The Mind

21 Jul

The Mind

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Transcript

(Admonishing the students)
Lecture by Father Paul Blighton
Tape 706 (6-26-1969)

 

This night I’m going to talk to you about mind, but I’m going to talk to you about mind as a useful thing and not an abstract something which you apparently do not understand many times. You have taken mind as a part of the great Divine Mind, which is right, but which you do not still understand because you — we take the body radiations and put these together and we are in search for a reality which we apparently haven’t conceived yet through our lessons because we haven’t realized one particular facet of mind, which is the most important of all.

Now, I can go on and talk to you about subjective, objective, the superconscious, the conscious, the superconscious and all the rest of the paraphernalia of psychology and philosophy, and you still won’t have anything, because you still won’t understand that there is mind, and that the most important thing — I don’t care whether you ever learn it or not about all these fancy names, but I do want you to understand one thing: that what you think infects everybody around you.

The movement of power and force generated by the human body and the human vehicle through the nerve system and through its reactions, and the thoughts which you have reflects down through your solar system, your body, your system, your universe. These are the things that are important. And until you get the concept that every word you speak, every thought you have, is affecting everybody around you, you haven’t got it!

Because I sat in a conference today where there was much play of words, and it wasn’t there, and we had to get down to the nitty-gritty of yes’s and no’s, and that is this and this is that, because you can play with words all night and get nothing out of them. But when you start to be conscious that God is a real God, and it’s power and it’s force in action, then you’ll start to get near Christianity! Because you can watch the Self, and you can realize illumination, and you can be just as far away from it as you’ve ever been in your whole life, if you were on a trip of drugs. And it’s worth that much to you.

But until you have got to the point where you realize that the power and force moving through you is a thing that’s the answers, and not the suit you wear, and not the clerics you wear, not the collar you wear, and it’s not the fancy words that you use, and it isn’t your degrees that you got in college, and it isn’t what you know about science, and it isn’t what you know about arithmetic or mathematics or chemistry, or physics, or any of the other things, it’s whether you’re conscious of the fact that when I say “no”, I mean “no”, and it is a finality of motion, and it’s going to do something. That is when you are approaching Christ, on the level of Christ, and until you do approach it on that level, you might just as well stay away from the books. You might just as well forget the Bible, and you might, better off you would be in your life if you forget God. Because you don’t know Him. He is nothing but a figurehead of some sort that’s a fantasy in your mind. He’s not a reality.

Now, I’m perfectly serious about this, that until you get to know power and energy and expulsion, and when you set it in motion what it’s going to do, you have not approached the point where you can even think of teaching the Bible, where you can even think of illumination or realization. You can’t handle it, you don’t know anything about it, and you don’t know anything about what you’re doing to the people around you. This is a reality. This is the power of creation in action.

If it were possible and it weren’t for the existing forms of education today, I’d take every book that we had and put it under lock and key, and I’d set you down here every hour, and I’d keep repeating this and repeating this until you would get up and start to listen, because none of the books that you’ve got, I don’t care who wrote them, are any good to you. Until you start to realize that every time you speak, every emotion you have, reacts upon the functions of the physical body, reacts through the spiritual body, and there is radiation going out from your body at a frequency which affects every single individual around you.

(There’s some more room up in here; I won’t bother you. Come on, just slide a chair over or something. Sit right on the table if you wish. OK.)

But I want to get home one lesson, if I can get home one thought and one lesson, we will have gained a great victory, not only over the mass mind but over the misconceptions of your own education. The very — some of you people, I’m sure, love poetry. So do I. This is very beautiful, but what is it that does you good and makes you feel good, but the rhythm and frequency of the words in the poetry, and the sound it produces. Why do we have to follow from bad to worse? We’ve spent two thousand years of confounded words! And that’s all they’ve been to you. We’ve spent two thousand years of reading the Bible, of reading this text and reading that text and reading the other text, and it’s meant nothing.

One boy that’s been here for a few months and listened to many, many lessons, I spoke of this thing in his presence, and I said, “If you do this you are setting up a pattern and the vibration coming out will be received by all those around you.”

