LECTURE: World Vision And Selfhood – An Exposé Of Perspective Part 1 – 1972
LECTURE: World Vision And Selfhood
An Exposé Of Perspective Part 1 – 1972
This Lecture by Mark L. Prophet was given at the New Atlanta Seminar in Atlanta, Georgia on September 1, 1972.
LECTURE TRANSCRIPT
WORLD VISION AND SELFHOOD: AN EXPOSÉ OF PERSPECTIVE Part 1
A Lecture by Mark L. Prophet
September 1, 1972
New Atlanta Seminar
Atlanta, Georgia
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It gives us a great deal of pleasure to be here in Atlanta, Georgia. By the way, can you hear me all right in the back of the room there? I don’t want to overdrive this microphone. I’m used to speaking without a microphone. Can you hear me over in the corner there? Fine. Thank you.
Continuing then, it gives us a great deal of pleasure to be here in this state under the auspices of our organization, The Summit Lighthouse. Mr. Paul O’Neal and his wife Patricia, together with several others of the people here in Atlanta, have been most helpful in bringing together this meeting. And we want to express our appreciation to all who have made possible this meeting tonight.
We’re just returned a short time ago from the so-called dark continent of Africa. We flew over the boiling hot Sahara Desert and we noticed a few caravans down below that were passing over the Sahara. We thought that we were quite fortunate to be up in the air looking down rather than on the ground looking up.
We have had an opportunity this year to contact many, many people from all over the world. We spent quite a part of our time in June in Hawaii visiting most of the islands there and then in July we traveled to Africa and now in September we are on the way back once again to Europe and then on to Greece and making what is called a Christian sojourn journey into Jerusalem. We also intend to visit Egypt.
Having had this much travel this year, we really in one way don’t look forward to more but at the same time it is a very interesting point of contact with the people of the world. And we all felt that the people here in Atlanta would be interested to some degree in some of our experiences so we anticipate this evening relating a few of these experiences, discussing the different life-styles that are actually happening now in various parts of the world and also relating all of these things to what we have defined as vision, world vision, world outlook, world perspective.
I will have to admit that prior to making some of these journeys, both Elizabeth and myself had many misconceptions about various parts of the world. But somehow or other most of us live quite comfortably with ourselves and we feel that we have enough information that we can many times make a proper assessment of various parts of the world. But when we get there and come in contact with the people themselves, if we have an open mind as we do, we may be startled to find world conditions are entirely different outside of our backyard than they are right in our backyard.
Now, both Elizabeth and I, thanks to our calling, have actually made contact with the Ascended Masters for many, many years and we have served the Hierarchy as we are best able to serve them. To the average person that actually comes in contact with the “Hierarchy” it seems to be a very puzzling term. Somehow, the last time I was in Georgia, people had the idea—some of the people did—that I was speaking of a physical hierarchy, such as the hierarchy of a church, when in reality we are not speaking at all of a physical hierarchy but of a spiritual order similar to the Order of Melchizedek.
Those of you who are Bible students will recall that Abraham, the patriarch, when he returned from the battle at Chedorlaomar made contact with the priesthood of Melchizedek and that he paid one tenth of all that he had to Melchizedek. Now, of Melchizedek it was said that he was without a father and without a mother and without a beginning of days or an ending of days. So entrance into the order of Melchizedek seemed to confer upon the priests of that order a very special quality that we could term the quality of infinite life as opposed to the quality of the mundane life that most of live today.
We come into the world as a tiny baby. All of us come in the same way and we grow up and see the life-styles that are so different in different people and we have a tendency—that is, most of us—to mimic these life-styles. We may choose one particular type of personality that we want to be and then I think almost subconsciously we set about the task of trying to follow some idol in the marts of man, in the human marts. We try to imitate some person and actually this breaks the human race up into a group of people with different ideas and different concepts of life. Yet in reality we come from a common source.
Now the term “macro” and “micro” are very important to us because I want to relate the priesthood of Melchizedek to you and to show you that this is a way of life that is heads and shoulders above the ordinary life that we somehow relate to through the educational process of the world and even through the religious process. Most of us have had contact or still have contact with some church and we feel . . . . [interruption]
Going on then, the life-styles of the church, for example, are not just all common. There are many, many different types of religion in the world and I think that probably the fact that there are so many different religions presents an element of confusion to our consciousness because in reality the purpose of religion is to bring us into closer contact with God.
Now God may seem to some people to be different than to other people. In other words, we have a God made in our image, an anthropomorphic God. In other words, we envision God in our own mind and that vision of God that we have in our own mind probably is the only “reality” and the only point of contact that we really have with God—is what we envision God as. But everybody doesn’t agree.
And so I would like to say tonight that God is a Spirit, which is, of course, a quotation from the Bible but it is an absolute truth.
We ourselves are a duality at the present time. There are actually two people in one. We have the divine image, the divine nature, the nature of our soul within and the nature of the soul within ourselves. This does not necessarily agree with those life-styles that we might elect to pursue. We have a very definite individual personality and that personality often becomes more important to us through a matter of centering our attention on it than the actual manifestation of the Spirit of God or the soul, the inner nature of ourselves.
I think basically we are all trying to move into some form of soul-consciousness or awareness in ourselves. We all have a great deal of hidden hunger. We want to be Christlike. We want to be godly but perhaps the world won’t exactly let us. They don’t really want to have us manifest true brotherly love, true compassion and true understanding for our fellowmen.
But whether we will or not, every moment of every day we are making a certain amount of karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word which means the law of return, that whatever we send out into the world must return back to us for redemption. And because man may do either good or bad, karma is either good or bad according to what we are sending out into the world. It is actually a childlike fact. It’s not complicated. It’s not difficult to understand.
