From Father Paul
This Holy Season Class in January 1974
This morning I want to go into some things related to this season of the year. I want to get to you brothers and sisters about the reality of our Lord at this time of year. There’s one thing I notice that you do not seem to feel. You have many things that function differently at this time. There are many of you had certain things in your life and in your personality clean up and you’ve gotten some things out of maybe the past of your experience, to release yourself from them. But there is that other thing that is taking place that you’re not fully conscious of, and that is the fact that while you look at a Christmas card and say, “Ah, yes, this is the birthday of Jesus on Christmas. This is what we’re commemorating.” But you do not realize the reality that this has actually happened, that Jesus was born again this year. Because that symbol of Jesus’ birth is not just a symbol. It is not just a thing that says on this date we are going to celebrate a memoriam, so to speak, like the passing of an individual into the other world.
No, we are celebrating a birth, because as he goes through each cycle of the twelve signs of the zodiac, of the twelve months into a new year, there is a distinct change. And the Jesus that you knew last year is not the Jesus that you know this year. Just look around yourself, amongst you, and see how many of those that are the same people that they were last year. Now this sounds strange to you, probably, but this is the truth. And this is why many of us who have gone a little deeper into things at this time of year and at the approach of the deeper realities of this universe and this orb, that we start to take on the sadness, the reality of the human race. To see their errors, to see the things which they have not done and the things they should have done. To realize what Jesus is about to do when he goes through the crucifixion again. Because that’s part of his memory too, and he will experience it.
If you have memory of any initiation that you have gone through you are never going to forget it, because if you do, it is not real. And as we approach these days of the crucifixion, there is a realization of the gifts that our Lord has left for us. And then there is that time between the crucifixion and the resurrection, that holy week when nothing seems to happen, when there is almost an appearance that the spirit has stopped functioning. It is as if the great Host stood in abeyance. Will he go through the crucifixion again this year? Will we gain for this year the atonement? For we gain and we sit and then we look within ourselves, we look within the cosmos and we see the greatness, the true greatness of the gift that he left with us. And this is the time of true retrospection; this is the time when we prepare for true rebirth. This is the time when every brother and sister should prepare themselves for the resurrection, and truly be born again into the life of Christ even greater than they were before. That they should really experience once again a true birth, to see the glories of the cosmos unfold. To really see that they are reborn, really know that they are reborn. Not just a nice tale, a story or a thankfulness for what he did then, but what he is doing now.
This may be a little bit hard for you to understand, but what he is doing now, this is the important thing. Men teach and write great books about the body of Christ, but the experience of this, Christ Jesus, the experience of this is what really does the job.
The other night, I presume it was something of imagination maybe, I was retiring and I looked up at the Master’s picture and I said, “Yes, I don’t have to ask, be with me as I leave, because I know you are everywhere.” And right at that moment there was great peace come across the void, so to speak, and really filled the room, the chapel. If I had felt separation between myself and our Lord, that peace could not have existed, because if you have to go from here to there, you are not there at all. It isn’t until we become a part and parcel of the crucifixion and the resurrection that we can truly know and understand the mystics of old and their work, the way they spoke of it and universal initiation. [Note by Mother Ruth: this was spoken three months before his passing.]
For every man, no matter who he is and what church he’s in, what order he’s in, what he believes or what he doesn’t believe, he is going to go through the crucifixion at some time, really. Not a wooden cross, but believe me, you can go through the crucifixion in everyday life. But when you do go through it there it is almost worse than hanging on a cross. And it will happen. Many of you have had your mothers and fathers and your friends turn against you. A number of you have been actually thrown out of the house, I know that, your home. You’ve been turned down on many things in the way of school and job and all that sort of thing, and then you wound up here. Well, what do you think that was? Why could you not have the friendship of family that understood you? I have seen men go from wealth to total poverty during that time. It was the crucifixion that was taking place. And then you came to the place where new life was and you experienced the resurrection. For you had died, many of you had, with all sorts of things. You were as far dead as a person could get, and still have life. You see, there is a reality and that reality is something you cannot escape, and you must experience these things.
