But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of Life; and man became a living soul. Genesis
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man. Romans
An Allegory
Once upon a time the synthetic image of you was created, and darkness moved upon its face. Yet the Spirit of God -Good was the vital energy used to create its very shadowed form. Darkness veiled the radiant face of the Light within, and your synthetic image came into existence and moved upon the human sea. The counterfeit likeness waxed strong and took dominion over the earth. Its patterns became accepted as natural, and the way to the paradise of true happiness was almost entirely lost and forgotten.
With the veiling of the divine radiance in flesh and the coming into prominence of shadowed illusion, an unfortunate event took place: the Real became progressively ethereal and took on the quality of the unreal, until at last its wondrous tones seemed but muffled echoes coming from the corridors of ancient memory; whereas the unreal took on body and substance, and illusion filled the mind and consciousness of man.
Whirling electrons, dancing in joyous freedom within the body cells, became fixed as orbiting planets around nuclei suns in miniature systems. Alas, these sparks of individuality were imprisoned in imperfect matrices, and the atomic structure of man no longer mirrored the splendor of the true, the free, and the brave. Instead, a dense molecular abortion came into being which, although fearfully and wonderfully organized, was, in effect, but a systematized miasma of matter.
The human diorama became a microcosmic nightmare interspersed with periods of joyful ecstasy ’neath the sun and blue sky, midst the verdure of the earth. The minds and feelings of men were now full of fleeting phantoms—flashes of crimson emotion, the blackness of despair. And the disciplines of the cult of achievement were legion.
The patterns of human experience were locked in a long chain of events leading through stages of infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adult years. The pressures of environment continued to mold and shape the personal personality. Home, school, church, and nation, parents, teachers, and friends—all exerted their influences upon the plastic nature of the evolving soul.
Subtle inner pressures were also at work. At subliminal levels the individual came into contact with the mental musings of the great and the small, the debased
and the exalted. The outreach of the subconscious mind was far greater than man ever knew; and while he wandered in a maze of whirling impressions, the problems of his existence amid the social complexities of life became more and more intricate. According to the law that like attracts like, minds attuned with minds whose frequencies were akin to their own. Thus, the rich became richer, the poor became poorer, and the depressed entered new lows of depression.
The cumulative thoughts and feelings of mankind all too frequently caused the individual to gravitate toward the negative, and it became easier for him to descend in a downward spiral than to ascend toward the Light. Meanwhile, heavenly bodies and solar orbs banded together in fixed wonder of the cosmic plan. In contrast to the vast simplicity of stellar design, the individual’s own internal sense of struggle created the complexity that was a friction of worlds within worlds against worlds that were without. And the truism was so true: we had nothing to fear but fear itself.
Freedom, or escape, as some called it, from all of the binding, blinding worries of day-to-day existence was sought in a change of scenery, travel, new climate, new clothes, or new acquaintances. But the only permanent change that ever took place in anyone was that which was wrought by a permanent change of thought.
The Quest for Reality
We shall attempt in this volume to weave a tapestry of life—your life—and to provide viable answers to those questions that everyone has asked at least once: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? How do I go about getting there?
We all came forth from the Source of Oneness, and to it we shall all one day return—with or without
our individuality. But at this point in time we see neither the beginning nor the end of our existence. Both are remote in the distant past and future.
Having lost the perspective of both shores, we try to fashion meaning out of relativity. Actors on a stage, playing many roles, we are no longer able to distinguish “the real me.” We make merry and join clubs, playing the games people play; and if we dare to think, we attempt to find a rationale for our Weltanschauung which at best is incomplete. Then, when we think we have found the logic of “the way,” we close our minds to all other interpretations, dismissing them as heresy.
We become so insulated by the contraptions of a synthetic society and the convictions of our own minds that we have no link to Reality, hence no means of escape. We have forgotten our wondrous origin and our glorious destiny. We grovel in the dark; we continue in the rounds of a senseless existence; we ask, “Why?” Many voices with many answers fail utterly to satisfy our soul’s longing for Truth.
We go to bed at night, we dream, and when we awaken we are relieved that “it was only a dream.” We have no remorse for the unreal. We dismiss it and we go on. Thus we distinguish the night from the day. But we fail to realize that there is a synthetic world that is also a dream from which we must one day awaken. What’s more, the transition from unreality to Reality will be just as natural as our awakening from an unpleasant dream.
Much of the world’s knowledge we may do without, especially in an age of increasing specialization. As individuals we can be quite content without having the slightest idea of how an atom is split, what makes our TVs and electrical appliances function, our cars run, satellites orbit, or rockets escape the pull of
gravity. Whether or not the moon is made of green cheese is, after all, not a question of life and death.
