VI
GENIUS INHERENT IN EVERYONE
I shall read to you from THE DIVINE ILIAD. I wish these words to be burned into your consciousness because they are fraught with much meaning.
“Man is Light when he knows that he is Light. Through My Light alone can man know Me.
“To know Me is to be Me.
“When man knows the Light which binds all things to Me , he is then ONE with Me.
“Behold in Me the One, inseparable.
“Two things there are not in MY universe. There is but one.
“Everything that is, is of every other thing that is. Nothing is of itself alone. All things are indissoulably united.
“this is a universe of seeming: an imaged universe of thinking: an action universe of desiring. That which Mind desires will appear in the image of that desire.
“Desire ye what ye will and, behold, it standeth before thee. Throughout the aeons it has been thine without thy knowing, e’en though thou hast but just asked for it.
“Sit ye not and ask, acting not, for thy desire will not come thy way to thee unaided by thy strong arms.
“Behold, I am within all things centering them; and I am without all
things controlling them, but I am not those things which I center in them and control in space surrounding them.
“I am the center of My universe of Me. Everywhere I am is the center of all things, and I am everywhere.”
It is my desire to correct the commonly accepted misconception
regarding the idea that geniuses are specially born. By genius, I mean that quality of Consciousness possessed by such outstanding geniuses as Rubens, Leonardo, Titian and Raphael; such philosophers as Socrates, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Plontinus, Laotzu and Confuscius; such mystics as Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Baha’u’llah, and the supreme mystic of all time, Jesus the Nazarene. Also our modern geniuses such as Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, Edison, Marconi, and their prototypes which are altogether too few in these thousands of years of world history. None is so rare among men as a genius. Out of hundreds of millions, we have but one.
Go down through the pages of history and count them. You can put
them all on a very small page. From these few, the culture of our race and its very resurrection from the jungle has come. These few have been our path to our ultimate mountain top. Our awareness of our very souls has come to us from these few who first found God in themselves and extended their awareness to each one of us in the measure of our ability to receive that awareness.
And even more rare are the mystics—one in billions or even in tens of billions.
Is it any wonder, then, that people say “geniuses are born as geniuses, and there is no hope for us.” I do not blame people who say that. I do not wonder when people ask: “Is there any hope for me?” I do not wonder when parents discourage their children who wish to be important in the world and say, “There is no genius in our family—not great musician—no inventor. We are just everyday people. Why are you wasting your time? Go get a job.” And that happens thousands and thousands of times as parents pull children down—inspired children who begin to know the Light in themselves---who recognize the Light in themselves. Desire is keen in young people at such awakenings. It is a great crime for parents to strip the very souls of their children when they thus hear the Inner Voice of the Light and wish to manifest it.
We all inherit all that God has to give. The maximum of genius is in
everyone. A spoonful is not given to one and a bowlful to another and a bushel to another. We are all born equal in the Light of God. We are His omniscient Light, and all of it centers in us. The only difference between the greatest genius in the world and the ordinary man is that the genius is aware of the Light within him and the ordinary man is not aware of that Light. The omnipotent Light is in everyone—all of it—in all of its fullness. Likewise, all knowledge is in the Light of everyone, awaiting one’s awareness of it.
Light is the Self and Soul of everyone; the omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent Light which is God. That Light of all-knowing is the foundation of Creation. It is the One still Light from which the two moving lights of this electric universe spring to manifest the One. Gradually, and all too slowly, we become aware of the Light of our Soul-Selves. We have been out of the jungle for only a few thousands of the millions of years of man’s unfolding. We are in the infancy of the human race—the wonder is that so many have become aware of even so much.
Do not include among so-called geniuses the men of great information who have given us discoveries based upon research and observation. Those men are no greater in knowledge than the ancient men who discovered the flame, the wheel, the boat and the sail for the boat. They are greater only in their greater amount of information and their skills gained from greater powers of observation and will to work. All material civilization has grown from a material standpoint. The early discoverers of the boat, the sail, the wheel and the plane were but keen
observers of material phenomena. More specialized observation,
research and reasoning from such observation has brought us to where we are now.