“Well, now, I didn’t know that.”

Listen, folks, how could he help but know it? You know why he didn’t get help? Because he closed his ears. He didn’t want to hear the reality. He’s afraid of the reality. He’s afraid to stand there on two feet and declare — whenever he declares something, know that he’s affecting dozens of people around him.

I’ve had some of my young folks that were getting ready for the ministry come into my room and say, “Father, what’s this all about? What’s this all about? You mean that what I say and what I do in that pulpit, in that sanctuary, is going to affect not only the people that’s there but all the community around me?”

I said, “You’ve only started, son. It’s going to affect the whole world’s future!’

That’s where it lays. I can take the brothers that are right here, that are under vows in this order, ninety of ’em, something like that, and if they ever learn this one fact, this one fact, they can go out and change the whole world. They can put it right where we want it, right where Jesus Christ taught it. But you’ve got to get this one fact and prove it to yourself. You’ve got to really know it, and when you know it, you’re then the victor, and what are you victor over? Yourself. You’re the victor over the carnal man because then you are — you know you are working with the powers of heaven, because it’s the Word of God that’s with you. We’ve got to stop this shilly-shallying around and bartering about this word and this form and this way and all this sort of stuff and get down to some concrete realities, because our people haven’t got ’em.

Why do you suppose when I serve communion, I say, “…through the fruits of thy labor, thy” — what? Does anybody know? What right have I got to say that?

(Student, inaudible.)

You’re darn right. And the vibrations from my hands too. You’ve stopped going through the ceremonies as if they were dead. I watch it every day of my life here. I know, I’ve got a human interest in people. I feel for them, sure I do. I’m lenient because of this, but I watch them go through the ceremonies and through the mass. I can listen to the beautiful words and the rhythm and the nice sound, and they feel a little of the spirit work. You know what a group of people like this can do? Do you have any idea?

One time about twenty, no, about eighteen years ago, a man came to my place. He said, “Father,” he said, “I’d like to have you come down to a little gathering.” This was in San Francisco. This was within five blocks of this place right now, less than five blocks from where we’re located right now. I went down to that meeting. There was quite a group of people there, and when they cleared out that night there was three of us left and we got to talking about the world’s needs, the world’s work.

He said, “I’m sure that you know that San Francisco is the place.”

I said, “You bet I do. This is where it’s going to first manifest, so pronouncedly the world won’t be able to deny it.”

He said, “That’s no problem, you know.” He said, “If about three or four of us got together and the conditions were right so the people wouldn’t get paralyzed, of course, or die from fright,” he said, “Four of us here could stand off an atomic attack from any nation in the world.” This guy was no kid. He wasn’t any youngster that just come and started reading space-age books either. He was training by one of the greatest teachers the world knows.

When are you people going to stop playing games? That’s what I want to know. When are you going to stop playing games? When are you going to start to buckle in and really do something for once in your life? Get right down on your haunches and start to work, start to get some experience and some realization of the power and force of this universe, and stop thinking about all the pretty pictures. Because some of the pictures I could relate here aren’t quite so pretty. Now, if you want to be amused don’t stay here, please. Not because we’d mind feeding you or sheltering you; we’d love to do that. But for your brothers’ sake, don’t stay here, don’t stay here. Because give him a chance, if there’s some more out there that can come and will do something, because you’re taking the opportunity away from somebody else. And if you want to play games, please find yourself a little boarding house; don’t stay here. We don’t need you, we don’t want you. We only want the man that’s got the guts to live for Christ and to help his brother man. If you haven’t got that in mind, forget it, because all the studying you can do in the world isn’t going to do you one bit of good, not one bit of good. You’re just going through a lot of false motions, until you learn that we are talking about and that that book is the handbook of the science of Life, and it tells you the formulas, how to use that power. Forget it if you don’t.

