FAITH AS FORCE
That period in the history of our Occidental culture is rapidly coming to a close wherein we could thingify on the mental phase of the psycho-logical level, verbalize on unconscious assumptions, indulge inferences as premises, pose higher order abstractions as sound meanings, use reified words as genuine coin of the realm, pass hypostatized notions on to others as profound realizations, etc. It is, at the same time, becoming metamorphosed into a new period wherein dynamic life facts will require symbols and representation for communication purposes in as precise a structure as that in which they subsist in Truth.
If we could treat faith as a powerful force in compliance with this rigorous requirement, we would, at this stage (1952) in the transition from the old order to the new, become unintelligible to the masses; but that is precisely the character of treatment which the subject merits. If you saw a big house on fire and you knew that there were lots of folks asleep in that house, you would try desperately to find some means to awaken them quickly. This is the way some of us feel about the present context of situation with our society and we know that the good-intentioned, "sweetness and light" method--as more chastely described in the preceding paragraph--simply will not work. It is not adequate to the times and, therefore, some other means must be devised to arouse the sleepers, or at least those who are not too sound asleep.
You and I may become conscious of faith as a dynamic and powerful force, experience it as such, and know that this is IT; this is the one possible 'thing,' means and method, which may salvage many; but how are we going to get it over, make it as effective as it is in Truth, in real life facts? If we did not have some understanding of the beneficent action-phase of karma--the worth of reaping after sowing--we would be much more desperate than we are, as we witness the deliberate diligence, if not the fiendish delight, of those in responsible positions hacking away at the remaining supports of the faith by which we have lived. It is a truism that where faith is lost, chaos takes over; and it does seem at times that we, as a people, must descend into chaos in order to learn what some call the simplest or most rudimentary lessons in impersonal love.
In this context of situation, and personally speaking, there are only three known ways whereby faith as a powerful force could adequately be presented; these are: 1, on the Mind level by radiating strongly charged waves and frequencies; 2, by coaching aspirants how to function consciously in the psychic nature above the mental level and without projection (dissociation of the psyche from the body) where they would experience faith as a tangible force; and 3, verbalistic description of the electronic spectrum. But to describe any one of these in this Treatise on Faith is impossible, if not out of place, simply because the faith by which we have lived, in what is so glibly called "our way of life," has required centuries of sincerity and devotion to a high ideal on the part of countless numbers of consecrated and devout men and women. To build up such force in the race oversoul, the strongest gestalt in the race consciousness, and have it experienced as a sustaining and powerful influence down to the levels of the lesser developed was a unique accomplishment in racial history; it signalized the highest attainment of the culture.
We will not here deal with the destructive agencies trying to undermine our faith as a force, or with how the fallacy of economic competence as security was intruded, or the penalty of taking things for granted, or the causes for the switch from self-reliance to dependence upon an imaginary extraneous power or God, or what the young ones crowding in, through lack of proper training, did to that which they had not worked for and earned, or the inevitable culmination and end product of the aristotelian attitude, orientation and outlook, etc., etc. These agencies, factors, causes, etc. are well known, but in any case the exposition of them would serve no purpose in this treatise. The purpose in mentioning what it takes to build up faith as a force in the race psyche is to emphasize the ways whereby this is to be accomplished for the New Age into which we are now being launched. If we set up the whole cosmic process--in its structure, function and natural order--as the referent for the word God, then on factual grounds it can be said: God reveals himself to man through man. In other words, God is always here-now, but it is the primal purpose of man's existence to make him manifest.
It was losing sight of this primal purpose (which was clearly envisioned by the Higher Ones, as we shall see later on) which precipitated the change in orientation of the race-psyche, intensified objective identification and gave increased opportunity for those agencies, factors, causes, etc. which undermine faith as a force.
The way out or 'back' to faith as a force can never be found by trying--even by the most strenuous efforts--to return to or reestablish the old order. The cosmic process is non-reversible, therefore the representations of one phase, period or cycle (cycle means one turn of its helical pattern) cannot be carried over per se but become incorporated, synthetically, in the representations of the next phase, and so on. That is why any given period, etc. exhibits, as representation, an epitomization of the past, up to and including that period. (No one can put a chick back in the shell from which it hatched). Whenever we use the present tense we include the long evolutionary past as part of the now.
To the cosmic process there is no trouble, upheaval, dislocation, etc., in the transition from one cycle to the next, for this is natural order. But if anyone, or a group-segment of the race-psyche, endeavors to hold on to the old order and its representations, trying to make static that which is dynamic, there is created an upheaval, moil, turmoil, etc. in his, or their, private world commensurable to the energy exerted in the holding process. If we flow with the stream of consciousness as it is fulfilling its intrinsic nature, destiny or course--"Thy will be done, not mine"--there will be no loss of faith, for it will be experienced as a continuous, growing, developing force.
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