We can survive without the knowledge of such complexities, but can we survive without the knowledge of Reality? Little do we know how necessary to our everyday life is the faculty of discrimination— the ability to distinguish the Real from the unreal. Without it, it is impossible to determine our beginning or our end. Light and Darkness, white and black, Good and Evil—where does one leave off and the other begin?
We may do all things, but we will never reach the shores of immortal Life until we have mastered this art. Others may build our homes, service our cars, manage our finances, treat our ailments, and spoil us with gadgets, but no one in heaven or on earth can fulfill our destiny for us. This we must do by ourselves, each man with his God; for He—call him Infinite Intelligence, Divine Love, or Science, if you will—is essential to the plan.
It is vital that we have in hand accurate knowledge of the laws governing our destiny. For only with the knowledge of the Law can we develop the ability to distinguish the Real from the unreal, to wield the Flaming Two-Edged Sword, and to answer the question that has been asked a thousand times, What is Truth? Once we have this knowledge and its attendant skill, Life is ours to command; Principle is ours to apply. Love is there waiting to be realized, and we become progressively more real as we behold Reality.
We offer this work to those who are tired of the long sojourn in the rapids of a half-real existence, to those who would get on with the journey, to those who have the courage to approach the jagged rocks of Truth, though the ship of unworthy concepts be dashed into pieces. They know it is possible to reach
the Shore while the tides and the winds are in their favor; they remember the words that beckon them onward and the Poet who stands upon the Shore, waiting to throw the line with a mighty heave of welcome:
Onward, courage!
Then blame not the Bard When the wind and the gale Sweep o’er the moor And bow down the sail,
For the ship shall move on And the Port be obtained If the courage be high And the will be maintained!
The Soul: A Living Potential
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.
“God hopes for the soul,” the Ascended Master Kuthumi (whose most beloved Christian embodiment was that of Saint Francis of Assisi) once wrote to his followers. “Man must identify with the hopes of God. And then, as the tolling of a great bell, the death knell of the finite self will make no mournful sound; but it will sing to the soul in cadences of immortality. Through these cadences man shall come to understand the golden meaning of Reality, and the revelation of worlds unknown shall also be his own. Stretching as an endless column of beautiful trees, the landmarks of the Real point the way from present circumstances to the very footstool of Reality, the rainbow of ascendancy, the Spirit Most Holy where man is crowned with the Life that is God .” 2
The allegory of the synthetic image has become a way of life for millions of souls caught in the labyrinth of a mass accumulation of their own synthetic creations. They do not know that their thoughts and feelings are clothed with the realities that they have given them; they have not thought upon the words of the scribe “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he .” 3
It is true that the unreal is often made to appear real, while that which is genuine and sustaining is relegated to the background of life, often stereotyped as charlatanism, cultism, or heresy. Moreover, the crystal-clear realities of the universal Mind are weighed down by dogma and doctrine and ridiculed by the popular people of the day.
In the synthetic society the blind leaders of the blind perpetuate a fraudulent existence and receive therefore the scathing denunciation of the Christ:
“Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered!” 4
Since the “slaying of the Lamb from the foundation of the world,” 5 the “scribes and pharisees” have barricaded man’s progress by their cunning hypocrisy. They have not afforded man his rightful freedom to think, to believe, and to create; neither have they opened the door to his understanding of the universe and its fathomable mysteries.
And so the Lord has sent his prophets and servant-sons and commanded them saying, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.... Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” 6
While man carries on his mundane affairs, the soul within cries out for Truth as a beggar in the street. Its pleas are seldom heeded by the outer mind that rushes madly to and fro, fulfilling the patterns of an existence it has not defined. And so the soul is left to starve until one day the din of life recedes; the self, no longer entranced by the glamour of the world, looks around for the beggar in the street and sees standing in his place an old man with a shepherd’s crook pointing to an alley somehow not seen before.
Pausing a moment to eye the curious figure, the self turns and follows the way. “No different from a hundred other side streets in the city—why did he send me here?” Suddenly at the far end atop the hill he notices a door; his pace quickens as he approaches nigh. There is a stirring from within his soul, and then a rustling from behind the door. Excitedly, expectantly, almost ecstatically he cries out:
What is this pearly door before which 1 stand?
Is this some realm of dream
Where lurks a shadowed band?
Nay, for that face I see so clearly now.
Peeping out from behind the open door.
Is an angel face
That I have known in long ago before.
