There was a period in my life when I was preparing for this work, not knowing that I was being prepared for it, when I could go through twelve solid years with an average of no more that three and a half hours sleep out of every 24 for twelve solid years, and I required no more sleep than that. And the reason was that I had to have all of those hours in use. In those twelve years I read the 1,500 hundred books that have become part of my consciousness. In those years I read some of those books through a hundred times from cover to cover. I really read. And all the time worked twelve hours a day as a practitioner doing the healing work and then for part of that time even went to the university to learn Sanskrit. So you see there is time because there are 24 hours in every day but how much do we wish to use it. If we wanted to use 20 hours out of 24 I can assure you that the grace of God would sustain us because it isn't sleep that we need, it isn't bed that we need, it's the grace of God we need. In the same way, we could get along on half the amount of food we consume because the grace of God would make up for the difference. We merely eat as much as we do because it's available and because it's tasty. Not because it's necessary. We can do with half if he have to and be just as healthy if not healthier for the grace of God has to be called upon when there's less of material reliance. Just as those as you already know who have come to Science and been told that they had to throw away their medicines. They got along without them. I know that the rest of the world wouldn't believe if it knew how many people there are who go 10, 15, and 20 years without a drop of medicine, without an aspirin, without a cathartic. The world would never believe such a thing because its physical setup is such that it must have aspirin, it must have cathartics, it must have this and it must have that as a minimum. And just think of all of us that you know about that have gone 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 years either with none or with so little that it's almost negligible. And then you'll know that it is possible to do away with that medicine cabinet because the grace of God supplants it.

I know sometimes there are some doctors who smirk about the subject of Christian Science or spiritual healing and like to tell about how they have a patient who's a Christian Scientist that sneaks to their office or had to have an operation or maybe they have two patients. But they forget about the tens of thousands who don't or that maybe even that one had to succumb once in a lifetime -- that they don't stop to remember. That even though a Christian Scientist or a New Thoughtist or a Unity student or an Infinite Way student may once in a while have to resort through fear or family to material remedy compare it with the rest of the world and see how wonderfully the grace of God cares for us in place of material remedies and then you'll know what I mean when I speak of the Christ. The Christ -- that gentle presence which is the grace of God in our experience -- how It carries us through. And how when we learn to listen to It, hear It, and obey It, It finally gives us dominion over disease, over germs, over unemployment, over unhappy human relationships -- gives us dominion. And then you'll understand why the day will come when that rock carved out of the side of a mountain without hands, that gentle Christ, that spirit of God within your consciousness will someday give you dominion over every element of human life including time, age, death itself -- you will have dominion.

And so should the time come when you want to pass out of this plane of existence you will but not through being pushed out with some horrible disease but just by gently easing yourself out and into whatever experience lies before you because there is an experience that lies ahead of all of us. It is not going to be given to anybody on the face of the Earth to stay in this plane of life forever. If there were such a thing I'm sure that some of our ancient Hebrew and Christian and Oriental mystics would have done it because they lived their lives in full conformity to the will of God. Men like Jesus, men like John, men like Paul, men like Moses, men like Enoch, Isaiah, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Shankara -- those men lived in accord with the laws of God and if it had been meant for anybody to stay on this globe forever they would have remained right here in physical form but they have all walked out of this form into whatever experience was ahead. And so will we when our appointed time comes. And it will be a way of transition, a transition into a higher plane of consciousness, one in which we will be freed of all the human ties, and human responsibilities, and human obligations. While we're here we can't shirk those but the day will come when we'll be released from them into the ability to walk our own way into the footsteps of God. And we'll do this remember through that thing called the Christ, or the Spirit of God in man, or the gentle Presence, or the still small voice. Call it whatever you will, it is within you, it is available to you through an inner hearing. It is available through you through an inner seeing. Not the hearing of the outer ear, not the seeing of the eye, but through an inner seeing and an inner hearing and an inner feeling that Presence becomes alive. Now you may have to have four periods a day, and then six, eight, ten, twelve, twenty eventually. They may be one minute in length and some of them may be three and some may be ten minutes. Occasionally you may find one to last an entire hour in which you will sit in stillness and in quietness. "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." The assurance that David had. The assurance when he said, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." That's the assurance that comes in stillness, in quietness, in peace, in tranquility. You develop that. The reason is that you have become separated from it by your centuries of human living. You have become separated from it through the belief that you had to earn a living by the sweat of your brow or keep a household with your physical strength. And now you're paying the penalty in a sense of separation from the still small voice that is always within you, ready, able and willing to speak to lead to direct. And now you have to go back. You have to retrace your footsteps to the Father's house. And I can tell you how -- through the many, many periods a day in which you determine to take mastership of your clock and not let your clock tell you that you haven't time. But you tell the clock that you have 24 hours of time and loads of minutes in that 24 hours - count 'em up 24 times 60 and see how many you've really got there to set aside your periods, even if it were ten minutes before the rest of your household were awake, if it were five minutes after the men-folk left the house, if it were five minutes before sitting down to that lunch or that dinner, if it were ten minutes before retiring, if it were just a few minutes waking in the middle of the night you would soon find that you are developing a capacity to be still, to be quiet, to be listening.

