaking, I realised that in one way or another we were all blessed and many times blessed, and that if we failed to recognise our blessedness, the problem lay in our selves. When I looked up again, Christ was saying, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth . . . . Ye are the light of the world.’ It seemed to me that Christ was saying a part of God was in each of us.” (9)

“Then a Priestess said, ‘Speak to us of Prayer.’ “And he answered, saying: ‘You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.’

‘For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether? And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart. And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again, and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing.

‘When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom, save in prayer, you may not meet.

‘Therefore let your visit to that temple invisible be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion. For if you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking you shall not receive: And if you should enter into it to humble yourself you shall not be lifted: Or even if you should enter into it to beg for the good of others you shall be not heard. It is enough that you enter the temple invisible.

‘I cannot teach you how to pray in words. God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips. And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and forests and the mountains. But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayers in your heart, and if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence:

Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth.

It is thy desire in us that desireth.

It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are shine,

into days which are thins also.

We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before

they are born in us:

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us

all.

“And a man said, ‘Speak to us of Self-Knowledge.

“And he answered, saying:

“Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge. You would know in words that which you have always

known in thought. You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.

‘And it is well you should. The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea; ‘And the treasures of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes. But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure; and seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line. For self is a sea, boundless and measureless.

‘Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.’

‘Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather,

“I have met the soul walking upon my path.” For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.’

“A man dreamt he climbed through a small window into a huge building. From the window a stair led downwards beneath the ground, where he found a room filled with gramophone records. And the building was his larger self, and the records, those of all his lives and his soul’s activities.

Standing before these records he picked one out to look upon it. Realising the importance of the moment he concentrated fully upon the cover of the record to read the words thereon. But they swam before his sight, for the power of the intellect alone is not sufficient to bring understanding of who we are and what we have been.

The words then began to focus, but a great pressure came upon his temples. Reaching up he felt hands upon his head, and grasped the fingers, pulling the hands forward into view. And as he did this he knew these were the hands of Christ upon him; and at the same time the hands of a friend who had spoken to him of God. Thus do the hidden hands of our redeemer and those he works through come to our awareness, and we know our soul has been always in the hands of God, though we knew it not.

Then he broke, and a torrent of cries and tears came from him. And the tears washed away that which had been locked, and the doors of his soul opened, allowing the feelings which had been long imprisoned there to arise and come out with the cries – ‘Jesus, I love you. I love you. I love you!’

Yield Chapter Six