Reflecting upon his departure from Reality, he realizes how far the soul must go to regain that God- awareness it once knew:
My thoughts slid down the finite spout And all the light of hope went out—
The rope I broke
And fear of icy desolation seized me round Til I was then completely bound In all delusions’ cords and vanities.
Now once again I rise.
Pulsation toward the skies
Where God and home as fires of love do glow.
Renewing courses raised to Sources
All divine.
My soul begins again to climb The stairway ladder where Each meaning comes So tender, sweet, and pure—
It makes me to know That God’s own plan secure Will hold me when the world Seems nigh to fall apart.
For after all there is but one great heart Which beats our own.
And we must rise to fairer realms Where we atone,
At one with all that really lives;
For paradise is Life that gives Nobility of efforts just To counteract the concept of the dust
From which God did make in hope A living soul—
And through the fragrant mists Reveals the Goal Of paradise to come. 7
The understanding of the living potential of the soul—where to find it, how to recognize it when you find it, how to amplify its powers for good—all of this and much more can be found in the Teachings of the Ascended Masters, those saints and sages of all time who have successfully passed the tests of life, and whose souls have regained that living potential with which every man and woman was also endowed.
Having graduated from the schoolrooms of experience in this world, these masterful Spirits are rejoined with the Image of Reality; and they stand with the elder brother of the race, the Lord Jesus, ready to assist from exalted heights those who have not yet pierced the veil of the synthetic image. To them we owe our own souls’ illumination and the wisdom of this little book. Through them you, too, can discover the Truth that waits beyond the veil even while you solve the dilemma of the synthetic image.
“In the seeming struggle between Good and Evil,” the Master Meru of the Andes said, “there are negative forces that seek to hide from the eyes of man his Real Image and to glorify the pseudoimage. This they do in order that they may control men by warping their motives and by surrounding them with fear. But the key to escape is simple.
“You must understand first that the image* that appears is not real; second, that the Image that does not readily appear but that is real is often hidden; and third, that this hidden Image is the Image that God
*image, from the Latin imitari ‘to imitate ’: a reproduction or imitation of the form of a person or thing ; esp . an imitation in physical form .
did make and that he saw was good. The subtle forces of the serpent that roam the planet—whether they act through a fraudulent theology, through psycho-political treachery, or through an invasion of the minds of men, producing obsessions—will continue to downgrade the individual by amplifying his supposed or actual errors; and they will continue to seek to hide the beautiful Image of God in whose likeness each man was made.” 8
The manipulations of these forces will continue only so long as man identifies with the synthetic consciousness. Therefore, in order to escape the foe without, man must conquer the foe within. The latter is identified as man’s synthetic, or false, image of himself; the former is the synthetic society he has created based upon the vain imaginings he sees mirrored in the synthetic image.
The Dethroning of the Synthetic Image
The foreground of your life is the screen of your conscious awareness; your attention is the lever which selects and directs the images that are projected upon the screen. These make up the composite that people identify as the real you, saying, “This is your life,” when it is not at all; for the synthetic you, made in the image of mortality, is never the Real You—the being who affirms, “I AM.”
The synthetic you is accustomed to making such statements as “I am sick,” “I am tired,” “I am poor,” “I am lonely.” These claims synthesize the unreal you and give rise to those soul-hampering conditions which are never true of the Real Self, who would not and could not utter such binding blasphemy. It is ever the synthetic masquerader—the impostor, the counterfeiter of the Real Man—who thus affirms, whose habit
patterns are composed on the one hand of the false reasoning of the carnal mind and on the other of the emotional torrents that flood the mainstream of the race consciousness.
The crude menagerie of thoughts and feelings spawned in the subconscious minds of the populace forms a mass entity whose name is Legion. 9 A synthesis of synthetic images, this entity is stamped out of the mold of the mass effluvia. Conforming to the lowest common denominator of the human consciousness, this legion is incapable, by reason of its origin, of paying allegiance to the natural perfection of the universe and its immutable laws. This conglomerate glob of nightmarish energies is the betrayer of each life- stream and of the divine plan for this earth, and it has delayed the spiritual fruition of the golden age, long envisioned by men and angels.
Deliverance from the hordes of darkness must come first to the individual before it can come to the planet as a whole. And each man must win his own freedom by disengaging his consciousness—his thoughts and his feelings—from the unbalanced and chaotic forces of mass conformism which are ready at any moment to sweep him into the undercurrents of fear, depression, obsession, mental confusion, and emotional insanity. When the individual makes an about-face to challenge the synthetic image, it seems as though he is confronting the entire world. And so he is, for in the synthetic society, the Real is no longer seen for what it is, but as the figment of some men’s imaginations; and he who aligns himself with the Real finds his enemies to be of this world and his allies to be of the next.
