Reincarnation and You

       Ever since you tasted the Forbidden fruit and decided that you, too, were a creator-you have been bringing forth the “inventions” of the human mind—which though sometimes beautiful for the moment were always evil in the final analysis. All these false ideas of creation have been sustained by your belief, fed with the substance of human thinking.

     You were created in the “Image and Likeness of God”—-a Little lower than the Angels and given do­minion over everything.

     And the book of creation was closed—-and nothing is to be added or taken from it. And it was called good and very good. Yes, better than good—and that is the description of YOU.

     All this is a far cry from the thing “born of woman” whose days are few and full of trouble and whose en­tire life is supported by human thinking and not by the Light of God. Everything that is Born of the hu­man thought is of “few days and full of trouble” and is a product of the human imagination. That is why Jesus, the CREATED One, could change any of the pictures of imagination—even death. And that is why you, when you arise to that place in conscious­ness, will see how it is that the so-called healing is not so miraculous after all-but natural and normal.

     Under the belief in a power apart from God, man has come under a set of laws so hateful and so intri­cate that he sickens of it all. Everything he does brings its re-action immediately, or else a belief in karmic law causes him to re-enact the tragedies of his former life. An endless and hopeless chain of experi­ences which get him nowhere: He places himself under a fearful, inescapable destiny.

     “Destiny waits on no man’s will. Man made it, but can he change it? The sum total of his merit is arranged against the consequences of his sins, each at the end of the scale, and himself the fulcrum.” 

     Jesus put it more simply when He said—“Man has worked out many inventions.” Through a set of ma­terial laws founded on a divided power man has worked out even a law of revenge which reacts upon him either as swiftly as a striking adder or as slowly as a glacier melting through centuries into one karmic situation after another.

     And in the human equation, according to the kar­mic law, there is no discount in the law of justice. So beautifully put by Jesus, “As a man soweth so shall he reap.”

     “There is no injustice—nowhere in all the universe—not for a moment. Justice—-every atom of it including all the injustice! No one escapes his exact desserts or lacks his op­portunity to learn.

     “Those on whom the seeming injustice is inflicted, would do the same thing, or something like it—its equivalent—if they had the power and the temptation.

     “They are learning the feel of the sting of injustice—-learning not to inflict it. The unjust judge is reborn to a life in prison on a false charge. The usurer spends a life or two in debt. The cheat gets cheated.

     “The cruel man suffers cruelty.

     “Each to the fate his deeds have caused, and each oneto the destiny that he himself has earned.” But what’s the purpose of it?

     “It is true that the fool who tries to stop the wheels ofdestiny fulfills his destiny by being crushed under it.”

-Mundy.

 

“But what’s the purpose o f it?”

    Can you answer that one? What’s the good of it all? Experience and problems leave most of us scratched and marred and with nothing better than a humble admission that “it was good for our growth” —yet how could Spirit grow, since it is a changeless substance—without beginning or without end—-end complete and whole within itself?

     Gradually we are beginning to see that Jesus came for the purpose of showing man how to de-hypno­tize himself from the pictures of his various incarna­tions—and to show him the “way back.” He finds him groaning and wondering who will deliver him from the body of this death—to-wit the redemption of the body. And yet He plainly stated, “I can of mine own self do nothing”-and He permitted Him­self to function through the character of Jesus for the purpose of showing the whole gamut of human be­liefs to be nothing but just that-beliefs.

     When you took on your present character, unlike an actor, you did not leave the old play and character behind, but brought much of it along with you-and worst of all you brought a balance sheet showing just what had to be paid on the old karmic debt. All the while adding to the endless karma of the next re-in­carnation. What a stupid picture! Bound to the wheel of life, which moving upward would throw you off into your real self-if you could but accept the simple revelation of Jesus Christ. But instead of letting go, you hug the precious old beliefs and go down again to be crushed by the wheel as it makes its eternal rounds. You either survive the horrible experi­ence of going under the wheel, or else it kills you and you take on a new character and begin again the “dance of Life”-a giddy affair governed by the laws “as for man his clays are few and full of trouble”—and “earn your living by the sweat of your brow.”

     When Jesus came to the world to free it from this horrible curse and supply the grace of God-man was so hypnotized that he could not understand nor accept the gift, and so Jesus was crucified, and would be again today-because the mind is still so hypnotized with the reality of evil. That is why you are be­ginning to hear of the second coming of the Christ in such things as “come apart from among them”—-“Lean on Me”-and a thousand and one other words which when HEARD will begin to free you from the endless chain of problems.

