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Edna Lister’s Lectures, 1957
Preface: Edna Lister suffered a compound break in her left hand, wrist, and arm in a Union Pacific Railway train accident December 22, 1956, while traveling from Chicago to Seattle, which explains the gap in her 1957 schedule for teaching, sermons and lectures.
Edna Lister essay series, sent bi-weekly to groups in Cleveland, OH, and Buffalo, NY, February-May 1957
Fresh Manna Every Day
Edna Lister, International New Thought Alliance 42nd Congress speech outline, July 21, 1957, Los Angeles, CA, Exodus 16:13-20, John 6:28-35
“And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat. This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded, Gather of it every man according to his eating, an omer for every man, according to the number of your persons; take ye every man for them which are in his tents. And the children of Israel did so, and gathered, some more, some less. And when they did mete it with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating. And Moses said, Let no man leave of it till the morning. Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank: and Moses was wroth with them.”–Exodus 16:13-20.
“Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. They said therefore unto him, What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”–John 6:28-35.
All growth and development, whether physical-material or mental-spiritual, in either the individual or civilization as a whole, is based in and depends on the principle of desire. You must have desire before you can take action of any kind. You must desire something better and greater than is available to you now. Desire causes souls and civilizations to progress. From hollowed log canoes to Leviathan ocean tankers, from steam harnessed for the first time to electronics, from the Wright brothers’ monoplane to jets, science and industry have been doing the greater works. We have accomplished all this based on the one desire to do something greater and better than what we had before or in the past. One thing we know: We cannot grow anything or create success without desire.
To pray for health, things, ideas, or illumination, you must first desire them. It’s an unwritten but absolute rule that the fervency of your prayers equals the fervency of your desire, and your results depend on this no matter your endeavor. To contact the source of fresh manna every day, you must desire fresh manna every day! A vague yearning or half-hearted wish toward something is not true desire. To desire, you must know all about what you want to create. You have to know what manna is to be able to create it. What will manna do for you?
Everyone knows about the manna of Moses, but few understand clearly that this manna is the “bread” of Jesus, mystically termed so in John 6:35 “I am the bread of life.” What is the difference between the two? Moses’ manna fell to the ground as small white flakes that the Israelites had to gather early in the morning. Fresh manna fell every day, and they couldn’t hoard it, or it spoiled. Moses’ manna was something like an all-in-one brand of vitamins today. They could see it, feel it, touch and taste it; manna was a visible material substance, a nearly perfect food fulfilling their physical needs. We have that same necessity today: We must have food, clothing and shelter. We need the manna of Moses.
Thinkers and writers have classed the “bread” of Jesus as too mystical or metaphysical an idea to understand. Typically, Christians have passed it by, or at least not consciously prayed to receive it. However, you must remember that both types of manna-as-sustenance come from above, and both require prayers of desire to bring them into visibility on earth.
With the manna of Moses, you work out your salvation: You pray for a position, for transportation, and to earn enough to meet your daily needs in food, clothing and shelter. With the manna of Jesus, you must be obedient to and practice the laws of Spirit, which are divine laws for the soul. Your prayers, when fervent enough, create from the same invisible substance of desire—positions by which you can earn food, new ideas for meeting your needs, and substance for healing your body. Yet it all comes from above.
The manna of Moses falls to the ground, and to partake of it physically, you must pick it up. This is like holding a job, earning a living that pays enough to meet your daily needs. In contrast to manna, the bread of Jesus flows through your mental faculties via divine Mind, and registers on your mind using the brain cells in the degree of the “I AM” consciousness that you have awakened as illumination and intuition acting as your share of the mind that was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5). This is why and how we can say that “we have the mind of Christ”–1 Corinthians 2:16. How fully you are using your share of the mind of Christ depends on the degree to which you have developed your access to it. Therefore, you can receive the manna that falls as low as the ground physically, or mentally as the living bread that flows through your mind when you ascend to the stars in consciousness.
All is One, and God, the personalization of the One, is the Source of all Light as Mind, Substance and Power, which we use as mind, substance and energy. The manna of Moses is your all-in-one vitamin, but the bread of life, the manna of Jesus, holds the Holy Spirit, the high potency vitamins of concentrated life, eternal and immortal.
Science is in the process of proving that everything comes from above as the high potency qualities of Spirit—they are all attributes of God, and faith, joy and love are the most important. Faith builds your supply pipeline to the Source. Joy generates the atomic power in your body’s cells. Love fills your molds and resets your creative abilities into action at a faster pace. Yesterday’s love-supply becomes stale today and worthless tomorrow. Spirit’s high potency qualities invest your life with a radiance, a glory and a divine quality that is all-powerful strength, life enough to meet every need with fresh strength every day.
Daniel in the lions’ den perfectly illustrates the power in these high potency qualities of Spirit when you add them to your present all-in-one prayers. Daniel had prayed, partaken of high potency faith, love and joy. Because the king’s advisers had persecuted him, the desire in his prayers burst into flame. Daniel stood serenely confident in the love of God, and was with Him. His faith was no thine thread but a strong cable of Light holding him in contact with the Father. Daniel’s joy so vitalized his faith and love that he was not lion-conscious—he had overcome all the devouring ideas of hungry lions in his mind and heart.
Daniel was God-conscious, so in love with God that love possessed him. Love moved through him and into his state of affairs, and instantly went to work on the lions. As love worked through Daniel, the lions changed. Love always takes charge as, through and for you when your love is undiluted by self, unadulterated by fear or doubts. When pure love is your daily fresh manna, the bread of life, it flows through you freely into your affairs.
Daniel’s fresh supply came as a strong emanation of Light, filling the den until the lions cowered in their corner, getting as far away from Daniel as space permitted. Daniel did nothing to cause the lions to cower. Love did the work. He wasted no time trying to conquer the lions. Love’s glory, moving through Daniel, had enslaved them.
In July, we opened a new International Geophysical Year.
You may ask, “How does this concern my creative ability, or my fresh manna every day?” Science has now named the spaces through which your desire prayers must past instantaneously, and then return as Light and substance. God has given you the creative equipment to do automatically what science labors so hard to achieve by mechanics. Yet if your prayers are weak and puerile, they may not break through these barriers.
New tiny satellites, with a life-span of two to four seconds, travel some 16,000 miles per second; they live 124 seconds at most. Their payload is a recorder and an antenna, which when triggered from earth, broadcasts scrambled facts, just before it burns out and explodes. Every fact the machine has recorded flows back over a communications beam to be unscrambled by a receiving recorder. They then send all that information to different departments.
Daniel’s light-beam of faith touched the Source, and Light-as-power returned along that established line to quell the lions’ appetite, the desire for prey. Prayer is your message-satellite broadcast orbiting the Source; faith is your fuel; love is your space ship, and joy is its engine. Your prayer travels to the Source and the fresh manna of life pours back over your radar beam. Fresh manna, the daily living bread, is your destiny when you do the greater works.
1 International Geophysical Year (IGY), an 18-month period from July, 1957, through December 1958, during a period of maximum sunspot activity, designated for cooperative study of the solar-terrestrial environment by the scientists of 67 nations. The only prior combined international scientific efforts took place during the Polar Years of 1882 and 1932. Discoveries were made in the fields of cosmic ray research, climatology, oceanography, and the nature of the earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field. Earth satellites launched by the United States discovered the Van Allen radiation belts, a region of high-energy particles, mainly electrons and protons. Soundings of the world’s oceans revealed new information about the physical features on the ocean floor. Seismically active rifts along the summits of mid-oceanic ridges were identified.
Divine Confidence outline
Edna Lister, July 21, 1957, Los Angeles, CA, 1 John 5:14
Through application of the law of aerodynamics engineers have overcome space—and with space, time, in a way that appears miraculous to us. By collapsing space and time the most remote countries and people have become our neighbors, and with the advance of scientific discovery there seems to be no limit to the conquest of space and traveling to other planets.
