In my teaching experience a good student is one for whom I have a deep feeling or whom I have learned to love because of his or her attitude toward spiritual work. A teacher can only give to the degree that a student is open to him. The great student is one who arrives for no apparent reason and can open the teacher by the depth of his need. It has been obvious to me for some time that this is the one area of life in which democracy exists. You can only grow spiritually if you have the need within yourself and fulfill a creative need within your teacher.

Anything you value and do not surrender will grow in you and in time overcome your spiritual desire. If your first and foremost need is to grow spiritually, you can achieve everything in life. If there is a holding on to anything other than the desire to evolve, this other wish will become the foremost drive and overwhelm spiritual ambition. It is often said that a man cannot serve two masters. Any power, ego image, or need in you, after the shakti has been activated in you, must be surrendered so it does not block the spiritual force. If it is not surrendered, we reach a high stage of inner development only to find we have fulfilled only a partial dream. Less than total surrender means partial reality - a sad reward for difficult work.

Everyone represents the highest force of spirituality, or God. We are each an instrument for higher forces, and any man we meet can be the symbol of higher creativity for us. This is reflected in our inner behavior, how we get along with our fellow man. There is nothing we see in another human being that is not a reflection of ourselves. If we were in a very pure inner state, there would be nothing that the impure (in others) could relate to in us.

Human beings professionally dedicated to serving their fellow men - doctors, nurses, priests, etc. - learn quickly that their ability to aid others is its own reward. The attitude of objective service they maintain allows them to establish a relationship with the physically and mentally ill not possible even with their flesh and blood relations. Finer understanding requires a detached attitude if you are to see and accept conditions which ordinarily close and block higher emotions in people. Exceptionally gifted people are often ,"strange" in their lack of conformity to the rules and regulations of society. It requires special understanding to use these talents, and those who are able to deal with such people must be themselves unusual.

Human creativity is a free-running force of a higher dimension. Its very existence precludes conformity, and the person who tries to conform will greatly limit the potential of his gift. The energy is ever-changing. Most gifted people associate with other gifted people, who are also not regimented. They disapprove of the conventionally creative man who conforms to codes. Their conformity is usually the greatest restriction on their talents. They are so conscious of the criticism directed against creative people that they spend their whole lives channeling their forces into orderly patterns. That they lose much of their force does not occur to them, for they are often successful and can always point to their success as witness to their talents. If they were free within, they would see that their potential has not been realized. If they are blessed with the ability to be creative and to conform to societal mores as well, they should be doubly aware of the enormous gifts they possess. It is better to learn to be grateful for such a rare combination of talents than to drain off creative energy by heaping criticism on others. Negativity is only creativity without consciousness and by its existence proclaims a block in the creative flow.

To be completely open is to be aware of the continued creative flow which brings the opportunities to learn and evolve. As you evolve, you feel within yourself these creative opportunities. As we evolve, our whole mechanism sensitizes and warns us of approaching situations.

Fulfilling the responsibility of the harvest is not possible without consciousness. There should be very high consciousness in you as you take a mate, plant your seed, and raise a family. Ancient man either performed in harmony with the complete cycle of nature or perished.

Often, I feel with a person before really looking at him or her closely. As a teacher of spiritual work, I have found that my best students are those with whom I have felt deeply. It is through inner communication that you grow. It is through inner contact that you can be nourished.

The truly creative man works in multiple dimensions. All that has existed, now exists, or will exist is open to him. He understands that time and space are meaningless. As a result, he is carried by his creative flow, unaffected by ordinary life.

The ability to surrender to the higher force enables you to experience miracles. Miracles are the manifestation of energy on higher levels; they possess no value unless they produce growth. When surrendered, they enable you to grow to still higher levels of energy. If a man who experiences a miracle feels he has reached the ultimate truth, his growth stops. Such a man is either simple, without capacity for further growth, or unconsciously afraid to pursue further.



THE TRULY creative work in multiple dimensions. They understand that time and space are meaningless.



One day an intelligent, gentle-looking black man of about twenty-seven walked into my shop. I immediately sensed an awakening spiritual force in him. Looking closely at his face I could see indications of a high form ofcreativity. I asked him his work and he told me he was a classical musician.

We talked for a while, and I felt very positive forces within him. I felt he was capable of great spiritual development, and told him so. I told him I taught yoga and that if he was interested in developing his creative potential, I would willingly take him as a student.

Two days later he returned, and we had another short talk. I asked him to do a spiritual exercise with me, and he agreed. We sat facing each other. He surrendered within himself, and I opened within myself, allowing the psychic forces to pass through me to him.