So each day we are weaving a thread of our own karma and each day with this sowing we are also reaping the return of karma from the past. And sometimes this karma is quite pleasant. I think it’s a great mistake for people to think that every single day with the return of the karma that they are getting that it’s always negative because it isn’t. Many times it’s beautiful and positive and helps the ongoingness of our nature.
But one thing that we must think of is the fact that if we do send out negative karma into the world, we certainly are going to reap it sometime, somewhere. And if we send out positive karma into the world, that too will return back to us. And so we can put it into the cosmic bank. In other words, we can produce the fruit of love, the fruit of peace and the fruit of joy in the world and reap in return all of this joyousness that God has in store for us, not only today but for all eternity. The universe is a comfortable place to live in if we understand the laws and are able to manipulate those laws as Jesus Christ did. He was called “Master” because he had self-dominion. But the same potential that dwelled in him dwells in us if we will only recognize it.
And so when I speak of the priesthood of Melchizedek, I am speaking of spiritual orders that are not at all related to those fraternal orders and groups that exist in the world, in society. I’m speaking of spiritual orders that exist in the world to come and are already with us as they have been with us in the past. I’m speaking of a timeless order.
Most of us, when we think of astronomy we consider that the stars come out because the day is gone and now we see all these stars. Yet they were there during the brightness of the day. We simply did not see them. And this is true also of worlds without end. I do not believe—in fact I know that the world, the earth, is not the only populated planet in the universe. And when I say I know, I know because of many, many experiences that I have had and contact with beings from other worlds.
I am not in the habit of lying. I was a successful sales manager at one time and I certainly did much better and could have done far better than that in the commercial world and I am not in spiritual work in order to make a living but because of the things that I have found to be true and the great needs of humanity.
You have no idea of the great hungers of mankind until you really get out and travel and meet people. For example, let’s take one little matter in Africa. When we came to Africa we found that a child’s tricycle that sells for nineteen dollars in America sells for fifty-seven dollars in West Africa. So there is a tremendous struggle that is occurring in the emergent countries of the world for economic security. They have great difficulty, really, great difficulty in surviving, in securing the necessary food and shelter for their family.
Yet these are temporary needs of humanity and everywhere. Even in these underprivileged countries, we find great interest in spiritual things. I suppose some people think that it’s a pie-in-the-sky idea. In other words they say, “Well, these people don’t have anything of a physical nature. They don’t have much. They’re very poor. And so,” people say, “they turn to religion in order to have a better future or the hope of a better future.“
I recognize this element in people but what are you going to do when you come to Atlanta or New York or Hollywood or some of the more affluent centers of our nation, for example—the richest nation on this earth? We find here the same great hidden hungers that we find in the heart of Africa.
And so we ask ourselves this question: What is it that creates such a driving interest in mankind if it is not the great hopes that are in people that are sparked by the soul nature of man. Man is really a spirit. Man is not just a physical body with a mind and a memory of history and events that identifies with himself. You can go back to the Sinai Desert and recall that when Moses saw a burning bush that was aflame and was not consumed in the desert, that Moses drew near to this bush because it was a phenomenal manifestation to him. He was startled. He was shocked to see that the bush did not burn up and so what did he say? He didn’t say anything at first but God said something out of the bush.
And he said, “Take off thy shoes from thy feet, for the ground whereupon thou standest is holy ground.” Now the concept of one particular, specific area of the land of the earth being holy ground and other parts being ordinary ground may proved startling to the mind of Moses. But he obeyed this edict. He took off his shoes.
And then he received the commandment of God to go down to the people of Egypt and to go to the great pharaoh, the ruler of all Egypt, and he was to go down there and say to Pharaoh, “Let my people”—that is, the people of Israel—“go.” And right away, Moses, being a practical man, brought up the question, in other words, “How am I going to go down to the pharaoh, the ruler of all Egypt, and tell him to let my people go and then secure the cooperation of Pharaoh, who is responsible for their subjugation?” So he naturally asked the question, “Who shall I say sent me?”
And God answered in the Egyptian tongue, of course, and he said, “Nuk Pa Nuk,” which means the same as Om Tat Sat or in the English language,
I AM THAT I AM. He said, “Tell him that I AM has sent you.”
Now this is another name for Being and we like to think in terms of the body of humanity upon this planet as being a whole loaf and then we see the Universal Christ breaking the bread in the fashion that he did when he was with his disciples. And we see that the crumbs of the whole loaf are the individuals upon this planet. And do you know that a crumb, any crumb, has the same qualities as the whole loaf?
It’s a great truism but it does help us one and all in our own development, if we cease to rely upon the human personality that is capable of being a computer, very nicely, and recording all of the lessons that life can yield to this computer of our mind and personality. Yet the prick of a pin upon the medulla oblongata and all vanishes into a mist. Or an accident on the freeway or an airplane crash or anything that happens can easily snuff out all of this existence.
And we all know this but somehow we don’t live with it. We don’t think of it every day because it would be morbid and not pleasant at all. So we more or less sweep it under the rug and we say to ourselves, “Well, we’re going on just as we are and we will never change.” This is not true because every single one of us have had changes in our lives and these changes are very beneficial providing we are on the progressive road.
If, of course, they’re retrograde changes, if we are descending into an abyss or a chaos, as our present society seems bent on—but we’ll get to that a little later—why then, we are making a very grave mistake, a mistake from which we may not recover in an entire embodiment or our society may not recover in this present epoch in time to avoid many forms of world cataclysm, which, of course, would happen to this world, if it does happen, purely as a chastisement of our current mode of living.
