Truth of Life, Love, Liberty

Truth of Life, Love, Liberty

Mary C. Ferriter

Contents

INTRODUCTION

It is in response to the earnest desire often expressed by both teachers and students that this little text book is put out. In my own school of New Thought I myself have often in the last five years felt the need of a text book touching on these sub­jects that I could place in the hands of my students, and finally the need grew so urgent that I prepared these lessons. The sub­ject matter naturally falls into three parts. At the root of one’s search for Truth, Philosophy comes first.

Philosophy furnishes us with something like a creed and helps us to determine what it is that we believe, to really be the princi­ple of life. Any belief that is worthy of the name of religion recognizes a principle from which the Divine order eminates, a principle powerful enough to change chaos into the orderly uni­verse. In part I will be found such matter as should help the student to a working philosophy, a foundation upon which to build his life, and a fundamental knowledge upon which his work can be based.

In Part II is taken up the study of Metaphysics, here we are dealing with the science of the real as distinguished from the phenomenal being. There is always a correspondence between the laws of phenomena and the various planes of Being and Life. Formed and formless, As above so below, is one of the oldest principles of Metaphysics, the truth that will lead you into uni­versal consciousness. The purpose of this work is not the enun­ciation of any special philosophy of doctrine, but rather to give the student a statement of Truth, a foundation. Having built upon the foundation provided in the philosophical teachings con­tained in Part I, the student, if he has builded well, will be un­obstructed by any prejudice of superstition. He can look beyond the phenomenal world and will see the real, the orderly universe, which is fashioned according to God’s great plan. He will see his own place in that universe with a clear understanding of his relationship to God and to man.

The study of Metaphysics leads to a better knowledge of man, a more intimate knowledge of God. Once we truly know our relationship to our brother, we shall better serve both him and ourselves, and once we realize that the highest worship to God is service to man, our worship will be finer, truer, more sincere.

Part III is devoted to Psychology. The science of the power and functions of the human soul leads us naturally back to the practical wisdom of Philosophy. Once we have a clear outlook on life and a measure of understanding regarding the laws that govern the universe, it is time to bring that outlook to bear on our life problems, to bring that understanding into practice and apply it in everyday life; and I have tried to make the lessons on psychology of breathing, eating, exercise, etc,, as practical and simple as possible.

As more sorrow and suffering comes from man’s ignorance of the laws of life—the laws of involving sex—than of almost anything else, I have devoted one chapter to that subject; not that all which should be said on that subject can be crowded in that short space, but if in the minds of even a few shall be estab­lished a realization that sex, in its purity, is as clean and fine a thing on the physical plane as gender is on the mental and spirit­ual planes, I shall be satisfied.

Perhaps there is little strictly original in this text book; rather, it is matter condensed and presented in a fresh way, but

hope in a way which will meet the needs of the progressing student of life.

Old methods have grown stale, old formulas have lost their virtue in the march of human progress. The old worn-out creeds and tasteless practices have but little that is stimulating to the swiftly changing consciousness of the age; we must have new methods to fit this consciousness that is so rapidly unfolding. Each day, each minute, almost, brings an altered viewpoint as we progress in understanding, even our daily modes of living must needs undergo some change. Fundamentals will ever remain the same, since Truth never changes; I have here to acknowledge in all gratitude my indebtedness to the older teachings and the older teachers, many of whom have had me for a pupil.

And this book in its concise form contain much that reflects the teachings of these modern masters that are awakening a new consciousness in the minds of the people. What I have gathered from their books and lectures and personal training has enabled me to gather all loose ends of faith together and bind them into one strong cord of Truth; and it is my duty and greatest pleasure here to acknowledge my indebtedness. In this little work I have endeavored to pass them on to you, and may it carry some message of Truth to each one that opens its pages.

MARY C. FERRITER.

Berkeley, California, 1922.

Part One

CHAPTER I

THE NEW IDEA OF GOD

The New World movement, of which these lessons teach, is a progressive idealism. It believes in all religions and is itself a blending into one grand symphony of all great spiritual truths. You can take the fundamentals of this teaching into your own church and the better understand your own religion, and the study will make you see how you may create your own destiny and control your own life, for to have understanding is to have power and dominion—that dominion which in the beginning God ordained that man should have over all things. If we have failed in that dominion it is because we have failed in under­standing.