Within a minute I could see manifestations on the surface of his face. His face became like a motion-picture screen - every half-minute it changed to a different face. In all, there were ten separate faces, each of an extremely strong, brilliant, swarthy man. They looked Latin American and seemed to be men capable of overthrowing a country. They were honest, completely dedicated men, who would stop at nothing to attain their high ideals of freedom. They would give their lives if necessary - but they wouldn’t hesitate to take the lives of others. They would murder, kidnap, torture, steal, destroy property, instigate strikes, stir up riots, cause bloodshed - anything they thought necessary for their ends.

After working with this man, I allowed my internal system to relax. Something within me spoke. "If you help this man to be reborn, he could grow into a leader responsible for the deaths of five hundred thousand people. But this is not your responsibility - you must give your gifts to all who need them.

"If you do not help him, another leader may take his place who would be responsible for the deaths of four million people. Your work could save the lives of three and a half million people - but it is still not your business to judge - just to give as it is required."

I told the man what my inner voice had told me, and he was impressed. He told me he had great hostility toward white people, and that if he developed leadership ability he might well use his strength to bring about social upheaval. But he also felt that working with me might help him to break down his hostility. He asked for time to think about it, and we made an appointment for lunch three days later.



SPIRITUAL growth, like love, can exist only in freedom.



He kept the appointment, and during lunch he told me that his wife was very much in favor of his coming to see me. It was the first time he had mentioned her, and when he said the word "wife" I could see her face on his forehead. I could also see her parents and the qualities she had inherited from them. I told all this to my companion, who said my descriptions were accurate, but he seemed upset by them so I stopped talking and let him eat his lunch in peace.

I felt quite close to the psychic flow coming from this man. It was obvious I could benefit a great deal from working with him, as he was a good instrument for me. I also knew I could do him much good.

The next evening he dropped by with his wife and young boy, both of whom I felt an affinity for. It was decided that both the man and his wife would start attending my classes. They worked with me for several weeks, but at one point I had to discontinue classes for a week because of a trip I had to make. When classes were resumed the young couple did not return.

I have often wondered what became of them - but have made no effort to find out. After working with many thousands of people, I have learned never to urge anyone to remain as a student. As long as my students wish to work with me and they try sincerely, I will keep them on but I have learned never to question when people leave - and never to pursue them. Spiritual growth, like love, can exist only in freedom.

A woman once came to my shop to buy a piece of sculpture as a birthday present for her son, who is a friend of mine. She had been a practicing psychologist for approximately thirty years. Several months earlier I had accompanied her son to her house, where she practices. As her son and I came out of the elevator a young couple entered it.

We found my friend’s mother in the doorway. She commented on our good timing - her patient had just left. "Yes," I said, "I saw the patient." "Oh," she said. "It was not the pretty girl." "I know," I said, "it was the disturbed man with her."

As I had not had much contact with the psychologist, having only met her casually before, she thought it was a strange comment for me to make. She asked me what I thought was strange about this man. I discussed the type of mental ailment he had, and mentioned his skin which I said was cut and scarred. She said I was right, except that the man’s face was not scarred but was as clear as hers or my own. About five years earlier it had been as I described it, but it had been rectified by plastic surgery. I told her also that the man would commit suicide within a year. It came to pass.

Later the psychologist came to my shop for the first time. She looked about and after a while sat down. She said she was often reminded of the impression of her patient I had shared with her at our last meeting, and she had just begun treating a young girl who she thought would interest me. That was all she said, but I was able to see within her mind a dark vapor within which the image of the girl was forming. I told her to say no more, and I was able to draw the image out of the psychologist’s mind and bring it into a fully formed figure which stood before me. It was then possible for me to talk to this girl and to look into her mind and psyche. I described the physical girl to the psychologist and also her psychic problems.

She asked me about the girl’s husband; I drew him from the girl’s mind and then described him and the relationship that existed between the couple.

The psychologist then mentioned a young man who had been under her treatment for some months. I immediately saw him, and there was a deep emotional lurch within me as I could feel his frustrations and needs. He was a sensitive, brilliant child of seventeen; he was disturbed because he had no love contact from his parents, and this starved his psychic mechanism. He reached for this love through strong and destructive social contacts. The psychologist and I were in agreement about the boy’s need for love and security and for someone to allow him to dig into them so he could stabilize his ambitions.

Then the psychologist tried to tell me of another patient, but I could not bring off the image. It was not until several hours later that I became exhausted by this new type of spiritual insight. I did not realize how much the experience had drained me but I was very grateful for a new way to work.

Some time ago I had invited about two hundred people to my home for a party. Some were people who study with me, others were close friends, and between us there was an open feeling of love and mutual nourishment. The party had been in progress for about two hours when a very gifted singer got up and performed. I found that my heart began to open more and more in response to this additional energy that was put into the atmosphere. Two weeks later I had another party and there was a gifted pianist who performed. I had a similar experience. It then became obvious that these gifted people had a great quantity of energy flowing from them, which had the effect of nourishing something deep within me. I began to realize that I needed stronger energy for my growth. I began to understand that I had grown above the level of exchange with the people who were there. My energy was sufficient to fulfill their needs, but their energy was not enough to fulfill mine.