Many years ago when I was a child playing with little toys that I purchased in the Woolworth Company, in the sand, my mind was even then musing upon God, for to me the central purpose of living is God and the development of the divine nature. Other facets of our existence may prove interesting, entertaining, and perhaps even may please our senses to some degree. But all of us know that all of the glories of the world—sic transit gloria mundi—“Thus passes the glory of the world.” All the glories of the world will ultimately pass away. And what will remain are the externalization of the holy will of God that we make ourselves through the elective of our own mind and consciousness.
I am convinced that down through the ages, from the time of Melchizedek and before, holy men have come to this world in order to illuminate people, in order to act as a conscious divine incarnation, as an individual who became aware of the Father’s love and desired to expand that love all over the planet.
So getting back to my childhood, I remember of laying there in the sandpiles and thinking to myself, “Surely all that I see in this world cannot be the end and purpose of our existence.” Later in life this became a proven fact, for more and more I came to realize personally that God as he spoke to Christ had no idea or intention whatever of—as the Master said—“leaving my soul in hell or suffering thine holy one to see corruption” because along the line of my own spiritual development I began to realize that what God spoke of Christ not only applied to Jesus but to all of the joint heirs of Christ upon the planet, to all of the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Catholics, the Hottentots and all of the people regardless of what religious faith they had. They were all made originally in the divine image. And God did not intend to ever blot them out of his memory.
But then along the line I began to realize that I had something to say about that. In other words, God had given me a free will and it was up to me to use it constructively, not destructively but constructively. And in this constructiveness I saw the need for a vision and perspective that would reach out into the world and bring to all who are able to receive it a understanding of their own divine nature, that they could release their potential and find out at last just who they really were—a divine incarnation.
Now in our book Climb the Highest Mountain we have, thanks to God’s inspiration, released these facts that a little child can know into worded form so that these facts may penetrate the subconscious mind of man, which subconscious is very, very, very hard to penetrate in some people. It’s very difficult for people to get the correct thoughts flowing down into the subconscious so that the subconscious mirror of life from within can reflect those thoughts out, and you are going to have to work at it if you want to get it.
I’m going to tell you this, that there are thousands of people in this world, millions of them, that are hungering and thirsting after righteousness. They want to be filled with the things of the Spirit and there are many teachers going out and promising them some form of liberty when, as the scriptures clearly record, they themselves are the servants of corruption. In order to serve the incorruptible purposes of God you must teach people how they also can be a partaker of the fountain of their own divine nature.
There are many people who sit today as gurus. They sit in the world in meditation and they are gurus. They have a circle of people around them but in many cases the people that they teach find that they are not able to duplicate the phenomenal feats that they see these gurus do. In fact they are not even able to quicken any part of their divine nature at all. And they finally follow and follow and follow after these gurus and then they find—a guru, by the way, is a spiritual teacher—they find after a while that in some cases they become disillusioned because people will say “Christ is here, Christ is there” when the kingdom of heaven is within you.
And in this conference you are going to see how you yourself can contact God and know that you have contacted God, how you are able to release your God and Christ-power into manifestation and how to avoid the contact with those seducing spirits that are in the world, that are purely devoted to what we might call the false hierarchy or the realm of the astral, where impersonators dwell who will masquerade as the real thing when actually their purpose is only to deceive. We are interested in truth-telling and releasing that truth into the world so that each person can receive a blessing from their own divine Presence, so that the burning bush of Selfhood can become a reality.
Some of you may remember many years ago an author who just passed away a few years ago by the name of W. Somerset Maugham. He wrote a book called The Razor’s Edge. I presume some of you have read it. In this book and the accompanying movie we were able to see this great lama-for this was, I believe, an order of lamahood. It was in Tibet. And we saw this great master sit there and reach down into a bowl of water and pick up one drop and hold it on his finger and as he held that drop up to the sunlight, of course, it gleamed like a diamond and he pointed out to his chelas that the soul of man was like that drop of water, that it had all of the resplendent qualities of the whole ocean inside of it. It was just a matter, from a quantitative position, that it did not have the quantity of the ocean but it had all the qualities of the ocean.
So set your minds at ease if you think for one minute that your salvation is going to come through any person. It will not come through us. But there are many people including ourselves who can point the way. We can be signposts and we can reveal the way in part. But when that which is perfect is come, when you have learned how to kindle the spark of your own divinity and bring it into blazing manifestation, you will find out that the whole universe is inside of the microcosmic you.
In other words, the macrocosm of time, of space—time is kal in the Sanskrit and space is desh. In other words, the kal in the desh or the desh in the kal, and the stars, the nebulae, all the great pinwheels of the universe—we’re going to show you some of those on the screen tomorrow—you will find that all of these together with the atomic substructures of your body and of all matter and the life forms of all substance, the lifewaves and the energy are all actually a part of the microcosmic you, a part of consciousness.
Whose consciousness? Your consciousness. And you will find after a while that you can be out of your body as well as in your body and that you can identify in a more close manner with the universe and that this is a natural manifestation. There’s nothing unnatural about it at all. And that people who are confined to their body and to little elements of intelligentsia, just the intelligent approach, will find themselves eventually fenced in by their own defensive concepts, their concepts that seem to guard the human personality but in reality do not release the great God-power into manifestation.
So I want to say this, that I know—I don’t guess at it—I know there is a plan behind the construction of your body and you are fearfully and wonderfully made. And I know there is a plan behind the body of the universe.