     Jesus had to descend to the pattern of His Jesus incarnation in order to experience any evil whatso­ever. That evil was all in His human destiny as Jesus —but any time He wished to transcend He “went un­to His Father”—not a locality BUT a degree of con­sciousness—-and the thing passed by with no expres­sion—it was a cloud without rain. The child was stillborn.

     Without having known or recognized His Perma­nent Identity—the one “made in the image and like­ness” He never would have been able to set aside His human destiny. When the pictures of the false law were about to manifest He immediately side-stepped them by entering into a new dimension and staying there. He was at the other side of the lake-which was all outside of the human destiny plan for Him—and even on the way to the cross He as good as said —-“Well, if I didn’t want to go through this to prove to you that even the karmic belief in death is noth­ing-I could call on My Father—the Permanent Identity—and twelve legions of angels would appear.”

     Are you beginning to see why the simple teachings of Jesus Christ are the only teachings which are worth considering? All the ancient teaching in the world will not reveal one-tenth of one per cent of the Power in one single WORD of Jesus Christ.

     And the wonder of it all is that He said you could do everything He could do. Not only could you do it unto yourself, but unto others-you could even raise the dead-which is “impossible”-in fact He said you could offset every human law-and every “impossible” thing could be brushed out of the picture by you.

     Yes, Jesus came to show man how to transcend human destiny—-but man mistook the whole lovely revelation for just another religion—-and fell down and worshipped a man instead of entering into the consciousness of the Presence and becoming One with it.

     You are wondering why John Smith who has been so good and true never got to first base, and why another who had nothing at all coming to her appar­ently skimmed the cream from the milk of Life with­out any effort; and now you are beginning to see the Law. Exactly what you have put into the universe you have taken out. There is no escape until you come to the revelation of Jesus Christ.

     This all sounds very dour, but in reality it is only what Jesus told us—and what we are only now beginning to hear. “My sheep hear my voice”—it has taken us centuries, and we have waded through the muck and mire of hundreds of characters trying to find the way out of the maze of human inventions. .It is only when you come to the Consciousness of Jesus Christ that you begin to put an end to the hu­man Destiny and the human reincarnation. You begin to discover your Divinity, which is only a “little lower than the angels,” with Dominion over everything on the earth, under the earth and in the sea. Ridiculous when you think about “dominion” and then look about you! And yet there it stands-and only through the recognition of your Jesus Christ-Con­sciousness can you return to your Father’s House and find again the Garden of Eden forsaken so long ago.

     The hour is getting late—you are an Avatar of the Word, and as you rise from the mire of human belief you may yet have much of the mud sticking to you, but as you walk into the Consciousness of your true self you will find this mud dropping from you. And having arrived at the place of BEING you will speak from the Plane of the Christ-Consciousness, dissolv­ing the congested human beliefs.

“Come unto ME and be ye saved”—-from what? Your human destiny and karmic beliefs. “Lean on Me”-the little John Smith which has been standing alone for so many centuries is finding what it means to give up and lean on ME.

     There is much of human interest in reincarnation. You can easily trace many of yours out into apparent reality if you have the desire to do so.

     The human pattern is as fixed and real as is the Divine, with this one exception-the Divine or fourth-dimensional capacity of you transcends and utterly puts to flight any Human destiny, the mo­ment you merge with your Divinity. No matter from what cause-nor how backed-up by human testimony. It is therefore possible for a man with a so-called “short lift-line” to live to a ripe old age, or a woman with all sorts of evil configurations in the heavens (as divined by thousands of people who have never looked through a telescope) to go on her merry way as an Immortal creation of God.

     Either you were made in the Image and Likeness of God, or you were conceived in sin and born in iniquity—-you decide that for yourself. If the former, then you are given “authority” over everything in, over and under the earth and sea; and if the latter, then you must come under the curse (for it is a curse, since it contains so much evil) of the laws of palmistry, stars, numbers, notes, colors, soles of the feet and even locations. All of them are true in the degree in which they function. So is voodoo true and as workable on its plane as anything else-but remem­ber: “Nothing that man says is wisdom, for it is foolishness in the eyes of God.” “Choose ye this day whom you will serve.”