Here in the mainstream of planetary life, the power of the various communications media to mold public opinion and to keep alive the synthetic image
is almost total. Books, magazines, newspapers, television, radio, theater, and movies exert a tremendous influence over the minds of men, controlling their tastes, their morals, their fads, and even their politics in the manner of a mass hypnosis. Rightly used, such media can assist man’s spiritual as well as his material development; but wrongly used, they can become a monster of sadistic creation, threatening to reduce the individual to an animal and civilization to an “animal farm.”
Whereas the molding factors of life, including the artifacts of science, ought to be a slave creation obediently serving their creator, man, the reverse has been the case. Man has been made the slave not only of the atomic age but also of his environment and of his inherited traits and attitudes. The synthetic image has dethroned the Real Man and now stands in the place of his master. This is the “abomination of desolation,” prophesied by Daniel, “which standeth in the holy place where it ought not.” 10 Thus has it been well spoken of the relationship between God and man, “Thou art the potter, I am the clay”; but too often we have made it to read, “I, the potter, and Thou, the clay.” 11
Because of the existence of so many conflicting centers of influence and the attendant pressures that these exert upon the human psyche, the type of life that is presently being lived upon earth and the quality of consciousness that registers in the minds of its people do not reflect the true purpose of life as it was planned by the Creator. At a dizzying pace these influences present to souls young and old a kaleidoscope of synthetic thoughts and feelings composed of the conscious and unconscious creations of the mass mind. Certainly this is not the Reality which you were intended to be and which inwardly the soul knows that
you are—for that portion of you which was created in the Divine Image always knows who “I AM.”
There is a cure for the synthetic image, but its discovery is dependent upon the recognition by each person of the environmental and hereditary factors that must be counteracted ere the Real Image can appear.
“The only way out is through the door of Reality,” advises Meru, who has parted the veil for the sixth root race at his retreat at Lake Titicaca. “This is the escape hatch which has been provided so that the body of destructivity created by man’s own negativity can be transmuted and overcome. As long as men remain involved in the ego, no matter what religious study they undertake, no matter what devotion they temporarily manifest, no matter how many good works they do, no matter what level of striving they attain, they will never be free from the illusion of the self that pursues them as a wanton ghost of struggling identity.
“Only when they escape through the door (I AM the door) into the understanding that the eternal Being of God is the ‘doer,’ into the realization that God can act in them to remove hampering influences, to transmute their darkness, and to translate their consciousness from Darkness into Light, will they begin to know the freedom of the self [soul] to achieve without limit.
“Let all see and know for all eternity that the not-self, the shadowed-self, the named-self, the personality-self, is and always has been the snare of the ego, and that the man or woman who lives in that consciousness must die in it. There is no possibility for flesh and blood to inherit eternal Life . 12 Men seek eternal Life because it is their true nature, the nature of God and of the Divine Image. Eternal Life is formed independently of the vehicle of self through the process of translation, that man should no longer
see death but be translated into that Life which is the Divine Nature.
“The statement that man should die daily 13 to the finite, egoistic self must be followed by another— that he should live daily to the progressive glory of his eternal Self and the apprehending of all the Reality which that Self can and does bring. This is the Sun we face that casts no shadow.
“This concept is far more than an index of words. It is a flow of the vital seed-idea into the consciousness of man whereby the consciousness itself is transformed into its natural glowing Presence. This is the Presence of God which identifies the individual, through his sense of expanding Reality, with the universal consciousness of God, yet never takes from him one erg of his energy or of his true selfhood .” 14
The Enthroning of the Real Image
Having realized through honest reckoning the truth about the synthetic image, everyone that is born of God should determine to dethrone all the potentates that masquerade as his Real Self and to enthrone in their place the image of Truth that man is intended to be—the manifestation of the Divine Nature.
The scriptures record that God made man in his own “image and likeness” and, further, that he saw the creation which he had made and beheld it as “very good .” 15 This creation which God hath made is your Real Self. It is that inner lodestone of goodness and perfection, that archetypal pattern of the Infinite which is intended to mold the outer form and consciousness in the divine likeness ordained by God.
Your Real Self is the permanent atom of your identity, the rock of ages that remains unmoved by the restless tides of life. It is the wholly natural man who
came forth from God, eternally vibrant and pure as a ray of Light from the heart of the Sun. Your Real Self is your conscience, which speaks its own name with the voice of authority and does thereby honor the name of God, I AM.