I tried to think of what I could do to raise my level of energy. I thought of several things I could undertake over a long period of time. Then I sat very quietly and meditated and came to understand that the need within me would attract what I needed. I deeply believe that we get exactly what we need and want. What we attach ourselves to expresses our individual creative position at the moment and also our potential for the future.

Later on, a very attractive woman came into my place of business. I’ll refer to her as Mrs. Jackson. There was a great sense of the thoroughbred about her. As we talked, it turned out that she had a long history of medical training, but she was extraordinarily open. I thoroughly enjoyed the time she spent with me. She had come from a nearby city and we found that we had a friend in common, a woman remarkable for her accomplishments and her detachment.

Then when I was alone, there was a great sense within me of having known Mrs. Jackson in a past life. I also felt a connection with her that would fulfill itself through a period of time. Soon afterward, our mutual friend came into my shop. I told her about the very pleasant meeting and she, in turn, told me the sad news that the lady was dying of an incurable disease. I could find nothing within me that was alarmed by this. I also couldn’t find anything in me that would accept it as something which would take place.

I sat and meditated and asked God to help me understand. Slowly the situation began to reveal itself. The woman and I had had a relationship in a former life. We were not married, but we had a close, deep relationship. It seemed to me that the unused energy of her past existence was manifesting itself within her body as disease. If I could accept from her this unassimilated energy-cancer then I might be able to free her and perhaps also receive in the process the energy I was in need of.

It is always better to take what is available than to wait for what you think is right. I am sure Jesus kissed the leper only because the leper was there to be kissed. You can only attach to what is there to be attached to.

Mrs. Jackson came to see me again a few days later and I told her about what had happened to me when I was twenty-five years of age. I was told that I would be dead at thirty-one. I could not accept this, mainly because of my feelings of what I would be when I was forty, fifty, and sixty. Therefore, I could only interpret it as a rebirth. It was my hope that by telling her this, she would find it possible within herself to accept her own situation. It is not wise to break into someone’s death room. Many times the death within a human being is what they have attracted and they are deeply attached to it. Disturbing it only makes death more painful. I was pleased when she opened up and told me her story, adding that she wished she could find a way out.

I feel quite certain that disease is only a manifestation of a call for help - a hope that somebody will see the need, the need to be loved and to receive energy. It’s like someone drowning and going down for the third time, while there are dozens of people watching on the shore, with no one inspired to jump in. We need someone to volunteer to dissolve the energy block. She said she would be willing and asked where she could find such a person. I told her that I would be willing, not as a favor to her, but as a mutual thing, so that as the energy block dissolved in her, it could be utilized as a source of energy for me.

Before leaving on a month-long trip to the Orient, I sat for a half-hour with Mrs. Jackson, pouring energy into her and drawing out, with the flow, the cancerous energy. I worked very deeply and felt great heat as the flow was coming into me from her. There was no obvious experience during this effort except that I could feel a remarkable cooperation and a deep sensitivity on her part. I told her that while I was away I would try to work many times a day to continue drawing off this strong disease force and that she was to try to keep open and try to feel my presence.

For the two days before I left and for the entire trip I felt like a small stove into which an endless amount of coal was being shoveled. I burned and burned and burned. I do a particular exercise which helps flush negative psychic tensions out of my system. It works particularly well after any kind of shock situation. It has been effective in allowing me to work with emotionally sick people. By dropping the tensions after they leave, I have not become ill. Occasionally when I forget to use it, I find that my body becomes rigid and that tensions spread throughout it. After an intense confrontation with someone who is particularly difficult, I sometimes work for half an hour and then for two periods of ten minutes each to flush out the negative force of the encounter.

For the month that I was away, I was working on the average of eight hours a day flushing out the negative quantity from the half-hour that I had taken of this diseased flow. It became apparent to me that the energy that could be assimilated this way was very powerful though minute in quantity. The content was more than enough to nourish me because of its density, but the consciousness needed to refine this small quantity was enormous. This made it impossible for me during the month that I was away to have any personal relationships or involvements. I could not afford to put any tensions on myself that might stop the flow coming out of me.

An important factor in our growing is to be sure that all our objectives flow in the same direction. Anything counter to our purpose becomes a tension which impedes the rapidity with which we can grow. It is no different than a plant growing in nature. There must be enough water and sun. Too much water or too much sun will hurt the growth. It is the conscious balance that a human being can maintain that will produce not only growth but a healthy spiritual being. There is an instinct within us that allows us to attract what we need.

