God is a Spirit and the soul is the living potential of God. The soul's demand for free will and its separation from God resulted in the descent of this potential into the lowly estate of the flesh.

Sown in dishonor, the soul is destined to be raised in honor to the fullness of that God-estate which is the one Spirit of all Life. The soul can be lost; Spirit can never die.

Never the Spirit was born;
the Spirit shall cease to be never;
Never was time it was not;
End and Beginning are dreams!
Birthless and deathless and changeless
remaineth the Spirit for ever;
Death hath not touched it at all,
dead though the house of it seems! <1>

The soul, then, remains a fallen potential that must be imbued with the Reality of Spirit, purified through prayer and supplication, and returned to the glory from which it descended and to the unity of the Whole.

This rejoining of soul to Spirit is the alchemical marriage which determines the destiny of the self and makes it one with immortal Truth.

When this ritual is fulfilled, the highest Self is enthroned as the Lord of Life and the potential of God, realized in man, is found to be the All-in-all. <2>

Today I want to talk to you about soul evolution and the fusion of mind and spirit. After all, that's the theme of this conference and, among other things, that's what we came to hear about, isn't it?

How does one define the soul? Have you ever thought about defining your own soul, drawing a profile and saying, "This outline represents my soul"?

We have all kinds of concepts about the soul. We know that we have an affinity with some souls and are repelled by others. The moment we meet someone, we take a reading of the person's soul. We shake hands and get into a conversation, and all the while at the subconscious level we are assessing that soul.

Usually our first impressions are correct. Sometimes we have an immediate negative reaction. But more often than not we allow ourselves to switch off the negative reading and switch on the positive reading because we don't really want to believe that a soul can be evil or have evil traits. So we say, "Oh, well, he's not such a bad guy. He means well. He's OK."

And in our naïveté we are not ready to believe that the "bad guys" master the technique of putting a patine, a sugar coating, over what is really an evil soul, causing her to appear sweet as honey. Under such circumstances it takes an astute and objective bystander—one who has no vested interest in the outcome—to read what is actually under the patine.

The Soul of Mark L. Prophet

As I was thinking about the concept of the evolution of the soul, I said to myself, "Whom have I known in this life or in past lives who I could say represents to me the soul of humanity, the soul I would like to see all souls emulate in a succession of virtues?" And without hesitation, I singled out the living soul I knew to be the soul of Mark L. Prophet. And I realized that because I had known his soul on earth, I could also know his soul in heaven.

I knew Mark for twelve years that seemed like twelve thousand years and forever—or one endless day. Ours was a mutual soul knowing. We communed at the soul level and we still do. I remember his soul in many roles—as a little child, as a wise man, as father, mother, spouse and comforter. As Guru, Teacher, Messenger and Friend.

Mark didn't seal his soul in an impregnable fortress so that none could have access to him. On the contrary, he allowed all souls of God to enter the precincts of his mind, which was one with the Mind of God, that they might commune with God through the open channel he had to God even while he was on earth.

We sometimes have misconceptions about our souls even if we have been in therapy under a qualified professional and think we know our souls. Often we are too analytical. We start analyzing, "Well, what is my soul?" We draw a circle and we say, "This circle represents my soul." Then we cut it up into large and small sections of a pie and we say, "Well, this piece of my soul is dysfunctional and this piece of my soul is intelligent and well-respected. But this piece of my soul suffers because as a child I was at times neglected and at times indulged."

I think we glimpse fragments of our souls. But only once in a lifetime do we come across a whole-souled person. And by that I mean a person whose soul is whole and intact. Until we meet such a person and study the profile of his soul, we have only a vague sense of who and what the soul really is.

The song "Lanello's Excelsior," <3> brought forth by our messenger of music, encapsulates the soul of Mark L. Prophet. (Mark used the pen name Lanello, which he later took as his Ascended Master name after he attained union with God through the ritual of the ascension on February
26, 1973.) It is a sweet and gentle melody set to words from a dictation. The haunting minor key of "Greensleeves," Lanello's keynote, is woven through the second half of the piece and leaves us with the call from Lanello's heart to "Come to the Home of the Mother, the One." The words and music, enhanced by the orchestration and by the performance of the Church Universal and Triumphant Choir, take us to the soul level of Lanello, allowing him to step through the veil and touch our hearts as no one else can.

In this piece we greet Lanello with the angelic salutation "Hail!" It is a greeting you will often hear exchanged between angels on the heavenly highways. And so we sing, "Hail, Lanello!" and then, "The world awaits thy coming," followed by the well-known and oft-repeated fiat of Archangel Michael, "Charge, charge, charge and let Victory be proclaimed!" Because Lanello stands next to us as we sing, we internalize something new and special each time we sing to him. We gain a sense of co-measurement with him and, through him, with our Mighty I AM Presence.

So whenever you sing this song, whisper sweet calls to Lanello during the interludes. For example: "Lanello, reveal my soul to me and show me how I can bring my soul to wholeness and maturity in preparation for my becoming the Bride of Christ."

If we cannot see the Masters, if we cannot hear the Masters, if we cannot converse with the Masters, if we do not know how to consciously walk and talk with the Masters on the path of life, there is one thing we can do: We can go to the heart of the music inspired by the hosts of the Lord and many qualified musicians on earth who serve on the Fifth Ray of Truth, Science, Healing and Music and follow that music back to the heart of the Masters.

Yes, we can follow it back to the heart of the Elohim Cyclopea and Virginia, the Archangel Raphael and the Blessed Mother Mary, the angels of music and the All-Seeing Eye of God, and the Ascended Masters serving on the Fifth Ray with Hilarion. We can go to the heart of the music and follow it back to our own souls, to our Holy Christ Self and to our beloved I AM Presence.

What Is the Soul?

The soul is a popular topic today. People talk about and write about the soul. They know that the soul is important, but they don't know why. Our souls have been evolving as long as we have been sojourning in the material universe. Yet few people really know what the soul is. Many give it no thought at all. You could say that they are "soul illiterate." If you took a random poll and asked people if they knew how to care for their souls, most people would say they didn't have the slightest idea.

What, then, is the soul, how does one care for the soul, and what is soul evolution all about? We must ask ourselves this question because our knowledge of the condition of our souls is the key to our success on the spiritual path.

For starts, we can think of the soul as a glisteningly transparent sphere that is constantly evolving —or devolving. The soul is the mortal part of ourselves that can become immortal—that must become immortal if she is to survive. To achieve immortality, the soul must be fused, or bonded, to her Higher Self, who is her Holy Christ Self. Yes, until this bonding takes place, the soul is impermanent and therefore can be lost.

This is why souls who are not tethered to their Higher Self are in jeopardy on planet earth. Any one of us can lose our soul and become a castaway <4> by blaspheming God or tormenting our soul (or another's soul) until the soul welcomes death as a surcease from physical and spiritual abuse. The Blessed Mother Mary has implored us to pray to God daily to send his angels to rescue souls who will be lost if we do not call for divine intercession in their behalf. Let us respond to her plea with soul fervor.

