If Any Man

“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow ME.”

This invitation to follow after ME carries with it the ability to take up the “cross” which is the power to “x” out all the beliefs and appearances of beliefs under which man has labored so long.

The recognition of this Presence, this Trinity, (in unity) Son-Father-Holy-Ghost, enables man to deny himself the double-eyed double-principled, thought-­taking consciousness and follow ME. The more youlook into this invitation, the more you see hidden away in it.

“If any man will come after ME.” If you are going to “go thou and do likewise,” you will have to deny all the limitations of the present consciousness, all the “wisdom” called by God “foolishness,” and learn of ME. This denying is not in any sense of the word a lip service to be carried out with denials. Declaring the nothingness of something is the greatest way in the world to make that “nothing” something, and trying to create a vacuum by denials is attempting some­thing which both Nature and God abhor. It is a fact that a vacuum in consciousness cannot be; it can becreated only in human belief, but when the recogni­tion comes that this vacuum is already filled with the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” then you begin at once to understand therevelation of the unseen. The “Look again” is the ex­tension of the double-eyed sight to a point where it becomes a far-visioned single eye able to see the flow­er before the seed, and hears the answer before thequestion. In fact, when the eye becomes single the whole body or temple is filled with light, and this single eye is the pure recognition of GOD in every­thing.

This recognition, as has been stated, is not a mental thing. It is something that has come after you are con­vinced within yourself that God is omnipresent. After that your ability to bring this into manifestation de­pends on the “praying without ceasing,” and the “denying” or disregarding of the vacuum which hu­man thinking has created in your conscious mind and called by some evil name.

All evil is a vacuum in the consciousness of man. It exists, as has been said, only in belief. It cannot be communicated unless it is accepted by another. This vacuum which seems so real can be instantly filled with God; in fact it has always been filled with God, awaiting recognition. The moment you see this simple teaching of the Master, the substance of God will appear in your consciousness where the vacuum of evil now stands.

Money, health, happiness, are impersonal ideas when translated into spirit, just as electrical heat, sound, and so forth, all become just “electricity” when translated into their original form. Do you then begin to understand that the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” is there in the vacuum of human belief, waiting to be recognized as the very thing which is apparently caus­ing the vacuum?

This extension of the vision into a single eye, the all-seeing eye of Spirit, gives you the ability to see through these vacuums of belief and discover that “the fields are ripe with harvest,” at the very instant that you are, on the human, reasoning plane, assuring me it will take four months before this can happen.

None of these marvelous things can come to pass so long as you tryto make them happen; they must and will appear when you SEE through the vacuum of human belief, and “deny” it by your recognition of the Presence, not by some word formula.

Do you begin to grasp this extended vision—the eye becoming single, and you being able to see through the vacuum of belief? You are no longer fooled by the testimony which is stacked up in favor of evil though it may have caused ten thousand to be­lieve in it as real.

When you discover any lack in your life that is a vacuum or a belief in the absence of God, then you can only “deny” it by complete indifference to all the history of its case. It is nothing as a vacuum, but this nothing is not stayed upon. Jesus, the Way-shower, spent no time trying to argue with the appearances of the barren field. He looked through it, through alltime elements, and brought to light not the imper­sonal substance of Life, but the materialization of that substance.

Looking for things, for your good, for your hap­piness, with the double eye, you have the pairs of opposites with which to contend. You have money and poverty, you can see either or both with the double eye, and more likely you will see poverty for, under the race-consciousness, evil is so much more possible than good, and so much more readily accepted. “Just my luck,” is common talk in the streets of life. Near­ly everybody accepts it as true. “Just my luck” —-­which is eternally evil. So the double eye sees double, sees good and evil, sees past and future, but the single eye which has rid itself of all the beliefs o f and about God, and has accepted only the ONE —- the Three in One—-begins to experience the new dimen­sion which says, “Before you ask I will answer,” in other words, look through the vacuum of human belief and discover the substance of the thing hoped for, and call it into being.

All this lovely new dimension is presented with simplicity and naturalness, yet if it is reduced to the thought-taking plane, it is utter rubbish. There is nothing but foolishness to it all.

It is only when the Eye has become single, that is, when you have discovered there is ONE GOD that you are able to “follow ME,” and it is then that you can take up the “cross,” the Power which crosses out all false beliefs by seeing through their vacuum.