Sometime ago a minister broadcasting from Ireland pointed out that according to proven laws of science, the bumblebee cannot fly! The weight of its body is out of proportion to its length and its breadth. If airplanes were built with the same proportions they wold not be able to rise from the ground, let alone fly. But the bumblebee doesn’t know anything about these laws of science. It believes it can fly and so wings its way in happy ignorance of its scientific inability to use its wings and poorly proportioned body to fly through space. If we would only exercise the divine confidence of the bumblebee, we, too, could accomplish the seemingly impossible.
Spiritual law does not limit you and me, but lifts us above the limitations of material law. We know what God’s omnipotence means—it constantly surrounds us, inspires us, and strengthens us. When we seek His help we are not praying to a far-off God, but to a friend, close at hand, who has promised to help us, to a God everywhere evenly present, nearer than breathing. Jesus taught that this divine help is always available, and that this all-encompassing Power will help us if we have the divine confidence that it will act through us to accomplish good for all. Stories abound that tell of feats of strength in times of emergency. People act in confidence, with no thought of inability, no thought of self. They have stepped forth to do what is necessary at the time.
“And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”–1 John 5:14. What is this confidence of which John speaks? It must include three things, a firm trust, a positive expectation that believes to see, and an unwavering boldness that is unafraid to try and that never gives up. This confidence is not dictatorial; you may not send it out with force, nor does it demand. True confidence is not aggressive, does not trample others, but is unwavering, just standing firm in your own belief. A knowing that as you stand under the Light of God, with a firm trust and positive expectation, you can and do appropriate all the good that comes to you, even as the lilies that boldly push up in the field where they grow best. New things come forth from such confidence.
You attain a belief and knowing that God has heard you and according to His will you know that the right thing for you will apppear at the right time. He has not only heard but has also sent the answer! This is confidence! You know then you are in the right place, at the right time and are ready to do the next thing next. You have that firm trust in the faithfulness of God, in the name of Jesus the Christ to create miracles for you. Again you may ask according to His will!
His will for us is ALL GOOD NOW—all that is good, not only for us, but for all others under like circumstances. When you seek help of any kind from the Father, your answer must be according to His law. What the Father does for one, He is willing to do for all, for He is no respecter of persons. When you ask for yourself, include all who have a similar need and confidently believe that they, too, are receiving. The fulfillment of your request must not be selfish or harm anyone! Knowing this, you can reach out through the confidence you have in Him through faith and attract your good to you!
As in the case of the bumble bee, even when man’s material law says it can’t be done, your miracle comes into expression according to your state of consciousness and expectance to receive because you, in faith and confidence, believe you already have it and “act as if” you do! As you receive, you become a living ensample of His goodness and God is glorified. When you step out selflessly for Him and boldly dare and do without wavering, the “added things” shall come to you as miracle after miracle.
It seems easy to be confidant that the earth will continue to roll in its orbit, that the sun is still shining even though you can’t see it through the heavy clouds above. The mountain is still there, behind the fog and mist. Why is it so hard to remember and believe that God’s Power is always available and efficacious just because man says something can’t be done according to his law?
Through prayer and surrender, you develop that spiritual confidence that “believes to see” keeping your eye on the reality, not on the appearance. You must recognize, accept, and give thanks. Finally, you come to know that “all that the Father has” is yours to use and He gives it to you. It is His will that you live by I AM, the Christ consciousness. “I am all health. I am all strength. I am courage. I AM now in that high place in consciousness where I AM at One with Him and His Power, and I declare all things good now!” Faith is bold! It dares and it does! Declare, “My expectancy is unwavering through confidence that I attract my Good to me, for God always says ‘Yes’!”
The Brain, Your Instrument of Power outline
Edna Lister, September 24, 1957, Cleveland, OH
The skull is the “golden bowl” mentioned in Ecclesiastes: “Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed, or the golden bowls broken, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the well. Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.”–Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 How does your brain develop? It is the result of half a billion years of evolution, achieved during the nine-month span from conception to birth. Some twenty-five trillion cells have been created by the time an infant is born, including those that make up the brain and nervous system.
Nerve cells are unique because they are living batteries, tiny electric signaling devices, recharging themselves automatically. Nerve cells are believed to be sterile; they cannot reproduce themselves. Other cells, the body’s “building blocks,” are replaced when they die! For example, when you cut a finger, the skin cells respond to the emergency by multiplying and producing new generations of cells. But a destroyed nerve cell is gone forever; no new one replaces it. In the five months before birth the body creates ten million brain cells in the cortex, which must last for the rest of the life.
The human brain is contained within the skull, the golden bowl of scripture. It is the most wonderful “creative center” of activity in the human body! A delicate mechanism, encased in a sturdy, durable skull, it’s able to endure repeated shocks and tremendous abuse for many years before it gives way. The average brain weighs about three pounds, and is perched like a flower on a slender “stalk,” the spine, which is almost three feet long in a six-foot man, terminating at the small of the back. Atop the spine is the brainstem, the bridge or “pons,” from the spine to the brain. A thick white cable of nerve fibers, three inches long, it lies entirely within the skull, buried between the bulging hemispheres of the brain. a continuation of the spinal canals. The long “stalk” runs up through perforations in the spinal vertebrae; the spine ends at. Many branches extend from the central stalk, like roads feeding traffic onto a freeway. On the right side, 31 nerves pass through these special “windows” between the vertebrae to the right side of the body. The left side is exactly the same, feeding to the left side. Another dozen pairs arise from the brainstem or “buried pons” in the skull.
These 86 basic nerves connect the brain with the whole body, and every cell of it in constant communication with the brain centers called the “nervous system.” The nervous system is made up in the brain mass. Each cell has long extensions or “tendrils” in assorted shapes—ovals, pyramids, bulbs or irregular blobs. They are bunched together at the neurons where they cross and re-cross. The longest have main bodies of just two-thousandths of an inch in diameter, delicate as the works of the finest of watches; they form networks of fibers that extend from a fraction of an inch to several feet. Under the microscope, a single brain cell with its fibers resembles the crown of a tree. Growing from each branch are smaller secondary branches from which arise a succession of ever smaller offshoots down to the infinitesimal nerve endings. The brain contains 13 billion such cells, five times the earth’s population. All this is inside the head! The units form masses of twisted fibers called neurons, now named, by one investigator, the “cerebral jungle.”
Until quite recently it was assumed that each nerve fiber was held in a fixed position. New studies at the University of Texas find and indicate that the brain tissue is more active. As I speak, you receive, and the fibers in your head are swaying about like seaweed swept by the tides. Your mind is sorting, classifying, and rearranging the new facts with those recorded in the past to incorprates the new findings and new Ideas. Wiping out old records is like stripping a recording tape to accept the new. We call it an “open mind,” which is what the Law of Acceptance prepares you for! You are ready to make changes, awakening new cells in old charts to make room for the new.
“Tentacles” (as science so names them) of protoplasm are slowly moving forward and retreating, swelling and shrinking and waving from side to side—this is always going on in your Golden Bowl! Hippocrates discussed the organ of the brain in terms of sense for today: “Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in a special manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear, and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet, and what unsavory; some we discriminate by habit, and some we perceive by their utility. By this we distinguish objects of relish and disrelish, according to the seasons; and the same things do not always please us. And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us, some by night, and some by day, and dreams and untimely wanderings, and cares that are not suitable.” Things do not always please us. Why? Because of the different position of nerves, fibers and cells.
Science asks, “What is the brain for?” And science judges and says, “It is the great organ of Adjustment.” The law says, we can’t have a brain “adjustment” when it is rigid from opinions and prejudices. We can’t move or sway to readjust to situations. The brain cells are either altogether unawakened or atrophied by self asin self-pity. The law is to “agree and adjust,” which awakens brain cells and takes them out of the deep freeze. Science says it keeps us adjusted to unpredictable events in the outside world; it adjusts to preserve our identity in an environment of swift and ceaseless chemical changes.