The individual, in order to be thoroughly satisfied with his life, his religion, himself, must have a tangible life philosophy, something understandable for a working basis. In the past we have been called on to have faith, and with the blind faith required of us we came through the childhood of the race; today we find the modern practitioners quite ignorant compared to the old masters, from the reason they lack the fundamental knowl­edge upon which the work is based.

Today, to be a success, we must have a working faith and an understanding of the things in which we believe, and that understanding we may acquire through a study of these lessons.

Every religion has been built upon man’s idea of God. It is man’s highest ideal of God and his relation to God which builds his religion; his highest ideal of life build his civilization, and both bring him back and bind him to the very center of his own consciousness. As man’s consciousness has unfolded his ideals have progressed, and as they have progressed, old civilization and old religions have gone down and new have come in their place. This is the natural law of spiritual growth.

Every religion agrees on Deity, the one first cause, the princi­ple back of all, above all, the Creator of all—the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent source of all. This has been the message of every great Master, although, in the childhood of the race, man was able to perceive God only as God was represented in form; so we have had many gods and gods in many forms— gods made to represent Deity and symbolic of the different aspects in which Divinity unfolds. But we have come to the end of the old dispensation; our childhood has passed; we must now touch life at a higher level of consciousness, and in order to do so, we must have a new idea of God, a new idea of ourselves, and a new idea of life.

First, what is God? God is All. Projecting from himself his consciousness, from it he has created all that ever was created. Each spark of God consciousness in the universe is a creative center. In the beginning, this All, the trinity of Life, Love and Unity, rayed out as mind, breath and substance. The Universe is mental, rooted and grounded in the AH.

Out of omnipresent substance was man created, and in it he lives and moves and has his being. This substance consists of earth, air, fire and water, controlled by currents—the east and the west the current of fire and air, the north and the south the current of earth and water. The east and west current is electri­cal, positive; it burns and destroys. The north and south cur­rent is magnetic; it builds and preserves. Where the currents came together—the positive and negative, the electric and mag­netic—they perpetuate the life substance of the planet; and both are good. It is the working of the law of polarity. And this substance is God substance.

There is only one thing in existence and that is God—God the Spirit, and God Manifest. His triple power is the power to create, the power to preserve and the power to destroy, and his power is exercised by the use of intelligence, force and sub­stance. In the oldest of occult records, The Secret Doctrine, we find written out the Akashi records of Genesis, and there learn that the solar system has spirit life which unfolds through cosmic law into a triple aspect of Divinity, the power that creates, preserves and destroys. The One forms the three and its essence is Divine mind. In the One are Omnipotence, Omnipresence and Omniscience united. The all-embracing consciousness is not divided into three; rather, it ensouls them, unites them. In past ages this One was called the Logos (Greek for word); and man is this three in One, for the powers of God are centered in him, and when he learns that truth, he is illuminated. Everything in the universe is in constant motion, {vibration). All the various manifestations of life are due to the varying rates of intelli­gence.

In considering the power to create, we go back to the begin­ning, when the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. There we have motion—force. And when He said, Let there be light, he gave expression to thought (intelligence). Following these two actions there was light—the great white light; and from it spread a halo of consciousness, in colors, called the Elohim, or the seven spirits around the throne. Our universe was created under the law of seven. In seven days, or ages, God created it and rested. Life itself manifests in seven things and only seven. Later in the lessons we will take these things up, one by one, and discuss them fully. The law of involution and evolution is a law of rhythm; we come into a life of action and go back into a life of rest, repeating the experience until we are masters. And for your comfort you may remember that an experience once mastered never faces you again.

In the beginning were the days, ages, or generations, of crea­tion—the ‘imaging in the consciousness of God; then followed formation, which took place during the seven days, through the power of the seven rays, or Elohim; thus did the conscious images of God take form, by means of motion and intelligence working on substance. The law of polar opposites (the law of creation, the law of love) was established when God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. Thus was substance divided into two great currents, and the heavens became the electric and the dry land which appeared was the magnetic; and it was Mother Earth which brought forth life; and every living thing yielded fruit after its kind. When God divided the dark­ness from the light, the morning from the evening, and the waters above from the waters below, he established the law of Polarity, and he made the sun and moon as symbols of that law—the one to rule the day and the other to rule the night. The stars he made as the symbols of the seven rays, the laws of evolution. God created all animal life and blessed it and com­manded it to multiply. After that God created man, saying, Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness. Gender is manifested in everything, gender is derived from the Latin root meaning To beget; to procreate; to generate; to create; to produce. It does not mean Sex—sex is a manifestation of  gender on the Physical Plane. When Deity manifested on the plane of generation it was in accordance with the one law of all Being, Polarity (Our Image).