One cannot deny that in contrast to the Real there is an overwhelming manifestation of unreality upon this planet; and yet, it would be folly to affirm that mortal error has permanence, for its temporary existence stems solely from mass acceptance in the minds of men. All should recognize that the vacuum we call darkness, which blankets interstellar space, is but an absence of Light—that virgin territory which is our opportunity to expand the kingdom. All should realize that Darkness can also be a misqualification of Light, and as such it forms the energy-veil we call evil. Thus all should see that in Light is the Presence of God-Good. Therefore, evil cannot declare with validity, “I AM”; for evil is a transitory shadow that must pass away. It is the counterfeit of the Life that is God; it is live spelled backwards.
While we can say that darkness is the absence of Light, we cannot say that error is the absence of Truth. Error is a misqualification of Truth just as evil is a misqualification of Light. Jesus’ statement “If the Light that is in thee be Darkness, how great is that Darkness !” 16 tears the mask from the synthetic image and points out man’s tendency to misqualify the Light that is in him.
The lie of the serpent, or carnal, mind lends credence to error by creating dogmas and then saying, “Fall down and worship me .” 17 Thus, error is founded upon the darkness of a self-centered existence and must be uprooted by scientific investigation as well as by progressive revelation. In every age man must
rediscover Truth and thereby be renewed; “for now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known .” 18
Only the Light of man’s being—the Christos— can stand in the Presence of God and affirm Truth. The claims of evil are annihilated by the power of Truth which affirms—for all to hear, to know, and to be—the Reality of perfection’s image. The statement “I AM Good” refers to the power of God who created man to be the perfection which God is, the power that conveys happiness and grace to those who acknowledge Truth and bow their knees to the supremacy of the Divinity within.
As the consciousness of man is disconnected from the sense that he is the doer, there is a diminishing of the power of the human ego and a corresponding increase of the power of the Light of Reality within the individual. The statement “I AM the door” shows that the God within must be the only acting (and activating) power in man. When the dynamic, spiritually regenerative act of affirming “I (the lesser self) and my Father (the I AM—the Greater Self) are one” is accomplished, the Presence of God can take dominion in the life of the individual and restore the law of grace and truth to its rightful place.
As John the Baptist spake concerning Christ, “He must increase, but I must decrease ,” 19 so the power of God, when invoked by the individual who understands that God is the doer, the arbiter of his destiny, increases the potential of his life until the whole man begins to express the greater reality of his original Self. This is the breaking-down of the partition between man and God . 20 This is the dethroning of the synthetic image and the fulfilling of the ancient Mosaic law
Chapter l • Your Synthetic Image
“Thou shalt have no other gods before Me ,” 21 written in the Book of Life as “Thou shalt not place the synthetic image before My infinite Reality.”
When the power of God, the Almighty I AM Presence, is enthroned as the governing authority for the individual’s every act, he is freed from the synthetic image. His consciousness is transformed until he can stand as Moses did on the desert of Sinai (which depicts the wasteland of the synthetic human consciousness) and there behold the bush which is aflame but not consumed . 22 This phenomenon teaches that Nature herself outlasts the synthetic image in almost infinite degrees, for the bush remains long after it has turned to dust.
The Flame that is God imparts the knowledge that behind the visible creation is the essential spark of Life which comes forth from the Creator and must be claimed by each of his servant-sons. Man, standing in awe of the Creator and the creation, takes off his shoes from his feet, symbolizing his recognition of the omnipotence of Truth that speaks out of Spirit’s own essence and declares, “I AM THAT I AM .” 23
The first commandment, paraphrased by Jesus when he said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect ,” 24 reminds us that no man should honor another above the Divine Presence which is within him. For the Presence is the inner guiding Light which will lead him through the wilderness of human thought and the maze of bewildering experience into the promised land of spiritual opportunity. Here the soul is fattened on the heavenly manna of divine Truth in the joyous seeking of a universally scientific Creator and creation; and man, by his God-given creativity, evolves through the Christie Light toward oneness with Reality.
The Way of Love
From Love I came, to Love I go;
And all this swing both to and fro Alters not any jot Of cosmic purpose I forgot.
I reach out now, to Truth I vow;
To Love in all I ever bow.
The universe is one alone—
No clash of multifacet tone.
The chime I hear is ever near;
’Tis Love that casts out every fear. Where’er I AM Thy Love lives too To free the many and the few.
Command perfection, Love’s great Law! Command perfection, Love’s great Light! Thy glowing beauty through the night As Star eternal, Light supernal,
Woos us all by present might.
For Love I AM and Love I live;
This is the allness that I give.
To each Manchild the spark is given— ’Twill rend the veil and bring to heaven.
Chapter Two
Your Real Image