We are dying and are reborn continually. 3,000,000 red blood cells die every second or 3,000,000 red blood cells are born every second. How? When we agree and adjust. There is a complete bodily turnover every seven years. Scientists formerly thought of the body as a machine. It needed food for fuel—energy for combustion was needed only to keep the machine going. Tissues were repaired only when they were completely worn out. Now, by using modern methods, radioactive tracers in the tissues know that all organs, every tiny cell, must work to exist. The cells must recharge themselves by the seconds. Life is like a whirlpool, not a machine. The new whirlpool is formed every few seconds from a rotating center, replenishing itself from surrounding waters. Form does not change! The system of nerves maintains its own “parts,” “identity” and “structure.” The whole body is a vortex of matter in a continual state of change—physical indrawn to desire, desire indrawn to mental, so the process must be fluid.
The brain is responsible for keeping us alive by perfectly balancing a process of birth and decay. Decay means it’s a “time to change.” Everything in the organs and mind helps or retards in carrying out these basic reactions or keeps parts waiting their turn by “retarding” until the whole physical balance is upset. We pay a high price for self-pity, criticism opinions. This upsets the vital life processes which changes the position of the fibers. The world unknowingly walks a biological “tightrope” between coma and convulsions or possible results of relatively slight changes in only sugar levels.
The brain receives advance notice of impending trouble through pain. The steady flow of information about current sugar levels adjusts it as effectively as a pilot guiding a plane through a storm. Too much sugar warns with “heat flashes” and the burning up of excess sugar, while too little sugar instructs the liver to release the proper amount from the reserve supply. The brain must know and adjust itself to changes in weight. Average: 1/16 oz sugar to every pint of blood and inhale 19-20 times a minute. The heart beat should be 70 x 90 beats per minute.
The nerve cell is a living wire which produces and conducts rapid electrical impulses. Each cell works, keeps itself loaded and ready for action with the aid of a “built-in” battery which runs on an oxygen-sugar mixture and recharges itself automatically. It can trigger several hundred impulses a second under need. Outside need signals enter the cell through special “receiving” fibers which are usually short, fine and highly branched. The “transmitting” or “exit” fiber is relatively long and thick.
Each nerve cell’s delicate receiving fibers makes contact with “transmitting” fibers of 50 other nerve cells on an average. Some contact 1,000 others! This is the reason why one “bang” (physical, emotional or mental upset) makes us ill all over. The signals are relayed from cell to cell as they pass through the nervous system. The rate of travel depends upon the diameter of the fiber conducting the impulse, the thick-set fibers being on the “high speed express routes.” The slender-set fibers are about 1/25,000 of an inch in diameter and have the speed limits of one foot per second or two thirds of a mile an hour. If the chemical-physical balance is upset, the whole system slows down. There is a slow reaction to everything.
The brain uses this whole network to adjust us to the world. 1. It receives “input” in the form of messages from the “sense” organs. 2. It organizes “input” on the basis of past experiences—the subconscious; current events—the emotional state; future plans—the mental state. 3. It selects and produces an appropriate “output” on action or a series of actions.
The Brain, Your TV Set outline
Edna Lister, October 1, 1957, Cleveland, OH
No one has ever used but a fragment of his innate potential brain power. No one is ever wholly awake! No one is ever wholly in action! Our potential powers, when we really do awaken, are more tremendous than science can now measure. We are misled as to our brain’s full capacity. Until recently science figured that to duplicate the brain as a machine would require all the then-existing radio vacuum tubes available to build a machine to replace a single human being—structure by structure, cell by cell, connecting fibril by fibril—a machine as tall as Rockefeller Center in an area as large as San Francisco’s Cow Palace to house the millions of individual units: their cooling and replacement systems, their files, and their message-transmitting components. Another scientist calculated it would take all the Power of Niagara Falls’ rushing waters to run it and to keep it from over-heating! Although modern transistors and comparable electric devices would reduce these figures and dimensions about a hundredfold, what each human brain contains, condensed into microscopic units, still remains immense.
Moreover, the capacity of this machine to store energy and information in new areas of awakened cells, and to transform the information into new questions for which it actually finds new answers, transcends man’s ability to build the comparable machines. And to transmit the answers excels the output not only of the best work-producing machines, but even of those fantastic electrical computers which match in one day the output of many months of man-hours. This is your brain’s capacity, which will last for your whole life! What are you getting out of your equipment? We stand on the frontiers of a new, exciting existence beyond our wildest imagination to grasp and it puts our old “dream-desires” to shame.
The brain is housed in a potentially indestructible body. One scientist tells us that it is about three pounds of “messy substance shut in a dark place,” a pinkish-gray mass, moist and rubbery to the touch, about the size of a “softball.” Shock-absorbing fluid cushions it against bumps, sharp blows and other impacts. It is wrapped in three membranes including an extra-tough outer envelope and is set snugly within a crate of solid bone.
The cerebrum is the large brain just inside the skull, curving down over the brain stem, and is folded and crumpled into the head. If spread out, it would cover more than a two-foot square, almost the size of one page of newspaper. More than two-thirds of the human cortex folds down into the deepest convolutions, tucked away where neurosurgeons cannot yet touch it.
Now we are able to send a few electrical “charges” (shock treatments) down the nerves to vitalize and quicken the atrophied centers. Soon we will know more about “ how,” “where,” and “why” they send these charges. The brain is stirred up by lights, sounds, orders or any disturbance or unusual confusion. These things produce sensation and form electrical impulses in nerves leading to the brain—“shocks” which stream into ever higher nerve centers and cause cell after cell to “fire” in a series of chain reactions.
The toes are the sense organs most remote from the brain. Fibers from these outlying sense stations carry messages concerning heat or cold, muscle tension, touch or pain. They are joined by fibers from the foot or leg, knee or thigh. They become a thick cable by the time they reach the spinal cord. Then they are joined by more all the way up the spine. All these lines are busy even during sleep. The heart and lungs are then listening with reduced vigilance and the brain relaxes. As long as we are alive, it finds no real rest. For the eyes, the sphincter muscle needs to relax and the brain rests.
The brain’s informers are called “sense organs” or sentinels located at strategic points throughout the body. Embedded in the skin are some 3-4 million structures sensitive to pain. There are 500,000 pressure or touch detectors and 200,000 temperature detectors. These tiny organs, plus the ears, eyes, nose and tongue are some of your windows to the outside world. Reports about the state of things inside the body come from other built in sense organs which give rise to sensations of muscular tension, hunger, thirst and nausea. Science does not know exactly the number of “senses” there are, but declares it is certainly more than five—nearer 20! They are given to us direct as 44 faculties and 44 senses. The five outer senses are of instinctive intelligence and are developed by animal instinctive intelligence. They include sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. The next four are desire, will, imagination, intuition and love.
Our first breath of aspiration takes place when the eighth sense, Imagination, is added to the seventh sense, will or willfulness. Aspiration is first looking up. The ninth sense, intuition, leads us higher into all truth. When desire gets out of kilter, it falls backward to mingle with the “senses” of instinctive intelligence, closing the door upon wisdom, imagination as vision, intuition and love. Each of the five “senses” has its own fibers carrying its exclusive messages. On their way to the brain, the fibers are bundled together as a great cable of sensory messages that the midbrain sorts into smaller specialiazed bundles, each bundle ending in it own different region of the cortex, which acts as the brain’s outer layer like the bark on a tree. This sheet of gray cells, the highest center of the nervous system, occupies the top position over-spreading the brain like a cathedral dome. The cortex carries out the most advanced thinking, the most highly developed mental processes.
Part of this outer area is reserved for maps of a special sort—the “listening” centers! The Voice of God registers on this area. The music nerve impulses representing notes are flashed to a horizontal strip of the cortex at the sides of the head. Imagine a strip with fine wires placed at many points along the surface and attached to electric recording equipment. Electrical signals representing different notes arrive at these strips and set up currents in the fibers located there. Wires and currents are detected and charted. In the laboratory, science has experimented on animals and surgical patients. The findings reveal that the strips make a natural keyboard and the highest notes heard come in at the back end of the strip, the lowest at the front. In between the high and low, the entire range of notes to be heard by the ears are marked off at regular intervals in octaves of about one-tenth of an inch from back to front of the strip—from the high to the low notes. Each tone is a precisely placed sequence of points.
Every note heard has its site on these strips and sends an electrical pulse to register exactly in the same place every time. If the place is touched by an electric probe artificially stimulating, you would hear that tone clearly even if not music but complete silence. It offers the possibility of a new kind of subjective mind in music played without instruments of any kind! It would simply stimulate the proper points upon a person’s “hearing map” not by the probe!