To the personal sense, when the lack, disease, or unhappiness is discovered to be a mere vacuum, the inrush o f manifestation is so instant that it is ac­claimed a miracle. It is acclaimed something super­natural, yet it was there all the while or else it never could have been made visible. Creation was com­pleted and finished in six days, and calledfinished and done—-and good. There is nothing that can be added to it nor taken from it. Man was told to rest on the seventh day, which is this DAY we now live in. But the human consciousness, having been separated from its parent stem, began the tedious and terrible job of recreating the entire universe out of the chaos and darkness of human night, and it has continued to labor to make appear, by its slow-thinking process, that which has always existed here and NOW.

Jesus comes and declares again that it is “done,” completed, and finished, and asks man in a free, easy manner to “Take up this crossing-out Power” and “follow” after “ME.”

Following after ME must not be confused with a personal Jesus in Jerusalem. This ME which you are to follow is the Father within you, and He gives you the ability to “take up the crossing-out power” and to follow after Him. This bringing everything down to the You of yours is perhaps a bit difficult, for we are inclined to pin all this wonderful thing on another.So that in the event it does not work for us, we can blame another, instead of standing up to the failure ourselves.

“Mine Eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” The single eye which is beginning to look through the vacuum of belief has already seen the coming into manifestation of this Lord. It is not disturbed and frustrated at every turn of the road, and is no longer held in the hypnotic sway of human belief. “Mine eyes have seen.” Do you know what that means? It means looking through the letter and seeing the spirit, for the letter of itself is dead and it killeth, but the Spirit quickeneth and maketh alive, and so this “Mine Eyes have seen” has a great possi­bility of correcting all the crooked vision, literally and figuratively, and the distorted images created by the thought-vision are discovered to be perfectly nor­mal and beautiful.

As one looking in a concave or convex mirror is undisturbed by the distorted reflections, knowing their unreality, so the Eye that is “seeing the Glory” not only sees nothing but the Truth, but is able to re­flect it. Awake thou that sleepest and Christ shall give thee light! Do you hear? Do you SEE this light ac­tually and figuratively in everything? It is the seeingwith the single eye that gives the apperception of this light. It enters into everything past, present, and fu­ture, wipes out all the barriers and limitations, and disintegrates the vacuum.

Do you understand now how a “glance” can heal, just as can a “touch?” Do you begin to see the Power that Jesus knew was indigenous in every man? Do you begin to extend the dimension of sight and ap­propriate all of its offices? It can heal with a “glance” if you can, but this must not be done with effort. Star­ing is not a glance; fixing the eyes in a hypnotic gaze is not “glancing.” Glancing is light, natural, spon­taneous. It is filtering through the vacuum of a be­lief and lighting up the reality. And as it glances at this reality with the power of sight, another also mayperceive the truth and be instantly healed. For the “virtue goes out” in the glance. Even as Jesus per­ceived “that some one touched” ME, when He had been crowded about all day, so will you perceive that some one “glanced” at you or you “glanced” at some one, and “it” took place.

All this is such foolishness in the eyes of human in­tellect. But we are not concerned with that. We are following after Jesus Christ, and the infinite care with which we go into it makes it all sacred and holy, and too precious to be “cast unto dogs.”

The single eye that has enabled you to “read” what is said directly to you by Spirit, to accept without equivocation or limitation, is the actual entering into the New Day wherein the former things are passed away. Behold, all things become new. It is wonder­ful! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the LORD. The glory, the glowing rays of light, go­ing out in all directions from the center of your be­ing, the “Lord in the midst of you.”

This extended vision which sees everything you have done when “under the fig tree” is not to be brought to pass in order that you may be a “psychic” or a “fortune teller,” but that you might see how to go into the Kingdom and that you might see through the vacuums of the human mind, and bring reality to pass by revelation. You are a revelator, and you have the clear vision to such degree as you can accept the words of Jesus Christ, to the degree they are your own. You are the temple through which this won­derful thing must come into being. You are the Light that is to light every man (in your world) unto salvation. You are the Light which cannot be hid, set upon a hill. All these things are true of you when you have made this union of body and soul, and have dis­covered the Father within, when you with abandon “take” the WORD and return to Jehovah, and there release its fulfillment. WHEN YOU CAN, YOU CAN. Do you hear? Do you feel-see? If so, you begin to realize what is back of this gift of Jesus to you.    

