I have not come to you to give you intellectual sermons. I do not like to blindly give you the thoughts of others. You can read books for yourself. When I speak to you, I shall tell you what I feel of God. I shall tell you what I hear from God. It is my privilege to bring to you a message that will help you to realize God, and to develop yourselves harmoniously, physically, mentally and spiritually.
I have spoken to thousands, and aroused the feelings and emotions of the multitude. But now it is my desire to train a band of souls, who would not remain satisfied with intellectual reasonings and a superficial knowledge of God, but who would night and day make the effort to contact the God Whom I have found.
Why Some Prayers are Left Unanswered
Why are your prayers not answered? Because of the evil seed elements in your subconscious mind, the bad habits of the past that stand between you and God. I wish you to read the Scientific Healing Affirmations daily, because health is not a permanent thing. There are destructive forces constantly lurking within you, as the result of past actions; therefore, you must be constantly watchful to counteract those forces. If you pray for success, but your subconscious mind is working against you, saying all the time: “I will not succeed,” how can you succeed? How can you aspire to reach God with empty, dead prayers? Pray until you positively KNOW. Yogoda gives you the method whereby, through true and faithful application, you shall attain to God.
You must do away with the traditional ideas of your sinfulness and weakness, and insist fearlessly that you are a child of God. Always remember that. Release your mind from your countless matter-bound-desires; for until you let them go, you cannot see the flame of God.
In “Whispers From Eternity,” I have laid, side by side, the feelings of the Great Masters. Let us take Moses. His was a martial spirit, such as befitted the time in which he lived. All great souls have met the need of a certain time. Goodness does not mean weakness. Goodness is a power that knows how to fight the forces of evil. If goodness has no stamina, it will be destroyed. Goodness must be harnessed with strength. Strength means power, and power is the ability to conquer. So the martial spirit of Moses was needed to meet the need of the time in which he lived.
How to Relate to God
One of the greatest contributions of the Jewish religion is the conception that there is only one God, but many prophets. No one should be put above God. Even though the waves and the ocean are one, still the ocean can never be taken for the wave. The ocean is the substance; the wave is one of the forms of the substance. The substance is the unchangeable; the forms are many and changeable. The substance is spirit; the forms are ever varying expressions of creation.
The greatest thing in the christian Bible is the statement that God made man in His Image. In this image lie all the qualities that are in the Spirit. In the drop are all the chemicals that are in the lake. We are made of spirit. It is false to say we are mortals, yet this mortal concept has grown so strong that it has become our second nature. We may know that we are made of spirit, but the consciousness of sin holds us in bondage.
Confession was a good thing; but it became, in certain cases, a mechanical affair. To recognize one’s errors and discard them, is true repentance. And unless the spiritual doctor is told about the symptoms and spiritual troubles of his disciple patient, he cannot very well help him. But confession is meaningless and harmful when the spiritual advisor himself is not free from the disease he aspires to cure in others.
Effective Prayer
To make our prayer-demands effective, we must first find unity with God. These Lessons are given to you for that purpose only, to help you gain that unity with God.
Do not let wrong and discordant things of the world worry you. It is true that there are many bad things in existence. But if a thing is bad, why make it a part of yourself? You are your own greatest enemy; and you are your own greatest friend. It is in your power to choose that which you want to make a part of yourself. This applies to thoughts and feelings and desires, as well as deeds.
We must always remember and affirm: “Thou art the Father Who owns this universe, and because we are Thy children, we own it too.” I can hear some of your say: “How is that possible?” The trouble is, we do not know how long we have been in bondage with weakness and wrong thoughts, and we have no realization of the depths of the mischief that has already been done by not being consciously identified with the Father.
(These Lessons are extracts from Lectures given at Mount Washington Center.)