AS IT IS
A man cannot change his way of life by changing his clothes nor by speaking with a different voice. To change basically, permanently and meaningfully he must reach down into himself and pluck himself out by the roots.
A man cannot lose his fear by telling himself that he is not afraid and believing it. He must know his fear; see it, feel it, and accept it. Then, if he does that which he is afraid to do, says that which he is afraid to say, thinks that which he is afraid to think, sees that which he is afraid to see and knows that which he is afraid to know, he has no fear, for by making known what was unknown or only half known, he discovers his basic invulnerability.
AS IT IS, is written for those who want to break away from the futile human pattern of seeing reality as it is not and thereby living a lie, to abandon the anaesthetic of ignorance and suppression within which man cocoons himself and to embrace the intensity of reality – as it is.
Humanity is doomed!
If we are part of humanity, identified with humanity, in sympathy with humanity, we are doomed.
If we attempt to save humanity from its doom, we shall fail, because humanity has chosen its doom and has shown its unwillingness to reverse its choice.
Our only valid course of action is to detach from humanity, climb out of the quagmire of its lies, its hypocrisy, its blind desire for its own destruction, find our own truth and create our own destiny.
But is it enough to break the links on the surface, to rebel against the superficial manifestations of a deeply rooted corruption? Is it enough to say, “I am not one of you?”
How deep is our conviction?
If the world is to blow itself up, shall we escape the cataclysm by removing ourselves to an island?
By no mans. Although we have no link with the mainland above the level of the sea, the link is strong and permanent below, and if we think the water separates us effectively, we deceive ourselves.
So it is our links with the human race. We can protest and separate ourselves, act differently, openly reject the normally accepted values of humanity, but how deep does it go?
Not very. Below the level of our conscious cries of revolt, lurking in the hidden depths of the mind, powerful and deep-rooted, are links as solid as the ocean bed, that bind us to the human predicament.
Consciously we are detached. Unconsciously we are part of, identified with, immersed in, submerged by the futile tragedy of the human game.
It is our futile tragedy, whether we like it or not, because unconsciously we have made it ours.
If we are ready to break the links we ourselves have created, we must dive down into the depths and find them, bring them to the surface and examine them, know them, understand them. For as long as we keep them hidden, and as long as we pretend to ourselves that they are not there, as long as we on our island imagine we have severed all contact with the mainland, the links will continue to bind us, and at the end, far from finding that we are free of the agony of man’s destruction as a race, we shall find ourselves part of it, as horrified to see his image crumble, as dismayed to discover the hollowness of his vision of himself, as the most convinced conformist.
For at that time all superficial differences will vanish, all conscious disagreements will cease to apply, and what will emerge will be the basic realities, the basic agreements, the basic identifications. And if we have let these remain as we originally created them within ourselves, there will be no escape. Humanity’s doom will be our doom. Humanity’s damnation of itself will be the damnation of ourselves.
We shall be like men who invest in the beginning of a project, sink all they have in its original creation, and then forget they have a stake in its success. When all looks black and nothing can be done to avert catastrophe, they opt out, but because they have forgotten, they fail to break the ties that bind their fortune to the fortune of the project. So that when the end comes, they find themselves inextricably involved with the disaster.
So we must break our links, sever our ties, plumb the depths of our unconsciousness, and cut the bonds, which we’ve bound ourselves.
And there isn’t much time. The distant rumblings that are heralds of the End have become a mighty roar closing in about us, piercing our eardrums and causing the very Earth to quake beneath our feet, so that very soon even the blindest, numbest, most oblivious of us will no longer be able to shut out the sound of it.
By then the whole world will be stricken by the sound of its own approaching doom. Every man will gaze in horror at his fellow man, and see his own fear reflected back to him.
And by then we must be free if we are ever to be free. By then the bonds that bound us must be broken, and we must stand above the terror of the End, aloof, detached, a part of something new.
For every end there is a new beginning, and if we are not of the End, then we shall be of the New Beginning. Either we shall be the ashes of the Phoenix, or his resurrection from the ashes. And if we care about the death of the Phoenix, then we shall be his ashes, but if we are detached and see the cycle of which his death is but a part, then we shall be his resurrection.
And those who care for the human race, those who would preserve it in all its hopeless degradation and irreversible decay, they shall die with it, they shall feel the burning disappointment of the latter days, they shall feel despair, they shall know the horror of a lie exposed too late, they shall feel the fires of destruction within their souls. And they shall die because they could not die. They shall be destroyed because they would not be destroyed. They shall suffer agony because they would not feel agony. They shall see the utter devastation of their race because they would not see it.
For he that looks for salvation in the world, looks for a glowing ember in the sea. Be that clings to the coat tails of mankind and seeks to be carried up to heaven in its wake, shall find himself in Bell.
For though we are in this world, we shall find no truth in the bounds it sets itself, no right within the rules by which it lives. We must be of another world, another set of laws, another code, a world where black and white are seen as what they are, not merged into the lie of murky grey and swallowed blindly, and then forgotten.
If love is what we seek we must know hate. If joy is what we pursue then we must find agony and feel it. If harmony is our ideal then strife and conflict we must serve to find it.
No pendulum can swing only in one direction. And if we have run away from pain, then we have denied ourselves the rights of pleasure. And if we have hidden our faces from the hideous facts of war, then we have taken away the gentle harmony of peace from our experience. And if we have shut our eyes and ears and hearts to ugliness, then we can never know the sweetness or beauty. And if to be safe we have cut ourselves off from the black side of truth, if we have linked ourselves with the mass decision of humanity to see God and the Universe as all loving, all forgiving, and all light, then we have checked for ourselves the pendulum and denied ourselves the white side or truth as well, settling for the meaningless compromise of the middle road, the lie with which the race has sealed its doom.
And we have set our own seal upon that general seal, and by agreement linked ourselves with the fortunes of humanity.
And if we leave the seal we leave the link, and if we leave the link we go with the rest, and if we go with the rest we die with the rest and are bound for eternity to the lie we clung to for security; no longer in merciful ignorance, our awareness dulled by the anaesthetic of our own suppression, but in stark and agonizing consciousness of the twisted inverted nature of the code we stand by. Like a man who is blind, and lives surrounded by the most hideous ugliness imaginable, and then suddenly one day he can see, and the horror of what he sees is unbearable, and he cannot change it and neither can he become blind again.
So before the End, when all accounts are settled and the shackles that still bind us because we have not had the courage to break them asunder, are fixed forever, before the time that must soon come, when the choice is no longer ours and the game is done, we must make the choice that still remains, whether to join the throng and throw in our lot with humanity's lie, whether to be one of the self-deluded optimists who see the race rising towards a magnificent destiny on the wings of scientific progress, who see centuries of hatred and violence that show no signs of abating as no more than the unfortunate driftwood floating on the surface of our civilization, and who see man as a pillar of strength and wisdom, plotting his path unerringly towards ultimate fulfillment, whether like the ostrich to hide our heads in the sand and hope the Day of Judgment will pass us by, or whether to open our eyes and see the race of which we chose to be a part, see it in all its helpless futility, careering blindly and irrevocably towards its doom.
And if we choose the last, then we must lay bare our souls before us, expose our own futilities, our own lies, our own distorted agreements that at present hind us to the destiny of man, and rip the lies to pieces and he free.
And to do this we must go to the root of the lies, the basis of them, we must find the point at which we chose to invert the truth in order to be safe. We-must find the first rejection, the first distortion, the first denial of what we knew. We must know ourselves, reach deep down into the very core of our being, grasp whatever we find there, though it be the foulest and most hideous manifestation of Hell, and bring it out for our ruthless scrutiny.