Now, I learned a lesson the other night. Even I learned a lesson. I talked to you about a level of consciousness that was far above yours when I talked about the fiat of the word, and I got myself right into, hung into the goll-darnedest word jangle here that you ever heard, here last time in class. Boy, how you went after those words just as quick as you had the opportunity to. That was your meat. That was your way of showing your intelligence. That was really dead meat for you to take hold of. You could really make something out of that because that was a level you didn’t know, you weren’t conscious of, so it was a good place to start to sling the words around and cover it up. I won’t make that mistake again, because I won’t be edged off into the other reality of things.

You know, your ability — you’ll find this in the lesson — your ability to demonstrate the supremacy of spiritual thought force over all apparent material resistance must necessarily depend upon your understanding of the mental laws and the reality of things. You know you can practice all the meditation and all the concentration, you can produce all the phenomena that’s in the book. I’ve got, I don’t know how many upstairs, a folder about that thick of all kinds of exercises and practices, and you know what? I’m scared to death to start to pull them out. I’m scared to death, because I know when you hear some of those, some of those exercises, boy, are you going to grab onto them! That’s something you can get hold of. That’s something you can do: “Boy, how I can show how I can demonstrate.” But will you forget God, in just about twenty-four hours. You’ll have forgotten He’s ever lived or ever existed. And Jesus Christ will be a past issue. And that’s why they’ve stayed right there in the drawer, and until I see some definite spiritual advance, real advance, that’s where they’re going to stay.

Because I know one order, one time, just about went on the rocks from its students demonstrating their prowess, with their power of will and mind. That’s a fact. It isn’t going to happen here. If we go on the rocks it’s going to be because I’m going to cull out the useless ones, and the useless ones are going to get down to be all, or something of that sort. But at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I stuck with the truth and the teachings of Jesus Christ, that my activities are my prayers, that’s for sure.

I don’t like to talk loud, but it seems it’s only when I drive home terrific sound into you people that you ever hear anything. Because if I talk pleasantly in a sweet voice — I can be pretty sweet sometimes, you know — you don’t hear a darn thing. You set there resistant like nobody’s business. And I can see three or four of them right now working like the old Harry to keep from hearing anything. Why? Why play games with yourself? You either want to advance, you either want to learn, you either want real illumination, or you don’t. You’re not helping us. You’re not helping yourself. You’re not helping the guy next to you. You’re not helping anybody. You’re just running a grand mirage of some sort of a play or something you’re inducing yourself into, of some kind, I don’t know what it would be named but it’s just an act.

Because truthfully there is something inside of you that is searching. There isn’t any man alive that isn’t. And the funny part of it is, these patterns that you create and that you put in your mind and then along comes some new student in the order that has only been here about two or three days, and boy, how you love to pass ’em along. And you set these into action in this order, in a way. And then we have to go through and clean them out, clean up your rubbish and dirt. That’s putting it right on the ground level. There is rubbish we have to clean out because you want to play games.

Does anybody here hear me, that can repeat and tell me why they should go to Mass, for instance? Does anybody know why they should to go Mass on Sunday morning?

(inaudible remark)

(Oh, make it back of me then so there won’t be any — Ok. (some moving around) Wait a minute. Give me the Koran there; that’s a good sturdy book. There we go.)

Does anybody know why they go to Mass on Sunday morning? All right … ?

Q: Isn’t it a completion of the weekend, celebration of the week … ? Keeping it in a pattern, you know, of the whole week, starting anew … (parts inaudible)?

Well, I can see what you’re driving at. It is, in an offhand way, this is true. M’hm.

Q: The seventh day of the week being the seventh point of the creation, the center point, represents the center point. We come to the center and start again.

All right.

Q: Well, each Mass sets a powerful pattern …

Yes, Harrison?

Q: … partaking communion .. .Christ (mostly inaudible).

Go ahead.

Q: You begin with the pattern formed in creation…and in enacting the pattern of creation you are setting the perfect pattern of structure throughout the entire week.

Now, listen to me carefully; I want you to get something. Now I’ve done this right in front of your eyes. There wasn’t one man, not one person, that talked of the Spirit. Not one person that had an idea of any energy or power in action. Not one of you. And I hadn’t been through talking about it three minutes. Not three minutes, to say nothing about three hours or three days or three weeks or three years. Not a soul spoke of any one of these factors. Not a soul. Now see, I’ve demonstrated right in front of your eyes that you don’t even hear me. You haven’t heard a thing I said. You don’t know a thing about it. Why? What’s wrong? Yes?