There is an expression, "Money goes to money." Spirituality certainly goes to spirituality. By increasing the amount of energy required to grow, a stronger appetite is developed, and this stronger appetite attracts situations which previously would have destroyed the mechanism. Because of the increased inner expansion the mechanism can handle a stronger energy and larger quantities of expansions. There is an expression, "If you want something done, give it to a busy man." This is based on the correct premise that anyone who can do one thing well can do many things well, and that it is easy to expand something that is already in a state of expansion. In real estate, brokers always offer property to someone who has previously bought. The resistance in somebody the first time is so enormous that it is "a pleasure to deal with somebody that knows what he’s doing." Spiritually what could be considered an opportunity for a developed person could mean the destruction of someone who didn’t have a history of spiritual development and study. The more a person lives, the deeper his commitment to his objective, the greater the acceleration of his growth. A young or inexperienced person finds it agonizing to make a decision. An executive makes hundreds of decisions a day.

The accumulated intelligence that comes with growing and accelerating eventually produces within you an enormous mechanism. This mechanism is like a great computer. New information can be put into it, and it is fed by the intelligence of all past experience, allowing for a quick and positive answer. Intelligence is a developed capacity which works best in a completely open person. Tension is prejudice. It reflects self-rejection because of insecurity and prevents us from feeling oneness.

The day after I returned from my month-long trip, I had an appointment with Mrs. Jackson. She came to my shop and I could feel she was a little more open than before. I embraced her and felt as if she were my older sister. She told me that she had felt my presence while I was away and had had the best month in the two years since she had been ill. She also said that she had very little pain.

Two of my students who instruct for me, one in New York and one in Indiana, were in the shop, and I thought I would try to use them in working with this woman. We sat in a triangle putting her close to the base, creating a great heat and flow which penetrated within her. We worked at this for about twenty minutes. I then worked with her alone and found that I was able to go much deeper within myself and within her. I then left her in a back room to sit by herself.

I went back an hour later to see how she was. It was as if she was sitting within a twenty-foot circle filled with images. There was an enormous mass of figures surrounding her as if she had disgorged this congestion. When she rose and came out of the back room, there was a much greater opening within her. I felt that I had to find something within me which could make an effort to meet this great effort that she was making. I realized that the difference in our physiques might create an imbalance of a kind between us - I am a heavy person and she was quite slender. Although I had been satisfied with the two previous attempts, I thought that the thickness within me could become an obstacle to her purification and I felt that if I went on a long fast I could refine myself and draw more deeply from her.

On my trip, while I was having coffee in the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay, I had run into an old friend of mine whose family I had known for many years. I joined him at his table and he greeted me very warmly, as we had not seen each other for quite a while.

We made an appointment to meet for lunch the next day. When we had dessert, he very charmingly made an effort to get something unusual and typically Indian. It was called mango fool, which was a puree of mangos and sweet cream. He laughingly said, "There is no fool like a mango fool." I remarked that he didn’t look as if he had had many mango fools lately, as he was looking quite thin and peaked. He said that he had just finished a month’s fast. It was a grape fast in which he took only grapes and grape juice. He was a man in his late sixties and was suffering from several illnesses, which he claimed were very much helped by the fast. There was a book explaining the grape fast which he very kindly gave me, suggesting that it wouldn’t do me any harm, as he liked to joke about my weight.

I had had some teachers who had remarked about my being heavy but the pressure of my life made it a difficult problem. I needed food in quantity to wash out the tensions of my everyday existence. I had been told at least a thousand times that I looked like a Buddha, but it never meant anything to me one way or the other. People would come into my store, look at a statue, then look at me and remark that there certainly was a resemblance. I was even accused of doing it deliberately. When I lived with the Shankaracharya of Purl, he made the following remark: "If you talk to a fool for a long time, you are also a fool."

I gave the book on the grape fast to a student of mine and told him to read it. He mentioned that, according to the book, grapes are a good means of fighting cancer.

This came to my mind when I felt I should fast to enable me to purify myself in treating Mrs. Jackson. I found myself not very hungry and surprisingly even went without any grapes for the first three days. I also found I did not need the quantity described in the book. After I lost the first twenty pounds, I found a relating vibration within myself which responded to a quality in Mrs. Jackson. As I continued to fast, I began to understand that she in a sense was a test of God to me. That by being able to do something for somebody else, I was able to do something for myself. Having such a high objective, the dieting became a simple and happy experience. The loss of energy and the haggard appearance of my friend in Bombay were not my experience. I found instead a lightness and joy as I felt the weight lift from me spiritually as well as physically. Michelangelo’s expression, "I freed the statue from the stone," came to my mind. Even though the dieting started out as a conscious sacrifice on my part, it soon became simply an expression of a higher consciousness. I found one experience leading to another like stepping stones carrying me higher and higher toward God.

The purpose of all that I have written is to show how we can take experiences and use them as ascending steps. It is the conscious reaching for more energy and for spiritual development that allows us to go to higher levels. It is a limitation in the mind that makes people think that spiritual work requires the abandonment of responsibilities on the physical level, such as family and friends, a job, and the providing of food and shelter. This idea comes through laziness and spiritual ego, which has allowed inferior people to demand what very superior people attain through deprivation and very hard work. To see a great saint working in India is astonishing. His ability to have long and arduous interviews with endless numbers of people each day requires an almost superhuman capacity. For this he is rewarded with a bowl of cereal and possibly a cup of tea. His system is so refined that it does not require more nourishment.