     When you begin to see this you will stop the Kar­mic sway of false human-thinking in your life—and the cat-and-mouse game will cease. You are created -by God—-eventually you will “call no man your Father”—-and if you call no man your father you will have no human-father-hereditary ideas to surmount. If God is your Father you have no birthday and hence no ensuing evil from having been born on a given day at a given moment in a given locality. “THE EARTH IS THE LORD’S AND THE FULL­NESS THEREOF”—-Do you believe or do you? You must answer for yourself.

     Yes, I know that startling proof is offered—so was it when the wise men and magicians produced snakes which looked just like the Snake which the Prophet of God had produced—-but—and there is the crux of it all—the SERPENT of the Man of God ate up the other serpents. So does the Power of God Al­mighty eat up all the quasi powers claimed in ancient and modern teachings of evil.

     Of course this does not dispose of evil in the world at once, and it does not dispose of all the funny char­acteristics you see in yourself—but it does dispose of reliance on anything but God.

     “But don’t you believe the Moon has any effect—remember the tide, the crops, and a hundred other proofs that can be shown?” I remember ONE thing: that I was created in the Image and Likeness with Dominion over everything on the earth—-over the earth, on the sea or in the sea—and as I remember that, I begin to experience the FEEL that GOD IS IN CONTROL OF THE UNIVERSE—not a star or a line or a color or a number. What say you?

     From some hundred stenographic reports of proph­ecies of every sort and from every place, I find only a minimum of them took place —which is not dis­counting the gift of prophecy, but it is something to think about.

     The real gift of prophecy could no more be “turned on and off” like water in your swimming-pool, than could you—-that funny little thing—-turn God “on and off,” because you made affirmations “at” Him.

     Prophecy cones at the precise moment it is neces­sary—-it is revelation and light that is given, but is not to be used to find out every trifling incident in the universe of man’s “wisdom.” And so we begin to awaken from the dream of a power opposed to God, and to see that all this reincarnation business goes on just so long as we think that we are born English, Negro, Jew, or Chinese instead of recognizing the fact that we are BORN OF GOD, which recognition will cause us to fling off the garments of beliefs and superstition.

     Do not misunderstand me—I do not discount the subject of astrology or palmistry or any other device to reveal the future. I know that “no man knoweth what a day may bring forth” is true—no man—ex­cept he to whom it is revealed for his own good pur­pose and reason. Do you see?

     On the relative plane all these pseudo sciences are true and real—but—that is on the relative plane. For every time a so-called reality is set up, another comes along and changes the whole thing with a higher de­gree of human teaching.

     Interpretation is so broad a field that it can lead many astray. “The Letter killeth and the Spirit maketh alive”—to see in a horoscope a man passing out may be true and false at the same time-he may be passing into a new state of things and dying to the old.

     “YE CAN READ THE SIGNS IN THE SKIES BUT CAN YOU READ THESIGNS OF THE TIMES?”

     When you ask for freedom from a karmic condi­tion that is confronting you, are you willing and ready to take the consequences? Do you want to be free from a thing, and have it too? I remember well a woman who said she was so tired of her home and wanted to get rid of it. Yet she broke out in tears when she returned home after a meditation, and found it in ashes. The way of it all is not yours but God’s. Be sure you want what you ask for and be sure you are ready and willing to take the consequences of your prayers. These consequences are wonderful, but sometimes they may seem a little drastic on the surface.

     A grandmother of sixty repeatedly said she wanted only one thing and that was “youth”—she wanted to be eighteen again. Suppose that prayer had been answered literally. Could she have taken it? She might have been turned out ‘of her own house—her twenty-year-old granddaughter certainly would have disclaimed her, and her sixty-five-year-old husband would have had her arrested as an impostor or a psy­chopathic case. When you ask for something, you must see that it carries with it a set of new circum­stances and conditions which will entirely change the present picture. Can you stand it? Could the Grandmother stand being turned out of her own house by her own grandchild, who was now two years older than she? Think it over, and see what this deeper revelation means—and then you will see why “everything was forsaken” when one Followed —and why this was a natural condition and not an imposed one. Many people “forsake” the outside first and hope to make the inside come up to it, but that is getting the cart before the horse. When it is done within, the outside will follow naturally, but you must be prepared to step out of the karmic condi­tion which is about you—to step out of the astral shells of belief which have held you for lo, these many years, and enter into the new day.

     All this seems rather terrible, for it makes prayer a dangerous thing. I have written it to you from in­spiration, knowing that you have the wisdom of God within you sufficient to interpret just what is being said.

 

Walter C. Lanyon