And when we know the nature and extent of each cretinous lie, we know the key to its elimination. We know the truth behind it, and in the face of such knowledge no lie can continue to exist. But so long as we remain in ignorance of the lie, the lie remains and clings like a limpet, unrelenting.
And when the day comes and the human race begins the final phase of its disintegration, then shall those who have clung to the lie through self-imposed blindness and ignorance, know the truth behind the lie; but not because they sought it. And they will try to separate themselves from the lie, which now in the light of truth becomes like fire to their souls. And because they have not sought to know the lie and cast it out but have clung to it, now shall it cling to them, and they shall not be rid of it, though it give them the ultimate anguish and they cry for mercy. For theirs is the heritage of man, and they shall carry it with them into eternity.
But those who have found the lie when there was still time, and have seen the truth behind it and thus destroyed the lie, they shall go on, not in the blinding agony of doomed humanity, but to the new cycle of the risen Phoenix.
And a new creation shall begin. New laws shall rule the players of a new game. New worlds shall be created.
Truth is the awareness of reality. Facts are nothing; they are the material of statisticians. Reality is the nature of a being; the will, the purpose, the knowledge, the experience of a spark of consciousness created by a God to fulfill a function.
Each being is a separate entity, and yet a part of Him who gave it its existence. Each being has a nature all its own, yet all are centered on the will of their creator, like spokes that radiate from a hub. And each has truth within its grasp, through knowledge of itself.
And the wheel turns and the spokes flash fire in the sunlight, and life begins.
And there is movement, a pattern, a time of evolution, a cycle, a sequence. Each phase follows from the last and prepares the way for the next. And in the motion of the wheel there is no lie, no grating of a harsh anachronism. Logic permeates the smooth passage of time, and logic is inexorable.
The wheel spins and revolution follows revolution, and the sequence is precise like the movement of the stars. And the hub remains, and the spokes branch out and circle it. And change is manifested only in the flashing spokes.
But while each spoke remains pure, bright, unsoiled, undamaged, only a flickering oscillation of light marks the passage of time. Overall the pattern stays unchanged -even within the wheel.
Only when a spoke is dulled, is bent, breaks off from the central hub, becomes entangled with its neighbor, twists itself into grotesque shapes, then begins the change, not in the motion of the wheel for that goes on with the inexorability of logical sequence, but within the wheel itself. The light is distorted. No perfect patterned regularity in the flashing oscillations, but a limping, awkward, rhythmless, nightmare of distorted images.
The wheel continues unaffected. The spokes devolve. They have lost reality, discarded it. So that within the wheel exists no truth but a jumble of conflicting lies.
Such is the creation of the human race. Each spoke the image of a living lie. Each being lost, blinded to the nature of itself.
The passage of time is inexorable; the orbit of the planet around the sun, relentless. The laws of evolution are indestructible.
But men! What parodies of God's original creation, what strange unrecognizable manifestations! What dreadful apparitions! Grotesque nightmares! God in His Heaven shudders at the ghastly sight.
Is this the race He spawned? Is this the army He created? Is this His brood? His beloved creation? Is this the thing He fashioned in His own image, instilled with the burning fire of life? Is this what He placed upon a richly fertile world? Is this the precious work upon which He bestowed His love? “WHAT HAVE I DONE?” He cries.
For the lie, like a treacherous cancer, has taken root, and man has embraced it. And the world has become the lie. And the lie is the world, and the world is the lie, and man is lost in his own blind worship of the lie.
Yet beyond the caverns of the mind is truth. For truth is the knowledge of reality, and behind the lie of blindness, the darkness, the ignorance, the twisted images, is light.
And light is knowledge, because by light we see, and by seeing we know.
And far beyond the tortuous blackness of the lie, is the dazzling brightness of the truth, the vast open spaces of the soul; where all is clarity; where the logic of the creation is manifested in the perfect harmony of function and will, purpose and emotion, vision and reality; where there are no blank walls or tiny crevices, no dead end passages or paths that circle on themselves, no gaps too narrow to pass through, no partings of the ways, impossible choices, confusions. Nor are there the terrors of mysterious sounds, deceptive, echoing, seeming to come from above then from below, distant then close at hand, ahead, behind, then all about us. No lurking sound or footsteps in the dark, no hideous visions that appear, then disappear, no doors that are, then are not, or lead to nothing, no sudden precipices and no fantasies of death.
None of the horrors of the lie. For here, in perfect knowledge of what is, is life, the spark of consciousness that exists at the core of every being and is limitless, yet is confined ideally within the limits of what is no more nor less than its complete reality, its natural state.
A being that is boundless is hounded by its very boundlessness. One that is hounded by the perfect hounds, the hounds that harmonize with the nature of its existence, is truly boundless.
But lost within the lie we are nothing; chaff blowing in the wind. We are the twisted members of a broken down machine; meaningless, worthless, having no part with truth and the ultimate game. Buried in the catacombs of self-importance, self-protection, and the fear of death, we cease to matter, become vulnerable, and live the very death we fear, the death of our existence.
For within the confines of the lie, what else would follow but a paradox, an inversion of what seems to be? He that seeks to save his life shall lose it. He must, for if he feels his life is forfeit, already he is in the bosom of the lie, therefore his life is not life at all, but death, and if he seeks to preserve it he remains in death.
For life, true life, the spark of consciousness, is indestructible, except by the self and the Creator. So where there is life there is no need for protection, for there is no fear of loss.
But man is in the bosom of the lie and he is afraid. He wanders blindly in the darkness of his fantasies. He creates hope and then destroys it. He casts light upon the dingy walls that hem him in, gazes at them for a while, seeing an image of the light of truth, and then plunges himself in darkness again. He holds a mirror to his face and says; "1 exist, for I can see myself". He touches his flesh, so that it calls back to him; "You are real, because you can feel". He gives himself pain, then pleasure, and then pain again, and says: "I am alive".
He hears others near him, cannot see them in the murky light and the twisting passages. He hears their groans, their hollow laughs, their short lived cries of satisfaction, and their shrieks of apothem. And he says: “We are all alive!” And he turns another corner.
He is lost, and double lost, because he thinks he is not lost but found. And the world and all its horrors and grotesque distortions is his tomb, because he sees it as a carriage to salvation, and grimly stays aboard.
Fear in the heart of Man, Fear in the blood of man.
Fear like a cancer grows and envelopes the being. It swells to indescribable proportions, till nothing else is visible and all is terrifying, all is a horrible nightmare, and there is no chink of light through which even a ray of true hope might pass.
Fear has the upper hand, rules all and carries the day. Man is the servant of fear whom he worships with greater reverence than any God. Fear has his way with him to the ultimate extreme. Fear can destroy him quicker and more agonizingly than anything else. Fear is his master and encompasses the Earth.
Man is driven by fear to God. Man is driven by Fear away from God.
Man is driven by Fear into the stale limbo of nothingness that is neither God nor anti-God, but un-God.
Fear is the all-controlling element; the whip, the snare, the spur that cannot be denied.
And Fear feeds on the lie. For without the mystery of the caverns of the lie there can he no Fear.
In the all-pervading light of truth Fear cannot exist, cannot find a foot- hold. Knowledge is the enemy of Fear, ignorance his greatest ally.
And ignorance is father of the lie.
And in the labyrinth of the lie that ignorance has built, stalks Fear .He is everywhere lying in wait, lurking in the shadows, in the walls. His whispers echo from one chamber to the next, and pierce the very souls or all those who wander through the narrow twisting passages or self-deception.
And hand in hand with Fear stalks Guilt, his blood brother, and each echoes but the other's cry, and both speak the same message. But Fear is the king, the master, and Guilt the next in line.
And sometimes Fear lurks in the back of the mind, unseen. But his effects are no less treacherous, as the mind responds unconsciously, and absurdly plunges yet deeper into the caverns of the lie, seeking respite from the threat in the very place where the threat is spawned and fostered.