The brain can sort messages when the signal is sent to the right “map.” Listening to music, the signals are mixed and the music is sent to the “visual map.” We’d “see” music as a mad rush of flashing lights, moving forms, vivid colors. This is called “cross-talk” between the nerve fibers! Insulation wears thin—like a telephone cable—and electricity leaks away. Then we can listen in on another’s talk. There are similar leaks in the nervous system which account for many ills. For example, the current escaping from the “touch” fiber to the nearby “sound” fiber has caused crashing noises from the bumping of an elbow!
Sensory signals flow into the brain, while motor signals flow out, and we can control these signals! It’s our choice of what we desire to see, to hear, or to send out. The layman speaks of brain fatigue, of brain fog, yet science says it doesn’t exist. It’s the operation of the brain, electrochemical in its character. The brain only appears to be tired! However you do experience fatigue in other parts of the body—eyes, neck muscles, back, emotional inattention—are not of the brain. These are distracting thoughts and imagination pictures of the need for rest!
Science believes that memory is stored in a loop of cells, connected by tiny tendrils with electric current going round and round the loop, 100,000 cells in length. This is exactly the same idea as a tape recording! Also, some say that there exists a chain of cells like knots on a string. Dr. Ralph W. Gerard, a neurophysiologist at the University of Michigan, said that after 70 years the brain may contain 15 trillion separate bits of information, all available to us! What a Treasure House! We are Masters of our bodies!
The Brain, Your Servant outline
Edna Lister, October 8, 1957, Cleveland, OH
We move upward from instinctive intelligence of the creature to intellectual intelligence, from the creature to the “Son of man.” The first set of five senses of the creature includes to see, hear, feel smell and taste. The second set of five senses of the Son of man includes logic, reason, discernment, discrimination, and Discretion.
The soul must ascend from intellectual intelligence to become a “Son of God” with spiritual discernment. The third set of the five higher senses of the Creator include desire, will, imagination, intuition and illumination. To achieve this move from pure intellect which is the capacity to worship principle as intellect only, the instinctive desires of the Creature, called “urges,” must be lifted and mated to “will” for “I AM,” the Christ mind; thus opening the optic thalamus, the pineal body, which we call illumination, and the pituitary gland, which we call intuition, and the optic thalamus. Instinctive desire is of the subconscious mind. At the same time the soul is ascending through three stages of consciousness it also moves from belief to blind faith, from blind faith to pure faith, from pure faith to knowing, and from knowing to comprehension. The soul has 22 lower senses dealing with physical relationships—our attitudes toward things and men—and 22 higher senses associated with our relationship to God. Remember, the “urges” use the five instinctive senses plus a self-centered desire, which is a reflex from, or caused by, a physical need.
Let us consider now how the brain, as a perfect machine, serves the lowest desires of animal or man through instinctive intelligence. In tracing fibers upward from the toes to the brain, we have considered only the afferent “intake” of sensory information from the outside. This same nerve network is also the origin or the point of departure for the outgoing efferent messages, addressed to the muscular system throughout the body. Because such messages cause all action, the fibers involved are called “motor” fibers which make up the “motor” (action) part of the nervous system. Sensory signals flow to the brain constantly while motor signals flow out steadily, sooner or later going into action. These nerves carry messages from the cortex and brain stem to make contact with the large motor nerve cells in the spinal cord. This completes the last relays of the descending pathways. The pathways lead to muscle tissue.
Each motor cell in the spinal cord has a “signal” transmitting extension which divides in to tiny branches, each branch ending on a separate muscle fiber. The average motor nerve cell controls more than 100 muscle fibers. All action involves a shift from “brain” to “brawn.” Muscles are composed of fibers that pull together in teams. The biceps in an arm have 600,000 fibers too fine to be seen. Each fiber cable is made up of thousands of still smaller strands called fibrils. Magnified under an “electron” microscope, the structure of each fibril appears as a series of fine dark bands, one above the other like rungs in a ladder. Further study reveals that each fibril consists of “interlocked filaments,” a long chain of molecules less than two-millionths of an inch wide.
Can you see how muscles and nerve fibers can twist and how nerves can be caught between the muscle fibers and can stretch and stretch until the muscles open and let the nerve go or straighten out?! The motor nerve cells in the spinal cord discharge and charge five to ten times a second! This is their “idling” rate as in the “idling” of a car motor. At an instants notice from the higher brain centers, they are prepared to stretch or relax further. The brain is constantly adjusting and readjusting the tensions of many muscles to maintain balance and posture. These ultimate units are designed to do the work. A single fiber can lift a thousand times its own weight. We call them muscles, but actually the muscles are more like jelly, made up of protoplasm, a slushy semifluid made up of three-quarters water plus the fibers, fibrils and filaments. When related, they become a soft, limp mass, but the instant they go into action, the muscles contract and are transformed into a thick, tough, elastic substance. They can change from jelly to a gluey plastic and back again hundreds of times a minute!
Standing is an acrobatic feat which is performed automatically. Everyone sways when standing upright. Failure in our motor nerve centers in balance control would send us sprawling! One powerful muscle uncontrolled would snap the leg back of the knee, pressing the calf hard against the thigh. Another muscle uncontrolled would keep the leg rigid. The brain receives messages specifying the tensions of more than 200 pairs of opposing muscles, every one of which must be properly adjusted to keep us standing still. It’s even more complicated in walking over uneven ground, a dive from a height, lowering a sail, riding a surfboard or playing tennis. Every action, however simple, is made up of many individual muscle contractions and large-scale movements. The movements must follow one another at exactly the right time and in exactly the right order. The brain does the timing! It coordinates all sequences of movements so we can move smoothly, not in a series of jerks.
The “motor area” of the brain runs parallel to the strip for the general sensation. The most active parts of the body have the largest area-sections on maps of the body that showcomplete muscle makeup, but they are not the biggest parts of the body. The trunk, body, and shoulders cover a small area; the tongue and lips show a bigger area than than the back, and the hands cover the largest territory of all. The active parts need more brain space to enable perfect control. There are such close inter-workings of nerve and muscle!
To adjust the positions of the fingers also means adjusting the wrist, arm and shoulder. The brain controls 30 different joints. There are more than 50 muscles for each hand. The hands are effective weapons! There is less violence transformed into gripping or turning devices or when the hands are gentle as a butterfly in a caress. To open a car door uses 400 times more energy in turning force than in using a telephone dial. It takes a fraction of an ounce of energy to pick up a paper-clip, while pulling on socks and shoes calls for 8 to 12 pounds of force.
From a biological standpoint, life is a complicated balancing act with no intermissions. The lowest section of the brainstem, called the medulla or bulb, helps to regulate breathing and heartbeat rates as well as swallowing and other vital reflexes. We maintain posture and balance with the aid of the cerebellum or midbrain which lies one level higher and looks something like a ball of yarn. Being attached to the brainstem or pons, it offers a natural target for physical destabilization.
The synthesis or breakdown of all body chemicals involves the hypothalamus or “sub-chamber” at the upper end of the brainstem, two inches behind the bridge of the nose. Still higher is the thalamus (a “chamber”), a pair of bodies about the size of Brazil nuts which serves as the main relaxation station, or the “sorting center,” for ascending to the highest centers. The automatic activities such as walking, eating, etc. are coordinated in a group of gray nerve bodies know collectively as the basal ganglia or nerve masses at the base top of the pile most recently evolved as the center of the brain, the cortex.
Conquering Inner Space
Edna Lister outline, October 15, 1957, Cleveland, OH
Science is fast conquering outer space. We, who are the pioneering mystics in the ascension of consciousness, must conquer inner space. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.”–John 14:12. We follow the Master up to our source in a process of ascension of consciousness. We believe in Gethsemane, Calvary, Crucifixion, burial and Resurrection. We believe that we must be resurrected, yet the “greater works,” which Jesus accomplished, begin with ascension of conciousness, of soul, mind, and body functioning as one. Full ascension is an “impossible” idea to most of the world. To many ascension is a matter of the soul only. To a very few, full ascension is possible, even of the body. We know that it must be so sometime, somewhere.