Have you ever thought about the fact that in this life and past lives you might have neglected the development of your soul, choosing instead to develop your human ego? Or that you might not have nurtured your soul—this essential "life-essence" that mirrors both your personality and the
Personality of God? What you have drawn from these two personalities, how you have integrated the two and incorporated them into your unique soul awareness, actually defines your soul identity.

If you have walled off your soul from the rest of yourself and disconnected your soul from your personality and the Personality of God, you are at a standstill in your spiritual evolution. And if you don't know it, you're even worse off: you're in a minus position.

Our souls are wise. Our souls know the past and its application to the present and the future. And they see the immediacy of the moment. The soul is highly sensitive and at the same time she is innocent and defenseless. She is vulnerable to astral forces. She is impressionable and easily led astray. She is often colored by her surroundings. She suffers when subjected to violence of any kind. She is wounded by mental and emotional toxins and by physical or verbal abuse. Our souls urgently need our comfort and consolation, our soothing words. They need to know that we will protect them from all harm.

We Are the Parents and Teachers of Our Souls

The Ascended Masters have referred to the soul as the child who lives inside of us. Psychologists have dubbed the soul "the inner child." The soul by any other name is still the soul. And we are her parents and teachers, even as we are her students.

It is our responsibility to daily impress upon the soul (1) what is right-what is real and of enduring worth and therefore must be kept-and (2) what is wrong—what is not real and not of enduring worth and therefore must not be kept but cast into the sacred fire.

As parents, we can lovingly care for our souls as we would care for our children or we can neglect our souls and become creatures of our own self-neglect, i.e., soul-neglect. Proverbs says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." <5> These words refer to one's soul as well as to one's offspring.

The Ascended Masters do not intend that we should be led around by every whim of our souls even as they do not intend that we should be led around by every whim of our children. Since the soul is our child until she comes of age, we must love and protect, instruct and discipline her on the spiritual path.

El Morya says that we should not place our emphasis on being obedient to the soul as the inner child, but rather that we should place our emphasis on teaching the soul to be obedient to God and to her Holy Christ Self. You would not allow your children to dictate the terms of your household or your comings and goings, so why would you allow your soul, your inner child, to dominate you and tell you, "Go here. Go there. Do this. Do that?"

The soul is the little child who is destined to become the Christ Child. Let us lead our souls even as we are led by our Holy Christ Self. Moreover, let us remember that as parents and teachers we are responsible for the protection and education not only of our children but also of our souls, that we might mold both the souls of our children and our own souls after the heavenly patterns.

Why Have We Come to Soul Evolution?

So why have we come to Soul Evolution: A Fusion of Mind and Spirit? And how do we achieve that fusion of mind and spirit?

First and foremost, we have come to enlighten, strengthen and protect our souls. Secondly,
we want our minds and our spirits to be as one through the integrating principle of the I AM THAT I AM. We shall achieve this oneness, beginning right here in the Heart of the Inner Retreat at Maitreya' s Mystery School and continuing for the rest of our lives. For the unity of mind (the masculine/feminine polarity) and spirit (the feminine/masculine polarity) is essential to the soul's release from the planes of earth in the hour of her ascension to the heart of God.

The Darjeeling Council directed me to convene this conference for a number of reasons:

(1) To accelerate our soul awareness.

(2) To conduct the ritual of soul retrieval <6> for the purpose of gathering the lost fragments of our souls and magnetizing those fragments to our Holy Christ Self for safekeeping. (You see, when the soul is empowered by the Son of God to magnetize her soul fragments back to her threefold flame, she is able to restore herself to wholeness; and, by the magnet of the heart, the soul is held intact.)

(3) To integrate our souls with our Holy Christ Self in anticipation of our souls' ultimate bonding to that Holy Christ Self.

FREEDOM 1995: Soul Evolution initiates a twelve-month cycle and future cycles under the sponsorship of Lanello, the Ascended Masters of the First Ray and the Manus of the Four Root Races. <7> They have come because our souls are in jeopardy. At the midpoint of the decade earth is at a turning point: As a people and a planet we will either accelerate or decelerate, we
will either go up or down. And God help us if we settle into mediocrity! For, surrounded by the putridity of mediocrity, we will no longer perceive that we desperately need the standards of excellence that the Ascended Masters of the First Ray set for us.

Under their banner of protection, reinforced by the armies of heaven, we do not sense, as they clearly do, the urgency of the hour. Yet they would make this urgency known to us step by step in their dictations. Yes, we have come to the Heart of the Inner Retreat to learn the steps we need to take to rescue our souls and the souls of millions who are in need of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wholeness.

You have made the trek to attend FREEDOM 1995 because you know that you can strengthen your soul by coming apart from the world once a year to this pristine valley that truly is the Place of Great Encounters. For ten days you have no other responsibility but to gather the forces of the universe unto your soul—to observe and then experience for yourself the sacred fire of God infolding itself within your heart, to drink the nectar of the Teachings delivered through the dictations and feel it invigorating every cell even as it quickens your mind and being. Truly, you are on your way to an inner retreat in the heart of God.

At this conference you can strengthen your soul through prayer and meditation and also by communing with the ascended adepts who, in answer to your simple heartfelt request, will draw you up into the rarefied atmosphere of their Causal Bodies and teach your soul to ponder the deep things of God.

They will show you the mysteries of life and death and take you beyond time and space, cause and effect, to the realm of pure being. Yes, these are the things of the Holy Spirit that your soul hungers and thirsts for.

And if you would pray yet know not what to pray for, remember that the apostle Paul tells us that "the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God." <8>

The Empowerment of the Soul

Throughout this conference the Ascended Masters will be speaking about empowerment—the empowerment of the soul according to her progress on the Path. Only God or the Ascended Masters—or a true and living Guru whom they have anointed—has the authority to bestow spiritual empowerment to souls evolving on earth.

(Of course there are fallen angels and aliens of the left-handed path who empower their underlings and tempt the children of God, even as they did Jesus Christ, to bow down to them and serve them in exchange for power and dominion over the kingdoms of this world. <9> Beware of them! For they do not convey the power of God but the vainglory of the world and the power of Death and Hell that ultimately destroys both the body and the soul.)

When it comes to the empowerment of the soul, the Ascended Masters work with those who have been and continue to be steadfast in their service to God under the Chohans of the Seven Rays and the Maha Chohan. If you would conquer the forces of Death and Hell that have empowered your human ego and your dweller-on-the-threshold, you must first apply for sponsorship and empowerment under El Morya, the Chohan of the First Ray.

In his Easter 1995 dictation, El Morya spoke of the initiations of the Holy Spirit and mastering the paths of the Seven Chohans:

The initiations of the Holy Spirit come to you day by day. And they come, beloved, when you are ready.

Before you can become a direct disciple of the Holy Spirit under the Maha Chohan, you must submit yourself to the paths of the Seven Chohans and master at least three of those paths, one of which must be the path of the First Ray under me.