And there is no respite. For the deeper the being delves into the lie, the greater its mystery and ignorance; the greater its fear.
And as it drives further into the murk of the lie, the presence of Fear grows stronger.
And often Fear crashes into the consciousness of a being. The being feels him, knows him, and runs again even further into ignorance and the lie. And the being shuts its eyes and shuts its mind and hides its stricken head. And Fear passes once more into the back of its mind and continues his work in a sphere where he can operate without disturbance, and drive the being slowly but inexorably, and quite unconsciously towards its doom.
Man, make no mistake. The world is not your footstool but your grave.
For in it the throne of judgment is the lie, and upon that throne sits Fear I and beside that throne stands Guilt.
And while you seek to conquer the Earth and bend it to your will, master the laws of nature, rule the atmosphere and cram the whole structure of the world into a miserable pattern of your own invention, Fear dictates your every move.
The lie is upon you, around you and within you, and unconsciously you grovel in the blindness of its an embracing aura. And Fear is your master.
Fear, the ultimate destroyer, the final death, the all enveloper, the torturer, the spreader of anguish, the crawling cancer of the mind the heart the soul, the inexorable disease that defies all antidote.
For when you chose to reject your God and rule your own destiny, when you entered the portals of the caverns of the lie, Fear came to you to keep you in mind of the God you had rejected; fear of death, fear of pain, fear of failure, fear of the great unknown beyond the grave. But far from using Fear to remember your God, you used Fear to increase your rejection of your God, to force more blindness and ignorance upon yourself, to negate your emotions, cloud your awareness, and bury your knowledge of your God and your creation by Him beneath a solid crust of self-deception and hypocrisy.
And now comes the moment when the lie is exposed for an eternity; the lie you have built around yourself out of your fear, and thus perpetuated the fear. For deep down the truth remains; it cannot be destroyed but only submerged.
And your rear you have used to roster the lie, and the lie creates more rear.
And the spiral goes outwards, farther and farther from the core of knowledge. And your fear grows greater and the lie more tortuous and monumental. And finally you are lost forever in the dark caverns of the twisting labyrinth of falsehood.
And when the End comes and all is revealed, all lies are swept from the Universe, so that only the core of stark reality remains, that is the moment of truth, the moment of inescapable knowledge.
And if that moment finds you detached from the lie, free of the ignorance or blind rejection, having journeyed back through the tortuous caverns of the mind to reach the truth through knowledge of what really is; if that moment finds you in the light, truly separated from the ties that bind humanity to its doom; then, though the world shall be buried for ever beneath the smoldering ashes of the Phoenix, you shall be a part of his resurrection. You shall rise with the new epoch and be reborn with the new creation.
But if that moment finds you alienated from all reality, suspended outside what is, a floating agonized anachronism, then that shall be your fate for all eternity. Only the pain shall stay with you. The dubious comfort of your home made lie will have gone, and with it the presence of Fear .For where there is already the ultimate anguish, the final fulfillment of the ultimate nightmare, what is there left to fear?
So be it.
Copyright 1968; The Process, Church of the Final Jud
In the beginning was GOD. And GOD breathed upon the vast and empty space of the Universe. And GOD created humanity.
And humanity could choose whether to remain subject to the Will of its Creator, or to set out upon the path of destiny by the power of its own free will.
And humanity chose free will. Humanity chose to guide its own path through the annals of time.
And GOD gave humanity a light by which to steer. GOD gave it the knowledge of right and wrong, that it might follow a path that would lead it back to the Truth from which it had set out. He gave it the concept of good and the concept of evil, and He said: "Follow in your heart the concept of good, for that is of Me, and the path that follows it will lead you back to Me, and you will find yourself in Heaven. But follow in your heart the concept of evil, and you will go further and further from Me.
For though I have created evil for your choice, evil is not of Me; it is of Satan, who is the Devil, and must for you be the Enemy so that yon do not follow Him. For the path of evil will lead you to the Devil and yon will find yourself in Hell."
And Hell is a place of darkness and misery and pain and anguish and hatred and violence and discomfort and unrest and unease and sickness and failure and death and futility and ignorance and malice and greed and envy and despair. And Hell is a place where no man should wish to be.
And humanity set off upon its journey through the annals of time, and the path of good and the path of evil lay before it. And the path of good was harsh and thorny, steep and narrow, and promised great sacrifice; but it led to the light of Heaven. And the path of evil was soft and comfortable, gentle and easy, and promised great self-indulgence; but it led to the darkness of Hell.
And humanity felt the conflict of good and evil; discomfort now with the promise of joy to come on one side, and pleasure now with the promise of agony to come on the other. And humanity found that choice was not the easy sense of power which it had imagined, but a gnawing sense of doubt and uncertainty. For the power to choose is the burden of responsibility ; there cannot be one without the other. Humanity had sought the power; now it was saddled with the burden.
But choice it had demanded, and now choose it must. To make no choice, is to take the easy way, and leads to Hell. To pretend there is no choice to be made, is to take the easy way, and leads to Hell. To accept the burden of responsibility and shoulder it, is to take the hard way, and leads to Heaven. It is the beginning of the road that leads back to GOD.
Humanity chose the road to Hell. Humanity rejected the burden of responsibility that came with the power of choice. Each man put the burden onto another. Each man claimed that another made his life for him. Each man saw himself the victim of his circumstances. Each man saw his life as the sum total of the decisions of others and the hand of fate.
And humanity's choice was manifested when each man blamed another for his own misfortunes. For blame is the ultimate rejection of responsibility.
Blame is the detonator or all evil. All sin stems from blame. All destruction stems from blame. Unless a man reels the need to blame there is no destruction in him; unless he reels the need to blame there is no hatred in him; unless he reels the need to blame there is no evil in him.
And humanity chose to blame. Humanity felt the need to blame. Each man blamed another, who blamed him in return. Humanity began to pattern the future course of the history of the world, on the basis of blame. Blame became the common factor in all events, and with it humanity set out along the road to Hell.
And blame begets ignorance, because in order to blame, a man must know the power of his choice , otherwise he will know the scope of his responsibility. If he knows that he has chosen to suffer, he cannot blame his suffering on someone else.
So humanity became blind to its own reality, for fear of having to bear the burden of responsibility and for fear of seeing the full extent of its power to choose. Humanity told itself a lie, a monstrous lie that provided the escape from the burden it was not willing to carry, and thereby it pursued the elusive comforts of the road to Hell, ignorant of the nature of its choice, and blind to the consequences.
And blame gave birth to blame, and evil was spawned all over the face of the earth. And violence and hatred were born within the hearts of men, and were hoarded in the name of peace, to be released from time to time with merciless destruction in the name of war.
And the pattern of blame was handed down from generation to generation, so that all men lived by its code, and blame became the hallmark of humanity. And though men began by using blame to pass aside the burden of responsibility, soon they were ruled by blame, their lives were dominated by it. It became the basic instinct of man; to blame.
He could suppress it, turn it upon himself, try to ignore it; it made no difference; his greatest need was to blame. And as his life became more worthless and corrupt from his pursuit of the road to Hell, so he felt a greater and greater need to blame; there was so much more for which something or someone had to be blamed.
And so it is. Man has taken the road to Hell, and steers by the lodestar of blame. Sometimes his eyes are opened for an instant, and he sees where he is going. And he cries: "We must not blame! We must all accept responsibility!" But no one listens. So he closes his eyes again, and finds someone to blame for the lack of response to his appeal. "Men will not accept responsibility," he sighs. "They continue to blame. It is the fault of our President. He is to blame for the hopeless state of our nation."
And the waters close over his head once more.
