The Impersonal Life

GOOD AND EVIL

In the Garden of Eden, where you abode before entering upon your Earthly mission, there grew this tree
whose fruit is called the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

While dwelling in the Garden you were still wholly Impersonal, for you had not yet tasted of this fruit. Having
once yielded to Desire, the Earthly agent of My Will, whose main work is to make you eat this fruit, the
moment you had eaten, that moment you descended, or fell, or were forced from your Edenic estate (like
the chick from the shell or the rose from the bud), and you found yourself involved in conditions altogether
new and strange. For now, instead of having dominion over the lower kingdoms, and of their supplying your
every want, you had to till the ground to get it to bring forth fruit, and by the sweat of your brow had you to
earn your bread.

Having taken upon yourself this Earthly mission, it now became necessary for you to enter fully into all
conditions of Earth life, in order to develop a mind and perfect a body capable of expressing perfectly My
Idea on Earth, — the real cause and reason of your entering into this Dream condition.

So having fallen or stepped out of your Impersonal or endemic estate, you yielded completely to the lure of
this Dream World, and now permitting Desire wholly to lead, you no longer were capable of seeing the
Reality or Soul of things; for you had put on a physical body, an earthly covering with a human brain, which
acted as a veil to your Soul Consciousness, and so bedimmed your sight and clouded your mind that the
light of Truth did not penetrate through, and everything was falsely colored and distorted by your human
understanding.

In this Dream condition you saw all things darkly, as through a mist, and with this mist enshrouding everything
you could not see things in their Reality, but only their misty appearance, which now however seemed to
you the real things themselves.

This was so with everything you saw through your Dream eyes, with things both animate and inanimate,
with everything you conceived in your human mind, with even your own Self and your other Selves round
about you.

Thus no longer seeing the Soul of things, but only their misty shadows, you grew to thinking these shadows
were real substance, and that the world about you was composed of and filled with such substance.

This mist was only the effect of the Light of Truth being invisible to your human mind, whose intellect, like
an imperfect lens, only befogged and twisted everything and made it appear as Real, keeping your
consciousness continually busied with these myriad illusions of your Dream World.

Now the intellect is a creature of and wholly controlled by Desire, and is not, as many suppose, a faculty
of the Soul. In other words, this mist then was the clouded lens of your human intellect, which, because
controlled by Desire, falsely portrayed and interpreted to your consciousness every image, idea and impulse
I inspired from within or attracted from without, during the process of My awakening your consciousness to
a recognition of My Idea within ever urging for outer expression.

All this I did purposely, however, through the agency of Desire, in order to lead you consciously into the heart
of Earth conditions.

While this false vision, inspired by Desire, caused many mis-steps and much trouble and suffering, and you
gradually lost confidence in your Self – in Me, the Impersonal One within, — in fact, you forgot Me, so that
you did not know where to turn in your helplessness; yet it was only through your thus losing the memory
of your Divine estate, and centering all your consciousness in these earthly conditions, that I could develop
your human mind and will, and all your faculties, and provide your human body with the strength and powers
that would enable Me to give perfect expression to My Divine Idea on Earth, which eventually must BE.

So, through your mistakes and troubles and sufferings, Desire for relief caused the Idea of Evil to spring
up in your mind, and likewise when these troubles were not It inspired the Idea of Good.

To all appearances of things and conditions you attributed these qualities of Good or Evil, — according to
whether or not they satisfied Desire My Agent, in Reality My human Self, or You, in your human personality.

All these conditions and experiences in life which you entered into, and which when pleasing seemed Good,
and when displeasing seemed Evil, were merely incidents created by Desire to quicken in you certain Soul
faculties, which would enable you to recognize the Truths that I, within wished at the time to impress upon
your consciousness. The apparent Evil was the negative aspect of the Fruit of the Tree, which always lured
you on by its fair appearance and by the sweetness of the first taste to eat and enjoy to satiation, or until
its harmful effects manifested and became a curse, bringing final disillusionment; which served to turn or
force you back in humiliation to Me, your True Self, Who, through the new consciousness thus aroused, was
then enabled to extract the Essence of the Fruit and incorporate it into Soul substance and tissue.