We cannot hope to conquer self or the workings of the body on the inner or the outer without the brain within the “golden bowl.” All conquering comes through the soul’s use of our physical brain powers, by applying what we know to what we do! From counting to ten on our fingers to calculators like the “Whirlwind” at M.I.T.
1 The Whirlwind computer, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the first to operate in real time, and used video displays for output. The Whirlwind used approximately 5000 vacuum tubes. Redmond, Kent C.; Thomas M. Smith (1980). Project Whirlwind: The History of a Pioneer Computer. Bedford, MA: Digital Press. ISBN 0-932376-09-6
All thoughts are stored in terms of remembered sensations and images of the external world. All thoughts, dreams or feelings come to us as combinations of these electrochemical “yes” and “no” responses. A full-color mental picture is only a group of starts and stops. Color in television or movie images are nothing more than controlled chemical or electrical patterns, and seeing red is only a state of mind. We use the term, “seeing red” to express irritation or indignation with someone who disagrees with us.
The brain process of “learning” consists of setting up mental switching patterns, processed repeatedly to train certain circuits and groups, “switchboards” in the brain’s nerve cells to function together. The mind’s circuits improve vastly with use and exercise. The more we use brain power, the faster its operation becomes, and it increases in ability and capacity. The more brain-power we use, the more we have available to use.
“Whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.”–Matthew 13:12. What do we have? Desire to use what we have. We foolishly spend too much time trying to decide, to choose how many “central exchanges” {routing nodes} we want to set up in the brain and how many we want to discard or no longer want to bother with. Our brain-power nerve cell switchboards die of neglect and starvation. For instance, if we have a talent, we use it or let it go and forget it. We either use it or forget it. Some people think about using their talents, skills or abilities, then feel guilty for a while until they forget they ever had it.
Cowling and Davidson
1. The ability to concentrate consists in merely learning to keep stray sensations from cluttering the circuits among our mental switchboards while we use just one.
2. Accuracy of observation is learning to connect the nerve endings, bringing in sensations with the proper mental circuits, by paying attention to what we are doing.
3. Retentiveness of memory involves exercising of the brain’s “condensers” and storage mechanisms so that their “charges” won’t leak prematurely, keeping their “contacts” bright so that they will deliver sharp impulse patterns after many years of use, and bringing all the circuits needed into close association. This is how we remember just one thing that will open a whole set of memories.
4. Logical reasoning is the exercising of “switching patterns” in large groups so that currents emerge, which will coincide with what the external world reveals.
5. Improvement in judgment is an even higher faculty that depends on predicting in advance, as a result of past experiences, which circuits will best lead to a correct set of mental images.
6. The sensitivity of association involves the developing of the faculty of interconnecting vast swarms of switchboards without confusion so that each demand can be made sensitive to useful currents flowing in all the others. This describes the proper use of the whole brain-power for “free choice.”
7. Last, but most important is creative imagination, one of our higher faculties. Creative imagination involves putting into operation vast new assemblages of switchboards and “central stations” in the untapped storerooms of our minds, so that new circuits can learn to conduct merely as a result of the past experiences of other circuits.
2 Cowling, Donald J. & Davidson, Carter. Colleges for Freedom; a Study of Purposes, Practices and Needs. Harper & Brothers, 1947, OOP.
We can do this by seeking first the kingdom of heaven! Seeking first will work for us because the whole pattern of our abilities can be known only in the Divine Mind that created us. Mind knows. Mind moves in and does the work. “The Father who dwells in me, He does the works”–John 14:10. How does all this knowledge help me in conquering space, and what does it mean? Knowledge of the body and its inner space, will help to ascend the body as well as the soul. The body itself is of no use to us after our ascension, however we are responsible for redeeming, lifting and reintegrating all the life sparks of our soul substance; we must all do this sometime in some place.
The process of drawing in the life sparks to reintegrate them proceeds this way: We draw the soul substance from the physical cells to the desire body molecules. In turn, we draw the desire body molecules into the mental body atoms, and from the atoms to the electronic fire body, which is purely spiritual. Each level of these bodies has it own power stations: The physical body has twelve glands and plexus enters. The desire body has seven vital centers, which overlay seven physical centers. The mental body has forty-four lotus centers, which overlay all the important points in the physical. The fire body holds the sun centers. The higher spiritual bodies are supposed to be loose in the physical. When they are frozen in place, the silver cord contracts and the other vehicles can only float above the physical. When you are operating under the spiritual faculties of intuition and illumination, the bodies are loose and the silver cord is elastic and stretches. Earth-binding desires render the silver cord stiff and non-elastic.
The kundalini, as it is called in Eastern teachings, is the individual creative fire, which descends the spine to the first vital center at the sacrum plexus. From there, it rises through the second or splenic center to empower all the high centers. Everyone has misused the creative fire at some point, idle words being the most common. However, attempting to “kill” desires results in a frozen sacrum. We must then re-track the misused creative fire by “thawing” the frozen centers. Nearly every “system” of teachings on earth trains people to track the creative fire through the navel center, at the solar plexus. In some Eastern teachings you may be encouraged to “contemplate the navel.” Here they urge concentration to destroy the desire to possess things and people.
Concentrating at the navel center produces two negative results: First, it definitely freezes the creative fire in the lower three centers (sacrum, splenic and navel centers). Second, unless the soul is also trained in how close the vital centers to outside influence, an entity may enter through the navel, resulting in a case of possession. The heart chakra is the respiratory rate of balance between the three lower centers in what we call the Land of Egypt, and the three higher centers, in the Garden of Eden. The heart center itself lies within the area we call the Promised Land. The throat is the center of all “I, me” and “my,” which is how the impulsive appetitive soul as subconscious mind appropriates our speech faculty. The brow center is the point at which we must mate desire and will. The crown of the head is the center in which we open full intuition and illumination.
Each of these seven vital centers is ruled by an initiatory degree of ascension. In the first three Degrees, the devotees and adherents of the work and teachings of the White Brotherhood operate, and so do mediums and trance channels. Hunches and gut reactions come from there.
| Christos | Crown | ||
| Priest | Brow | ||
| Master | Throat | ||
| Mystic | Heart: Respiratory Rate of Balance | ||
| Adept | Navel | ||
| Disciple | Splenic | ||
| Neophyte | Sacrum | ||
The three higher Degrees of Master, Priest and Christos are the fields of operation of the mediator, prophet and seer. Only then can you step into the marvelous realm of becoming an oracle for God. From this you can so easily see that awakening your centers of Light and life as you ascend is critical to your life’s work.
Conquering Time outline
Edna Lister, October 22, 1957, Cleveland, OH
Space is absolute because it is am aspect of The One, but time is the appearance of relative sequentiality. Space is an aspect of the absolute as universal substance, the absolute substrate upon and through which relative time moves. Time is an action contained within space. The instant that time moves into action as sequance, the space it occupies becomes relative to the Godhead. God, as All That Is, is the only possible boundary of infinite space. The spatial boundaries of the universe contain all that is apparent to us in God’s Creation, all that we can measure or number, which includes time. This is why “timing” is so important, and why you must hold time as a sacred trust. Tempus vincit omnia—time really does conquer all things. You acknowledge this when you say, “Give it time to work out,” and Tempus omnia sanat, “Time heals all wounds.”
As a category on the outer, you use timing in the form of antecedence and sequence to relate events, which makes integration of all outer experiences possible. Time also expresses the law of mental synthesis. You bind and relate your different actions and experiences to time so that you can, by “contacting” one “time” in your memory bank, find your way to all other related “times.” Without timing, you could not operate your brain. Timing is the action-Power, which descends from above as intuition to touch the nerve ending cells into life. Only by “time-action” could you know “which” and “what” memories and knowledge you need to open and relate. Timing changes ideas from one memory sector to another. Timing adds new to the old and rearranges what you know. Your whole life depends on your timing. Everyone operates under this great principle and category of time.