And God created man, Male and Female created he them, and blessed them and commanded them that they be faithful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it. Man has the three powers of the Trinity—the power to create, the power to preserve and the power to destroy; he has the four elements of substance God gave him to work with, and as he multiplies the three by the four, there he comes into the twelve faculties of the human mind, and through the power of the human mind man will literally subdue and replenish the earth.

When God followed his own Divine, command to multiply he made the twelve constellations, which man has used to symbolize the twelve months in the year. Physically, mentally and spirit­ually, man, after his own fashion, has worked the same, with the results that he has perpetuated the stream of humanity, and has harnessed the very elements and subdued them and made them his servants.

The Triune God is expressed in Life, Love and Unity, or spirit, soul and body, or mind, breath and substance. The three powers shine out from the One, and when those powers come into action they produce light. It was the Trinity which divided into the seven rays of consciousness—the Elohim. While these uni­versal powers belong to all nature, man alone is conscious of them, conscious of life as an eternal principle, expressed as spirit, soul and body in man; in God as Life, Love and Unity, Intelli­gence, Force and Substance, Father, Son and Holy Mother, or, as we have it in the orthodox Christian churches of today, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

In the beginning God projected Intelligence (mind) and Force (breath, or vibration) upon the face of the waters (ethers, or substance), and brought forth all that is. From God to man the principle of creation is the same, and in every act of our lives the trinity is repeated. Because God is All, then whatever God is, I AM, and whatever God does, I have within me the power to do. And if we discover God’s purpose in creation, then we shall have discovered what we ourselves were created for; we shall know why we are here and how to solve life’s problem.

What was the first thing God did after he had formed man? He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He so desired a counterpart of himself that he created man in his own image; he so loved, that he desired opportunity to perpetuate his love  through man, to live through man. We were created in love, for the purpose of loving, for the purpose of perpetuating. We had the breath of life breathed into us in order that we might perpetuate. When God breathed his breath into man, man became a living soul, with the creative power of IMAGINATION; and by the power of reason and the power of choice he could pre­serve or destroy his creations; and it is as good to destroy as it is to preserve or create; often indeed it is not well to preserve our own creations. In man the Trinity is repeated. He has a Spirit (breath) and a Soul (mind) and a Body (substance). In this sense is he the image and likeness of God. He is God’s Word, made flesh. Spirit is the set Principle, Soul the growing Princi­ple, and Body the Temple in which Spirit and Soul stand forth as an expression of the LIVING GOD.

Our powers of creation are used by us both consciously and unconsciously, and the law of perpetuation in man takes more than one form. In early youth the life in us is used to build the body; next comes the period of generation, in which we may pro­duce other bodies; and following that comes the age in which we may again use life with which to build up our own body—to perpetuate it. The principle that works in perpetuation is always the Father-Mother principle. In all things do we see this: in fire and air, in water and earth, the electric-magnetic, the posi­tive and negative, Father-Mother Principle is at work creating. Every created thing is the objective side of God; the formless is his subjective side. Nor are God and his creations ever separ­ated, although man in his ignorance is ever trying to separate them, trying to separate spirit and matter, trying to separate the subjective from the objective, God from man. They are all one substance, manifesting in different ways, just as does water when it becomes ice, or steam or vapor. Yet it always remains water; and as vapor may be condensed to the point where it forms ice, so may spirit be crystallized into form and still remain spirit; and so we may truly say that all is one substance at differ­ent vibratory rates. God pronounced all that he created good; he gave the creative power to man and man has created a world for himself, but he has not pronounced it all good. He has called good only those experiences which pleased him; those which were unpleasant he has called evil. That is because he has lost his centralized point of consciousness (his equilibrium), and in­tellectually he has separated himself from the great atomic mind of substance; he has separated spirit and matter in his thought. He has tried to put asunder that which God joined together and  that is why in his consciousness he has established good and evil, God and devil. The only devil there is is fear. God is unity and God is All. The only quality there is consists of the things that are and the things man thinks there are, the good that exists and the evil man thinks