Of course, man has interfered with nature. You see that in the thorns, the mosquitoes and all of the little creeping and crawling creatures that—somehow or other you say to yourself, “I wonder if God made that creature.” And then you read, it says God made everything but then we start to really question some of that and so I’d like to just touch on it momentarily and say—and I’m not going to try to prove the hypothesis tonight. That’s not my aim.
But I am going to say that we found in reading the akashic records—now some of you know what I’m talking about and some don’t. The akashic records are actually the recording of past ages. These recordings are actually made in the universe and are on substance in some cases, and in some cases they exist in the universe without requiring any substance to manifest upon. You have probably—most of you, that is, are familiar with the workings of magnetic tape. You know how you can put the human voice on tape or you can put video signals on tape. Well, don’t you think that God is just as capable as our modern scientists, that the God of the universe that created the whole business of the universe ought to be capable of sustaining past momentums and records?
Well, we examined some of these records, quite a few, and we found out that even in past ages, for example, there have been golden ages before. We found out that in past ages that scientists learned how to create vertebrates. Now, do you know that in this age that we live in, that scientists are actually working on vertebrates and how to create creatures? They are and they think that one day they will find the secret of life.
Well, we found in reading the akashic records that scientists in the past had actually created conditions that produced some of the bugs that we are plagued with and that actually the living God himself did not create them. Now, I know that some of our orthodox friends might take great exception to this and they might say, “Well, God created all the crawling creatures” and so on. And they’ll quote from early Genesis and we find ourselves then almost brought into a Darwinian argument, like the Scopes trial up in Tennessee. But we don’t have any intention of getting into that. But we did read the records and it was unmistakable. And we saw that man, who is a co-creator with God, who is vested with creative power, in the past was able to interfere with nature.
Now, who among us today can say that mankind today has not interfered with nature? In all of this battle of ecology that seems to be the current vogue of the world we all seem vitally concerned with our physical environment and no doubt we should take interest in what is going on around us. But what about our spiritual environment? What about our spiritual thoughts and our ability to function as a spiritual being?
I don’t know whether you’re aware of it or not, but we are aware of the existence of God. And I’m not speaking of this in an esoteric sense that we feel that we’re in any ivory tower. We don’t feel that we’re in any ivory tower at all. We’re just humble. And I know this to be true. I recognize the absolute supremacy of God and the Hierarchy. And when I speak to you as I am tonight, it’s not from an ivory tower. It’s not from some sort of a lofty position where I think that I’m any better than anyone else. Not at all.
It’s just that by his grace I have devoted my life to understanding in a deeper way the great cardinal truths of the universe, just like some men have become diamond smiths. In other words, they know all about cutting diamonds. They know all about precious minerals. Their whole life is spent in this one field and they become experts in the field. Well, so we have spent our whole life and spend our whole life—and we’re glad to do it—in spiritual things. And we have been all through all of the intellectual bog, all of the realm of dogma.
I personally belonged probably in this life to probably eight or ten churches, pursued various philosophies, explored hundreds more. And I have no regrets about it. I learned a great deal and feel a very keen ongoing sense, but I didn’t do it to be wise. I did it because of a genuine search.
I remember one time when I was a little boy of thirteen that I was actually on the way downtown and there was a “human fly” up upon a building there and my extrasensory perception was very keen even then. And as I approached this building I knew the man was going to fall and I knew he would be killed. But I didn’t know that he would fall right at my feet and break his head open like an eggshell, right at my feet.
Well, as a result of this experience I felt a keen sense of what modern psychologists have called weltschmerz, in other words, a world pain. And I began to ponder on why should there be death when actually there was so much joy to living. And so as I was on the way home I went past a tent meeting of a revival service and at that early age I was a keen candidate for, as they would say, walking up the sawdust trail.
And so I went up to the altar and I felt the terrible weight of world condemnation. Surely God was right around the corner like a bogeyman with a big stick and if I didn’t go up to that altar and pray, I would lose my immortal soul. That’s the way I felt and that’s the way they talked. And I believed it as a child completely and implicitly.
And so I went into that route for a while and I felt the weight of condemnation, which is actually a satanic work because Christ tells us plainly, he says, “The Son of man came not into the world to condemn the world.” I want to say that three times. “The Son of man came not into the world to condemn the world. The Son of man came not into the world to condemn the world.” I want you to understand the great cardinal truth that Jesus pointed out.
It’s not the weight of condemnation because that only frustrates man. I went through a period where, acting under the power and the strength of the law and the sin of the law, my soul became tortured on the very tree of orthodoxy. And you have no idea of the great suffering that I went through. It was almost a mild form of the dark night of the soul spoken of by Saint John of the Cross. So I went through a great deal of this and then, of course, after a while the great mystical light of the law began to shine and the Masters made themselves known unto me.
I remember a very phenomenal experience that I had as a very young man. I was still in my teens when the Master appeared to me. I was working that summer on the section because one of the boys that I played with was the son of the section foreman on the railroad and all of the young men that he knew received a summer job. And we went out there and we were pounding spikes into the track. So while I was there on the section, this experience happened on a very hot afternoon and I considered it was a hallucination. I thought it was just imagination and that’s all because one of the Masters appeared to me in the air and I saw him and heard his voice and I knew it was a real experience because it was in a cloud. A cloud descended around me.
And the strangest thing of all was that the whole experience took only a microsecond yet was five minutes long in my mind and the conversation was five minutes long. Have you ever had a dream when you know the actual timing of the dream according to our psychologists—who’ve really tested these things with electrodes and everything else—actually probably only a few microseconds yet the dream may seem to be hours long? Well, this is what happened to me.