I began to understand that the quantity of food I ate was to give me the energy I needed to fight the tensions that had accumulated in this life. And after separating from Baba, the teacher I had studied with for many years, I needed to work harder to replace the energy I had received from him - At the same time I found that the releasing of tension opened in me a joyousness that allowed God to enter my being. A teacher in no way is a replacement for God and I found that the person with whom I had studied was so obsessed with his being God, or more than God, that I could not respect and sustain the relationship. Anybody who teaches by tension is an insecure human being. A teacher should give love and free people from tension so that they can open to God.

One evening after I returned from India and the day before I started the diet, I went to someone’s home for dinner. It was in many ways my last supper. There was a very tense young man at the dinner party, who had recently begun studying with me. He came and sat next to me. He started to talk, and as he went on I found myself drawing in his tensions. I opened and kept seeing and feeling this flow coming out of him into me. I could take it into myself as easily as I could eat a handful of potato chips. Six months earlier if I had sat next to someone like this, his tensions would have agitated me, I would have become nervous, and I would have had to move away.

Several years earlier I had the experience of seeing the very ascetic Swami Chittananda, who was known for having lengthy periods of fasting. He was visiting in New York and I called on him. I was received by this gentle, frail little swami, who was very pleasant to me. We started talking and he asked me what my name was; when I told him that I had been given the title swami, I felt him withdraw into himself It seemed to me that my lack of refinement and his extraordinary refinement made me less appealing to him, especially since we had both been given the same label, even though I used mine with great reluctance. When I asked him if he would visit my ashram, he accepted, though very tentatively, and I felt it was his intention to come for only a few minutes.

It was fortunate that in the ashram there was a girl who had spent some time in India; with her help we were able to get flowers and fruit. When the swami came, everyone prostrated themselves before him, bringing him these simple gifts. The discipline and training that were evident were very much admired by this saint, who said it transcended the level of his own people in America. I felt that in some way this atoned for my own lack of development. I went to visit him on several occasions and tried to stay very open in his presence. It took me many hours each time I visited him until I could feel his inner vibration. I could understand it only to a degree and through respect found nothing in me to lessen the enormous reverence I had for this man.



A TEACHER in no way is a replacement for God.



It had always been my understanding that purity could be a limitation to spiritual development, as without material to burn, one could not develop. I felt that the coarseness of myself gave me very available material to burn and purify. However, I might be merely justifying my reluctance to surrender some ideas and habits. My ability to feel the presence of this saint and to relate to him with a more secure feeling within myself was, I began to feel, part of my fasting. Surrendering in depth changes our pattern, and then when the energy goes through our spiritual computer it brings increased quantities of new knowledge. The process can be compared to the ability of a great scientist to assimilate in one minute information that has taken years and years to accumulate. When you have attained this high level in one area, any new information brought to it raises the level of that information.

Spiritual work, being an expression of very pure creative energy, affects anything touching it. It is the most fertile, nourishing soil. The joke about Texas could be applied to it: if you put a seed in the ground, jump back, because it will grow so quickly it will throw you off your feet. But when we develop within ourselves and enter this creative flow, we must not jump back but allow the flow of creation to express itself.

All things that reflect spiritual growth are the manifestation of energy. The pattern manifests itself as a moving picture not only to show what is happening at the moment but also to project the future. A stockbroker on Wall Street has dozens of graphs and innumerable sources which he continually keeps in touch with to project relationships. The depth of a stockbroker’s sensitivity to the material and the rapidity with which he acts determines his success as an individual and the success of his firm. It is not only our own capacity that determines our success; the people and organizations we associate with can limit our capacity in many ways.

The world is full of people who are brilliant after the fact. The capacity of any conscious flow to work to its highest potential requires rapid assimilation of information and energy and rapid expression of the energy in constructive terms. The understanding of the changing inner content of energy necessitates that creative action be put into practice as soon as possible after receiving inspiration or knowledge. It’s something like squeezing an orange and getting immediate nourishment from it, as exposure to the air will destroy its vitamin content.

A child is created because of the drop of semen that a man implants deeply within a woman. This seed is not exposed to the air and works because of that and because of the depth. The same principle applies to all seeds. They are received in an act of surrender. Invariably when any creative act is put into form, there are many people who say, "That’s exactly the way I was going to do it." Unfortunately, they had the concept but they did not act upon it, which makes them only witnesses to somebody else’s creativity.