The Chohans who preside over the other two paths of your choosing may accept you, whether as a preferred chela or a beginning student, or they may tell you to diligently follow the path taught by the Messengers until you may be invited to be directly under the tutelage of one or both of these Chohans. I exercise the same discretion. <10>

Make no mistake, unless you have the sponsorship of an Ascended Master when you confront the Not Self, you may be tossed and tumbled by sinister forces of the astral plane bent on your soul's destruction. And believe me, you will also need that sponsorship when one day your soul is called upon by her God to cross the "great abyss." If she accepts the challenge and conquers the Not Self, she will earn her right of passage to come and go in the heaven-world even while she tarries in the earth plane to tie up loose ends prior to her ascension.

In light of all this, the Ascended Masters have come to empower you who have earned levels of merit in your steadfastness on the spiritual path. Thus, you will note on the conference program that the beings of the Second Ray will tutor your soul in preparation for her empowerment on that ray. Likewise, the beings of the Third Ray will tutor your soul in preparation for her empowerment on that ray. During the conference you may also choose to apprentice yourself to the Masters who deliver empowerment on the Fourth Ray, the First Ray, the Five Secret Rays and the Flame of Freedom on the Seventh Ray—and to the Masters who deliver the empowerment of the White Light Sheathed in the Emerald Ray and Matrix (i.e., Ray-O-Light's Fearlessness Flame) and the empowerment of the Incarnation of God.

Four Quarterly Conferences:
An Opportunity for the Soul to Step Up Her Spiritual Evolution

The soul evolves through the cycles of the seasons, each cycle a turn in an ascending spiral. That's why the Ascended Masters directed Mark Prophet to hold four quarterly conferences annually, one at the turn of each season.

The conferences are an opportunity for the soul to step up her spiritual evolution through direct contact with the Ascended Masters and her I AM Presence. This step-up is facilitated by the soul's Holy Christ Self and the Messenger's pivotal contact with the students as well as with the
hierarchy of light. The release of light through the Ascended Masters' dictations and the students' dynamic decrees gives the world a spiritual spin and accelerates the evolution of every soul on earth.

If you make contact not only with the Mind of God and the Spirit of God but also with your own point of soul awareness and you maintain that contact between conferences, your soul may one day, when she has gained a certain God-mastery, enjoy an unbroken communion with God.

Once she has accomplished this, her Holy Christ Self will extend to her his right hand and assist her in rising over a spiritual coil of light from the seat-of-the-soul chakra to the solar plexus to the heart chakra, thence to her original and lawful abode in the secret chamber of the heart. Ultimately this coil will become the ascension coil over which your soul rises to enter into her permanent union with God.

The Moods and Energies of the Soul Correlate
to Specific Meridians and Organs

Esoterically speaking, the word soul comes from the word solar. Every day our souls rise with the sun and set with the sun. Yes, the soul is a creature of ritual. She moves with the Son—the Son of God that shines in her heart—as well as with the sun of this solar system and the Great Central Sun.

The soul experiences moods and energies, which correlate to specific meridians and organs. According to the principles of Oriental medicine, the chi (life force) flows through each meridian and organ at a specific time of day, as shown in this chart from the text Fundamentals of Chinese Acupuncture by Andrew Ellis, Nigel Wiseman and Ken Boss:

The text explains:

As day turns to night and one season follows another the rhythms of the body follow the rhythms of the natural world. Chi flows through the body in a daily cycle that begins in the lung channel [meridian] and ends at the last point on the liver channel. It then proceeds to the lung to begin once again . . . The time listed opposite to each channel [in the chart] represents the time of maximum chi and blood in the given channel. This information is useful in both diagnosis and treatment. A symptom that occurs regularly at 4:00 a.m., for example, may be indicative of a lung
disorder and may best (though inconveniently) be treated at that time. <11>

William Tara, in his book Macrobiotics and Human Behavior, gives the following table, listing specific organs and the corresponding behavioral characteristics that reflect either balance or imbalance: <12>

One can see from this table that if one does not maintain balance in his physical body, his emotional well-being will suffer. What the table does not show is that the soul will also suffer as a result of the condition of the body. This is a spiritual suffering and it carries over into the mental health and the psychology of the lifestream.

The soul recedes as you recede, the soul is happy as you are happy, and the soul ascends as you ascend. But her fortunes sit squarely on the base of your pyramid of life. This pyramid contains (1) the four lower bodies, (2) the systems and organs that make up the body, and (3) the corresponding chakras that rise from the base of the pyramid to the All-Seeing Eye in the capstone.

The strength of the soul is dependent upon the health of the individual organs, their harmonious interaction, and whether or not the soul chooses to embody a perpetual joie de vivre. The soul's karma and her past incarnations, as well as the balance of light or darkness in her chakras, are also factors that affect her physical health and determine in part where she is on the path of becoming an integrated being in God.

The Soul Mirrors Whatever She Puts Her Attention On

The soul is in touch with all life. And for this very reason she requires daily immersion in the sacred fire of God through deep and one-pointed meditation, an active devotion to God and a loving solicitude for her enemies as well as for her friends.

From the heart of the Elohim of Peace flow the words of the apostle Paul for the tutoring of our souls in the way of sustaining a positive mental attitude:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of Peace shall be with you. <13>

The soul mirrors whatever she puts her attention on. So we must use the mirror of mind and spirit to reflect back upon the soul the values and virtues we want her to first internalize and then externalize.

The soul's visualization of the physical sun and the Sun-behind-the-sun, i.e., the spiritual sun, is a key to the soul's becoming a permanent part of the Sun of her Mighty I AM Presence. If in her
meditations the soul fixes her gaze on Alpha and Omega in the Great Central Sun and on Helios and Vesta in the sun of our system, she will absorb the infinitesimal patterns of the many suns in our galaxy and beyond-the whole and the part, the atoms and the molecules, the worlds within worlds. This will give her an intimate connection with physical infinity, which will bring her, through her dynamic decrees, to that spiritual infinity to which the ascended adepts have attained.

The Soul Is Trapped in the Seat-of-the-Soul Chakra

Through ritual the soul evolves. And the soul who is right with her God is eager to evolve to that level of attainment whereby she, after long centuries of exile, may once again take up her abode in the secret chamber of the heart. But there are serious, sobering reasons why it is not so easy
for the soul to rise from the seat-of-the-soul chakra to the heart chakra. You see, when the soul fell from grace, she fell from the secret chamber of the heart and thereafter was confined to the seat-of-the-soul chakra.

El Morya tells me that most souls who fell are still trapped in the seat-of-the-soul chakra by their karma and that they cannot rise above that station until they balance the percentage of karma which the Lords of Karma require of them—usually 51 percent, plus or minus. (The percentage is different for every soul because each soul's karma is unique.)

It is from this chakra that Saint Germain would rescue souls by the Seventh Ray action of the Holy Spirit and the violet flame. Coincidentally, or not, the seat-of-the-soul chakra is the Seventh Ray (the violet ray) chakra, the very best environment for the soul in her yet imperfect state.

