From Father Paul: class on the Tree of Life
January 1971
… Now, it’s time we get down to the basis of these things. Learn the details here and start to put them to work in your life. And I don’t mean just on Sundays, but boom-boom-boom-boom right down the line. This is a seven-day-a-week job. And don’t you ever think it don’t take seven days to do it, in each incident. That’s right.
The Light, Life and Love, the three “L’s”, are the way in which the Christ brings Life, growth and development, and it is also the thing that – if you were to look at this (on the chart), Epigensis or Grace, that is what helps to bring this on. Because the growth, it has to be substantiated by the Life and the Light within which we live.
The average individual has a great desire for Life. They have a great desire for spirituality and, of course, most of that desire comes from within themselves and the attraction that the Self has for the Father, within which it is, it lives and has its being. But most people are not informed—and have not been informed that true Life, as a Christian, means that you live as close as you can – now get that word straightened out in your mind – as close as you can to these three principles of the Christ; and you absorb it, and you live with it and you work with it, as close as you can. And of course that may not be very close, from the ultimate reality, but it will be an outstanding and outshining example of Christianity, if you do just that. As close as you can at the present time.
And don’t try to condemn yourself for making mistakes, because the only real mistake you can ever make is if you stop trying and don’t pick yourself up the next day and say, “Well, I did it yesterday but, h’m, I’m going on today.” That’s the greatest mistake that man ever makes. It is one of the oldest sayings in the ancient schools that man’s greatest mistake was not what he actually did that was wrong, but he didn’t pick himself up the next day and try again. Not trying is man’s greatest sin. And this is not a pacifier by any means, but an absolute truth that was taught in most all the great schools.
We have exactly the same thing here, and we show as we go along through the Tree of Life: Light, which goes and strengthens the spiritual body; Life, which works through the soul, and Love, which works through the flesh body of man, not only in his relationship with man and woman, but also in his relationship to the ultimate of the Self and the gaining of the Illumination on the Way, as Jesus said. These three bodies are as existing fact, very simple, there’s nothing so unusual, there’s nothing so mysterious about any of them. There’s many people here in this room whom I know have seen the Self and the soul and demonstrated it, and are able to work with it. There’s a lot – wish there were a lot more. And maybe one of these days we’ll get down to that too, I hope.
The spiritual body is not some sort of a mythical image or something, but is a reality… The soul and the soul body or Self which is around the Self is an existent fact and we don’t have to prove that because so many have seen it. The flesh body we looked at, and we think we know, but actually know very little about that because that can be changed, and you can’t change the spiritual body, and you can only improve the soul. So, it winds up with the understanding of this as the understanding of the outer body of man in the physical world so that he becomes master of that and is able to work with it and live happily with it regardless of what he thinks about it now.
The symbolism that I spoke about yesterday and showed the symbolism of the physical body – I want to show (pause, drawing on a blackboard) Ah, this is not Atlas, it was though, the image of a man, just the outline. This fellow was a weight-lifter (laughter) This spinal cord here and the branches from it, and the main branches of the body, which is the arms and the legs, and the whole telephone system that is represented within the physical body itself. It is a pretty wonderful thing to be able to realize that we can control any part of this body anywhere, at any time we want to, if we know how to use it, know how to use the energy and the power. You can cut it off or you can clear it up. You can clean it out, and you could even isolate it so they could take a piece of skin off your leg, or instance, and it would not have fazed you at all, and you would not suffer.
…I’m not talking about phenomena. I’m just talking about plain ordinary control of the physical body that will help you to bring you to the point where you can truly find the illumination of Christ and you can truly find the Self, and the door can be opened and the veil removed. This is a factual thing, not some Grecian myth, by any means. These are the things which we need to know and which the world is crying for today, and in their ignorance some of them are suffering terrific pain, not only physically but mental. This is what we’re here for, to serve man so that they too can know and help those on the street, and help those anywhere, no matter where it is. To go where we are needed, when we are needed – not when we’re ready to go, but when we are needed; and this is our striving here in this Order. Is there any question? Yes
Student: What’s an altar call?
Father Paul: Well, an alter call is when the good parson gets up and preaches a good live, fiery sermon of – probably hell-fire and damnation out of Isaiah or some other book of the Testament, and he says, “Now, my good friends, it’s time you got to the point where you love Jesus and you gave your life to Jesus. And we’re going to have the altar call and I want you to come up, all up here that want to give their life to Jesus, and kneel here, and we’ll bless you, and we’ll start you on the Way.” And then they’ll start to sing some songs and- to get themselves in the spirit of things. And they will, some of them, come forward and publically make a confession of their sins, so to speak, so they would put it. And this is a true thing that has been practiced for many years.
Public admittance of your errors or sins, or whatever you want to call them, was practiced by some of the ancients too, and it was part of the daily routine of some of the ancient mystic Orders in their retrospection, to acclaim their errors daily, to disperse of them and so forth. So it’s not exactly new. It’s a revised form, you might say, and some things added. Like many things. That’s the altar call, when they invite you to the altar.