There are many talented people who amount to nothing. There are many superior people who live deeply unhappy and unfulfilled lives because they do not have the discipline to put their talent to use. A growing creative existence requires large amounts of a continually higher energy to sustain the pattern of growth. Along with this growth there is the need to act upon the stoppages and to keep the flow of creative energy constant. Since man is not a machine, there are increases and decreases in his flow of creative energy.

This fluctuation causes stoppages which, if they are not corrected, will break down the mechanism. If this were to happen in a cotton-spinning machine, it would show up in the lack of finished thread being wound on a bobbin. It would also cause a tangling of fiber, which would not allow the mechanism’s repairs to be made.

In your instrument, a deep and subtle consciousness is required to find the change within your creative flow. This is easily discernible by watching the product or the outer manifestation. If a person’s activity suddenly decreases sharply, or decreases slowly over a period of time, it is an indication that the creative energy is not flowing properly. Acupuncture is a method of using needles for energy by shocking the group of muscles which are tight. The needle penetrating the area of these tight muscles causes energy to flow and to be assimilated by the body in a normal way.

There is a very definite relationship between body structure and spiritual existence. As we grow from childhood to maturity we encompass our tensions within the physical maturity of our tissues, bones, and flesh. It is one of the unconscious ways a human being armors himself against the pressures of life. It is one of the reasons that peasants throughout history have always been short and squat. It is nature’s way of creating that physical, psychic coating within the physical body that enables the species to survive. Thickness of any kind helps absorb shock, psychic or physical. Layers of insulation protect man from brutal living. This in no way suggests that people of higher social and economic levels do not develop their own particular shells. One of the ways that society separates people is by their physical appearance. Many similar characteristics of build can be seen from culture to culture; a ditch digger in Japan is built much like a ditch digger in Europe or a ditch digger in Peru. This is amazing in a sense, since the diet of these people can vary enormously.

To rid the body of inherited tensions, you must either break them down so they can become part of the flow of creative energy or learn to use them consciously toward the direction of spiritual growth.

All structure within a human being represents the natural resources given him at his birth to enable him to reach complete fulfillment. It is very much like certain countries where people have lived for many generations without exploring their natural resources. In present times, these countries have been found to be enormously rich; their riches and the necessary technology to free them will begin to raise their standard of living. This has come about through the world’s need for their raw material.

It is essential for a human being to place himself where there is a call for what he has to offer. Having the advantage of movement, naturally he is not restricted in the same way raw materials are that are locked in the earth. Black slaves in America escaped from the South to the North when they had within them the wish to fulfill themselves. European people of all classes and religions moved to America for the same reason. Today the movement need not be from place to place. It is essential that it be from level to level within each person sothat he can find out how he can free himself of his own restrictions, which are the tensions which come through his birth and past life.

Women are fighting for their liberation. One outstanding expression being manifested is hostility - not an opening up of the deep quality that is within a woman. We see the same thing with blacks and every group that proclaims its need to be free. This is a direct expression of how tensions are the first thing that must be removed before a person can find his inner freedom. This has to be understood so that it is not met with counter-hostility, but with love and consciousness. The need for deep nourishment is there, and it is the only way to break down these tensions. The best treatment for a starving man is for him to increase his food intake slowly. This is the only sensible way to achieve change, but of course this advice is usually resented as everyone wishes immediate results. Slowly nourishing the starving man allows his adjustment to be complete and he does not suffer from the muscles being overloaded before they are strong enough to absorb food quickly.



THE WISH within a human being is the most powerful energy that exists.



Fasting has the capacity to bring muscles and tensions to a state of surrender. It releases psychic tensions which are held when they are fed in a normal way. These tensions are held in the muscles and tissues. Being overweight causes additional pressure to hold them in and makes for more defensiveness. Even a naturally thin person fasting for ten days would benefit enormously by the releasing of latent hostilities and poisons held in the muscles and tissues of the body. It is easy to squeeze water out of a rag. The thickness or thinness does not change the structure’s capacity to hold negative quantities.

The poisons and tensions held by the body from birth account for much of the inherited disease which is seen in family histories, such as gout, rheumatism, and asthma. Many of the diseases prevalent in a family rest in the tissues upon the conception of the child. The child flowers into the same type of neurotic from which his seed came, from his parents who possess similar potential. A good way not to be possessed by these characteristics is to fast and discharge these poisons from within the tissues.

A very, very important factor during fasting is the need to be quiet. To release one group of tensions while under the influence of another group of tensions is insanity. Any attempt at change must always take place with higher levels of consciousness and lower levels of tension. It is necessary for a person to consciously raise the level of his relationship during this period of inner chemical change. As a woman bearing a child is given lists of things to do and not to do, things to eat and not to eat, it is also the tendency of people around her to become more loving and tender during this time. This makes a baby the beautiful object that it is. Few women regularly receive the tenderness and love that they do during this time of childbearing. The man is completely open because the child, not being a reality until it is born, is still in the illusory state, having an unknown potential.