But there is no vision of the blame for what it truly is. Sometimes there is a vision of the consequences of blame, and there are many who say: "We must not fight one another!" So vast quantities of blame are suppressed, hoarded unconsciously, and built upon from lack of satisfaction through expression. Hatred is held in check, so that no violence is allowed to show above the surface. But soon the pressure of frustrated blame becomes too much; the dam bursts and violence erupts in war or riot or revolution or assassination.
But no one asks the question: "Why? Why-deep down-do we need to blame one another, and thence to hate one another, and thence to destroy one another?"
So it goes on. And if anyone WERE to ask the question: "Why?" No one would know the answer. It is buried too deep beneath the centuries.
Many would reply. Many would find countless reasons, countless rationalizations, countless justifications for humanity's compulsive need to blame. But no one would know the answer. Humanity has traveled too far along the path to be able any longer to look back and answer why it came this way. The true reason is long forgotten and cannot be recalled.
You can tell a man why he blames, and he might understand with his intellect, and he might even agree that what you tell him is so, but he will not FEEL the reality of what you say to him, he will not feel it inside himself so that his instinct to blame is plucked out by the roots and discarded. Humanity has sunk too low for that to be possible. The cancer has taken hold, and man has trapped himself irrevocably within the lies from which he blames. Nothing can save him now.
So the end of the road has been reached; the climax of the easy way, the point from which there is no return. The Devil has won. Satan has triumphed over man, and humanity is doomed. Man demanded the power to choose and man has made his choice, and nothing shall change it. For the time of the harvest is come and the Separation is already taking place.
The Judgment of mankind is now.
The Spirit of the Lord Christ is manifest upon the earth, and mighty sword is ready in His hand to strike down all who would cling to the values of humanity.
And the Lord Satan has done ms work and is free from the burdens of the Underworld, free to stalk the earth with the prowling Fiend of Hell beside Him; Tempter no longer, for the time of sin is past; Destroyer now, for the time of retribution is at hand.
And men still search for their meager sins, straining at gnats, whilst camels lie in their bellies, swallowed without a qualm. Too late; the evil now in the world is not the manifestation of men's sins, but the ultimate consequence of their choice to sin.
For the evil of the Latter Days is not of man, but of GOD. It is the retribution brought upon the world as promised time and time again; the end of the path of wrong. It is the Mighty Hand of the Lord GOD, and no man
Shall stem Its progress.
Humanity was warned, and did not heed the warning. Now comes the final settlement; the Judgment and the Devastation of the world of men.
For the world of men is a place of darkness and misery and pain and anguish and hatred and violence and discomfort and unrest and unease and sickness and failure and death and futility and ignorance and malice and greed and envy and despair. For the world of men is Hell.
The earth is Hell, and man has made it so.
Humanity chose the easy way that leads to Hell, and now its journey is ended. Humanity is In Hell, for it has created Hell around itself.
The game is over. It remains only for the Separation to be complete and Hell to be destroyed.
And Bell is the home of the Devil. And the Devil is mean and corrupt; a liar blinded by his own deception, yet cunning within the confines of his ignorance. And the Devil is weak, and yet strong in his weakness, for the Devil by his cunning can suck the strength from the truly strong and bring them down with him. And the Devil breeds death, the death of the soul, and gives life to the torturous conflicts of the mind in which the soul has trapped itself. And the Devil sustains whomever will maintain the corruption and decay which are his life-blood. And the Devil destroys all that promises to bring the spirit of purity and oust corruption. And the Devil charms with a sweet facade which hides a treacherous heart. And the Devil talks of love, and leaves the scars of hatred in his wake. And the Devil cries peace, and brings war. And the Devil speaks of glory and a magnificent destiny, and leads deeper into death and degradation. And the Devil is brimful of promises and so-called good intentions, yet behind him is a trail of abject failure and betrayal.
And the Devil is afraid, for he is steeped in evil.
And as with all things, by his fruits shall ye know the Devil. And the Devil's fruits are foul; bruised and bitter, and rotten to the core. And the Devil's home is Hell.
And humanity is mean and corrupt, a liar blinded by its own deception, yet cunning within the confines of its ignorance. And humanity is weak, and yet strong in its weakness, for humanity by its cunning can suck the strength from the truly strong and bring them down with it. And humanity breeds death, the death of the soul, and gives life to the torturous conflicts of the mind in which the soul has trapped itself. And humanity sustains whomever will maintain the corruption and decay which are its life-blood. And humanity destroys all that promises to bring the spirit of purity and oust corruption. And humanity charms with a sweet facade which hides a treacherous heart. And humanity talks of love, and leaves the scars of hatred in its wake. And humanity cries peace, and brings war. And humanity speaks of glory and a magnificent destiny, and leads deeper into death and degradation. And humanity is brimful of promises and so-called good intentions, yet behind it is a trail of abject failure and betrayal. And humanity is afraid, for it is steeped in evil.
And as with all things, by its fruits shall ye know humanity. And humanity's fruits are foul; bruised and bitter, and rotten to the core. And humanity's home is the earth, and the earth is Hell.
Satan is free for His work is done. Satan is no longer the Devil, for He has passed the poison on to that which chose to take it and become it.
Now there is nothing more evil in the universe than man.
His world is Hell, and he himself the Devil.
And humanity could choose whether to remain subject to the Will of its Creator, or to set out upon the path of destiny by the power of its own free will.
And humanity chose free will. Humanity chose to guide its own path through the annals of time.
And GOD gave humanity a light by which to steer. GOD gave it the knowledge of right and wrong, that it might follow a path that would lead it back to the Truth from which it had set out. He gave it the concept of good and the concept of evil, and He said: "Follow in your heart the concept of good, for that is of Me, and the path that follows it will lead you back to Me, and you will find yourself in Heaven. But follow in your heart the concept of evil, and you will go further and further from Me.
For though I have created evil for your choice, evil is not of Me; it is of Satan, who is the Devil, and must for you be the Enemy so that yon do not follow Him. For the path of evil will lead you to the Devil and yon will find yourself in Hell."
And Hell is a place of darkness and misery and pain and anguish and hatred and violence and discomfort and unrest and unease and sickness and failure and death and futility and ignorance and malice and greed and envy and despair. And Hell is a place where no man should wish to be.
And humanity set off upon its journey through the annals of time, and the path of good and the path of evil lay before it. And the path of good was harsh and thorny, steep and narrow, and promised great sacrifice; but it led to the light of Heaven. And the path of evil was soft and comfortable, gentle and easy, and promised great self-indulgence; but it led to the darkness of Hell.
And humanity felt the conflict of good and evil; discomfort now with the promise of joy to come on one side, and pleasure now with the promise of agony to come on the other. And humanity found that choice was not the easy sense of power which it had imagined, but a gnawing sense of doubt and uncertainty. For the power to choose is the burden of responsibility ; there cannot be one without the other. Humanity had sought the power; now it was saddled with the burden.
But choice it had demanded, and now choose it must. To make no choice, is to take the easy way, and leads to Hell. To pretend there is no choice to be made, is to take the easy way, and leads to Hell. To accept the burden of responsibility and shoulder it, is to take the hard way, and leads to Heaven. It is the beginning of the road that leads back to GOD.
Humanity chose the road to Hell. Humanity rejected the burden of responsibility that came with the power of choice. Each man put the burden onto another. Each man claimed that another made his life for him. Each man saw himself the victim of his circumstances. Each man saw his life as the sum total of the decisions of others and the hand of fate.
And humanity's choice was manifested when each man blamed another for his own misfortunes. For blame is the ultimate rejection of responsibility.
Blame is the detonator or all evil. All sin stems from blame. All destruction stems from blame. Unless a man reels the need to blame there is no destruction in him; unless he reels the need to blame there is no hatred in him; unless he reels the need to blame there is no evil in him.