Time appears as our relative idea of sequence is born in the intervals, long or short, between happenings we recognize as events. You know and recall experiences and knowledge by their timed record in memory. Events always seem to succeed each other in memory. From this arises the experience of “succession.” You are thus able to relate events in sequence as they happened, not in a scattered way. For example, someone who tells a story poorly, so that they must backtrack and add necessary details for it to make sense, is someone whose timing is “off”; you have heard people say, “He has poor timing.” When they say, “She has perfect timing,” you know that person has a good sense of time. A lack of orientation is the result of a failure to allow time to measure space. Extreme cases even find it difficult to use a map. Time is “real” here on the outer world of manifestation, although relative universally, where “All time is now.” We need periods, such as years, day and hours, to explain our experiences. Immanuel Kant’s Antinomy of Space and Time is good reading, although heavy.
The principle of number arises from your need for spacing, or sequencing time in your life. Counting involves the establishment of a unity. Units are determined by mind itself, using such expressions as: Time involved, space occupied, work done and temperature. Your use of temperature as unit includes measuring emotions, “boiling mad,” and “cold as ice.” A unit is the absolute form of an action or a position, since both space and time are involved. Number arises from the repetition of this act under a synthetic form of counting. This unfolds into a numerical series, expressed as for instance, powers, roots, logarithms, differentials, integrals, limits and rates.
Mind creates its own data, processes and problems, and tests them by its own insights. You have nerves which conduct signals of sensation to the brain. The senses have nothing to do with their production, and nothing to do with testing; only the nerves of space and action. Someone credited George Russell Harrison, Dean of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1942), with the statement, “Science is the systematic production and analysis of experience, using time and space. Science is a systematic search for truth.”
Timing is the action, the Power that descends from above as intuition, as said earlier. A scientist must be “intuitive” as well as “systematic.” Harrison, as a scientist, also said, “Intuition is the ability to integrate previous experience without detailed analysis, to produce new awareness.” He further said that what we commonly call “intuition” involves merely a mess of confused emotions (hunches, predictions and premonitions) and prejudices, with thought. “True intuition,” he said, “consists of that leap upward in the dark” (which we would call ascending into the Light), “with no solid ground underneath, in which you end up in perfect balance on your feet.”
The Five Categories of Soul Expression outline
Edna Lister, November 19, 1957, Cleveland, OH
On the Via Christa we study God as both principle and personality. Principle is “the absolute, unchangeable, undeviating, immutable foundation upon which all universes are based and established.” Principles begin as absolute and abstract qualities and aspects of the Godhead, such as omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence, which are then expressed as Wisdom, Love and the Logos, translated from the Greek as “Word.” Originally, in ancient Greek philosophy, the Logos was identified as “the reason that is the controlling principle in the universe; the divine wisdom manifest in the creation, government, and redemption of the world and often identified with the second person of the Trinity,” the first Begotten Son. Personality we define as “the personalization of the absolute abstract Light manifest as the All That Is; the supernal Light as Being, which we designate as God; the outer individualized expression of the indwelling living soul, an individuated manifestation of God as consciousness.” Beyond the physical body, the “personality” is all that the world can discern or “see” of the invisible soul, embodied though it is.
God, considered as abstract principle, is the universal Mind that thinks and plans, the Substance of which the universe and all things and beings in it are composed, and the Power that animates, motivates and enables all beings and processes to operate. We can observe the apparent operation of these principles through five main categories of expression, namely philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, science, and mysticism.
Philosophy [Greek φιλοσοφία, Latin philosophia] literally means “love of wisdom.” In modern usage, “philosophy is a general term denoting an explanation of the reasons of things; or an investigation of the causes of all phenomena both of mind and of matter. When applied to any particular department of knowledge, philosophy denotes the collection of general laws or principles under which all the subordinate phenomena or facts relating to that subject, are comprehended. Thus, that branch of philosophy which treats of God, etc., is called theology; that which treats of nature, is called physics or natural philosophy; that which treats of man is called logic and ethics, or moral philosophy; that which treats of the mind is called intellectual or mental philosophy or metaphysics. The objects of philosophy are to ascertain facts or truth, and the causes of things or their phenomena; to enlarge our views of God and His works, and to render our knowledge of both practically useful servants to human happiness. True religion and true philosophy must ultimately arrive at the same principle. Philosophy is an “hypothesis or system in which natural effects are explained; as reasoning; argumentation; and as a course of sciences read in the schools.”
Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom intellectually and through moral self-discipline; it is the investigation of the causes and laws underlying reality, and an inquiry into the nature of things based on logical reasoning rather than sensory-based methods. A philosophy is a system of motivating concepts or principles, the system of values by which you choose to live. Philosophy reveals God’s nature as principle, both absolute, the All That Is, and relative, all that physically appears or can be measured. In the study of principle, you must first postulate a Source from which all principles of being flow into existence. Nothing can exist on the periphery of creation that does not first exist as an Idea in its quintessential form at the Source. Thus, we may say that philosophy is all wisdom at the Source and all principle as Creation.
Metaphysics is “the science of the principles and causes of all things existing; hence, the science of mind or intelligence. This science comprehends ontology, or the science which treats of the nature, essence, and qualities or attributes of being; cosmology, the science of the world, which treats of the nature and laws of matter and of motion; anthroposophy, which treats of the power of man, and the motions by which life is produced; psychology, which treats of the intellectual soul; pneumatology, or the science of spirits or angels, etc.” “Metaphysical theology, called by Leibnitz and others theodicy, treats of the existence of God, his essence and attributes. These divisions of the science of metaphysics which prevailed in the ancient schools, are now not much regarded. The natural division of things that exist is into body and mind, things material and immaterial. The former belong to physics, and the latter to the science of metaphysics.”
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value. As the study of the science of being, metaphysics investigates that which lies just beyond your fingertips, just around the corner, just outside your field of view. Metaphysics restates the principles of philosophy and dilutes absolute principle into relative laws modified to meet man’s needs and intelligence. For example, a metaphysician would restate the philosophical statement, “God is All,” as, “God is everywhere evenly present and available.” Even orthodoxy admits that a mystical divine spark exists within everything.
Psychology [Psyche is Greek for “soul”] is the doctrine of the nature and properties of the soul. The term psychology means “the study of the soul,” but its modern definition has been degraded into nothing more than “the science that deals with mental processes and behavior; the emotional and behavioral characteristics of an individual, a group, or an activity.” Psychology is better defined as “the branch of metaphysics that studies the soul, the mind, and the relationship of life and mind to the functions of the body.” Thus, psychology studies the universal Mind of God as it operates in man.
Psychology further studies the personalization of God as man, functioning in three phases to suit man’s needs and requirements. As the phases of mind, we know them as the subconscious mind, conscious mind and super-conscious mind. As the phases of soul, we speak of them as the appetitive soul, the rational conscious soul, and the Oversoul. Because you are an individuated personalization of the Mind of God, you may remain in tune with that Mind and in harmony with the will of the Absolute, which creates perfect timing in your choices and life. It does no good to consider yourself as some broken-off fragment, for you are part of the whole of the All Good God.
All your interpersonal difficulties arise from misunderstandings and unmet expectations between and among personalities. To conquer these tendencies, you must lift the appetitive soul’s urges in desire and will to cleanse them of the thousands of negative impulses they can and will intrude into your consciousness. When you have disciplined and trained the appetitive soul, you will have freed it of past limitations and it shall be alive, alert, and aware to present you a thousand beauties instead.
Mysticism is “the doctrine of the Mystics, who profess a pure, sublime and perfect devotion, wholly disinterested, and maintain that they hold immediate intercourse with the divine Spirit.“ Mysticism is “the immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality or God, and the experience of such communion as described by mystics. A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience.”
Mysticism reveals God’s hidden nature as being personalizable as individual personalities, what we would call God the One expressing as God the Many. A mystic is one who communes with God directly, as the source of all personality. Thus, we say that God speaks as personality through personality to personality. You may contact God, personalized as the Father, the Mother, and as the Son, in no other way. Mysticism deals with that which is mysterious, unknown, obscure, invisible, and veiled from mortal eyes.