As sight becomes a pure, unadulterated, spiritual quality, it begins to function for the first time in its new capacity. It is taken out of the limitation of mus­cles and nerves and is released into a field so large andinfinite that one is lost in following. Just think of it, you—-you the former “worm of the dust,” the one who was “born in sin and conceived in iniquity,”—-have this glorious gift of vision —- extended sight, singleeye, sweeping like a great searchlight in all directions, into the past, into the future of the conscious mind, detecting all the mental and though tie-ups that are acting as causes in your life today for the evil theremanifested. And untying these thought patterns of yesteryears and preventing any future tangles, be­cause it SEES through. You will see through, or else you will drop down to the level of thought-taking and“try to see through.” In which case you will see nothing but the picture floating in the vacuum of the mental plane, for all the evil in your life is made and sustained by thought. Snap the thought, and the pic­ture must go. And so this seeing through the vacuum is another manner in which you are enabled to dis­integrate the picture of evil.

You note the figurative angle of all the teaching of Jesus Christ. For instance, when He says, “If any man will come after ME, let him take up his cross and follow Me.” Now, literally, to the consciousness this is impossible. Just what are you going to do with an imaginary cross? And then in an effort to make some­thing out of it, you take up a thing called “burden,” which immediately you identify as part of the Life of Jesus. What good can come from this contradic­tion, since Jesus said, “Cast your burdens on ME and I will sustain you.” And in another place He says,”Take up the Cross and follow after Me.” Do you begin to see with this single eye through the mystifi­cation that has arisen in human thinking and obscured the Light? Seeing the double standard, or the pairs of opposites, you immediately begin to feel sorry for Jesus, yet He did say, “I come that your joy might be full.” How shall we interpret these contradictory things? There is an endless procession of utterly ab­surd commands if you take them from the conscious thinking-plane. They are not only impossible, they are worse. Yet every one of them is possible when the “eye becomes single.”

The glory of the new vision—“Mine eyes (single eye) have seen the glory of the Lord.” I have seen Him in loathsome leprosy, in the most suffocating poverty, in the morass of futility. I have seen Him through all this vacuum, and He has answered, “Here am I, what will you?” “Master, Master, Master!” and the little John Smith (the glorious temple of the liv­ing God) must at last recognize the triumph of Jesus Christ in the universe of belief.

Do you grasp how it is that you come again to the door of a consciousness and knock and if any man “sees” your voice (yes, the senses merge into one) and opens unto you you will come in to him and”glance” at him and he at you? And the former evil thing that has been floating in the vacuum of human thought will evaporate as a mirage on the desert, and there will appear, in its place, God, in whatever formnecessary to accomplish the continued sense of heaven here and NOW.

Faint echoes of the permanent self, before it left its Garden of Eden, sound through the mists of mat­ter. Often have you stood in a quandary of human confusion and have said, “Let me see, let me see,” only to find yourself still in human darkness because you were using the double sight which had to look through the “glass darkly,” and could see only dis­tortion and evil. But with this single eye which has again come to you through recognition of the Pres­ence, you are able to see “Face to face.” Isn’t it glor­ious? Then “through the glass darkly” of the double sight which is the perpetual “overcomer,” but NOW “Face to face.” The NOW is the instant you can ac­cept sight as a reality. You will see, and then it will turn into the lovely light-filled consciousness-“BE­HOLD.” You are beholding, for the first time, God in His universe, and are recognizing your part in the grand “man-“i-festation. Your place in the sun, your place in glory, because your eyes have become single and the glory of BEHOLDING, instead of trying to “see,” is accomplished with the strange new-dimen­sional power which can manifest what it “beholds.”

Out of the glorious eyes of you streams this spirit­ual sight, and this pouring through the temple drives from every niche and cranny the thieves of belief re­garding your vision. Suddenly your eyes are opened,and the steady stream of light continually passes through, bringing with it a balanced perfection of sight.

If your “eyes” have seen the glory of the Lord through Jesus Christ, they will become single and filled with Light, and the former pictures floating on the vacuum of human belief will be no more. The mirage of poor vision will have passed into oblivion.

“Fear not, stand and see the salvation of the Lord,” which He will show you TODAY.

CAN YOU SEE it is the same as can you take it. Neither of these questions has to do with anything physical, the physical or the mechanics come later. The ability to SEE (or take) comes first, and then your eyes go through the necessary adjustment.

“Come and see a man who told my fortune,” and the woman of Samaria missed SEEING a man who was offering her “living waters,” which if she drank thereof she would “never thirst again.” Never meanseternity, and yet the woman wanted to “see” a man, instead of to “SEE” a man-i-festation of the New Day.

Open your eyes! Behold the glory of the NEW DAY!

 

Walter C. Lanyon