We have but multiplied our power of observation of material
phenomena. While thus multiplying our ability to observe, we have
multiplied our reasoning and thinking powers and our skills for the
purpose of learning how to put more things together and take them
apart.
While learning the HOW, we have never learned the WHY or WHAT. That is why science today has so little knowledge of CAUSE. It produces effects but cannot tell the WHY of those effects.
The greatest living scientists do not know what electricity is; nor can they define gravitation, magnetism, light, life, energy, nor the
construction of matter. Their theories in these respects are but wild
guesses which are so often changed that scientific textbooks become obsolete in a few years. For that reason, the world of today is well informed with observed effects and skills in the use of materials but has practically no knowledge.
Effects of motion cannot be known because they are transient, changing, evanescent things. They can but be comprehended. Knowledge lies in CAUSE, and until we know cause in the why of things, we have no knowledge.
Where are we today? Information and skills have put us where we are now, not knowledge. Knowledge is the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient Light. That Light is within everyone and everything to its fullest extent. It is in every cell of one’s body, centering it. It is in the magnetic poles of everyone, controlling them. You may have that Light of all-knowledge for the asking. Knowledge is cosmic; it is universal. Desire what you will of it and it will unfold within you. You will suddenly become consciously aware of it by receiving a flash of inspiration. That flash is your answer.
We are what we desire to be. We can be what we wish to be. If we make a plan of our own lives and desire that plan to be fulfilled, we will become that. And all the laws of the universe will help us to become that. Each step in the unfoldment of desire leads to new unfoldment.
Desire to be great and you will be Desire to kill and you can also kill. The universe helps equally in either case. The universe works with each person to help him fulfill his desire, no matter what that desire is. We can make or break ourselves. Our lives are our own making. If we work with the law of balance, we achieve balanced results. If we break the law, the law breaks us to an equal extent—and immediately.
I often say to groups, especially the salesmen’s groups to whom I have talked for many years: “Mediocrity is self inflicted; genius is self bestowed.” It lies with you. A genius is one who is conspicuously aware of the Light in him; one who lives in the balanced rhythms of the God Light. A genius is a co-creator with God. He is the bridge between man and God. The geniuses of the world give us our culture. They uplift mankind.
A mystic is one who is more fully aware of the Light. He is the supreme genius. Jesus, the one mystic of all time, can never be exceeded, but he can be equaled. The end of the journey of man is to equal Jesus in full cosmic consciousness of the Light.
On one of these evenings, I will tell you the story of the journey of man from the jungle to the Light. All mankind will eventually have full conscious awareness of the Light whether he will or not. Even though he walks toward the dark, he must eventually turn and go the other way. He has no choice in the matter. When he has sufficiently punished himself by walking toward the dark, he will turn to ease his own selfinflicted suffering. Each one of us is walking either toward the dark or the Light.
The decision as to which way you walk is under your control. You areeither seeking God or trying to escape from Him. The genius or mystic who has found God lives in the world of inspiration. He is always seeking the ecstasy of the Light. He lives in that wonderful ecstatic world of aloneness, and prefers to. He is never alone—for he is with God---thinking God—creating with God.
He is forever interpreting the inspiration of God’s whisperings to him, whether they be in musical rhythms, inventions, poetry or sculpture, or any product of industry. Every man who is inspired to manifest God worthily is expressing the measure of his own genius, whether he manifests it in the kitchen, in the workshop, or in running an elevator. One who is joyously and ecstatically working to the best of his ability to manifest God in him is expressing the genius in him. He is the one who is walking toward the Light—the one who is trying to be worthy of the Light.
The one who is walking away from God is he who does not wish to be alone. He is afraid to be alone with God; he is afraid to be alone for fear he will run into God. He fears inspiration; he fears the Inner Voice speaking to him. If the Inner Voice ever so much as gets in a little word, he turns on the radio to drown it out. And if the music is not quick enough, he will seek for jazz, speeches or advertising. He will turn the dial here, and back again—change from one place to another—turn it off and go out for a card game---go to a bar room to drink and seek pleasure for the body in company with other bodies like him. Such a man is not seeking God; he is trying to escape from God. Such a man is not walking toward genius. He uses every effort to find a way to get away from God the moment he finds himself in danger of being alone with his Self.