Nobody can tell you whether it will take you one week to receive the first intimation that something is happened or whether it might not be like in my case it took eight months. Eight months of more than a dozen periods set aside every day for meditation and still it took eight months before I had the first response. But then I had the second one a week later. And I had the third one probably two weeks later. And then a fourth one, one week later. And then gradually two in one week. And then eventually one every day and so on until now most of the time it is possible for me to sit as you see me here, get quiet for a minute and then all of a sudden have it come, and quickly, and quickly, and give me my message or give me my word or give me my Bible passage. Don't be surprised if I tell you that it was riding in the taxi between the hotel and here that these three Bible passages were given me that I read tonight. While we were riding in the taxi I had this Bible in my hands and I kept fidgeting with it and that's when it came. And then as I've sat here and turned within quietly every once in a while the message kept coming and coming and coming. It isn't a made up message. It's not memorized. It keeps coming in the degree that we turn in. Oh sometimes I have a little struggle because in my work where all day long and sometimes all night long I'm dealing with the problems of students and patients and some of them are pretty nasty problems. Sometimes you get pulled down off your high estate and then you have to build yourself back up again. Sometimes people come into your experience who really pull almost everything out of you that you've got of a spiritual nature. That's all right you can rebuild it again and if it blesses them you don't mind it. But it does give you something to meet because you have to build back up again to where you were. The Master did by going away for 40 days. We ought to go away much more than we do for this rebuilding.

Now the whole of it, the whole of it in the Master's teaching is the Christ. He called it the Father within but Paul called it the Christ. And the Father within or the Christ, that's the voice. Now that voice, the word of God is quick and sharp and powerful. And when that voice utters Itself the Earth melteth. The whole four temporal kingdoms of the Earth melt. I have seen all forms of sin and all forms of disease melt away when that voice spoke within. I've seen all kinds of human wrongs made right when that voice spoke within. I've seen such power in our union relationships in the states -- company and union -- I've seen such things as you cannot imagine just as this same voice that gave me these Bible passages for this lesson tonight. That same voice. It's the voice of God and we call it the Christ. It's the gentle Presence. It's the calm. It's the inner assurance or tranquility. It's the grace of God. Call it any of these names but be sure of this that until you have it you are nothing. You are just aging human beings. You are just nothing. Branches cut off from the tree that withereth. You are nothing until you have a contact within yourself. When you have you've made contact with living waters, the streams of life that renew and renew and renew just like they renew your plants, year by year, year by year, water does it. Only this is a living water that is within us. And it is that which gives us command over the four temporal kingdoms. It won't allow money to be our masters. It lets us be masters over money so that we can command whatever is necessary for our legitimate needs. It won't allow the body to master us forever. The Christ enables us to master not only our bodies but in as the experience of Jesus and our practitioners even to govern the bodies of those that comes to us for help. It won't allow us to be made victims of the blitz as I brought out to you the other night. But you can walk the streets in the midst of the blitz and it will not come nigh your dwelling place if you're abiding in the secret place of the most high, if you are maintaining your contact with the inner Being, the Christ, the Spirit of God in you. If you ignore it, if you refuse to make your contact with it, if you don't have the stamina to stick with it until it does take over your life you'll just have to do it in the next life. Some day or other you can be assured of this that every knee is going to bend, every head is going to bow to God. So if you put it off in this lifetime don't think that you can put it off in the next or the next or the next. Someday you're going to have to look a clock straight in the eye and say you've got 24 hours of 60 minutes each and brother I'm going to use you. You are not going to use me. I am going to use you. And then it is that you'll find those five and ten minute periods when you can seat yourself and say, "Speak Lord, Thy servant heareth. My fate is not out there in the whirlwind, in the fire, in destruction. My fate is in the still small voice within me. And when he uttereth His voice in me the Earth of problems just melts away." And I'm going to learn to be still and I'm going to learn to listen. I'm going to develop the knack.

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