Science, which deals only with the physical universe, is utterly and completely materialistic, and is therefore unable to “prove” the mystical truths of the eternal reality perceptible only by the mind as personal experiences and observations of the soul; science regards all this as illusion or delusion. All your difficulties in life stem from your incomprehension of the full relationships you have with God, with your own soul, and with your fellow man, each expressing through soul as personality.
Science (Latin scientia, from scio, to know) is knowledge, or certain knowledge; the comprehension or understanding of truth or facts by the mind. In philosophy, science is “a collection of the general principles or truths relating to any subject. Pure science as mathematics, is built on self-evident truths; but the term science is also applied to other subjects founded on generally acknowledged truths, such as metaphysics; or on experiment and observation, such as chemistry and natural philosophy; or even to an assemblage of the general principles of an art, such as the science of agriculture or of navigation.” However, the science of God must be perfect. Science is one of the seven liberal branches of knowledge—grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.
Since the Age of Reason, the so-called “Enlightenment” (the 18th century in England and France), the definition of “science” has changed drastically to mean “the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena; methodological activity, discipline, or study; knowledge, especially that gained through experience.” Science relates to outer physical facts, principles, and laws that are subject to demonstrable physical proof through the five outer physical senses. Simply stated, science can prove itself by physical measurements based in the senses of touch, feeling, seeing and hearing, etc.
These categories of soul expression describe ways by which you may understand how you use or invest soul substance, wisely or unwisely. Psychology and metaphysics teach you to conquer the devils of self, not just to control self. The devils of self include all afflictions of the subconscious mind, including impressions, repression, suppression, complexes, illusions, delusions, hallucination and obsession.
Metaphysicians call such mental-emotional demons products of the little self, the creature soul portion of soul. Psychologists call this the subconscious mind, which they might also refer to as the storage bin of illusions and delusions. Only your self-created demons can bedevil you. These include the dweller on the threshold of consciousness, the aggregate substance of your past negative thoughts, words, emotions and actions. Lifting all self-created messes is part of your responsibility in earth life. Lifting is declaring a person or situation good, imagining the subject on a cloud continent of Light, perfect before God. You are personally responsible to declare that what comes to you is good and very good, opening the way for God to move in and make it so.
The Five Categories of Soul Expression transcript
Edna Lister, Ruth Johnson, scribe, November 19, 1957, Cleveland, OH
Except for purely physiological phenomena, you may categorize everything that happens, everything you experience in daily living under one of these five headings—psychology, metaphysics, science, philosophy, or mysticism. You must train yourself in your thinking and reading to fit what you learn and experience into one of these categories. By doing so, you open whole new memmory storage areas in the brain, one for each category. This topic, the five categories of expression, is a challenge to open new brain cells. The basis of eternal youth for the body begins in the mind as a rather “mechanical” mental process of continually expanding your brain activity by opening your mind to new ideas and limbering your thinking in an emotional climate of enthusiasm, joy, and fervency.
Start from this premise: You can answer any question and understand any process if you know where God is. If you extend your mental antennae arising from the nerves your brain, then look up and ponder, Divine Mind will answer you. However, unkess you can fit everything into these categories of expression, you will remain limited in your ability to organize your studies and the results of your speculation as you live life, regardless of whether you choose to travel the Via Christa.
Mysticism is belief in the possibility of union with divine nature, trust in spiritual intuition as a means of acquiring knowledge of mysteries inaccessible to intellectual apprehension. To us, mysticism is the study of God as personality. Mysticism is that which is mysterious, obscure, unknown, veiled, hidden, unprovable by general science but revealed by personal experience and observation. A mystic is one who communicates with God directly, with God as personality, for God is the Source of all personality. All your difficulties in life are traceable to your relationship with God and your fellow man through personality. Mysticism is the study of God’s personality. Mysticism also deals with Heaven as a place. You can and probably do go there to classes every night. You have photographic memory cells that are always ready for you to open and use. They record everything that happens on the inner amd outer, and can bring the pictures to us here, later unfolding the memory cells of all we have seen and learned over there. This is one important form of mystical revelation.
Philosophy consists of an entirely different approach to God. Instead of dealing directly with God as Personality, we are dealing with God as Principle. Imagination and photographic memory cells may open the shutter, but cannot be used in the study of God as Principle. Rather, you must postulate a Source and proceed with the tools of logic, reason, discernment discrimination, and discretion insofar as you can apply them for balance, for Philosophy is the study of the Wisdom of God. Principle is the absolute, universal, unchangeable, undeviating, immutable foundation upon which all universes are based and established. Philosophy is all Wisdom at the Source and all principle as creation. It is the love of Wisdom and the study of abstract principles. Philosophy is the love, study, or pursuit of wisdom or of knowledge of things and their causes, whether theoretical or practical; it is the study of all Wisdom at the Source and of all principle as God’s Creation.
Science includes those branches of study relating to the phenomena of the physical universe and its laws, a connected body of demonstrated truths with observed facts systematically classified under general laws; the study of relative, modified principles which can be proven through physical measurements and through physical senses. Science is knowledge for its own sake. It is the study of the exact nature of things and their operation. It can prove itself by physical measurements and through the physical senses.
Metaphysics, from the Greek meta ta phusikais, is the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space; theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of being and knowing; principle modified into livable laws and statements of truth suitable for finite consciousness. Metaphysics studies the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, and potentiality and actuality. Metaphysics means “beyond that which is measurable” and is concerned with the investigation of what lies just beyond the fingertips. That which we see with higher vision is there, in the air, but cannot be proven to the satisfaction of science. That is where metaphysics begins. We can see the results of cosmic-ray-healing prayer, for example, but its action is metaphysical.
Metaphysics studies the science of being. Metaphysics establishes principles of philosophy as axioms or statements of Being, and in restating then, modifies them into laws that suit the intelligence of man. For example, to convert the philosophic principle, “Reality is all truth,” into a metaphysical healing statement for the one who is ill, it must become “God-substance is truth, which enters in and heals.” “Faith manifests through truth.” The Master based all his statements of truth on these five categories of soul expression.
Psychology is the science of the nature, functions and phenomena of the human soul or mind; mystically, the personality of God expressing as man, and the Mind of God functioning as man in three phases subconscious, conscious and super-conscious. Psychology is concerned with the universal Mind of God in man, as man, and with the Personality of God as the personality of man. These are statements of principle, therefore philosophic statements: Man is both personality and principle even as God is. Yet we are more than just broken-off pieces of God, lost and lonely. We are conquerors of the self through the strength of Christ Jesus, our Lord. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”—Philippians 2:5. “We have the mind of Christ.”—1 Corinthians 2:16.
In psychology, the Personality and Mind of God are separated in expression. The soul, in an ascending consciousness, expresses as the appetitive soul (subconscious mind), the rational soul (conscious mind), and the Oversoul (super-conscious mind). The Holy Spirit is the overall divine Personality, embodied in the Son.
In the creature state of instinctive intelligence, under psychology, we classify impressions, both pre-natal and post-natal; repression; suppression; complexes; illusions; delusions; hallucinations; obsessions and possessions. A repression is like putting a lid on a pot of boiling water. As the lid represses the steam, a repression can become a suppression, and a suppression, buried deeply in the subconscious mind, can become a complex with its cause unknown. Every repression carries the potential for explosion. Illusions are imaginary, but seem real to the one who is experiencing them. When you see something that is not there, you are experiencing a delusion. A hallucination is similar to an illusion, but is based on fact. Some idea or experience hidden in the subconscious creates the hallucination. An obsession is a fixation.
Triumphant You! outline
Edna Lister, November 25, 1957, Prayer Circle, Washington, D.C., Romans 13:10
“Love does no harm to a neighbor: therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”–Romans 13:10. God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. God is deathless, ageless, and abiding. These statements set a keynote vibration for life, and to them, we add, “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” Your capacity for comprehending these three statements determines your capacity for life. What do they mean to you?