Likewise the apparent Good was the positive aspect of the Fruit, which, having pushed forth of itself into
expression, through your recognition of and obedience to its urge, was now permitting you to enjoy its happy
and natural effects, and to receive the outward benefits of My loving inspiration and guidance.

This you, who was being led by Desire through all these experiences, was only your human personality,
which the Real you was training and developing and preparing so it could become a perfect instrument for
Your use in the expression of My Idea, ever seeking to manifest Its perfection in the flesh.

All this You did, not only compelling your human personality to eat but to live on the fruit of the so-called
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, until you had seen and known all the so-called Evil, and from living
on and with it had discovered in it the germ of so-called Good, plucked it, lifted it up, and turned it right-side
out; so that you from that time on knew that Good and Evil had no real existence, and were but relative
terms descriptive of outside conditions looked at from different viewpoints, or were only different outer aspects
of a central inner Truth, the Reality of which was what You sought to Know, Be and Express.

During the latter ages you have been, as it were, gradually throwing off layer after layer of human consciousness,
dissipating the mist or glamour thrown around your mind by the intellect; subduing, controlling, spiritualizing,
and thus clarifying the intellect itself; until now you are beginning to awaken and to see, through the ever
thinning remaining layers, occasional glimpses of Me, the one Great Reality, within all things.

All this time, You, the omniscient, Impersonal I AM of You, were consciously and intentionally doing all this;
not for the purpose of getting the mere knowledge of earth conditions and things, as your Intellect has so
loudly and authoritatively proclaimed, but in order that you might harvest what You had sown in the dim ages
past, and could manifest My Perfect Idea on Earth, even as You are now manifesting It in the Impersonal
estate, Your Heavenly Home.

You, remember, are the Great Impersonal I, Who AM doing all this, Who AM continually changing in outward
appearance, but Who within AM eternally the same.

The endless flow of the Seasons, — the Spring, with its busy sowing; the Summer, with its warm, restful
ripening; the Autumn, with its bounteous harvesting; the Winter, with its cool, peaceful plenty, year after year,
life after life, century after century, age after age – are only the outbreathing of My Idea as I inspire It forth
through the Earth and through You, My Attribute, and through all My other Attributes, during the process of
unfolding in outer manifest state the perfection of My Nature.

Yes, I am doing it through You, because You are an expression of Me, because only through You, My Attribute,
can I express My Self, can I BE. I AM expressing My SELF.

I AM in You as the oak is in the acorn. You are I as the sunbeam is the Sun. You are a phase of Me in
expression. You, one of My Divine Attributes, are eternally trying to express My perfection through Your
mortal personality.

Just as an artist sees in his mind the perfect picture he wants to paint, but his hand cannot quite portray
with the crude mediums of brush and color the true quality and effect he sees, so do You see Me within Your
Self and know We are One, but always are prevented, by the imperfection of the earthly material of your
human personality, with its animal body, its mortal mind, and selfish intellect, from perfectly expressing Me.

Yet, I created your body, mind and intellect, in order to express My Self through you. The body I made in
the Image of My Perfection; the mind I gave to inform you of Me and My works; the intellect I gave to interpret
My Idea as I inspired it to the mind. But you have been so distracted by the human phases of this body, mind
and intellect, and their outer uses, that you have forgotten Me, the One and Only Reality within, Whose
Divine nature I AM ever seeking to express to and through you.

The time is soon here when the outward uses shall no longer distract, and My Reality shall be revealed unto
you in all the glory of Its perfection within You.

You, when I thus reveal My Self, shall not be more blessed than before, unless that which I have revealed
shall become the Bread of Life to you, and you shall live and manifest the Life It reveals.