Alas, the soul is literally a self-made prisoner. Furthermore, she is the prisoner of the human ego and the dweller-on-the-threshold. Both are stern taskmasters and avowed enemies of the soul. They have occupied the temples of man and woman since the fall of twin flames in the Garden of Eden.

Since Eden We Have Created the Ego and the Dweller

The Garden of Eden was the original Mystery School founded by Lord Maitreya to train Sons and Daughters of God to become spiritual adepts, initiates of the highest order, that they might go forth from the Mystery School to raise the consciousness of the children of God and to make the teachings of the spiritual path available to them and eventually to all mankind.

The paradise described in Genesis was in the etheric octave somewhere between heaven and earth. Adam and Eve, the archetypal twin flames, and numerous other sets of twin flames studied there under Lord Maitreya, who is named in Genesis as the Lord God.

When tempted of the Serpent <14> to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, many of Maitreya's students disobeyed him. Even though the LORD had told them that "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," these students of the Mystery School believed the Serpent's equivocation, "Ye shall not surely die," and partook of the forbidden fruit. <15>

All who entered into this act of disobedience paid the ultimate price: the flame of their immortality was snuffed out. Thus, they knew that their souls had become naked and that they were now mortal. Grief-stricken, they went forth from Eden, literally driven out by the LORD God, "lest Adam put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever" <16> in his fallen state.

And so, Adam and Eve and many sets of twin flames were consigned to the earth plane and to earthly bodies. To them the LORD God declared: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." <17>

No greater indictment has ever been handed down by the Lord God upon his people.

While we were in Eden we were innocent. We developed neither ego nor dweller. However, our souls were susceptible and we fell. Over the long centuries of our souls' incarceration on planet earth since the Fall, we have created the ego and the dweller and allowed them to mushroom until they have displaced the "hidden man of the heart," the Holy Christ Self.

We have allowed the ego and the dweller to intimidate our souls. Only the soul who has garnered the sacred fire of God can counteract the telling blows of the Not Self. She who has Wisdom's fire consciously recognizes and confronts the ego. She is up to the task of slaying it. Furthermore, she knows that she alone must undo the threads she has sewn in dishonor and must now sew in honor.

We can all become conscious of the antics of our egos if we want to be-that is, if we are not in a state of denial, denying the destructive words and deeds that come through our egos and dominate not only our own souls but, sadly, the souls of others. The dweller-on-the-threshold, on the other hand, is not so easy to detect. It inhabits the subconscious and the unconscious minds even as it inhibits the soul's evolution. And while the soul is terrified of the dweller, the ego is in cahoots with the dweller, ever plotting the soul's demise.

When a soul has committed herself to Darkness and the Dark Ones, she is completely taken over by the human ego and the dweller-on-the-threshold. There is no longer a distinction between the ego and the dweller. They are merged as one. The soul has for all intents and purposes ceased to exist.

What was once a pristine creation of God is now bonded to the Not Self instead of to the Holy Christ Self. Only Darkness and the Dark Ones inhabit what was formerly a temple of God. Jude called the fallen angels in this state "wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever." <18>

David's Feat Must Become Our Own:
We Must Each Slay Our Own Goliath

The soul who has allowed the ego to grow lifetime after lifetime has created a monster, literally a Goliath. In the Biblical account of David and Goliath, Goliath represents David's dweller-on-the-threshold. Before David could be crowned king of Israel, the Great Law required that he slay Goliath, the champion of the Philistines. This was a spiritual initiation. God initiated the soul of David that he might prove himself before Goliath and the Philistines and before King Saul and his people. <19>

So David, the naked soul, took his staff in hand and chose five smooth stones (symbolic of the five secret rays?) out of the brook and put them in a shepherd's bag. With his sling in hand, he drew near to Goliath. And Goliath mocked him and "cursed him by his gods," for David was "but a youth and ruddy and of a fair countenance." <20>

But David demonstrated his confidence in himself and in his God. He said to Goliath, "I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand." His courage was unparalleled. He told Goliath exactly what he was going to do and he did it, affirming again, "The battle is the LORD's and he will give you into our hands." <21> Not for one moment did David even consider that the battle was his alone: he knew it was his and God's.

So when Goliath arose, David ran toward him and "put his hand in his bag and took thence a stone and slang it and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead and he fell upon his face to the earth." <22> David's feat must become our feat. And our soul must mature, pressing her soles into his footprints. For one day we, too, will be called upon by God to slay our dweller-on-the-threshold in defense of our soul's ongoing tenure in the Community of the Holy Spirit.

David's initiation was all about empowerment and communion with God. The confidence David exuded was based not only on his faith in himself and in his God but on his direct communion with God. God told David that he would empower him and give him the victory over the Philistine and his hosts, and he did.

When the soul is empowered by God and she knows it, because all the forces of her being are poised for the victory that she knows is hers, she is fearless not only before the ragings of her own ego and her own dweller but also before the ragings of the entire false hierarchy of fallen angels.

"Behold, Now Is the Accepted Time . . . "

Lifetime after lifetime we have either glorified God in our souls and in our members, challenging the ego and the dweller each step of the way, or we have damned our souls and our God and chosen to plight our troth to the ego, the dweller and the fallen angels, accepting their offers of power and glory and dominion.

"Behold, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation," wrote the apostle Paul. <23> We must choose this day whether we will attain union with God in this life or whether we will damn our souls and our God and forfeit that union. If we espouse the former path and our souls pass their tests, we will attain union with God. If we espouse the latter path and our souls fail their tests, we have nothing to look forward to except "fiery indignation."

As the author of Hebrews wrote: "If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment
and fiery indignation." <24>

The truth is that most people have neither the spiritual attainment nor the empowerment from God to gain the upper hand over either their egos or their dwellers, much less the fallen angels. Thus they do not hold a tight rein on their souls or their souls' evolution. It is sad but true that
without divine intercession all but a small percentage of the population are unable to deal with and overcome the forces of Evil on a day-to-day basis. They are not equal to the challenge of defeating the forces of Evil lodged within their own psyches, much less the forces of Evil lodged within the psyche of the planet.

And so, ultimately, until the soul is once again bonded to her Holy Christ Self, the human ego and the dweller-on-the-threshold are more powerful than the soul. And this is one reason why it is not so easy for the soul to rise from the seat-of-the-soul chakra to the heart chakra.

In order to rise, the soul must overcome her tendency to repeatedly fail her tests at key points of vulnerability. She must recognize these key points and seek daily to transcend them. And with the help of her Holy Christ Self and Archangel Michael, if she applies herself, she will learn step by step how to challenge and defeat her human ego and her dweller-on-the-threshold.

The day will come when, after studious application of the laws of God, the soul will have balanced 51 percent of her karma. Having achieved this level, she will at last ascend the spiral staircase from the seat of the soul to her lawful abode in the secret chamber of the heart, there to commune with her Lord, her beloved Holy Christ Self.