And humanity chose to blame. Humanity felt the need to blame. Each man blamed another, who blamed him in return. Humanity began to pattern the future course of the history of the world, on the basis of blame. Blame became the common factor in all events, and with it humanity set out along the road to Hell.
And blame begets ignorance, because in order to blame, a man must know the power of his choice , otherwise he will know the scope of his responsibility. If he knows that he has chosen to suffer, he cannot blame his suffering on someone else.
So humanity became blind to its own reality, for fear of having to bear the burden of responsibility and for fear of seeing the full extent of its power to choose. Humanity told itself a lie, a monstrous lie that provided the escape from the burden it was not willing to carry, and thereby it pursued the elusive comforts of the road to Hell, ignorant of the nature of its choice, and blind to the consequences.
And blame gave birth to blame, and evil was spawned all over the face of the earth. And violence and hatred were born within the hearts of men, and were hoarded in the name of peace, to be released from time to time with merciless destruction in the name of war.
And the pattern of blame was handed down from generation to generation, so that all men lived by its code, and blame became the hallmark of humanity. And though men began by using blame to pass aside the burden of responsibility, soon they were ruled by blame, their lives were dominated by it. It became the basic instinct of man; to blame.
He could suppress it, turn it upon himself, try to ignore it; it made no difference; his greatest need was to blame. And as his life became more worthless and corrupt from his pursuit of the road to Hell, so he felt a greater and greater need to blame; there was so much more for which something or someone had to be blamed.
And so it is. Man has taken the road to Hell, and steers by the lodestar of blame. Sometimes his eyes are opened for an instant, and he sees where he is going. And he cries: "We must not blame! We must all accept responsibility!" But no one listens. So he closes his eyes again, and finds someone to blame for the lack of response to his appeal. "Men will not accept responsibility," he sighs. "They continue to blame. It is the fault of our President. He is to blame for the hopeless state of our nation."
And the waters close over his head once more.
But there is no vision of the blame for what it truly is. Sometimes there is a vision of the consequences of blame, and there are many who say: "We must not fight one another!" So vast quantities of blame are suppressed, hoarded unconsciously, and built upon from lack of satisfaction through expression. Hatred is held in check, so that no violence is allowed to show above the surface. But soon the pressure of frustrated blame becomes too much; the dam bursts and violence erupts in war or riot or revolution or assassination.
But no one asks the question: "Why? Why-deep down-do we need to blame one another, and thence to hate one another, and thence to destroy one another?"
So it goes on. And if anyone WERE to ask the question: "Why?" No one would know the answer. It is buried too deep beneath the centuries.
Many would reply. Many would find countless reasons, countless rationalizations, countless justifications for humanity's compulsive need to blame. But no one would know the answer. Humanity has traveled too far along the path to be able any longer to look back and answer why it came this way. The true reason is long forgotten and cannot be recalled.
You can tell a man why he blames, and he might understand with his intellect, and he might even agree that what you tell him is so, but he will not FEEL the reality of what you say to him, he will not feel it inside himself so that his instinct to blame is plucked out by the roots and discarded. Humanity has sunk too low for that to be possible. The cancer has taken hold, and man has trapped himself irrevocably within the lies from which he blames. Nothing can save him now.
So the end of the road has been reached; the climax of the easy way, the point from which there is no return. The Devil has won. Satan has triumphed over man, and humanity is doomed. Man demanded the power to choose and man has made his choice, and nothing shall change it. For the time of the harvest is come and the Separation is already taking place.
The Judgment of mankind is now.
The Spirit of the Lord Christ is manifest upon the earth, and mighty sword is ready in His hand to strike down all who would cling to the values of humanity.
And the Lord Satan has done ms work and is free from the burdens of the Underworld, free to stalk the earth with the prowling Fiend of Hell beside Him; Tempter no longer, for the time of sin is past; Destroyer now, for the time of retribution is at hand.
And men still search for their meager sins, straining at gnats, whilst camels lie in their bellies, swallowed without a qualm. Too late; the evil now in the world is not the manifestation of men's sins, but the ultimate consequence of their choice to sin.
For the evil of the Latter Days is not of man, but of GOD. It is the retribution brought upon the world as promised time and time again; the end of the path of wrong. It is the Mighty Hand of the Lord GOD, and no man
Shall stem Its progress.
Humanity was warned, and did not heed the warning. Now comes the final settlement; the Judgment and the Devastation of the world of men.
For the world of men is a place of darkness and misery and pain and anguish and hatred and violence and discomfort and unrest and unease and sickness and failure and death and futility and ignorance and malice and greed and envy and despair. For the world of men is Hell.
The earth is Hell, and man has made it so.
Humanity chose the easy way that leads to Hell, and now its journey is ended. Humanity is In Hell, for it has created Hell around itself.
The game is over. It remains only for the Separation to be complete and Hell to be destroyed.
And Bell is the home of the Devil. And the Devil is mean and corrupt; a liar blinded by his own deception, yet cunning within the confines of his ignorance. And the Devil is weak, and yet strong in his weakness, for the Devil by his cunning can suck the strength from the truly strong and bring them down with him. And the Devil breeds death, the death of the soul, and gives life to the torturous conflicts of the mind in which the soul has trapped itself. And the Devil sustains whomever will maintain the corruption and decay which are his life-blood. And the Devil destroys all that promises to bring the spirit of purity and oust corruption. And the Devil charms with a sweet facade which hides a treacherous heart. And the Devil talks of love, and leaves the scars of hatred in his wake. And the Devil cries peace, and brings war. And the Devil speaks of glory and a magnificent destiny, and leads deeper into death and degradation. And the Devil is brimful of promises and so-called good intentions, yet behind him is a trail of abject failure and betrayal.
And the Devil is afraid, for he is steeped in evil.
And as with all things, by his fruits shall ye know the Devil. And the Devil's fruits are foul; bruised and bitter, and rotten to the core. And the Devil's home is Hell.
And humanity is mean and corrupt, a liar blinded by its own deception, yet cunning within the confines of its ignorance. And humanity is weak, and yet strong in its weakness, for humanity by its cunning can suck the strength from the truly strong and bring them down with it. And humanity breeds death, the death of the soul, and gives life to the torturous conflicts of the mind in which the soul has trapped itself. And humanity sustains whomever will maintain the corruption and decay which are its life-blood. And humanity destroys all that promises to bring the spirit of purity and oust corruption. And humanity charms with a sweet facade which hides a treacherous heart. And humanity talks of love, and leaves the scars of hatred in its wake. And humanity cries peace, and brings war. And humanity speaks of glory and a magnificent destiny, and leads deeper into death and degradation. And humanity is brimful of promises and so-called good intentions, yet behind it is a trail of abject failure and betrayal. And humanity is afraid, for it is steeped in evil.
And as with all things, by its fruits shall ye know humanity. And humanity's fruits are foul; bruised and bitter, and rotten to the core. And humanity's home is the earth, and the earth is Hell.
Satan is free for His work is done. Satan is no longer the Devil, for He has passed the poison on to that which chose to take it and become it.
Now there is nothing more evil in the universe than man.
His world is Hell, and he himself the Devil.
Copyright 1968; The Process, Church of the Final Judgment
Brethren, as it is,
Justification is the light and the darkness, the right, or the image of right, that takes away the totality of wrong; the good, or the image of good, that takes away the totality of evil; the white, or the image of white that takes away the vitality of black.
When as humans we justii1] in human terms, we run from the total darkness of the Godless world of men We create for our own peace of mind, an artificial man-made light, an image of rightness to counteract the knowledge of total wrongness in a world that has rejected its Creator. We manufacture an illusion of good, so that a11 is not seen to be evil. We paint white, that which is in essence black because it has removed its elf from the source of 811 life and knowledge. We give the semblance of truth to that which we know to be a lie.