And so after this experience had occurred, the first thing that I said to myself was, “You are really hallucinating.” Now, I wasn’t in the habit of doing things like that. I was a very practical person then and I still am. I try to stay down to earth. I wanted to deal with reality but I had an inquiring mind that reached out.
And so on the following morning, which was Sunday, there came a thundering rap at the door and there was an actual, physical human being at the door, a Western Union boy with a telegram. They delivered them in those days, you know. Nowadays they just mail them to you but in those days they delivered the telegram if you paid for it and of course we got this telegram and I read it and there was the confirmation of what the Master had told me.
Now if you think I wasn’t surprised—I had thought all the time that it was an imagination of my mind. And here I was confronted with an actuality. There it was.
And so for quite a few years I had contact during which time the Masters taught me many wonderful things about God. And then, lo and behold, I finally got into that dogmatic concept, that concept of my particular religion that I belonged to at that time, and I thought well, maybe this is the Devil talking to me. And I said to myself, “Well, I don’t want to listen to him. I think that that would be very bad for me.”
And so I told the Master to go and I was terribly surprised at how quickly he did it. He bowed to me and he said, “My son, as you wish.” And he was gone. And he never came again and quite a few years passed. And finally after seeking him most diligently to reestablish my contact with him, he came back. But it was not easy to get him back.
And when he came he started in the current work upon which is based the foundation of The Summit Lighthouse. So, you see, we’ve had a lot of contact, both my wife and I.
Now, in addition to the divine plan, we have to recognize the lack of quality in life but a technology that is absolutely supreme because of its ascendant nature. In other words, how many years ago was it that the motor car was invented? At the turn of the century, about. And the electric light and almost all of the modern technological developments were invented within the past hundred years. Yet in all of this tremendous sophistication we still are not able to solve our problems.
This morning I was on the Atlanta freeway. I tried to come to a point where I could get on a certain entrance and finally I came to the end of the funnel. In other words, two lanes merged together and I won’t tell you what the man next to me said. It wasn’t pleasant. But he lost his temper just terrible because I even existed or because my car was there, you see. And these are part of the practical things of life.
We have to recognize that people are often not contented in their own being and as a result of the lack of contentment of individuals they spill over with their emotional feelings. And so rather than have a brotherhood we have a sort of a George Orwell’s 1984. Only even more. We have the great dragon Tiamat, the dragon of chaos, existing in our world. It’s very ugly at times. There seems to be a great lack of qualities that we need to create a golden-age brotherhood.
Yet why is it that so many millions of people all over the world are hungering and thirsting after this golden-age brotherhood? It’s the hunger and thirsting after righteousness of the soul. And the soul is hungering and thirsting after the kingdom of heaven upon earth because millions of children every single day are praying and what are they saying? They’re saying The Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come on earth even as in heaven.” Is it any wonder then, if God listens to man’s prayers, that there should be created in the whole human race a great feeling of hunger?
I want to tell you something tonight. The man who is at the bar, who is drinking, he is seeking God. The man who is in the house of ill fame, he’s seeking God. The man who robs in order that he might have affluence in this monetary world, he’s really seeking God because if he has God, he has all things met. All his needs are met. And what a great pity it is that people are expending their energy this way. But I’m not going to condemn them because they are seeking God according to their level.
What we need, then, is to raise the level of human consciousness to where they will understand what true objectivity can mean to them, when they become objective and understand that they are God in embryo. Now, I can quote from the scriptures a very interesting passage, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” Remember now, this is a scripture. “Let this mind be in you,” it says. He thought it not robbery to be equal with God.
But here’s the clincher, “But made himself of no reputation and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient.” I find today that the greatest enemy of the spiritual man is spiritual pride. In our own search for God we have found that the bugaboo of human pride always tries to get in the way. And one of my first, primary recommendations to every single one of you and to the whole world would be to shed pride and avoid it.
But then there is another form of pride that is permissible. It reminds me of Continental Airlines’ little slogan where they say, “The proud bird with the golden tail.” Actually they have a pretty good airline. But the point is, you have to have that kind of pride in the universe and in God that you will do things in order to make this a better universe. Let the impact of that sink down into your ears for a moment and think about it. If everyone in the world really worked at making the universe a better place, aren’t you convinced of the fact that the world would become a better place? Of course it would. The law works.
Now, the present dilemma, the present state of the world is so well known to you that I don’t want to engage the teeth of your mind in just reviewing some of the evils of our present society. But I want to mention just a few and the cardinal problem of our time is one of control. There are people in high places who understand the importance of creating in the human race a group of literal robots, of individuals without strong wills. In order to enforce their will upon humanity they have actually placed chemicals into our drinking water in many of the major cities of the world. Unsuspecting people will actually-well, in fact, all of us are drinking this water unless we utilize discrimination and recognize that this is being done. I have heard—and I am not convinced of this–that there also additives being put into our gasoline which is polluting the air.
And what is the chemicals, what do the chemicals do to people? They are docility factors. They make us docile. They make us ready to accept excess taxation. They make us ready to accept forms of control. They make us willing to accept very crooked maneuvering in the television industry.
Media is controlled today and almost everything that media says or does is actually a form of control. We do not really have freedom and I’ll tell you why. The only people that are on television today or are given a story in the newspaper are those people that those who control want to speak, the ones they want to speak, the ones they wish to give air time, newspaper time, magazine time—these people. They are given that time. But the rest are excluded.
And we have the tightest controls in America today that I think has ever been established. For example, you take the United Press International. If you stop and think about it, terrible things are happening by suppression of the news.