The inability to live with perfection brings out in a person his sense of inadequacy, which turns to violence and which begins to reduce the situation to a less perfect state. Once the objective is reached, the need to raise the level of consciousness is essential to maintain the flow of energy. In the case of a child, when it is born, it has projected onto it by its parents a future which is positive and happily acceptable to the parents. This pertains not only to a child but to friendship, to marriage, and to any other relationship.

The imagination and energies within a person have the capacity to shape the future. The wish within a human being is the most powerful energy that exists. It can scale mountains and cross oceans as it expresses a depth beyond the ordinary. It is capable of the extraordinary as it continually expresses a force which can control the destiny of the individual himself or the person he relates to.

A continual flow of energy going in the same direction year after year is capable of doing anything. Need and pressure can turn anything or anyone into something of an extraordinary nature. The need for change has only to do with the ability to meet a strong energy and allow it to become a guiding force. Martin Luther King’s most touching expression was, "I have a dream." A visionary has the capacity to suffer for other people and for an objective regardless of insurmountable pressures. These pressures stimulate and nourish rather than hinder a strong and creative person. Gandhi had a dream; Moses had a dream. It is the ability to visualize beyond the limitations of society that can set the world on fire.

The daring of one person’s expression is the key to the door of many people’s energy. It is necessary for us to find the challenge that can raise us to a higher level. We meet a challenge, we meet a dream; and because that energy is greater than ours, reaching for it gives us the nourishment to fulfill it. This is the expression of an inner hunger that can only be satisfied by feeding on this energy.

When I first met Mrs. Jackson, it was not an energy that I was looking for, it was a situation that was available. it’s never intelligent to question what is given, but to accept it and learn to assimilate it. Man from culture to culture has eaten different kinds of food and after generations the capacity to eat and receive nourishment has become so remarkable that diets of some regions might kill people of others.

There is within people a capacity to understand external purity. They can easily accept the need to have pure food and water. They can accept going to monasteries and detaching from ordinary tensions of life. But they may try to use an air conditioner to bring clean air into a house in which there is a bad gas leak. Anyone having a furnace knows that every summer it must be cleaned so that the grime that accumulates inside and outside of the pipe is removed. Various parts must be washed and replaced or the fuel that comes into the furnace gives inadequate heat. If internal parts are neglected they can cause the entire mechanism to break down.

It is not how much we receive but how much we can internalize that accounts for our capacity to grow. Consciousness in a person is the ability to make the connection between himself and the source of energy and to keep it open and flowing. A good furnace is one that takes in fuel without any waste and gives off maximum heat. For a person, wrong identification and attaching of levels lower than the ultimate objective bleeds out energy and reduces the capacity for success.



IT is not how much we receive but how much we can internalize that accounts for our capacity to grow.



There should be no conflict between three dimensions of work operating simultaneously. As an example, as I identify with Mrs. Jackson and draw energy from her on a physical level, then raise the energy from her on a spiritual level and refine it, the process causes me to surrender on a physical level all the negative psychic tensions, or the non-assimilated matter out of my body, and allows the flow from her to me to continue. The refined matter is then brought through my body to the top of my head where it connects to a higher creative energy, or God, allowing my attention to be on three levels simultaneously. It is the need to focus on one area at a time that creates tensions. As the heavier quantities flowing from one dimension to another are refined, they remove obstacles and discharge tensions.

An interesting experience for me during my fasting was the capacity of my chemistry to draw more energy from the atmosphere. I had been on the fast for about a week when I walked by a freshly cut lawn. The smell of the grass was particularly tasteful, and I found that deep within myself I was able to open and draw nourishment from this smell and from the energy put into the atmosphere by the cutting of the grass. it was being drawn in from the center of my head and taken in by muscles and cells, which had become more sensitive.

I have had several such experiences since. It is a sensitivity that comes from years of practicing yoga, plus the effect of fasting on my ordinary mechanism. This consciousness of drawing energy into my being from the natural nourishment in the atmosphere, such as green woods or bodies of water, has become another form of identification for me. The awareness of sound has intensified. The awareness of color and other sensory perceptions has become heightened. The expression that I found on a nourishment level has extended itself into other areas of my life. To identify with lesser or perhaps more brutal situations has become increasingly difficult for me. It is another kind of fasting or dieting. The consciousness of the sensitivity of the people I find myself with is in direct relationship to my capacity to be open. The less intelligent and sensitive the person, the less open I am.

It is amazing for me to understand that food in a physical form is no different from food in a spiritual form. The people and situations we allow in our life directly affect our ability to grow based on the amount and quality of the nourishment we receive from them. It is again the old cliché of "money goes to money." A thick person eats thick, thinks thick, and thickens everything by his attitude and thinking. He should be willing to "fast," that is to remove himself from his ordinary surroundings until he can assimilate the heavier energies so that his system can clear and receive lighter and finer forces which will allow him to become more sensitive.