First, How long do you want to live? How old is God? Do you let love fulfill the law, or do you want law to fill love? Your life’s whole pattern depends on your answers. The physical body you occupy is new today, not the same as it was a year ago. Do you really know and remember this? Your body recreates every cell, according to science. Yet you either rebuild it anew, or according to the same old pattern. God has made you in His image and likeness, which is eternally self-renewing. But do you hang onto yesterday’s old habits and today’s patterns forever? The forever pattern you choose depends on your idea of God’s age. If He is deathless, ageless, and abiding, this pattern is yours now.
Love fulfills the law, but do you love God enough? You cannot get hot about God as principle, but just worship and obey. God as personality is different, and can excite the rapture of love. You may choose to have love burst as a flame and a glory within you now. Do you live by little me-made laws, and want them to fulfill love, or by the laws of I AM consciousness? Who is taking you where, I AM or little me? Is your love of God greater now than it was a week ago? Why not? The River of Life is always flowing Home. The nearer the Source it draws you, the greater the love flowing through you, and you are walking in it. Since greater love must fill you to revitalize you, you must love more.
Three imperative soul faculties—discrimination, discretion and discernment—form laws that you must follow. To graduate in rank, Boy Scouts must take an observation test, and their survival skills depend on how well they observe their surroundings. Discrimination is the art of observation, raised to its highest pinnacle of perfection. Discrimination is a fine sense of timing, through love enough, which is the timing of the universe. Discretion is the highest art of diplomacy. Without a fine sense of discretion, which is based in the timing of love, you have no diplomacy or tact. Discernment is the high art of keenness in perceiving the whole inner and outer picture at once, now.
How do discrimination, discretion and discernment concern you as a triumphant soul? These three faculties can and do make your relationships with others a triumph. Add honor to God above all else, and loyalty to principle. The mating of high honor and loyalty produce the firstborn offspring, integrity of heart, mind and purpose. Consideration then operates as integrity in action. When love times your use of discrimination, discretion and discernment, it fulfills the law of your choice to overflowing. Your creations become visible with condensed love substance. With such love, you, the triumphant soul you are, do the greater works. Your new pattern of life appears as a youthful body, and success!
You have ascended to the House of the Lord, deathless, ageless, abiding, the secret place of the Most High. In this place, God has prepared a table for you in the midst of your loved ones. You are becoming triumphant!
A “Great Woman” transcript
Edna Lister, Ruth Johnson, scribe, December 1, 1957, Cleveland, OH
This is the story of a woman who was called “great.” We know her by no other name than the “Shunammite woman,” so called because she lived in Shunem, a village in one of the most fertile and picturesque places in Palestine. She may have been called great because she was wealthy and influential, but she was great in other ways also, in her faith, her wisdom, her silence and her calm poise. It is quite evident she also bestowed kindness upon rich and poor alike. All of which make her an example of victorious living.
Elisha the prophet often walked by her home in his travels. She had no doubt heard of him upon whom Elijah’s mantle had fallen, and who was called a man of God because of his good works and the miracles he had wrought. She was particularly receptive to God’s word and these things caused her to wonder. One day the Shunammite woman shared bread with Elisha and after that he often stopped at her home when he went that way. Finally she said to her husband, “Behold now, I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually. Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall; and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick: and it shall be, when he cometh to us, that he shall turn in thither.” This upper room was reached by an outer stairway from the garden. As it was cool, quiet and private, it became the prophet’s favorite retreat when he visited the nearby town. How generous and thoughtful she was, and we can imagine that she always kept it ready for him, and with refreshments—honey and fruit—after she served him fish, milk and bread from her own supply.
Elisha enjoyed the homely comforts and he liked people. This family was blessed to have as their guest the prophet who was known for his work all over the northern kingdom. There seemed no way by which Elisha could recompense the great lady of Shunem. However he questioned Gehazi, his servant, who reminded him that this lady had no children. Elisha thought of Rebekah, Sarah and Rachel. He bade Gehazi to “call her” and as she stood in the doorway of his chamber, Elisha told her that by this time next year, she would embrace a son. She could scarcely comprehend what she had been told. But as next spring came, Elisha’s prophecy came true. She bore a son. Imagine the parents’ joy and love for this unexpected blessing! It must have increased their faith and adoration of God.
Several years passed, the boy grew up and one day went out among the reapers with his father. It was the harvest season and the whole valley around the village was like furnace in the intense heat. Not a breath of air was stirring. They boy had not been in the heat of the sun long when he complained to his father about his head and the father sent him by a servant to his mother. She held him in her arms but he continually grew worse and died of sunstroke.
Now was a time of great testing for this mother confronted with the death of her only son. Her trust in God became supreme. Being a woman of action, she did not hesitate. Governed by powerful faith, she knew what must be done. She carried her son up the outside stairway entered the prophet’s chamber and placed his lifeless body upon the bed. She uttered no word of complaint, no loud wailing. She keep her silence until she could go to the prophet. She remembered the story of how Elijah had raised the son of the widow of Zarephath from the dead. She believed such a miracle could be wrought for her son. So great was her faith, she did not once say, “My son is dead.” She hurried up the steep slope of Mt. Carmel where Elisha was in retreat. She said nothing, but driving forward in her faith, she never faltered or doubted.
When she reached Elisha he asked, “Is it well with thee, with thy husband and with thy son?” Her great trust and confidence in God’s power to heal found expression in her calm answer, “It is well.” In humility and in reverence she knelt and touched Elisha’s feet in an attitude of supplication and appeal. He sensed her need for him and said, “Her soul is vexed within her and the Lord hath not told me.” Still her only answer was, “Did I desire a son of my lord? Did I not say, “do not deliver me?”
He understood the seriousness of the situation and sent his servant to take his staff and go the child. With determination and a decision made with strong purpose to the woman further implored him, “As the Lord liveth and as the soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” Elisha arose and followed her. The servant had placed the staff on the boy, but it had brought no sign of life. Elisha came, entered the room alone and prayed to God in faith, knowing. He then stretched himself upon the child until the boy’s flesh grew warm, and he responded—he sneezed seven times and opened his eyes. Elisha then sent for the mother. Seeing that her son breathed, smiled, and stretched out his arms to her, the Shunammite woman fell at Elisha’s feet bowing in silent gratitude that her son lived again! As Elisha directed, she and her son returned to their house. Imagine her joy and thanksgiving this gift of life!
What a wonderful example of spiritual victory God had given to this woman of faith. Later when famine was spreading across the country, God again showed her favor. Elisha warned the Shunammite woman and her son to go to the land of the Philistines to escape the approaching famine. She quickly did so without looking back to her possessions and the comforts she was leaving behind. She “let go” of yesterday, accepted the opportunity of the “NOW” in the spirit of perfect obedience, and pressed on with her son into the land of the Philistines.
After seven years, she returned to find that her house and land had been confiscated. Again she held her silence—with no hesitation or delay she proceeded to do the next thing next: She went in person before the King. Elisha’s servant had preceded her and told the king how the prophet had restored her son to life. The King ordered that what was hers be restored to her. She was in the right place at the right time having followed her soul’s direction; so her faith and timely action again were richly rewarded.
From the beginning, this woman’s life is an example of victorious living. Her serenity in the moment of trial, her firmness in affliction and her unselfish endurance won her a well-deserved place in history as a great woman. Her answer in all times of anxiety and anguish was, “It is well.” In the gallery of heroic Bible women she is a perfect example of a positive faith. This woman let no negative ideas worry her because she had sublime confidence in the power of God to fill her every need. As she did, so let us keep our thinking positive. our courage strong, unwavering, and our faith unconquerable. Entertain no doubt! Never give up!
Ontology: The Theory of Being outline
Edna Lister, December 3, 1957, Cleveland, OH
Coming soon.
Progression: Categories of Being outline
Edna Lister, December 10, 1957, Cleveland, OH
Coming soon.
The Wheels of Ezekiel
Edna Lister transcript, Margaret Pratt Doan, Ruth Johnson, Ross Whitehead, scribes, December 17, 1957, Cleveland, OH
Coming soon.
Edna Miriam Lister
1884–1971
The original Christian Pioneering Mystic,
Platonist philosopher, American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother.
References
Rivière, Briton (1840–1920). Daniel in the Lion’s Den, 1872; oil on canvas; H 98.5 x W 152.5 cm. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England.
The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).