I’ll give you some idea of this. We arrived in Africa. We landed first in Morocco and this was before King Hussein the Second was assaulted in the air. We found conditions there very terrible. It was just unbelievable. When we turned our money in, changing American dollars into the dirham of Morocco, we lost a great deal. And when we turned the dirham back into American money, again we lost a great deal. Now, I don’t wish to get into the story of Morocco. That would take an awful lot of time.
But I do want to mention that when we arrived in Ghana in West Africa, we had been talking with the airline stewardesses and of course they had no idea of who or what we were. They didn’t know we’d written a book. They didn’t know that many, many people were expecting us in Africa. So when we got there—and we didn’t know it either. We knew we’d written the book but we didn’t know what was going to happen to us when we got there.
So we landed there right in the middle of a coup. And the plane came to a halt on the runway and the lieutenant of the airport police arrived there. And he came into the plane and he said, “Mister Prophet?”
And I said, “Yes.”
And he said, “I”m here,” he said, “to carry your bags.” But he didn’t say he was a lieutenant of the airport police. He said, “I come to carry your bags.”
I thought this was funny. I looked out and there all of the rooftops of all the buildings that I could see in the airport were lined with people. And when I got out of the plane they all started waving, you know. And I thought at first they were waving at someone else so I turned and looked back, you know, to see who that someone else was and then I saw they were waving at me. So I went like this and they waved all the more.
Well, about that time the airline stewardesses, they all came out, you see, and there was an army staff car there under the wing of the plane. And they said, “We are here to pick you up.” And we were the only passengers that were picked up and we were carried to the actual door of Potaka [?] International Airport. When we arrived there at the door, the police lined up and they saluted us. So I thought, “Well, this is something I didn’t expect. You know, beware when all men speak well of you.”
So we went on from there to the VIP lounge and when we got to the VIP lounge, there was the press. And the press were there to take a story from both my wife and I. Well, I want to tell you something tonight. That story was suppressed by the same power of the United Press International type of thing. I don’t say UPI did it, but what I mean is, it was suppressed immediately. It was a very good interview, believe me. And the whole interview was suppressed and was never published.
But what they did do, they elected to really publish my wife’s statement at Legon University and so she hit the headlines of the paper. And in that statement they said, “Elizabeth Clare Prophet, an American Prophetess.” And you know they have a very strange and bizarre sense of humor and they really thought because the name was Prophet (and it’s our real name of course) they thought that they would really enjoy putting “A Prophetess,” you see, and so they used that. And they went on and gave her the headline over the head of state who was Colonel [. . .] and he was below her on the same paper.
But now you have to really have political science insight and you really have to understand what was going on. You see, there is a strong Communist movement seeking to overthrow the forces of democracy in West Africa and this Communist movement is actually trying to establish a unity of emerging nations. And so, because my wife had made a statement that the nation we were in had a destiny, a spiritual destiny to help unite Africa, they decided that they would put that in the paper in line with their current program, in other words, to support what they had in mind, you see.
But the Master told me, he said, “It’s going to backfire on them.” And of course I think it really did. But nevertheless, when I left West Africa, they finally published a picture of myself also. And my wife was in this picture.
And there was something I was going to tell you. Oh, yes. This is the funniest thing that you ever saw happen. We decided that we would not go there with a business suit on and my wife would not wear a dress. So we went in West African clothing. In other words, we had it made. We bought the fabric in Hawaii and then we decided that we would have these garments made and we put it on. Well, all those people decided they wouldn’t wear West African clothes and so they came out in western business suits and dresses. [laughter] It was really quite a switch.
But the whole point I was really trying to make was about the controls of the press, you see. These controls are very serious and they exist all over the world. Now, from Africa we went to Scotland. Now, in Scotland and in England they were having labor trouble, very serious labor trouble, and this is what they would say in the paper. They would say, “Dockyard workers say that there is no use whatever in trying to maintain peace.” And they had that on the headline, something like that.
And so they would stir up the entire labor force, you see, with the power of the press. And I think nowhere did I find it so bad as in England, where they would make their predictions one day of what was going to happen the next. And you know if you were a dockworker and you read where it says, “Tempers flare,” you know, like that, well, naturally this has a tendency to become what the lawyers call a leading question, you know, or a leading statement. It tends to make people do this and so our present dilemma is one of control.
Now, the needs of Hierarchy do not necessarily coincide with the needs of man but they ought to. The needs of man should coincide with the needs of Hierarchy. Now, the Hierarchy does not work from the world standpoint, the spiritual Hierarchy. The spiritual Hierarchy works for the best interest of the world, constantly.
And so what are the best interests of the world? More freedom. And what are the present trends in the world? Less freedom. Do you see this point? I mean the trends in the world today are to suppress freedom and the trends of the Hierarchy are to give us more freedom so that we can work out our mutual destiny.
We have all these crises and they will all pass. I’m here to tell you this night that the crises of the world are going to pass. This is a time of great trouble. Jesus foretold the tribulations that would come upon the human race and they are all being fulfilled.
So what is the most important thing that we can have tonight or today? It is truth. If you give the people the truth and the freedom to discuss it, as some of our great people in this world have said, “Then truth will become a catalyst to release the golden age into manifestation.” And that is why I think that The Summit Lighthouse is so important.
Now it’s not possible for me to actually give you in this lecture—in this one lecture I can’t elaborate extensively on all the things that Hierarchy have done through the activity of The Summit Lighthouse. But in this book, Climb the Highest Mountain, so much of it is beautifully set forth in classic language which we worked on for over five, six years that I know that you’re going to find many great answers to your questions in that book. And that is truth.