Once the Soul Is Awakened, She Must Learn to Deal
with the Four Types of Animal Magnetism and the Martian A's

When Gautama Buddha came on the scene, his disciples recognized him to be such an extraordinary human being that they didn't ask him, "Who are you?" but they asked him, "What are you? Are you a god? Are you a man? Are you human or divine?" And he simply said, "I AM awake."

It is startling to think that billions of souls on planet earth are not awake but asleep. Yes, they are asleep to spiritual realities, dead to the realms of eternal Truth. When we think about waking them up, we had better first wake up our own souls! And when we do and our souls first rub their eyes and yawn and look around and say, "Where am I? Who am I?" and then drift off again into the sleep of oblivion, we must shake them awake! Yes, shake them awake!

Once fully awakened, the soul must learn what is Good and what is Evil. We as parents and teachers must teach the child who lives inside of us to deal with both forces and to see them for what they are. We must teach the soul that Good is all powerful and that in reality Evil has no power of its own but only the power that we give to it.

We must teach the soul to defend herself and to take up the sword of truth to defeat the lie, no matter who mouths it. We must teach the soul that there are four classifications of animal magnetism that can cause her to stumble if she does not clear her four lower bodies daily of their
vibration. We must warn her that animal magnetism can entrap her in the lower chakras and the lower animalistic nature.

The four types of animal magnetism correlate with the four lower bodies and the four quadrants of the Cosmic Clock. Malicious animal magnetism manifests in the memory body and the memory quadrant, ignorant animal magnetism in the mental body and the mental quadrant, sympathetic animal magnetism in the desire body and the desire quadrant, and delicious
animal magnetism in the physical body and the physical quadrant.

Your defense against these negative momentums is to call daily in the name of your Mighty I AM Presence and Holy Christ Self to the Elohim Astrea to lock her cosmic circle and sword of blue flame in, through and around all animal magnetism and family mesmerism <25> and to command that they be consumed by the violet flame.

We all have to deal with these momentums. They're part and parcel of the nature of the beast. They come with the territory, as they say. So what do we do? We teach our souls to rise above them and to stay centered in the heart chakra and in the balance of the threefold flame.

One of the most deadly traps the fallen angels have laid to catch the soul off guard is the collection of offenses that I refer to as the "Martian A's." These offenses, each in its own turn,
are a blasphemy against God the Father, Alpha. They all begin with the letter A, and they are a perversion of everything that our Father Alpha stands for. By venting them through any of your four lower bodies or your chakras, you can be the unwitting tool through which they enter and poison the planetary stream of consciousness-to the degradation of every living soul.

The Martian A's, by name, are aggression, anger, arrogance, argumentation, accusation, agitation, apathy, atheism, annihilation, aggravation, annoyance and aggressive mental suggestion.

An aggressive mental suggestion is a strong suggestion, projected either from within or without the psyche, that comes into your head and will not leave you alone. It does not originate in the Mind of God nor is it native to the soul but it can strongly influence the soul to take the left-handed path and to be pressured into making one wrong turn after the other on the highway of life.

An aggressive mental suggestion will pound the brain and pound the brain and pound the brain! until the brain is exhausted and it acquiesces to the erroneous suggestion projected by the sinister force. Because it is so powerful, you may think that it must be of God, when it is really of the Devil.

Aggressive mental suggestion is subtle. Its root is in the Serpent mind. You must never let aggressive mental suggestion sit on you. Deal with it immediately! Call to Archangel Michael to plunge his sword of blue flame into its cause and core. Then give unrelenting decrees to God and his hosts to deliver you, and stick with those decrees until you are delivered of the wiles of Serpent!

Through the Psalms, We Identify with the Soul of David

Through the Psalms, we identify with the soul of David, who deftly delivered himself and all of Israel of the ragings of Goliath—the giant who was the incarnation of the four types of animal magnetism and all of the Martian A's. (Although scholars debate whether David wrote any of the psalms ascribed to him, let's assume for the moment that he did since the tradition goes back centuries and we are all steeped in that tradition. Whether or not he actually wrote them, they bear his imprint.)

In the Psalms, David speaks of the travail of his soul. In Psalm 6 he says, "Return, O Lord, deliver my soul. Oh, save me for thy mercies' sake." "Deliver my soul! Save me!" David's message for us, which he articulates again and again, is that we must call upon God to protect and deliver our souls from evil—and the evil of animal magnetism and the Martian A's-day after day.

In the Twenty-third Psalm not only does David seek refuge in the Lord but he also prophesies his soul's immortality. Consider who is speaking in this psalm. Consider that it is the soul of David, who, having slain the dweller, is becoming one with his Higher Self, his Holy Christ Self, the
fullness of whose glory was to shine in his final incarnation as Jesus Christ. He says:

The Lord—the Mighty I AM Presence—is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Notice the simple acceptance: "He is my shepherd. He will care for me. Therefore I shall not want." Through thousands of years of his soul's journeyings on earth, the soul of David has learned that there is only one who can shepherd his soul and that that one is the Lord, the Mighty
I AM Presence. He has learned that he cannot commit his soul into the keeping of another.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.

Day after day the Lord restored David's soul. Why? Because the soul on earth requires daily restoration through the Holy Christ Self and the I AM Presence. Daily the soul must deal with the weight of the world as well as the weight of her karma. Before David's soul could take on the morrow and the next day and the next, David would seek solace from his God and his soul would be restored. He knew that he must care for his soul all the days of his life.

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. [He teaches me the right use of God's laws, he guides me each step of the way.]

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Does the valley of the shadow of death consist of the remnants of David's lower self that must be passed through the sacred fire to be consumed? Does it represent the subconscious or the unconscious world of David—the enemies within as well as the enemies without, including Death and Hell, that he must slay ere he receive the mantle of his Christhood in his final incarnation?

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Recite this psalm to your soul. Do not neglect to do so. Your soul needs to hear you read her this psalm. She needs to feel your comforting flame and to have your assurance that when she gives her all to God she will also be able to slay her Goliath. And furthermore, you must teach her to believe in herself and in her God. Tell her that she can rise to levels of leadership and be an example of the victory that is possible to the saints.

The Deathless Solar Body and the Parable
of the Marriage Feast and the Wedding Garment

We know that the goal of the soul is to attain union with God and that to achieve this she must rise to the heart chakra and be bonded to her Holy Christ Self through the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But before this bonding can take place, the soul must accomplish many tasks, one of which is the daily weaving of her wedding garment. The Ascended Masters call the wedding
garment the deathless solar body.

Let us go back to Eden for a moment. As I mentioned earlier, once we allowed our souls to be compromised by the order of fallen angels called Serpent, our souls became mortal, i.e.,
naked. Before we partook of the forbidden fruit, we were immortal. So, the before represents
the immortality of the soul in Eden and her allegiance to Lord Maitreya. The after represents her loss of that immortality when she transferred her allegiance to the Serpent.