Now, if you really want to try-not try, but really do it, really experience it-meditate with the Master. Don’t set there and say, “Now, I’m going to meditate on Jesus,” and fold your hands or put your hands on the arm of the chair, or you get on your knees in front of the altar and say, “I’m going to meditate on Jesus.” Oh, pshaw. Reach out your arms as if you were reaching toward a very fine young lady or your mother or somebody. Reach up, throw yourself out, get away from yourself and what you think you’re going to do, because you’re not going to go and do it that way at all, never in the world. Let yourself go out. This is your last moment. There is just one hope and that’s him. Otherwise it is death. This is the way you reach Jesus Christ, and you’ll never reach him any other way. Until you know, until you are sure that Jesus is the only one that can bring you to the Father and that this is your only one that can bring you to the Father and that this is your only hope. That all the mental thinking and concentration and all the other things are merely extra tools for other things, but in this they can do nothing. “Jesus, accept me, let the power of the spirit come down upon me and give me new life.” For all your mentality and your mentalism, and all the beautiful thoughts that you can think is not going to do it. You have got to give yourself up. It has got to be a last ditch stand as if you were over in the prison, and that they were going to pull a switch and he was the only one that would give you the reprieve. That’s where it is and that’s what it is. It is a reprieve, and anything short of that is just a mental idea that you have created. A mental idea that you still want to do it yourself. You can’t do it. It won’t work. You can sit and issue all the prayers for hours, and all the work, the beautiful things that you want to say, and it isn’t going to do it, not a bit. Until you make that appeal for that last-ditch hope, you will not reach him, because you still, until you can do that, you still have your thing going. You still are doing it yourself. And that is not it, and you cannot experience the crucifixion until you are with him, truly. Now let us get away from the mentalism and get down to the basic realities.
After you’ve made it, after you are with him, then these other things have their place, and you see it. But until you are with him and can feel some of the things that he felt, that you can share some of the sorrow that he felt, until you can feel some of the glory and joy that he felt in the resurrection-and there is joy even in the crucifixion. This is something you wouldn’t quite understand, but that’s where it is. And in this holy season this is what we should strive to attain. And I often think, as I see someone trying to contact the Master, what he said. This is the secret of it: “Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?” His appeal. He wanted to make that move forward, that reaching out into the other world where his Father was. So he had to make the void between him and his Father before he could follow that path of Ascension.
Now let’s during this Easter season, this holy season, let’s put this to work and prepare ourselves for the days that are universally accepted. It doesn’t make any difference, maybe the man had made a mistake with the calendar, or one thing or another. That won’t make any difference. This symbol is there just the same and there’s just as much reality to it as if we had turned the clock back two thousand years, even if you were right there on Calvary; it’s just as real. It is happening, and this earth itself is going through and will go through a resurrection on those days, and the crucifixion. Because it will come to its illumination. This living body within our Lord Jesus Christ, every cell of its moving reality. This is the time to begin to work as people, not as mystics, occultists or anything else, but under the true ancient faith of the way of creation, to work hand in hand with Jesus Christ, to reach the great Christos above.
There is the Way. He said, “I am the Way,” and he meant that. This was not meaning that we should follow what he did. That wasn’t what he was talking about when he made that statement. He meant he had traveled this path before, and this was the path he was traveling again to leave a track, a track where the sign posts were on it, this way into the other world, into the other place, into the higher realms, if you wish. But by him passing this way he had left it open for us to follow. So if we did the things that he said, we would be able to travel that same Way that he did, because he had paid the price for it. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” And just because you have had a flicker of light when you went through illumination, that isn’t the whole bag of wax, believe me. That’s just the beginning. That is just the beginning. Follow ye him. God bless you.