That is the human game. When a man does wrong and knows he has done wrong, he tries to make it not so wrong by justifying it. He harms another man, feels the guilt, and then tries to reduce the burden of sin against himself; by blaming another, by reducing his awareness of the extent of the harm he has done, by pleading ignorance, by insisting that he only intended good, anything to create some rightness, or illusion of rightness, to relieve the sense of total wrongness.
That is the justification of men, the justification of self by self; a man-made light flickering feebly, but just perceptibly in the great void of Godless darkness.
And by agreement, in the world of men, they justify each other -except when they MUST blame each other in order to justify themselves. And they alternate between combining forces in fear against the common enemy of total darkness, and fighting one another for the meager and inadequate substitutes of artificial light. A man must feel justified, even if it means the whole-hearted condemnation of another man. If for him to maintain his illusion of being right, another must be shown to be wrong, then that is the goal he pursues.
The world of men is the absence of GOD, and therefore the antipodes of Heaven, which is Hell. And man carries a candle in Hell, so that he can pretend he is in Heaven.
And whenever a man feels wrong in the eyes of GOD, he tries to make himself right in the eyes of men. When he feels the darkness of his estrangement from GOD closing in upon him, he lights a candle of man-made lightness, and fights off the suffocating gloom. He justifies.
Every time he makes an excuse for his actions; every time he pretends to himself that what he has done is not as bad as it rea11y feels to him; every time he blames his shortcomings on his background, or his upbringing, or his environment; every time he blames his circumstances on his neighbors, or his employers, or the government, or the weather; every time he blames his failures or mistakes on his friends, or his enemies, or his colleagues, or his lack of education; every time he protects his good and altruistic intonations against the knowledge of his selfishness; every time he blinds himself to the destructive consequences of his actions; every time he makes a show of good will which balies his inner feelings of distaste; every time he makes himself feel pity of remorse, to convince himself of his virtue; every time he shifts responsibility for a11 the ugliness and wrong around him; he justifies. He carries a candle of illusion into the darkness of reality.
For if a man can justify his state of being, if he can find just a chink of light in his world, or if not find it, then create it, then he can continue in that state of being OF that world.
That is what it is to justify. If we are wrong and we know without a shadow of doubt that we are wrong, then we MUST cease to be what we are. If what we do is ev1l, and we cannot escape the knowledge that it is ev1l, then we MUST stop doing it. N o one can do or be that which no part of him tells him to do or be, and if no part of him can find even a pretence of an illusion or rightness or good in an action or state, then no part of him drives him towards it. He has no justification.
But if we can find a grain of what seems to be rightness in what we are, or create an image of rightness, even if it only lurks in the back of the mind, then we can go on being what we are. That grain, that image, drives us to continue. And if we can create the illusion of just one shadow of goodness in our actions, or at least a suggestion of inevitability which counteracts the concept of deliberate evil, then we can go on acting as we do. These tiny images of rightness and goodness and choice-less-ness, are enough to give us what we need to continue as we are.
They are our justifications.
The world of man lives in a constant state of justification.
The lie is: "...justification reveals the truth, and therefore it is the right thing to do."
Justification is one of the roads of Hell. It runs parallel to another road in Hell called Blame, which is the detonator of all evil.
And man carries a candle to light his way. And so as man believes he is moving forward, he moves in a state of illusion. The candle lights his way in Hell, so that he can pretend he is in Heaven.
In the world of men, countless bright and shiny images, dreams and illusions, bum to keep humanity justified in its estrangement from its Source of Life. Man has, in his terms, justified himself and his Godless state of being, justified his actions, justified his way of life, with everything the world has offered him.
But a few, a precious few, have stopped before it was too late. They have remembered the Light of Life. They have recalled its brilliance and its purity, and they have remembered that it was not made by man, but stems from GOD. They have seen the inky blackness of man's self-justification. They have witnessed what he calls his altruism, and seen it as no more than masked egotism. They have looked behind the protested appearances off good intention, and seen the self-interested and destructive motives which they hide.
They have looked at man, the mighty lord of all creation in his own deluded eyes, and seen an empty husk, chasing, in ever decreasing circles after an empty dream. They have known the hollowness of man's endeavors on his own account. They have seen the utter futility of his attempts to create a GOD that works on man's agenda.
And, they move forward. They have rejected justification. They OWN the Circumstances that surround them. They see what stops them, acknowledging the failure and moving forward. They stand powerfully in the giving of their Word and are responsible for their actions. They seek out a clear space to create profound thought and concepts. They uncover that which is concealed.
They reconcile opposites and watch as Blame and Justification no longer become their well traveled road.
Alone, they reach into the murky depths of the pool of darkness and feel for a hand and pull on it to reveal the man that does not know he is drowning.
And when the man is pulled out of the pool he is bent over barely able to stand, weak, in all of the nakedness of his illusions. And now he looks around him and looks at sights that he can vaguely remember from a long time ago, years past, in his youth; and the man begins to cry so deeply that there is no sound, only the pain on his face, for now he confronts the source of all of his ills, himself.
Copyright Church of the Final Judgment, 1967
CHRIST said: Love your enemies.
CHRIST's Enemy was SATAN and SATAN's Enemy was CHRIST.
Through Love enmity is destroyed.
Through Love saint and sinner destroy the enmity between them.
Through Love CHRIST and SATAN have destroyed their enmity
and come together for the End;
CHRIST to Judge, SATAN to execute the Judgement.
The Judgement is WISDOM; the execution of the Judgement is LOVE.
WHY THE UNITY OF CHRIST AND SATAN?
Christ said: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that despitefully use you and persecute you." But why? Why is it right to love our enemies? At another time He said: "Agree with thine adversary whilst thou art in the way with him." But why? Why should we agree with our adversary when the whole basis of our relationship with him is disagreement? Christ does not say that we have no enemies. He recognizes the existence of conflict. But he tells us that our task is not to propagate and intensify the conflict, but to set about eliminating it.
CHRIST TEACHES US THAT IT IS NOT ENEMIES WHICH WE SHOULD SEEK TO DESTROY, BUT ENMITY.
The essence of conflict is blame. I blame you. You blame me. I think you are "wrong". You think I am "wrong". I believe you to be "bad". You believe me to be "bad". That is a state of mutual blame. And the inevitable result is conflict. And as long as the blame continues, the conflict continues. As long as each of us continues to think and believe that the other is "wrong" and "bad", each of us will continue to be the enemy of the other. If we stop thinking the other is wrong, we stop blaming him. And if we both stop blaming, then there is no more enmity, no more conflict. If even one of us stops blaming, then the conflict goes. Because it requires two opposing forces to create a conflict. The other may still feel that there is a state of enmity. But it is no longer a mutual agreement, therefore although it may continue to manifest in his head, it cannot manifest outwardly.
YOU CANNOT CREATE A BATTLE WITH ONLY ONE ARMY.
To recognize that a person is doing wrong, is not blame but awareness - " wrong" in this case meaning something which is necessarily destructive or damaging to himself and other people. For example, when we see someone blaming, we know that it must give him pain and therefore it is an undesirable activity. Christ would not advise us to ignore this, or to be unaware of it. But to decide on the basis of this that the person is wrong, that he is evil, that he is a bad person, that is blame. That is identifying him with the wrong which he is enacting. That is saying that because he does bad things, it follows that he himself is a bad thing. When a person creates negative effects, it is right that we should judge what he does negatively. But it is not right to judge what he is negatively. That ca n only lead to blame. When Christ says: "love your enemies", He means separate what a person is from what he does. He does not say: "love what your enemies do to you". He has other advice for that. "Resist not evil" means "accept the bad things which are done to you. Don't fight against them." But "love your enemies" means "don't identify those bad things with the person who is doing them".