But at the present time we only printed a very limited number, a few thousand of these books that we run off on the first press run and they, of course, are being distributed all over the world. I was amazed at how some of the most important people in the state department of the nation we were visiting gobbled these books up. They got them as fast as they could. We sold an awful lot of books in Africa. And of course they’re selling strong all over the country. And I know you’ll be interested in this and that’s why I wanted to tell you.
But that book reveals the truth and it proves it point by point and it builds it up in the form of logic that any person at any level can understand. Because we have all kinds of myths and monsters, all kinds of illusions that actually are no more real than the bogeyman of our youth when someone would say to us, “In the other room is the bogeyman.” But as we grew older, there was no bogeyman.
And a great deal of the dire forebodings and threatenings of people saying that the world is going to come to an end immediately and all this type of thing—this is not necessarily true. I’m not going to say that eras cannot come to an end. I’m not going to say that people in one lifetime won’t find that that lifetime will end. It will. But most of the fears of mankind today are myths and monsters of human creation. And the sooner we can rid ourselves of these things and settle down to the serious business of living from day to day in a karmic manner that is calculated to build a better world, a better kingdom for our soul, the better off each of us will be.
Why? Because perfect love casts out all fear. Fear has torment and the most important thing that we can do in this world is to rid ourselves of the fear and engage our mind with the perfect love of God that made a beautiful world. Don’t you think in all honesty that this world is a beautiful place when viewed from a divine sense? Look at the flowers. There isn’t a human being alive, I don’t think, that if they had any degree of sensitivity—the marvelous structure of the flower and the release of the perfume of that flower, or a beehive and the beautiful geometric forms that are in the beehive and in the honeycomb—that does not see the workings of God in nature.
So beyond the sunset of our current age I see even now the formation of a new age. Why? Because the statement was made “Until Christ be formed in you.” The world seems to be entirely enamored with the personality of Jesus. Jesus was afraid of this. This was the one great fear that he had within himself, was that people would worship him without ever understanding what he was talking about. This is why Jesus got a towel and wrapped that towel around himself and washed the disciples’ feet because, he said, “He that will be great among you, let him be the servant of all.” And so it is in serving God that we will create a new day, for tomorrow can be beautiful if we will only make it so.
William Shakespeare in one of his plays said, “Out, damned spot!” No, I’m not swearing because condemnation, now that we’re talking about it, is the recognition of man of the fact that he has something to shed. He has something to get rid of. Surely you in this room must realize that our society and our individual world needs to cast out something that is not what it should be.
And so I like to think in terms of the Liberty Bell. Do you remember when the Liberty Bell was first cast that it had a flaw in it? It still has it there. But in the song it says, “And God can mend thine every flaw.” So it is absolutely possible in spite of how big this world is, in spite of all of the different theories and ideas of people, that the damned spots, the negatives can be cast out and Christ can be enthroned in our individual lives. This is self-mastery.
Would you like to tell me tonight how much better you can get than to be one with God? People start worrying about what the guru says. The guru said this. The guru said that. Well, is the guru any greater than God? Of course not. Is the guru any greater than Christ? Of course not. Your divine unity is just as good as anyone else’s divine unity because divine unity means oneness with God. So if you achieve this, you don’t have to look any further. The answer is there and the mysteries of the world are solved.
Now there’s one great mystery I want to give in closing. I realize that I could probably squelch my wife, which is not my intention. She has a very interesting message for you. And I realize I’m going to have to cut some things out, and not because they are bad spots, either. So I want to say that the mystery that I want to convey to you tonight is the mystery of karma. It’s a very interesting little mystery. It’s a matter of forgiveness. You remember that Saint Peter was told by Christ that he had the power to forgive sins. And whoever sins he forgave they would be forgiven and whosoever sins he retained, they would be retained.
Well, here’s the way it really works. If I go ahead right now and I step on your big toe as hard as I can, tromp right down on it and then when I’m all done I smile at you sweetly and I say, “Would you please forgive me?” And you say, “Yes, I’ll forgive you but it hurts like the dickens.” Well, I want to tell you that you may forgive me that sin but, cosmically and karmically speaking, that will still be counted against me because, whereas you forgave me that sin, I have wronged the universal by taking life’s energy to render hurt to another part of life.
This has nothing to do with the doctrine of ahimsa that the Hindus teach about. But this has to do with the great, lesser and greater mysteries of God, both. It’s the law of karma. And here is the problem as it relates to the Christian church today and its teachings. We teach that forgiveness of sin is granted by God or by people and so we say to someone we’ve wronged, we say, “Forgive my sins. Will you forgive me for what I did?”
We say to ourselves, “All right. This person has forgiven me” and we forget it. But the universe will remember it because the universe is a giant computer. Now, the universe is not necessarily punitive but the universe is very instructive. And so somewhere along the track of life there will be retained this record which some day we will have to balance even though life has forgiven us. Do you understand that?
This is what I call one of the great mysteries of God and if this mystery had been taught—and it was taught by Christ—if it had been preserved in the Christian church to the present day, most of the wrongs of society would not exist. Because you know why they exist and continue to exist, because people think they’re getting away with it.
And they regard the actions of the, you know, the Catholic Church of course was, following the death of Jesus in the early days, was of course the primary church, not in its present form. It was the only church back in the old days. And so they thought when they asked the priest to forgive their sins that that was the end of it. And of course it’s the end of the record in one way and people feel more comfortable but the record also is still there and it will teach them. Do you see the point?
This is a very important law and it is a law and this is why we have so much karma coming back to the human race today. We have so much karma because whereas they were forgiven, the records had to be cleared and they had to be taught. And so in all departments of life, perspective will come at last.