Q: … I heard you say, you were speaking of patterns we form when we speak. (inaudible…) And you asked us why we do Mass.

That’s right. If you can pull this gang out of that, I’ll give you credit, really I will.

Q: (inaudible)

Look, let me put this to you, let me put this to you. Now you were trying to think, you were trying to find out an answer, and yet you were right there when I said it. The word “energy” doesn’t mean a d. thing to you. The word “power” doesn’t, doesn’t mean anything to you. The word “force” doesn’t mean anything to you. It has no relation to the Christ. The word “spirit” doesn’t mean anything, not a thing. Because you’ve disassociated them from the earth. They are things in the book; and I’m not talking about just you, the whole works here. Yes, John?

Q: … Paul … that you did mention Paul when you …

Yes, yes.

Sister (Gail Rest?): … power …?

Where?

Sister: Someone over there said “power.” I remember hearing that. You just said yeah, and then forgot it.

No, I didn’t forget that. You said “power” in what way?

Brother: I said it sets powerful patterns …

Powerful patterns. All right. You see, you see how little you hear, how little you associate? You’ve got God cut right off. There’s a God in the book, but it hasn’t anything to do with us up here, not a thing; and there is a number of you people that have been here for four or five months. Why? What’s lacking? We write it in the simplest terms, we tell you in the simplest way. Yes, John?

Brother: (mostly inaudible) … I think due to the fact that we haven’t seen physical manifestations … illustrations …

They’ve never seen a healing, huh? Nobody ever felt a healing here, have they? Nobody ever has come down off of being high on drugs after laying their hands on them? Nobody ever did here. Nobody ever came in here and seen somebody come in this place, and nobody came here and seen people come in this place dejected, tired, worn out, down in the mouth, afraid, full of fear, everything else, and seen their whole physical body change. Nobody’s seen that. What’s the matter? What are you looking for? Are you like the Israelites? After the Master (end of tape side 1) got through performing the miracle of feeding five thousand, he went into town and they turned around, and they said, “Show us a sign.” Yes?

Q: It’s the seventh day when God rested, and it’s a Sunday, the day of the sun. And that’s the spirit. And this is when we communicate … the spirit … His son. This is His day. And this is where the entity comes to, and you as a priest, you bring it down to us. We feel it.

That’s right. God said, as far as that’s concerned. You shall rest on the seventh day, whether that’s Saturday or Sunday, it makes no difference to me. Yes?

Q: … but a lot of it is because people forget this, that everything, goodness all around us, has made us of energy. The very action is the power of God moving. It seems as if the separation between when your prayer, when something, when you’re calling down force that is already there.

Yes?

Q: (inaudible) Isn’t this the… when all the different tools of man are all brought into play?

That’s right.

Q: … all work together in one …

One composite form. The very first thing you do, the very first thing we do when we enter the sanctuary is to purify ourselves. The very first thing we do is humbly kneel and say, “Father, I have really been a louse this week, and I’ve got to serve this communion. I’ve got to serve this Mass, so will you prepare me and make me fit to come into Your tabernacle and habitat? Do this service for these brothers? Even though I’m not fit to do it, make me that way so that I can serve them, serve Your consciousness to them.” This is true, absolutely true. I don’t care if a — I wouldn’t want to see it, but a priest could come in off the street just after robbing somebody’s pocketbook, and if he’s got the consciousness of being able to work with it, he can go in and kneel before the sanctuary and be sanctified and serve perfectly legitimate good communion, and everybody will benefit from it. Why?

Q: Well, I was going to say, you’ve got all these — it’s a little late now because nobody did … No one’s going to say that also in communion you were given the body and the blood of the lord Jesus Christ, and therefore you have everybody at Mass who is there, the community is raised one step in vibration, because he has partaken of the body and blood.