THERE ARE BAD EFFECTS, BAD ACTIONS, BAD MANIFESTATIONS - BAD IN THE SENSE OF UNDESIRABLE. BUT THERE ARE NO BAD PEOPLE.
Enmity - paradoxically - is good people doing bad things to one another. We know this. We can see it so clearly when we are on the outside of a conflict, when we see two people, both of whom we love, hating each other. Each of them is convinced that the other is bad, but we know that both of them are good and the badness is rooted in a misunderstanding between them. Now if we choose to take sides, then we become part of the conflict, and one side begins to look bad and the other good. But if we remain impartial, then we also remain aware of the basic reality that both are in fact good, and the badness lies not in them but in the conflict that exists between them, and the things they do to one another because of that conflict. And blame is the detonator. The agreement in each that the other is wrong, is the element which sparks and then maintains the conflict. Christ Himself has an enemy; the enemy. He is called Satan, which means enemy. And that conflict between Christ and Satan is the basic conflict, the prototype of all conflict. It's the light against the darkness, the high against the low. But also it is a conflict of all conflicts, because it is the conflict between the power which stands for conflict, the Satanic power, and the power which stands for no conflict, the Christ power. If that is resolved then all conflict is resolved. Now as long as Christ opposes Satan in His work, as long as He blames Sat an and sets Himself against Satan, then He maintains the conflict. In order to fulfill His own function, which is the elimination of conflict , He must take His own advice. He must separate Satan from what Satan is doing. He does no t have to love what Satan does, although He must accept it as an essential aspect of the Game, but He must love what Satan is. He must love Satan Himself. Love is the opposite of blame. Love is the recognition of a fundamental validity, behind and beneath all undesirable manifestations. If Christ has that recognition with regard to Satan, he cannot identify Satan with His undesirable manifestations, so He cannot blame Satan. He can se e the invalidity of what Satan does, but at the same time He can see the validity of what Satan is. And that is love. If Christ and Satan are in a state of unity instead of conflict, then Sat an has been defeated, but it is the defeat of salvation, because through it He is released from the function of creating conflict. It is defeat in that the enmity which it has been Satan's function to create and propagate has been eliminated. And it is salvation in that Satan is thereby freed from the burden of that essentially negative function. And if Satan is no longer able to maintain a conflict and a state of enmity with Christ, then He can no longer create and maintain conflict in the world. Because that would be an activity against Christ, who stands for the elimination of conflict. Therefore, if conflict is to be eliminated from the world, there must be a state of unity between Christ and Satan. As long as there is war between Them, then the power of conflict, which is Satan's power, is predominant. As long as Satan can keep Christ in a state of mutual enmity with Him, then He can keep men in a state of mutual enmity with one another. As long as Christ, who represents love, can be kept in a state of blame with regard to Satan - then blame is the rule, love is the exception to the rule, and conflict is the order of the day. But although the final coming together of Christ and Satan is needed for the final elimination of conflict, yet each and every human being can make his or her contribution towards that coming together. Christ did not say: "I must love my enemy before you can love yours." He did not say: "I must stop blaming Satan before you can s top blaming one another." He said: "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that despitefully use you and persecute you." Christ will ultimately free us from conflict. But our part is to help Hi m to free Himself from conflict. He teaches us what to do. We do it and thereby help Him to do the same. This is our contribution. If He could do it on His own, He would have no function in the world. But this is the nature of existence. He helps us to free ourselves, and we in turn help Him to free Himself. He carries the greatest burden of all - the burden of the direct hatred and enmity of Satan Himself. He cannot throw aside that burden until we have thrown ours aside - with His help. Then, by the Universal Law, His will be lifted.
THE BASIS OF CHRIST'S TEACHING IS THE WAY TO ELIMINATE BLAME.
EVERY PARTICLE OF KNOWLEDGE HE GIVES US IS DIRECTED TO THAT END.
EVERY PARTICLE OF KNOWLEDGE HE GIVES US IS DIRECTED TO THAT END.
He does not simply tell us not to blame. That would be like telling an alcoholic that the solution to all his problems is to give up drink. He leads us on a journey, that if we follow it to its logical conclusion, must inevitably end with freedom from blame He approaches it from every angle. He teaches us the nature of blame. W e must know what it is, what effects it has on us, what causes it and what it causes, where it manifests and how it manifests. And He teaches us the value of the absence of blame; H e shows us the desirability of eliminating blame. Then He helps us not to blame, by exposing for our inspection the fundamental nature of things, the basics of the universe, the incredible logical structure of creation. That shows us the basic validity of everything. When we know the nature of blame and when we know the effects of no blame , we want to eliminate blame. When we know the true nature of all things, and how and why and for what good purpose they have been created, then we can begin to love all things; and the more we love the less we blame. Christ does not preach to us about the merits of love. He gives us the knowledge, which, if we will absorb it and make it our own, enables us to love.
IF WE KNOW THE UNIVERSE AND ALL THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE, WE CANNOT HELP BUT LOVE THE UNIVERSE AND ALL THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE. AND THAT MUST INCLUDE OUR ENEMIES.
But knowledge of basics must go deep and take root before it is a match f or our instinctive reactions to apparencies. The instinct is to blame the enemy, to identify him with his actions and his attitudes, and to brand him with them. Knowledge of his fundamental validity, and of hi s basic positive link with ourselves, must be very firm and deeply felt to counteract such an instinct. For example, it's not enough just to know with your intellect that someone is a child of GOD. That knowledge alone does not stop you hating him when he hurts you - and I mean hating him, not what he has done. But knowledge can be absorbed. It can be learned in such a way that it c eases to be an intellectual adjunct to our personalities, and becomes an integral part o f our personalities. And for that we require time and repetition. And we require not only the simplicities, which stand out as the main high-lights of the pattern, but also the complexities, which form the intricate network of logic and explanation that ties the pattern together into a cohesive whole. Our personalities are structures of illogical agreements, which are geared only to reacting to apparencies. And one of the themes of these structures is hatred of our enemies and the instinctive propagation of conflict. But through the teachings of Christ we can undermine those structures, and replace them with structures of logical understanding, which are geared to responding to fundamental realities. At present our thoughts are aware of the realities, but our emotions, where the power is, are still governed by the apparencies. Eventually, as we absorb and assimilate the knowledge which Christ gives us, our thoughts will be aware of the apparencies - we shall not fail to see them with great clarity - but our emotions will respond t o the deeper and more meaningful realities. We can see examples of this in small ways even now. When you really love a person, you don't stop loving him because he does something bad or destructive. You' re aware of the destructive action, but it doesn't affect your much more basic positive response to the person himself. Now imagine that on a grand scale; as a way of life covering all relation ships between people both close and remote. All enmity would be destroyed before it could take root. Destructive intentions would produce no retaliative response, and would therefore be starved out of existence. They would be seen and known, but they would b ring about no equal and opposite counteraction. Therefore they would find no foil, and would die.
LOVE IS THE RECOGNITION OF A FUNDAMENTAL VALIDITY.