Dear hearts, I urge you to be very patient with yourselves. It isn’t a matter of being patient with me. What I’m doing tonight is touching in a very simple manner on some of the great laws of the Brotherhood. I think it’s important that people understand these laws.
We will get progressively deeper into truth and tomorrow we will create greater areas of perspective and the whole conference will be a conference calculated to bring illumination to your consciousness and focalize your awareness in a deeper understanding of God and Hierarchy.
Thank you and may God bless each one of you.
END
Who is Melchizedek?
Melchizedek, priest of the Most High God, is an ancient member of the sacred-fire priesthood that we know as the Order of Melchizedek. The Melchizidekian priesthood is very ancient, going back all the way to other star systems. It is the priesthood of the seventh ray, combining the perfect religion and the perfect science. Priests of this order are required to be scientists as well as to perfect the way of the light of God in their temples.
The Biblical record
Melchizedek is first seen in the Bible as the priest of the Most High God who met and blessed Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and to whom Abraham gave a tenth part of the spoils. Melchizedek served Abraham bread and wine, the first record we have of the serving of Holy Communion. Melchizedek is a very key figure of light, a Guru of gurus. He was the greatest initiate and adept of the Old Testament and ascended at the conclusion of that embodiment.
In chapter 7 of the Book of Hebrews we read:
For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace; without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.
In the Hebrew, the name Melchizedek means “king of right.” Therefore he is a king of righteousness who multiplies the Law of God by the right use or exercise of that Law. It also means king by right, by attainment. Melchizedek also held the title of King of Salem, which is King of Jerusalem, the Holy City. The word king means, “key to the incarnation of God.” Therefore Melchizedek holds, by the rod of his authority and his attainment, the key to our incarnation of God in the Holy City, in the New Jerusalem.
Lord Ling explains the description of Melchizedek as without father or mother:
But it is written that in due course of time, by the power of the spoken Word released from the throat chakra, spiritual individuals shall face one another and, uttering the sacred words, shall quicken by light rays in the seed power the proper use of the sex (sacred) energies and the caduceus action, and produce a living form instantaneously in the great cosmic light from which steps forth a son of God in radiant manifestation.
In this manner Melchizedek was born without father and without mother, without descent, without beginning of days and without ending. You say, “You have said that he was born without father and mother, and yet you have said that they faced one another.” Yea, it is true. But those who faced one another were as masters of light, a Son and Daughter of God, and he was without earthly mother and father, but not without heavenly mother and father. Thus, I have revealed to you this night one of the secrets of the Order of Melchizedek.
The Order of Melchizedek
The book of Hebrews says that Jesus was “made an high priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.” The akashic records reveal that both Jesus and Saint Germain studied in the retreat of the Archangel Zadkiel when they were in embodiment on Atlantis. Both completed their initiations and training in the order of the priesthood of Melchizedek before the sinking of the continent. They stood before Melchizedek and the great Archangel Zadkiel, who said upon these two blessed ones, “Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.” Once one receives that training and initiation, it carries over to succeeding lifetimes. Thus, Jesus was already a priest of the Order of Melchizedek before his birth in his final embodiment.
One of the symbols of Melchizedek is the Maltese cross. This cross is made up of four V’s that meet in the center of the cross, representing the four planes of Matter. Melchizedek teaches the mastery of these four planes, and he is at the heart of the cross at the point of the meeting of the lines of force of Spirit and Matter, Alpha and Omega.
The priesthood of the ascended master Melchizedek is of the seventh ray and the seventh age. You can request to become a member of that order. The first step is the giving of the violet flame. You can also write a letter to Jesus, Melchizedek and Archangel Zadkiel, asking to be trained in the priesthood of the Order of Melchizedek. Burn the letter, and the angels will take it to the heaven-world. Each day give violet-flame decrees and ask to be taken while your body sleeps at night to Archangel Zadkiel’s retreat for training.
An outer order of the priesthood of Melchizedek
On June 30, 1978, Kuthumi announced the forming of an outer order of this priesthood:
O sacred fire flame, O flaming ones of the priesthood of the Order of Melchizedek, I am come in the name of the World Teacher. I come, a fellow servant of the Lord Christ, imbued with the wisdom of a mystical light. It is the light now tenderly burning within the secret chamber of your heart.
Let the priesthood, then, come forth, ascended beings of light who carry flames and palms and march two by two as they come before the altar of the LORD God. They appear to be singularly unconcerned by the great tragedy and tribulation of earthly life, and yet these ones who have chosen the higher way and the higher consciousness contain within themselves such an intensity of light, such a magnitude of the Great Central Sun within their hearts, that I tell you, beloved ones, that each and every one of you receives an impetus of light from these dedicated servants of the Most High God who serve at inner levels as the ascended brotherhood of Melchizedek.
Beloved ones, I come to you, then, with a very special announcement. I come to you, then, with the great gift of this priesthood. I come, then, with the translation of a word, of a sacred fire, and of a wisdom. It is the desiring of this inner priesthood to raise up among Keepers of the Flame, devotees of the Ancient of Days, an outer order of this priesthood of Melchizedek. Therefore receive the anointing of the Lord Jesus, who stands with me upon this altar today—the anointing of the heart, precious ones, by the man of sorrows who has become the man of joys. The anointing of the heart, beloved ones, is the sacred opening of the potential of that heart to be a sacred fire.
When you contemplate the depiction of the saints and of the Lord Christ as the blood drips from the heart, understand the translation, that this is the heart of a Christed one dripping with the sacred fire, and the very drops of his blood are for the transmutation of world sin. And so by that body and by that blood repeated again and again and again through the brothers and sisters of Assisi, we would raise up those who would be electrodes of the inner priesthood of Melchizedek.
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