A steady diet of refined food or vibrations will not suffice to attain the ideal growth that is theoretically possible. It is not possible for a human being to change the inner condition by just fasting or altering the diet. To effect a real change, conscious effort is needed to clear out the system and allow it to grow organically strong enough so that it can absorb the change. Real change takes several years of conscious effort. One needs to fast, to keep a little more detached from past habits, and to slowly allow the inner mechanism to develop so that it can grow consciously with the new energy diet.

Change within a period of three to six months, or even a year or two, succeeds in creating illusions. The steady change in diet will make the mechanism finer but will not allow sufficient inner energy to flow through and support the organic growth necessary to fulfill the responsibility and the future growth of the organs at a rate that can be assimilated and also to perpetuate its ultimate potential.

In nature it is the endless crossbreeding of a new strain for dozens of generations that produces a superior strain. In a human being it is the wish that is reflected in enormous outer change. It is our emotional capacity that allows us to make the sacrifice and it is our minds that reflect that sacrifice.

To really serve God is to rationally follow the laws of nature. It requires patience and time to allow the transmutation to take place. If you love your family and wish to grow through them, you must be open and keep the flow of energy going between you. When you marry, the respect and flow must be expanded to encompass both your family and your husband or wife so that you are extending the creative flow as well as the genetic flow.

We have the illusion that we can exercise our own will for our own end. The entire concept of spirituality is submission of your will to a teacher as well as to a philosophy or religion. Many times, against tremendous resistance, the student submits and then the energy connection occurs which makes for a rebirth. It is particularly difficult for willful or stubborn people to allow this to occur. The defensiveness of the mind is unbelievable and many people who make efforts and pay the full price of time and energy do not succeed. It is the deep unconscious which prevents this marriage of energies, or crossbreeding, from taking place. It is the inability of the person to submit to anybody or anything. It is the primitive resistance of a primitive human being. I have taught for over twenty years and find it a recognizable quality, as there are certain characteristics which exhibit themselves in the personality. They are frustrated by their own sense of value. People feel superior to the situation and deeply resent submitting or being a student. They usually feel they have an ability to teach and always fight for a minor position, such as a teacher or apprentice, that puts them above the level of a student.

It is like a prize fighter who never stays down for the count of ten. He gets up continually and gets his brains knocked out. A deep inner pride allows him, in his own mind, to feel he has never been beaten. To truly surrender is not only to be beaten but to not care. It is not within the capacity of a weak ego to ever give in. A real human being is one who will die for what he believes, and because he will die, he has the potential of being a true vehicle through which God can work. When people do not have the inner security to completely submit, it reflects their own will and their inability to truly accept God’s will to work through them.

It is very difficult to explain this to anybody who has never really surrendered. It is like trying to squeeze a greased pig. It just won’t stay in your arms, in the same way that trying to consciously work with people who cannot submit to God makes it impossible to have a real connection with them which will eventually free them to have their own connection with God.

The greatest thing that you can do is to really ask in your heart to be open so that you can surrender to God. If you can’t have the dramatic experience of your heart opening to this wish for your creative growth, then all the work you do in the future will be superficial. It does not matter how much you work, how long you work, or the sacrifices you make; unless the effort springs from a deep conscious surrender, all the energy you put in and all the effort you make will not become deep nourishment. If this deep conscious opening and wish to grow does not exist, the result will be superficial and unproductive. To have a good garden, all the fertilizing, watering, and work must take place within the confines of the garden. Watering around the gate outside the fence and indiscriminately throwing fertilizer and seed in the air is not the same as working in the area where it is needed. A man who does not open within himself to the greatest depth possible, and continue to expand theeffort, is like the man in the parable of the sower throwing the seed on the rock. Every effort for a human being is internal and in depth. A deep conscious effort will bring results.

There is a gap somewhere in our minds which does not let us relate to things as they exist. We are always trying to change the nature of things; however, as we evolve, truth continuously changes. As we learn and experience, we should stay detached so that we may continue to change. We need great inner nourishment to grow to the connection with our past lives and when we reach that energy we should accept it in a state of surrender. It is often said that everything that was and is exists in time at any given moment as well as everything that will be. To be connected with that is to have that sense of creation which is truly the expression of a spiritual being.

My feeling about the woman suffering with cancer encompasses all the levels of physical and spiritual energies as well as connecting to all past lives; because of this there is a completeness which defies definition. The need to explain is itself a limitation on the experience. It is only to show the connectedness which occurs when you surrender. Each day, the energy coming into the atmosphere contains something pertinent to both my conscious development with this person and my own ultimate development. It is living in yesterday, today, and tomorrow simultaneously. It also is doing good to both her development and my development. Everyone around me is Teaming, everyone around her is benefiting. The total good is there, the expanded consciousness is there, and the gratitude toward God is there. We are all growing. No body is superior; the situation expresses creative energy not personality.

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CHAPTER THREE

Teaching:

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