When Dr. Steinmetz said that the nature of spiritual power would be revealed in the 20th Century it should have shaken the foundations of the entire religious world. Because nothing would be more natural than to assume that the religions of the world knew all about spiritual power because supposedly religions are based on spiritual power. And yet no one seems to have been shocked by that statement and so far as I know no one has made the claim that the nature of spiritual power was well known.

Actually, the reason that the nature of spiritual power has not been known is this -- that spiritual power does not belong to the mind -- to the intellect. There is no amount of knowledge that anyone can attain that would be spiritual power. There is no amount of knowledge that anyone could attain that would move mountains spiritually or heal disease spiritually or raise the dead or forgive the sinner. You cannot forgive the sinner by saying, "I forgive you." You cannot heal the sick by pleading with God to heal the sick. You cannot multiply loaves and fishes spiritually by any means now known to the human mind.

It is because of this that we know that spiritual power can only be brought into expression through the attainment of a fourth dimensional consciousness -- a higher awareness than that which is possessed by the human mind. In other words, there is no known truth that will ever function spiritually. It makes no difference what truth you study or what truth you believe you know. Whether it is one of the more orthodox appeals to God or whether it is using the words of Jesus Christ, "I say unto thee pick up thy bed and walk." or "I say unto thee arise." or "Thou seest me thou seest the Father that sent me." Use these statements, memorize these truths, do anything you like with them and you will find that there is no spiritual power in them. Take any of the statements that have ever been given to the world by any of the modern metaphysical teachings -- learn them by heart -- if you like learn them even forwards and backwards, and see if they will result in any spiritual activity and you will find that the answer is 'no'. You will find that there are students who have studied 10, 20, 30, 40 years and still haven't achieved the healing of a headache, and yet they know all of the words in the Bible and they know all of the words in the metaphysical books. In the same way there are great biblical scholars -- very few of them have ever attempted to perform anything of a spiritual nature with all of the knowledge they possess. And the reason is it isn't possible. It isn't possible to bring the least spiritual power into expression by any means now known to the intellect or to the mind and yet any person with even a grain of spiritual attainment can do mighty works that the greatest minds could never perform. That is why the Master said that you must come as little children, not as great scholars, not as men and women who know a great deal about scripture or truth but as a little child.

It is for this reason that our work is quite a difficult one. It is the only work of its kind anywhere in the Western world where the entire goal of our work is the attaining of some measure of spiritual consciousness. Our work is not the imparting of knowledge because all of the knowledge, all of the letter of truth that there is in the message of the Infinite Way can be imparted in any one week in the year. It would require only one week of anyone's time to learn all of the letter of truth -- to learn all that we know -- all that's embodied in our books. Every bit of this could be learned in one week as far as the mind, the intellect is concerned. What good it would do I don't know except if an individual decided to take that knowledge and work with it and practice it until it served its purpose in developing the higher consciousness.

In the Orient this is quite a different story. This manner of teaching has been known in the Orient since long, long centuries before the Christian era. It is that system whereby there is a spiritual teacher that is one who has attained some measure (some have more and some less) of spiritual consciousness, and by sitting quietly in their cave or in their mountain place or by the river bank, gradually attract to themselves some individuals who feel drawn to them or led to them, and then these become the student body and they will sit around with the teacher, come back each day for a session, sometimes remain for two or three or four nights and days, sleeping outdoors if necessary until some measure of light begins to dawn in their consciousness. Other teachers have graduated from their caves and formed ashramas -- small houses, temples, places of worship and living, and students come to them -- drawn there because there is no advertising, and you have the same thing repeated. People sometimes come from thousands of miles away just to spend a week or two with a particular teacher. Usually the local students will come and remain anywhere up to five, six, seven years because in the Orient, in spite of radio and television, they still don't know that we think you can learn spiritual truth over a busy weekend. And so they feel that it's quite normal and natural to spend three, four, five, six, seven years with their teacher. However, the teacher is never imparting very much of truth because the teacher knows very little of truth, and in fact there isn't much really of truth to impart. And so it becomes a matter of meditation -- of imparting a truth here and there with which the student can work, meditate, ponder, until they attain some degree of awareness of even one particular truth.

In the experience of some of these students they reach a place that the teacher recognizes where they are ready not to live now as the disciples said, "We can do all things in thy name." In other words, through your consciousness, but where they are now ready to live on their own consciousness, and usually the Oriental teacher sends the student out away from him for a year or two until the student proves that they have been able to live on their own consciousness -- their own degree of attainment, and then usually they receive their title, their robe, and they in turn go out and either sit in a cave or start a small ashrama, or in these modern days travel to the Western world and start teaching.

All of this is aimed at one thing -- the development of a higher consciousness than the normal intellect or human mind -- the development of a state of consciousness which is not normal to the human being because it has never been developed in the human being although it is there. In the beginning, before what is called Adam and Eve, every individual had a fully developed spiritual consciousness -- in fact, that's all they did have -- they didn't have what we call mortal consciousness because they had no awareness of good and evil. They had no more awareness of good than they did of evil. They only had an awareness of being -- harmonious being, joyous being, free being. There was neither Greek nor Jew. There was neither bond nor free. There was only being. Pure being. And each individual drew their wisdom, their substance, their support, their life from the Source which was the Divine Consciousness called the Father Consciousness. The Father Consciousness is this Supreme Consciousness. The Son Consciousness is the full and complete individualization of the Father Consciousness. In other words, when an individual drew entirely from their spiritual source they had that same mind that the Father had and they had the fullness of it without in any wise taking away any that their neighbor had. Just as your garden can have the full sunshine without depriving your neighbor's garden of any sunshine. It too can have the full sunshine.

Now, after what is called the fall of man. After what is called the departure from the Garden of Eden, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, man has a consciousness of his own. He no longer has the Father's consciousness, he now has a mortal consciousness, that is the suffix 'al' meaning 'of' a consciousness of death. As everyone has who is under the universal belief in two powers. That very belief in two powers means life and death, good and evil, rich and poor, pure and sinful. That is the dual consciousness of the human race, the mortal consciousness, the consciousness of death. Now, ever since the beginning of religion the attempt has been to get back into the Garden of Eden, or in the language of the prodigal son who also was the son of the king, the son of nobility, royalty, kingliness, and wealth, and as a son was heir to all his father had, but he too entertained a sense of separation and decided to be an individual on his own account with no dependence on his source, no dependence on the Father, but rather, "I me of my own self am mighty." And so he departs with whatever measure of his father's substance his father gave him -- and remember it was divided -- and then every bit that he used left him with a little bit less until he ran out of consciousness, ran out of substance, and had nothing left not even to eat. And from the moment that he turned in recognition of this fact, turned back to the father's house he also exemplified the place that we exist now in the human scale where we realize we have come to the end of our rope. We have used up all of our resources. We have no way of knowing how to maintain peace on earth -- certainly, no way of knowing how to prolong life and we're ready to acknowledge -- those that are in the Father's house, even if they're servants there, are a lot better off than we are facing tomorrow's headlines.

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