Hearkening to the Serpent was not only a matter of disobedience; it was a breach of trust. A sacred trust. Trust is the foundation of every relationship and most especially the Guru-chela relationship. In sum, we disobeyed our Guru, Maitreya. We lost our immortality. We became mortal. And we have had to face the consequences ever since.

The LORD God told Ezekiel, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." <26> In the context of the Edenic dispensation, this meant: "The soul that sinneth, it shall become mortal." It meant that the soul that sinned against the Manu and the Guru of that 2,150-year period <27> would not have the
opportunity in that round to regain her immortality. She would have to reembody on earth in the next 2,150-year dispensation and trace the footprints of her Manu and her Guru until she found them. She would have to apply to enter her Guru's Mystery School and submit to the rigors of initiation that he would require of her ere she returned to the paradise of a golden age.

As we discussed, the Garden of Eden was Maitreya's original Mystery School. Had we not compromised our souls—had we remained in the Mystery School, submitting to our initiations in divine order, passing our daily tests—we would have graduated from the Mystery School and gone forth to bring Maitreya's teachings to the world. Furthermore, we would have walked the earth alive with the flame of our immortality and clothed with the deathless solar body.

Today, as mortals, we must weave our deathless solar body by spiritualization of consciousness, by sacrifice, surrender, selflessness and service. We require the assistance of our Holy Christ Self in this monumental task. We need to match the light God gives us daily over the crystal cord with our own sewings of light, for thereby we can say: "My Holy Christ Self worketh hitherto and
I work." We can multiply that light by meditation, mantra and the science of the spoken Word.

Day by day we weave our wedding garment, the deathless solar body. When we have perfected that garment, our souls will be ready to return as Brides of Christ to the heaven-world, never to go out again from Eden. Alas, as of this moment our wedding garment is not perfected. Our souls are not ready to rise on the spiral of ascension's flame to be received in the arms of our Mighty I AM Presence, who alone can bestow upon us immortal life.

No, our souls are yet in the valley of decision. We have many choices to make as we are confronted daily with the initiations Lord Maitreya gives to us. Yes, he, the Lord God who once walked and talked with us in Eden, whose sacred trust we broke, has forgiven us seventy times seven—and perhaps seven hundred thousand times seven hundred—during the intervening centuries of our souls' banishment from paradise.

Once again, he walks and talks with us and patiently delivers to us the initiations we have so longed to be worthy of receiving. Indeed, how profoundly grateful we are, not only for his forgiveness but also for his compassion and utter kindness. For in a dictation given on May 31, 1984, in the Heart of the Inner Retreat, Jesus Christ announced that Lord Maitreya was dedicating the Royal Teton Ranch as the place prepared for the reestablishment of his Mystery School in this century. <28>

And so, since we can't get out of this world until we have woven our wedding garment, Lord Maitreya meets us at our level—in the lowly estate of the flesh. He has come to save us from our wayward selves. He comes to test us and to test us again and again that he might finally receive us in our wedding garment and bestow upon us the living, pulsating flame of eternal life that shall never again be extinguished by man or by God.

Here is Jesus' parable of the marriage feast and the wedding garment.
The scene of the marriage feast takes place on the third level of the etheric octave.

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.

Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, "Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage."

But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise:

And the remnant took his servants and entreated them spitefully and slew them.

But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city.

Then saith he to his servants, "The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.

"Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage."

So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.

And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment.

And he saith unto him, "Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?"
And he was speechless.

Then said the king to the servants, "Bind him hand and foot and take him away and cast him
into outer darkness [the physical octave]; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

For many are called, but few are chosen.—Matt. 22:2-14

This so-called friend had not woven his wedding garment; therefore it was not lawful for him to enter the etheric octave. The king had his servants bind him hand and foot and take him away and cast him into outer darkness (the physical octave), where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The question that comes to mind is: How could the one whom the king called "friend" have gotten past him and his servants? It is clear that fallen angels have stolen their way into the retreats of the etheric octave, masquerading as angels of light. And did not our Lord say, "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force"? <29>

One lesson we derive from this parable is that we must guard the citadel of our consciousness lest fallen angels intrude upon our minds, hearts, spirits and soul identity. The fallen angels don't pretend to have a wedding garment, yet they are pretenders to the throne of grace. As we see in this parable, if they are given the slightest entrée, they slither in to defile even the Holy of holies. Wherefore God has sent his holy angels to protect our souls from the wiles of the fallen angels.

The parable of the marriage feast and the wedding garment is the story of ourselves. We must prepare ourselves for this marriage feast, for one day the king will send his servants to bid us partake of the festivities and we must be ready. Our souls prepare for the marriage feast during many lifetimes of service, looking to and cleaving to the I AM Presence, eventually bonding to the Holy Christ Self and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Healing the Soul Is a Top Priority

The soul must learn how to work through the burdens of her unresolved karma that are reflected in the burdens of her unresolved psychology. Your soul is attentive when your therapist brings you to the place where you can understand why you have repetitive negative patterns in your life that, try as you will, you cannot seem to correct. We have all experienced this.

Negative patterns do not go away just because you invoke the violet flame. They go away because you invoke the violet flame and you learn your lessons, often in the school of hard knocks because you are too stubborn to learn them from your Holy Christ Self.

And then one day you stop beating your head against the wall and you open your eyes and you see, you know, because the mist that blocked your seeing and your knowing is cleared. And what was a mystery is no longer a mystery.

So, every morning we put on the mantle of the good physician and we go forth to heal our souls. Healing the soul is a top priority. If you do all things well on your spiritual path but neglect the healing of your soul, you will surely come to the crossroads of your neglect. And you will have no other choice but to pick up the cross of your karma and carry it to the place of Golgotha, the place of the skull—in other words, the place where you have crucified your soul. Here you must take her down from the cross, anoint her body with myrrh and aloes, and call upon the Lord and Saviour to resurrect her from her deep sorrow over your neglect.

Mindful of your soul's need for healing, my beloved staff and I have prepared for you two audiotapes: Healing Meditations and Love Meditations. <30> The prayers are taken from the Healing decrees and the Love decrees; and the hymns of Healing and Love are taken from the Church hymnal.

The prayers were dictated to Mark L. Prophet by the Ascended Masters prior to his ascension. Into these worded chalices you can pour your unceasing adoration to God. They are recorded at a devotional pace so that you can offer your implorings to God and his hosts for the healing of your soul, the souls of loved ones and the souls of humanity.

These prayers, together with violet flame unguents applied to the body of the soul, are your means of healing your soul of the ravages of your neglect; for they afford you the opportunity to balance the karma you have made with your soul.

If despite your neglect of the child who lives within you, you are worthy of the ascension on all other counts, your first priority before or after your ascension will be to balance your karma with your soul, i.e., your inner child. Since in the final analysis you are your soul, your soul's wholeness will be the key to your ultimate victory.