When we truly have this recognition, with reality, and when we apply it t o all things and all people, then we cannot blame. We can only love, both friends and enemies Then Christ can love Satan, and through that love, Satan's enmity must be dissolved. Then the Unity of Christ and Satan is not just an ideal, but a fact. And all conflict vanishes. At the beginning we asked: "Why should we agree with our adversary, when the whole basis of our relationship with him is disagreement?" We have the answer to that question now. Our relationship with him is on the level of apparencies. And on that level the basis is disagreement. The apparencies are at odds with one another. But if the apparencies are less relevant than the deeper realities, then our relationship has a different basis. And the deeper we go, the less disagreement we find and the more agreement. Again we have examples even now in this strife-orientated world. The man who cannot go to war and kill another man, whatever that other man may have done; because to him the agreement involved in the fact that both of them are human beings, is more real and meaningful than the disagreement involved in the fact that they subscribe to opposing political ideologies, or even the fact that they belong to different nations which are in conflict with one another. The more basic positive link here takes precedence over the more superficial enmity. That is a small harmonic of the way towards the Unity of Christ and Satan There are many many signs which can help to lead us towards replacing blame with love. One is the Universal Law; "As we give, so shall we receive." The human instinct believes that as we take so shall we receive. But that's the Game. That's the challenge. That's all part of the strife-orientated reality which absorption of Christ's teachings can undermine and replace. But as well as working towards the establishment of the Universal Law as an instinctive reality instead of just an intellectual idea, there are things that can b e learned from knowledge of the Law. If someone hurts us, our instincts tell us that that person is bad and should be resisted and opposed. But the Universal Law tells us something quite different. It t ells us that we have inflicted a similar hurt on someone else. Now we are at liberty to hold onto both realities. They are not mutually exclusive. But they have an inevitable conclusion. X has hurt me, therefore X is bad. If X has hurt me, it is because I have hurt someone else. Therefore, I am also bad. At once we undermine our own blame, not with a resistance to it or an inhibition on it, but with a simple logical follow-up. "All right", says the Universal Law, "believe that X is bad and wrong and evil and undesirable. But if that belief is based on what X has done to you, then you must also believe that you are equally bad and wrong and evil an d undesirable. Because you must have done the same to someone else". With that kind of logic, we can no longer give any credence to our instinct to isolate badness outside ourselves. If there are evil forces outside us and we are affected badly by them, it can only tell us that there are precisely the same evil forces inside us as well.
IF OUR ENEMY CAN HARM US, THEN WE ARE JUST AS BAD AS HE IS.
How far can we blame him, with that particular knowledge to circumnavigate? We are quite convinced that we are not really bad, not at heart where it matters. How can we escape the knowledge that the same must apply to him? Two birds are killed with one stone. First, we are forced into some awareness of his fundamental validity - otherwise we must reject our own! And second, we cannot validly even hold his actions against him, because we have clearly equaled them ourselves. So what have we left? All we know is that looking at him we are looking at us. The Mosaic Law tells us to love our neighbor as our self. The Universal L aw forces us to love our enemy as our self. If we are valid, he is equally valid. If he has done wrong, we have equally done wrong. There is nothing basically to choose between us when it comes to validity and invalidity, or good and bad, or right and wrong. As this becomes real, blame must give way to love - gradually maybe, reluctantly perhaps, but inevitably. The Universal Law puts evil where it belongs; and that's within ourselves
YOU CAN ONLY GIVE CREDENCE TO YOUR HATRED OF SOMEONE IF YOU ARE PREPARED TO GIVE CREDENCE TO YOUR HATRED OF YOURSELF.
In fact we only hate and blame other people because we hate and blame our selves and we see ourselves reflected in them. Which is why a large part of Christ's teachings is concerned with showing us our own basic validity. If we can learn and believe in t hat, we can very quickly learn and believe in the basic validity of others. But Christ also said: "By their fruits ye shall know them". Does this not indicate that a person who creates bad effects is himself fundamentally bad? No, not fundamentally bad. But we cannot find or give any meaning to a person's fundamental validity, if the invalid aspects of his nature are being concealed behind a facade of validity. First the facade must be stripped away. We must see behind it, behind the protests and the unreal images. We must look at the effects a person creates, and if they are negative, despite an apparency of good intentions, we must recognize that behind that apparency is a source of negativity, an inner sickness, which shows not in the image but in the effects created. Christ never said that we must be blind to a person's faults. Quite the reverse. Only when we can see them clearly, know them and understand them with reality - and for that a person's effects on others are the most important evidence - can we reach behind them to the fundamental validity which must be there. We cannot heal someone, for example, if we cannot see what's wrong with him. We cannot penetrate to his basic validity, if we ignore or are blind to the nature and extent of the invalidity which he has piled on top if it. Christ does not manifest love for Satan by pretending or insisting that Satan is really not a destroyer and a separator and a creator of conflict. He recognizes Satan 2E He knows His destructive power, His divisive effects and His propensity for separation and conflict. He sees the effects and He knows where they come from. But also He knows that behind and beyond that negative activity, is a true Son of GOD, full of love and life -giving. That is love; a full recognition of all the invalidity, together with an awareness of the underlying validity. So by their fruits ye shall know them. Yes. By their effects you will k now their agreements, their patterns, their functions, their problems, their weaknesses, their strengths, their abilities, their inabilities, their intentions, their fears, their hopes, their loves, their hates, their instincts and their inclinations. And most of it may be very undesirable indeed; someone ready made to constitute your enemy. Then use your knowledge and your Christ-taught understanding, to recognize beyond that undesirable apparency, the fundamental validity of a child of GOD. And instead of setting out to destroy your enemy, set out to heal him. That is love. The bad is inside ourselves, and yet we are valid. Another simple logic presents itself from this reality. We are fundamentally good. But from that fundamental goodness springs a fountain of bad effects. How can this be? Only if even the bad effects themselves have a positive and valid purpose 2E If it comes from a source of validity, then even invalidity must have its own validity. A paradox, but understandable if we realize that without the existence of negativity, positivity has no meaning. If there were no darkness, then there would be no such thing as light. I f there were no pain, there would be no pleasure. If there were no suffering, there would be no deliverance. If there were no hell, there would be no paradise. If there were no hatred, there would be no love. If there were no swing of the pendulum in one direction, there would be no swing in the other.
ALL GOODNESS IS JUDGED AGAINST THE PRESENCE OF ITS OPPOSITE.
So not only can we see the fundamental validity of our enemy, and thereby love him despite his negative apparency, but we can carry that logic a step further, and love him with his negative apparency. We still do not need to love the negative apparency itself, in other word s we do not have to wish to preserve it. But a recognition of its validity, as being an essential and GOD--created element in the Game, introduced for a positive and basically life-giving purpose, will take us a long way towards a true acceptance of it. And an acceptance of evil as opposed to an instinctive resistance of it, is part of the prelude to eliminating it.
GOOD CREATES EVIL IN ORDER TO GIVE ITSELF MEANING; JUST AS THE SOUL CREATES THE BODY IN ORDER TO GIVE ITSELF DEFINITION.
And GOD created anti-GOD in order to bring about the Game. None of this makes pain less painful, or evil less undesirable. We still want to get rid of it. The difference is that now we have it in perspective. Now we understand it. Now we appreciate it. And now, because we know it, we can begin to control it, instead of being under its control. When we have full knowledge of pain and evil and conflict and hatred and enmity, then we control them. And then we can get rid of them. In a state of ignorance we desire to eliminate conflict, but we cannot. When there is knowledge, that changes. The desire to eliminate conflict remains; but t he difference is we can. Love is the recognition of a fundamental validity; which is knowledge, which is control. That is part of its nature. When we recognize the fundamental validity of our enemy, we love him, we know him, we control our relationship with him. Therefore because we love him, we want to eliminate our conflict with him , and because we love him, we can eliminate our conflict with him. Every time we do this, even in the smallest way and on the lowest level, we add another contribution to the love of Christ for Satan. And thereby we bring the Unity a little closer still. And finally, when Christ, by the giving of knowledge, receives the knowledge that He needs to bring about that Unity, Satan's function as the creator of conflict an d separation in the world will be over, and all conflict, and therefore pain, misery, frustration, unhappiness, rejection, guilt, fear, depression and regret in the world will be dissolved, gradually but inexorably.
Copyright Church of the Final Judgment, 1967