You see what your communion has been meaning to you? You went through the form just the same as they did for two thousand years. You’re going through the form, but it don’t mean anything to you, not a thing. But I’ll bet you many marbles to doughnuts that if I took you down to the corner and bought you a good drink of the very best liquor, you wouldn’t forget that for several weeks, if you happen to like the taste of liquor. Thank God, I do, although I don’t use much of it. I like the taste of good liquor, but I want good liquor. I don’t want any half-way. And you’re settling for just about as small amount of anything in life as I can think of anybody settling for. You are scraping up the crumbs from the floor, that’s what you’re scraping up, the crumbs from the floor. That’s all you’re getting, just the crumbs. Now when are you going to start to live and enjoy the communion? Not until the day that you know that Christ, the body of Christ, is there, you won’t enjoy it. And not until you know that means that there is power and energy in that body. Not until that day.

I’m going back to one of the old hymns that used to be sung in the old gospel centers. I can remember it just as plain as can be: “There is power, there is power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb”, in the blood of Jesus Christ, some of them said. I’ve heard that song sung and I’ve heard whole audiences moved right out of their seats into the aisle in prayer. I know there’s some emotion used in this, but there was a respect for that, that you people haven’t gotten hold of. It’s on the church level, but it’s on the devotional level too. And this is something you lack or you wouldn’t miss what you’ve missed tonight. Now that’s for sure. This has to do with brain, and until you get rid of it, until you stop playing around with all the words, and until you stop fooling — you’re trying to fool yourself. And when you get right down to the business of working with what is, you’re just not going to enjoy it any more.

You know I’ve come up out of these classes many times, and I’ve sat down and I’ve said to Mother, when that, I don’t know how long ago it was, I said, “Mother, I don’t know. What’s the sense?” I’ve felt this a number of times, but I’ve got a job to do, so it must be done. Maybe I’ll salvage two or three of you. I hope so. I hope I will, I sure do. I hope I salvage two or three out of this group. There I’ve got, that’s enough to go out and serve mankind and bring the light of Christ. I sometimes wonder. I really sometimes wonder when I watch you perform, when I see you in church, because I know you’ve got such a need. You don’t even know it half the time. You’re always messing around with something else, some little tiny facet of your personality that you’d like to have. You’d like to stay over on Christ’s side of the fence, but you’d like to hang onto this over here. And it’s always the most petty, insignificant thing that a man could think of. It’s like in the Testament, it said he sold his birthright for a mass of pottage. That’s for sure.

Maybe I’m preaching a sermon, but it’s a — I can’t tell you this any other way. It’s so simple that I can’t go on and just give you a whole lot of descriptions. He’s the foundation of you getting the realization, of seeing God and having the gates of realization open to the Self. You don’t until you get control of your mind and stop thinking completely, can you ever hear the voice of the eternal coming through. You can’t hear it any other way because you’ve got too much to say. You know so much about this creation that you made a darn mess of your life before you came here, and you still know that much. It don’t make sense. It just doesn’t make sense.

There’s one old criteria, right out of the hard-shelled business world, if you’ve got something the matter with you, and the psychologists and psychiatrists will tell you this too. If you’ve got something the matter with you and you go to the doctor, if you want to go to one; if you go there and you lay your money on the line, for goodness’ sake, listen to what he says. Otherwise, don’t put your hard-earned cash on the line; put it in your pocket, because it will do just as much good there as it will do if you go to the doctor and not pay any attention to what he says.

Now this is the situation here. You’ve got a problem, you’ve got a condition. You want to have it rectified, you want a new life. You want the reality of God. You want these things but you don’t want to listen. You just don’t want to listen, so how can I get anything through to you? I can go on and read these words that have been written, and written out of the old works, some of them, and some of them, one or two lessons that I had here before and I added. There’s four lessons here on mind, and there’s nothing in them about deductively and inductivity, and all the rest of this, and they’re all true. There’s five lessons on mind alone. They’re all true, all good material, nothing wrong. But if you got through reading, how close would you be to God? Would you have any more consciousness?