The genius is just the opposite. He seeks the forest, the quietude of
Nature; he seeks good music, good literature—uplifting things. The
great creator Rachmaninoff multiplies himself by dividing himself and giving himself and those divided parts to the whole world for its uplift. The one who is walking away from God divides himself by himself. That is the seed he sows for which he reaps the harvest of mediocrity and failure to achieve eternal values.
You who sit in an audience and hear Rachmaninoff, and say, “Geniuses must be born,” or “there is no genius in me,”---or hear the music of Tschaikovsky or Beethoven---or any of the music which has the rhythms of heaven in it—the rhythms which make you forget your body as the composer forgot his body when he created it—you who feel thrills up and down your spine while you listen to it are a mirror which is reflecting that genius. His inspiration is being reflected in you. You are being re-inspired by him, and that is the evidence of your genius whether you perform it or not, or whether you have ever done anything in your life to express genius.
When you are thus inspired by another, you are multiplying your Self by knowingly becoming one with other Selves. You are unifying your Soul with the universal Soul through your increasing awareness of the universal Soul.
The very fact of its reflection in you is evidence of your own inner
genius. You love it, and you walk alone afterward to be in the ecstatic aftermath of that wonderful harmony. For days it keeps recurring to you, whispering the reflection of cosmic rhythms back to you. For days they pulse in your heart and become a part of you, a permanent part of you. It is as though they said to you, “Be me. I am the Light.” The music you heard was the Inner Voice of the Light. It was the door to the Light through which you can enter. Wherever you hear good music or see good art---wherever you are inspired by anything whatsoever—and uplifted by it to any extent whatsoever—you are walking toward your own genius in the Light and away from mediocrity.
However, the fruit of genius does not drop into one’s lap. One cannot be a wishful thinker, sitting idly waiting for the material manifestation of one’s thought.
All the great geniuses I have known have certain traits in common, and not the least of these is a great capacity for work. They find inspiration in their great reverence for Nature and a deep desire to be alone. Their awareness of God is born in “aloneness” with Self.
Personal contact with such men as Paderewski, Leopold Godowsky, George Gershwin, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Victor Herbert, John Philip Sousa, Caruso and others among musicians; with Coolidge, Shapley, Michaelson, Millikan, Jeans, Edison and others of the great scientists and inventors—was living proof to me that these men had unfolded their genius because of their cooperation with God.
In their oneness with the Source, they became immune from fatigue and their inner awareness is portrayed in a seemingly unlimited personal power of accomplishment.
Likewise, I, too, found the kingdom of heaven within me since the age of seven I have consciously walked and talked with God. Whatever I have created has been co-created with God, in that ecstasy of Mind which is the unchanging nature of God. Whatever I have achieved is because of the awareness of God working with me as One Mind—achieving through me as One Thinker—not two or three times a day---before and after meals by saying prayers periodically in words—but continuously---consciously, moment by moment.
I do not think I have ever prayed in words. I pray in conscious desire. I pray in concepts—concepts of whole ideas, not parts. I never go to sleep at night without consciously thinking that kind of prayer in which I express desire in whole ideas of what my day for the morrow must be. I do not weaken my prayer by trying to find words for it. I keep my desire strong by not thus dividing it into words or in parts. My prayers are communions, not conversations.
The night is the most important part of life. We waste our precious
nights through not knowing what sleep means, and what it is that sleeps. Certainly it is not Consciousness which sleeps. It is also certain that there is no such state as unconsciousness. We must know that in order that we may make use of our nights to hasten our journey to our mountain top and not be limited to the day alone.
The day is for thinking and acting; the night is for gaining new
knowledge and inspiration for manifesting God in a masterly way. If
our thinking is an extension of Light within us, our creations are
masterpieces—and they must be because God does not fail us when He inspires us with His mighty rhythms.
God does not allow mediocrity to pass through us when the ecstasy of our thinking reflects the ecstasy of His thinking. The wholeness of God’s knowing and the rhythm of His ecstasy within us makes us forget all time—forget all body—forget everything but the Spirit within us. By so thinking, we unfold our genius. In like manner, we revitalize our bodies through the inner joyousness of Mind which insulates the body from toxins engendered by fears, worries, and the boredom of monotony. All who desire to thus awaken their inherent genius may do so by thus desiring to awaken it.
