The curse of dogma.

The philosophy of life accepted by the majority has constantly led us from our noblest possibilities.  We eat and sleep and suffer and die in our brain-minds and the lower and unreal portion of our selves, and keeps the chambers of the soul with doors locked against our own entrance. 

Look at the faces in the street, the general aspect of humanity in public places: they are beginning to fear death; the thought of death is with them always.  Fear is in our blood and it will be in the blood of our descendants.  Our young men grow old before they have been young, and our woman are bowed down and joyless.  We are limited in our intellect and heart-life and physically where many should be giants, they are now apologies for men----and all because down the though the centuries we have been presented with-half truths only.  The great and universal truths about life have been hidden away under forms and ceremonies and reasoning and argument and expectancy and faith, till we no longer know where we are.    

They borrow their opinions from outside sources and ignore the divinity sleeping within themselves.  Appearances pass for truth, the letter is preferred to spirit wile they are relying on their false righteousness.  

We hunger and thirst for the surface of things and will never rest long enough in the chambers of our souls, often taking no step forward in things spiritual because our minds are so immersed in books, often burdened with a kind of scholarship that tears out the heart of humanity, and explains the universe and all that therein is from the standpoint of matter and the brain-mind alone.  Even if we read and studied millions of books and had the greatest of teachers to instruct us, we would find no truth until we believed in our inner selves and that, being human, we are more than human---greater than the world imagines or than dogmas and creeds allow---because there is within us that which is capable of absolute knowledge and may not stop, without self-degradation, at faith. 

Many who desire truth are yet unwilling to give up for its sake any of their mental encumbrances that bear no relation to truth; preconceived notions lingering in the halls of their memory, opinions born of their own whims or the psychological influence of their neighbors' minds or the books they read or their environment, the conventional views they absorbed through their education when they were taught to accept cant phrases as substitutes for vital realities.

Consider the injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.  We read it glibly in church on Sundays and repeat it with a certain vanity in the repetition, but what have we of it in our daily life?  Conventional phrases expressive of politeness and a conventional attitude of goodwill; lip-worn platitudes, in respect to which whoever violates normal usage is accounted rude and unfriendly.  It never or rarely occurs to us that talking about feelings loving our neighbor as our selves, unless real feeling capable of dominating our lives and actions lies behind the words, is all a vain repetition---lip service, cant, and even hypocrisy.  

No man or woman can walk in the light until they have freed themselves of superficiality.  The human mind must achieve its independence, stepping out and standing for greater things than mere societies slogans.  As long as we are unfocused and our thinking is all with the ideas of old religious systems, so long will it be impossible for us to understand the real nature of our humanity because the essentials for such an understanding lie all within our divine higher self, in the inmost sanctuary of live.

                   Thank you Katherine Tingley  One truth, many paths.  Be good, do good.

                                                                Louis DiVirgilio

Natives of eternity.

We know humans are religious by nature.  Every human being, even the lowest, has tendencies towards religion because all are sprung from a divine source.   Whatever the mind or even the life of us may be, the god is still sleeping within.  The basic knowledge that we are essentially divine can solve all the problems that have vexed us or our forefathers before us; by it, humanity may be lifted out of all its despair and limitations. The thought that springs from it immediately is that our evolution is in our own hands to create and direct, that our salvation can only come from ourselves and through our own efforts.  One has but to evoke one's own higher nature, perceiving and recognizing the resources of the god within one's being, and the response will come as surely as the rising of tomorrow's sun.  Was it not said the kingdom of heaven should be found within our selves?

We are wonder-seekers; the mind is curious and tends to reach after what is unknown and far away, so we set our thoughts and hopes upon remote regions, a point in space beyond the stars.  But we are not led to our highest duty by what excites in us the love of the marvelous.  Was it not the heart, in the chamber of the heart---there and there only that the kingdom of heaven might be discovered?  

Forms and creeds and dogmas can but obscure the light within.  As long as the mind is led by them---no matter how high the principles they may seem to inculcate it cannot but miss seeing at least one half of the meaning of life, it cannot but be put off with half truths and be deaf to the in voice. There can be no glory nor inspiration in the life: the soul like a lonely wonderer will go on seeking to touch the mind to growth and the life to nobler standers of character.  It will go on to flood the conscious self, the whole personality, with the fullness and grandeur of its power---and seeking in vain.  That is why humanity is drifting out now into the seas of unrest, and why the shadows overwhelm us and our sight cannot penetrate them: we do not understand ourselves.  

And know all antiquated theories are being overturned, customs and beliefs are being abandoned.  There is some force at work in the world today that compels us to acknowledge the poverty of our religious life and thought.  Before the World War (1914-1928) a large portion of humanity was half asleep.  Those of dogmatic faiths were complacently satisfied with their religion, but now we find ourselves everywhere stirred with a new unrest: the faith that seemed so abiding holds no such absolute sway now. Dogma and creeds are dying slowly, and there is such depletion in church attendance that the clergy every were are alarmed.  Why?  Because humanity is starving for the bread of life and can take no religion  more of the wretched husks that have doled out to it for centuries. 

The fact is that we are essentially divine, born to evolve.  That is what we are here for, and not to sit negative under a burden of errors.  The possibilities of human nature are not limited and is not difficult to discover truth if we only look for it unbiasedly.  But we must be without preconceived notions , we must have no belief in a personal God or that we live but one life on earth, for such ideas as these  cripple the mind and are bound to generate fear and unrest.  To find that infinity within us, we must start upon the quest aright, having forever prevent our realizing the goal.  

True religion can function only through the inner nature: only through it can we realize the relationship between us and the universe and deity.  Therefore he who is wise will clear his mind of dogma and let the soul sweep in on him as the tides cover the shore; that for things as they are, and with eyes concentrated on the inward life, he may have sight of the inner beauty; that he may have sight of the soul growing and evolving living as naturally as the flowers do; that the interior life of humanity, from which all our hopes, aspirations, and ideals come, may express itself through him as simply and perfectly as the beauty of a rose is expressed through its form and color and perfume. 

For we are warriors of the universal law to do battle superbly for the spiritual manifestation of we ourselves, that these cloudy things which prey upon the mind may be dispelled by the sun that makes all things clear; by the light of the soul, the illumination of the higher self, the eternal spiritual shinning of our own inward divinity.  What we see of humanity, even at its best. but the shadow of the real thing which unmanifest and forever striving towards manifestation, and this is the higher, the immortal part of us.