When you do make your transition, you will be taken to the appropriate retreat in the heaven world for a period of time to be determined by the Lords of Karma in consultation with your Holy Christ Self. Here you will remain until you have accomplished the healing of your soul under the
guidance of masterful angel therapists. They, together with your Holy Christ Self, will tutor your soul until you achieve soul wholeness. And through the ritual of soul retrieval conducted by the ascended and unascended Messengers, you will learn to magnetize back to your soul the fragments that have been imprisoned in the earth and throughout the universe.

The Fusion of Mind and Spirit

In conclusion, I will briefly address the subject of the fusion of mind and spirit.

The fusion of mind and spirit can be likened to the merging of the right and the left brains. The mind expands knowledge, the spirit creatively applies it. When they are fused as one they carry the plus/minus polarity of Alpha and Omega and the soul soars in her Godward evolution.

The condition of your mind and spirit (lowercased) indicates the carrying capacity of your mental body and your feeling, or desire, body. You have to know your limits. You have to know what the lower mind and lower spirit can and cannot do because they are finite, and then arrange your life
accordingly.

Because you also have a higher mind and a higher spirit, which are in fact the Mind and the Spirit of God, your limited lower mental body and your limited lower spiritual body, when accelerated by specific stimuli, may one day be able to access the Mind of God and the Spirit of God.

Many people, however, never get out of the cage of the lower mind, the mental body, the intellect —because they have no desire to get out of it. And unless their desire is fueled to attain union with God, they will be forever stuck. Other people have accessed the Mind of God for so many lifetimes that they cannot remember when they were not accessing the Mind of God.

God intends your lower mind to be fused with your Higher Mind when your consciousness has been sufficiently developed spiritually to contain it. God intends your lower spirit to be fused with your Higher Spirit, or Holy Spirit, when you have exalted that Spirit in your temple in preparation
for your soul's ultimate union with God in the ritual of the ascension. On both counts your Holy Christ Self is the facilitator of the fusion: (1) of the lower mind with the Higher Mind and (2) of the lower spirit with the Higher Spirit.

Paul said, "Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus." <31> And if he said it, then it must be possible. So all we have to do is let the Mind of God that was and is in Christ Jesus be in us, and everything else will follow—if we are true to ourselves and true to our God.

I wish you all Godspeed on your path of soul evolution that ultimately leads to the fusion of your mind and spirit with the Mind and Spirit of God.

notes:

1. Sir Edwin Arnold, trans., The Song Celestial or Bhagavad-Gita (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948), p. 9, quoted in Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Climb the Highest Mountain, 2d ed. (Livingston, Mont.: Summit University Press, 1986), p. 8.

2. Climb the Highest Mountain, pp. 8-9.

3. "Lanello's Excelsior," song 513A in Church Universal and Triumphant Book of Hymns and Songs, is recorded on audiocassette B95047P (total 44 min., $6.95 plus $2.50 postage and handling).

4. I Cor. 9:27.

5. Prov. 22:6.

6. The Messenger conducted the ritual "Soul Retrieval: Fusing the Fragmented Parts of the Soul" on June 27, 1995. See also El Morya, January 1, 1995, "Take a Stand for Truth: Fusing the Fragmented Parts of the Soul," pp. 81-82, 85-87, this volume; and Gautama Buddha, May 14, 1995, "A Rescue Mission," p. 208, this volume.

7. The sponsorship of Lanello, the First-Ray Masters and the Manus. See Lanello, February 26, 1995, p. 95, this volume.

8. Rom. 8:26, 27.

9. Matt. 4:1-11; Mark 1:12, 13; Luke 4:1-13.

10. El Morya, April 16, 1995, p. 263, this volume.

11. Andrew Ellis, Nigel Wiseman, Ken Boss, Fundamentals of Chinese Acupuncture (Brookline, Mass.: Paradigm Publications, 1988), pp. 37-38.

12. William Tara, Macrobiotics and Human Behavior (New York: Japan Publications, 1984), p. 72.

13. Phil. 4:8, 9.

14. The Serpents were an order of angels on the Second Ray under Archangel Jophiel's command. They fell from grace when they tempted twin flames in paradise to depart from the covenants of the Lord God. As their punishment, they were cast out of heaven into the earth, henceforth to wear the bodies of mortals. "And the Lord God said unto the Serpent, 'Because
thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel'" (Gen. 3:14, 15).

They were called Serpent because they were masters of the Kundalini, or life force. The Kundalini is serpentine in appearance as it is coiled at the base-of-the-spine chakra and raised at will by adepts to the third eye. When the Kundalini is awakened, it begins to ascend the spinal column. We see this represented in the caduceus, a symbol of the medical profession. The caduceus is illustrated as a staff with two entwined snakes rising to a pair of wings at the top. As the sacred fire rises on the spinal altar through the two snakes (i.e., the male and female energies), it heals mankind's diseases.

15. Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-6.

16. Gen. 3:7-13, 22-24.

17. Gen. 3:14-21.

18. Jude 4, 6-13.

19. I Sam. 17:1-37.

20. I Sam. 17:38-44.

21. I Sam. 17:45-47.

22. I Sam. 17:48-51.

23. II Cor. 6:2.

24. Heb. 10:26, 27.

25. Jesus said: "Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? . . . Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." See Matt. 12:46-50; Mark 3:31-35; Luke 8:19-21.

26. Ezek. 18:4, 20.

27. 2,150-year dispensation. See 1990 PoW, p. 64, and 1993 PoW, pp. 585-86.

28. See Jesus Christ, May 31, 1984, "The Mystery School of Lord Maitreya," in 1984 PoW, Book I, pp. 316-17, 324.

29. Matt. 11:12.

30. Healing Meditations-Prayer, affirmation and music for physical and spiritual healing, B94118P, and Love Meditations-Prayer, affirmation and music for the healing of the heart, B95046P. Each audiocassette is 70 minutes ($6.95 ea. plus $2.50 postage and handling, whether ordering one or both cassettes; includes booklet).

31. Phil. 2:5.

"Have you ever heard us speak of the soul of Saint Germain or the soul of El Morya?

"You have not, beloved, because from the hour of the alchemical marriage of the soul to the Holy Christ Self unto the ascension in the Light, that soul does become the integrated individuality in God. The soul is no more but the totality of being is the God-manifestation. The soul has been assumed unto her Lord and her Lord is now her name, her living awareness.

"So, you see, beloved, the potential has become the full realization, and the potential can no longer be found. Therefore that which is to be and then to be absorbed and replaced by the greater Be-ness must at that moment, that moment of the passing, even sense the self as inadequate and instantly know that the True Self is the adequacy in God.

"Yes, beloved, it is ordained and willed by the Holy Spirit that we speak from the highest octaves of Light to you through our Messenger. For you are worthy, you deserve that Light; and yet what is worthy in you but that Light itself?

"Come ye into the Light!

"Know, then, that you have witnessed individuals burdened by demons who fear and tremble and are outraged that the Word of God is released, that it cannot be stopped, that it does go forth. Think what a desecration of Jesus Christ it is that one who calls himself a Christian should deny the soul's communion with and speaking to her Lord and deny the Lord's answering!