“How can I acquire cosmic consciousness?” people ask. “How can I become cosmically educated, as you have?” I have often been asked to tell of my illumination into that rare state of knowing which is known as Cosmic consciousness. I have not formally attended school or a university since the age of nine, but have had a super-university education and training purely from the Cosmos by walking and talking with God.
Beginning at the age of seven, I have experienced cosmic illumination every May. For ten days or more during these periods, I had to seek aloneness in the forest. The essence of these illuminating experiences was recorded by me and will soon be published as “The book of Early Whisperings.”
Every seventh year these illuminations were very intense. In the seven times seventh year—at forty nine—came the greatest of these periodic illuminations. It was at that time that the cosmic state of all-knowing remained with me for thirty-nine days and nights. During those thirtynine days of illumination “The Divine Iliad” was written. This divinely inspired cosmic message was given by our Father so that man could transform himself through new comprehension of His still Light and His electric-wave universe of moving light.
Many people desire cosmic illumination at its fullest as the great mystics have experienced it. This rare experience is very dangerous because it is very difficult for the severed Consciousness to again function in the body by normal coordination of sensation and Consciousness.
The best way to acquire the Light is to become aware of it gradually. Seek it by desiring it. New awareness and comprehension will then slowly awaken in you as the Inner Voice awakens you through inspiration.
It is better to be gradually transformed as the whole human race
marches toward the mountain top than to have it all at once and suffer the crucifixion and aloneness of being ahead of your time and waiting long, patient years in which you may not even speak of it.
“Man is forever seeking the Light to guide him on that long, tortuous road which leads from his body’s jungle to the mountain top of his awakening Soul. Man is forever finding that Light and is being forever transformed as he finds it; and as he finds it, he gradually finds the Self, which is the Light. And as he becomes more and more transformed by God Light of the awakening self within him, he leaves the jungle further and farther behind him in the dark from which he is being released by his gradual transformation from the electric awareness of the Spirit.
“There are those who seek the Light who are discouraged because they seemingly cannot find it, being wholly unaware that they have been forever finding it. Unknowing ones expect to find it all at once in some blinding flash, revealing all power, all knowledge and all Presence. It does not come that way until one is nearing his mountain top. Man cannot bear too much of the Light at a time while his body is still new. It is too near its jungle to bear the Light. All who are well out of the jungle have already found enough of the Light to illumine their way out of the depths. They are forever finding all they can bear. He who is far out of the jungle and still seeks the Light in the high heavens is forever finding it, and is forever being transformed as he finds it.
“The dark road from man’s jungle to his mountain top glory becomes ever more illumined during the ascent of man from his body to the Spirit. It is a hard but glorious road to climb. All must make it.
“The ascent of man from the dark to the Light is the forever repetitive play which man is playing on this planet.
“When all mankind has found the Light, the play will be finished; likewise this planet will be finished as its abode for men. It will then be rolled off into its ever expanding orbit where Venus is gradually being rolled into place to become the stage for the next repetition of the ascent of man in the solar system.
“We actors of the play must, therefore, be content with the lines of the play revealed to us each moment in life. We must likewise be ever joyous at our continuous transformation bit by bit, moment by moment, from day to day and from year to year. And each one of us learns his part line by line, the better to fulfill them worthily.
“All parts of the play manifested by man are experiences which become actions of the play. All experiences are part of man’s unfolding; each a part of his journey from the dark to the Light which constitutes the play. All experiences are steps in man’s journey from the jungle to man’s mountain top of glory. All experiences, therefore, are good experiences.
There is naught but good; there is no evil. There is naught but life, there is no death.”
I shall end where I began, by reminding you in burning words from
THE DIVINE ILLIAD which I wish to recall for your own salvations:
“Man is Light when he knows that he is Light. Through my Light alone can man know Me.
“To know Me is to be Me.
“When man knows the Light which binds all things to Me, he is then ONE with Me.”
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