Now look, we can stand here and preach or teach from now until kingdom come. It isn’t going to do a thing. Not one iota is going to be gained from it until you start to work consciously, knowing that you are seeking how to touch the Infinite so as to set this power and this energy in action. Now, I can’t force you to — at least I’m not going to — how to do this. I can set examples and so can others here, of what takes place. We can demonstrate how people have been healed and all the other things here, but if you don’t get down to the business of using it, and get down to the business of practicing with it, get down to the business of knowing that it’s there, and this is what you’re seeking. Not the words, not what you’d like, but seeking the reality of the creative power of the mind, of standing in the shadow of Jesus.

I saw a demonstration of this the other day where somebody tried to use force to stop somebody from talking, but I soon put that fellow’s freedom back in his pocket with his own hands so he could talk again, in just about ten seconds. Now, if it wasn’t real, you couldn’t do this.

The whole thing lies with you. Your whole realization, your whole reality of Jesus, of the Christ force, lies in your hands. There’s nobody in the world can force you to have it. And if you’ve got something else on your mind, forget it; don’t bother to come to class. Just forget it, don’t come in here, because you aren’t going to get anything. Because I’m going to continue each night until I see intelligence work, and association work, and the power and force of this universe. I’ve got to get it through to you if it takes the rest of the twenty weeks; we’re going to talk just about this. Now this one lesson I’m going to succeed in teaching. I’ll either succeed in teaching it to you or I’ll succeed in driving you out of the class, one or the other. That I assure you of. Now, let’s get with it.

And if you’re going to be, have any idea that you want to be a minister or a priest, if you don’t want to get down to this little thing, what are you going to do when you start to function? You can’t, because you have to lose yourself when you enter the altar. You lose everything there is about you. You no longer exist. You have given it all up, and you stand in the shadow of the Master. And I’ve felt his hands take my arms more than once when I was serving communion; and I mean that.

Now, you’ve got to get down to the nitty-gritty of this if you really want to serve man. This is going to tell whether you’re going to do it or not, because I’ve found one concrete thing, that until you get to be able to do this and be able to associate, at least associate where these things manifest and how they manifest, at least — there’s no sense in teaching you all the ins and outs of the ministry and the priesthood. It’s just literal waste of time. Because if you can’t set in one of my classes, when I scream at you, and get anything out of it, either soft or heavy in my voice, thinking it’s hopeless, gentlemen, it’s hopeless, just hopeless. Because the whole priesthood and all of the works of the spirit depend on the realization of the reality of the power and energy and force in action, which you have control of, and which you either accept or you reject.

You know, it’s just like Abraham when he laid his son on the altar. Because he heard, he thought he heard the voice of God telling him to sacrifice his son. And it wasn’t until he put his son on the altar and raised the knife that he learned the truth. And it isn’t until you lay your body on the altar, and everything you’ve got, your mind, your wishes, your desires, your whole being — when you lay it there and wait, then you’ll get something. Then you have a chance to become a priest, but not until. Then you have a chance, because it takes all of you, not part. You can’t separate it; it’s impossible. It takes every single act, all of your time, all of your thought, and all of your wishes. And desires? They’ve disappeared a long time ago. You just don’t count for nothing when you get to be a priest. There’s just one thing that counts, and that’s what you’re doing. When you’re so danged happy you give up all your time and work like the old Harry to be identified with Jesus Christ, that you’re as happy as a lark, no matter whether there’s a storm or there isn’t. And sometimes the greater the storm, why, the greater joy you have, that’s for sure.

Now, I’m not, I’m not — let me reiterate one thing: I am not talking allegorically. I’m not interpreting anything. I mean every single word I said literally! Every single word. I meant just that, literally. This isn’t an allegory. This isn’t interpretation. This isn’t symbolism. This is a reality, right straight down the line. This word, expression of the priesthood, every single word of it is absolutely true, just the way Webster will define every word in that dictionary. And I meant every word of it. And if you can’t take this, you’re not ready.

It’s a little late; they’re just coming in. The clock stopped again. Every time I come into class the darn clock stops on me. What time is it? Is that right time?

Student: Yeah. (inaudible)