"But what is the wonder of it all is that the soul, the individual calling himself Christian, cannot see through the lie of the demon nor separate himself out from the tie to the demon who does voice the condemnation of the very process of the transmission of the Word of God through the Messenger.

"To realize that this supposed worshiper on the Path cannot know the difference between the voice of God and the Holy Spirit and the voice of foul spirits speaking through himself, herself, denying the very reason for religion itself, which is to bind the soul back to God, [is a wonder in itself]. How can this [binding of the soul back to God] happen in logical succession if there be not communication [betwixt the soul and God]?

"In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, is God, without which that which was made was not made." If the Word is in the beginning, beloved, I assure you it is in the ending. I assure you that there are wolves in sheep's clothing and false pastors and the seed of the Wicked One from the highest orders of the fallen ones who have entered into the marts of religion, making commerce of souls and the Path itself.

"Think, then. Of course, complete poverty is not practical. But when there is the espousal of poverty, beloved, then you easily do away with those who have come for the money. For they will not stay under a vow of poverty, for the things of this world are yet an allure to them, a part of their desires. And the entities of materialism surround them and place in their minds desires for this and that, and they do not recall that the energy of God is limitless.

"And if you put all of the energy that God has given to you in one direction, to be the vessel of the Holy Spirit and the vessel of kindness, I tell you, you will do it! You will do it! And if you do not do it inside of a fortnight or a year, a twelvemonth, beloved, you will know one thing of a certain —that you had other desires greater than to be the love of the Holy Spirit.

"Pain is a weaning process. We have allowed our Messenger and chelas to know pain and the very depths of pain and loss and persecution, and so on, but only because our Messenger and certain chelas have welcomed whatever discipline or initiation. For as you know, only the chela can create the Guru and in so doing will have the full ministration of the Guru.

"Some will say, 'Don't tell me that, Kuthumi! I do not want that kind of a path. Give me a path of peace and pleasantness, nonaggravation, no acceleration of anxiety or tension or frustration.'

"Well, beloved, we bow to the free will of every individual.

"You set the limits or the limitless nature of your path.

"If you acknowledge something, some love or sweetness of the Light in your Messenger, then have it! Have it yourself, beloved, for all things of God can be thine if you will but be one-pointed.

"If you will rest your heart on kindness, I guarantee that you will acquire many other virtues in the process.

"In order to be kind you must be practical, you must be thoughtful, you must be about the business of your Father-Mother God. You must not waste time or energy. You must not be self-indulgent or subject to highs and lows.

"Always ready with the cup of kindness of the elixir of everlasting Life, you must maintain a vibration [that is] able to carry it and never be without it. Kindness must acquire wisdom lest people take advantage of your kindness and not receive it as a gift that is holy, to be treasured.

"Without power, then, how will you propel kindness abroad in the land? Therefore, to fulfill the gem of kindness you must get, with all thy getting, the power of God.

"Well, how do you get the power, beloved, if you do not harness your free will to the will of God?

"So now you see, to embody the kindness of the Buddha you must know, of course, the will of God and adore it and embody it. This is kindness to God and yourself with a motive. As with the sling, it is the pulling back so that there is energy in letting go for the delivery of kindness that will heal a soul.

"Kindness must develop [in you] memory or systems of memory that you might remember to pray for so many who need that kindness, and pray for them by name.

"My beloved, see, then, the facets of the snowflake, of the jewel. See kindness at the heart and [see] all of the extensions of that particle in geometric formation being as a lace pattern so that by the power of the hexagon you can in all directions radiate kindness.

"Thus the Path is for those who are shaping their desirings, who love the desirings of God in their hearts, who sing, 'Jesus, joy of man's desiring . . . ,' and truly know the fullness of that joy.

"O minister to life, beloved, and more! Now embark upon your true mission to be world teachers. If you desire to place yourselves under our tutelage, come to the ranch if you will. And if you cannot, study where you are. But be assured that when you apply to us, we will begin that course and direct you in the ways of the training that you need. And if you call to us, we will see to it that you will encounter every individual on earth whom your karma requires you to contact and give the gift of understanding.

"Is not the gift of understanding the gift of kindness?

"Aye, it is. Surely it is.

"Is there no greater unkindness than to leave someone in ignorance?

"I think not. More harsh than a thrashing is to be so insensitive to the pleading of a soul bound by the ignorant carnal mind as to leave that one without the understanding whereby the soul might escape from the prison house of that carnal mind.

"I AM Kuthumi. This Messenger has been my disciple for centuries on and off in the Himalayas between other incarnations. The bond is very close, beloved. You can trust this heart as an open door to my heart.

"And as some of you may not know, I come specifically on a mission to assist you in the resolution of your psychology, your relationships and your ties to Father, Mother, Son and Holy Spirit. I will always come to you when you call to me.

"And, yes, I will be a part of your 'master mind alliance' as you form tight alliances with trusted friends, devotees on the Path with whom you share a crystal vision of a world to come, with whom you have plans for a specific project.

"If you use the "I AM Light" decree with all of its visualizations and mantric force, if you will take the teachings the Messenger has given and give the call to the I AM Presence and Holy Christ Self to enter the superconscious, the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious mind, you will find yourself day by day more in control of these four lower bodies, who are your servants, each one a vessel for the fulfillment of your mission.

"I come with profound compassion.

"And compassion, is it not a form of kindness?

"I come with it, beloved, for I know that the touch of compassion as I touch your heart, caress your cheek and smooth the brow does make you aware that one loves you, that it is I, that I understand, that I am with you.

"Take the "I AM Light" decree as a mantra. Give it nine or thirty-three times for nine or thirty-three days. See how I can help you in your circumstance.

"Circumstance is but a grid of consciousness consisting of your karma and your psychology. If you change these, you will change your circumstance. I will show you how but it is not lawful for me to provide the energy. By giving the mantra, you give me the energy.

"Then, beloved, study the books on psychology recommended by the Messenger and know that the violet flame will heal and transmute. The Healing Thoughtform and the Emerald Matrix will seal [the pattern of perfection], will bring about change [for the better, will heal and restore to wholeness].

"Some of you understand the process of a healing crisis when you seek to fast and [pray and] purge the body. Know, then, that there is also a spiritual healing crisis. If you send much violet flame into the temple, much substance will come to the surface. If you are not aware of this, you may not know that that is the very moment to increase the violet flame and the calls to Astrea and to seek counseling [for the soul's resolution]. For so many things tumble out [of the psyche] at once and there they are on the table before you. They will either go into the flame or back into the subconscious, depending on your understanding of how to deal with those conditions.

"This is why we have ministers and counsellors in this church and why you must also learn to fulfill those roles. How better to learn than to go through the process yourself. And therefore study so that you can give positive suggestion, support and uplift to those in need and [so that you can] be keenly aware when one of greater professional qualifications is needed to help someone out of certain patterns of the psyche or out of the maze of that labyrinth of the unconscious. Wise ones and elders in this church have much experience to offer you."