At-one-ment betokens reconciliation. It indicates a return, a becoming at-one with the Source of Being; with that from whence it came.

Because of his ignorance man has become conceited and has lost his way; has lost touch with his Creator. Man's evil thoughts, desires and degenerative practices have made of him a defiled and unfit dwelling place for things that are holy. In by far the greater part of the human race the Father finds the human temple undesirable as a place of residence. Man has been seeking through the flesh to satisfy his longings, while at the same time desiring heaven in a vague, visionary sort of way, but only after he has had his fill of all that is earthly and belonging to the flesh.

For unknown ages the peoples of the earth have been wandering farther and farther away from the one true knowable, but unknown God. The Nazarene, like other Avatars before Him, and like all Masters since, undertook to wean them away from their delusions and illusions and bring them back to an understanding of the Laws and a realization that God and all that belongs to Him is the only reality, and though this being true, acceptance in no wise interferes with the good things that belong to earth and all that the earth represents.

"Men knew [of] God but glorified Him not as God, neither were they thankful; but became vain in their imagination and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

"And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things."

Man's mistake has ever been, and continues to be, in attempting to make God in the likeness of himself; a personal being filled with anger, jealousy and revenge, demanding life and blood to appease HIMSELF, all the while trying to make himself believe that his thought is to pacify the God he has invented in his mind.

Little wonder that man has strayed so far away from the true, the incorruptible God and has long since lost all knowledge of Him except for the image which his diseased (ill-at-ease) mind has conjured to be God.

Men throughout the ages have taken upon themselves what they foolishly believed to be the power and speech of God and demand of those weaker than themselves or yet more foolish than they are, obedience and reverence for the opinions they hold as true. In their delusions they come to think of themselves as gods, vide a Hitler, Mussolini or Hirohito. They are themselves governed and govern others by theories more illogical and degrading than any heathen so-called that ever existed. Finally they reach a stage of illusion where they feel themselves equal with a God they have never known and attempt to usurp His throne; ultimately meeting defeat, but only after causing untold misery and the death of countless numbers.

Who, being sane and sensible, could think of a heavenly - a spiritual - Father who is all-good, yet consenting and even encouraging mankind to pillage, kill and torture helpless men, women and children? What sane man could love such a being? What manner of God could appear to men as the embodiment of Love, saying: "Worship thou me with all thy heart, and with all thy Soul [in thought, desire and deed]," and "Thou shalt have no other God before me," and then command them, or approve and forgive, to murder, rape and otherwise destroy others of his children who interpreted his commands differently or sought expression of life in a different manner?

God created and must therefore love all Souls. He does not go forth to wage war against His sons and daughters even though they may have traveled far from the truth. He does not distribute favors and blessings on the one hand regardless of worthiness, and torment, carnage and destruction on the other. Correctly speaking, God neither grants favors nor does He punish. The thoughts, desires and actions of men return to them, either to condemn or bless, punish or reward. It is the unswayable Law so well stated by the Nazarene: "According to thy faith, and thy works, so be it unto you," that brings either benefit or punishment.

God created Souls and a "heaven" for them, just as He created a world for those creatures who sought to inhabit it. His Souls became dissatisfied and since there is free Will, He permitted them to "fall" from their high estate and take upon themselves bodies. For their government and welfare, He called Laws into action. If man is foolish enough to attempt to evade these absolute and unchangeable fiats he thereby brings about a reaction and it is because of this rebound that he is punished; not by God, but by the REACTION of his own action.

Can God ever be guilty of violent action or be unmerciful? Can anything that is truly good do an evil act?

That is an utter impossibility. The hateful, revengeful, malicious God that has been held before humanity, very much like the villain in a Punch-and-Judy show, is man-made. He is not the likeness of an incorruptible, ever-loving, ever-present God, but is the image of corruptible man. He is a creation with attributes capable of breaking his Laws for the profit of corrupt man.

This is not the Father who was the Creator of man and all there is. It is not the God whom we should take unto our hearts and become reconciled with as a result of the At-One-ment.

Men of today, like the Jews of old, look for a king to come and rule over them with judgment and wisdom, provided this agrees with their own ideas of what constitutes wisdom, and what the judgment should be, and always to their own special benefit. Men seek to have the "other brother" severely judged, while they feel their own weaknesses should be overlooked or lightly condemned, if not entirely forgiven.

"Professing to be wise, they became as fools" and as a result their foolish hearts are in darkness as great as that which existed before in the foretime and before God's messengers came to lead them aright. They remained beclouded and misled, not by God, but by their own thoughts, desires and acts and refused to receive the Light which would "save" them. Constantly and consistently they wander farther and farther away from the source of Being and the "altar in the wilderness" whereon is the ever-burning Light; making the possibility of an At-One-ment increasingly more and more difficult.

The Soul of man was made (created) in the image, or likeness of the Creator - God. When man became self-dissatisfied and left the high abode, and in "falling" took upon himself (or itself) a house of clay, he was given a mind with which to think and reason; the power to create and make of himself such a spiritual being, that at some future date he might return to his lost estate. This mind of man is a creator, but it also has equal capacity and a greater desire to destroy. As a result, man is now not "in the image of God," but in the image of his own thoughts and governing desires.

God is incorruptible, therefore unchangeable. God becomes corruptible only in the thoughts of man. Man has, lo, these many ages, sought to pattern God after his own small, deformed, degraded image. If he would again become at-one with the Creator, he must commence to idealize, create and rebuild himself into the glorious image of God, ceasing in his efforts to bring God down to the level of his own unworthy desires, lusts and weaknesses.

The carnal, lust-filled violent man cannot think of a God other than in his own image and filled with like desires. Those living on a level of passion and low morality must reasonably be expected to think of God as violent and destructive. They reason that God must be of like nature or He would not permit them to thus live and act. They forget one great fact, that they have free Will, which permits them either to destroy or to "save" themselves without interference by the Law.

In almost all ages and separate from the masses are a few thinkers; idealists, if you will. Among these are those who have become conscious of the true God. They have attained to an At-one-ment with the Father. They may countenance war, even though recognizing that God does not sanction destruction, and that He may not be the Host of their army. They know that to kill is to destroy and that to destroy is evil. They are also fully aware of the fact that they are fighting for the right, for the protection of the innocent, the welfare of the many. They choose the lesser evil. In their Soul is the knowledge that if they did not fight in an effort to subdue the malicious and evil hordes battling against right, these human demons, Soulless because of their own degradation, would bring destruction to a greater number of innocent people than of the evil ones who are destroyed.

Man continually follows his own ideas, thoughts and desires and foolishly believes that he is obeying the Will of God. As a result of permitting his own unenlightened intellect to guide him, he is led farther and farther away from all that is good and the source of all good.

In every past age men have fostered upon future generations their personal conception of God. The Jews looked for the coming of a God who would free them from bondage and at the same time bring them a life of "milk and honey," a life free from physical effort, permitting them to enjoy life at the expense of someone other than themselves. This desire indicates their dishonesty of heart just as certainly as masses of today have a like desire.

We blame the Jews for much, but possibly a majority of those professing Christianity today, and, to be just to all, many of those condemning both and accepting a philosophical concept, are governed by like desires.

Churchanity, frequently misnamed Christianity, has taken the philosophical Jesus and distorted the Christos He taught all men to seek, and which He Himself demonstrated as the "becoming of the Son of God," into an "image like unto corruptible man." Conferred upon this Spiritual Entity, if that is possible, the image and personality of man and made of Him a creature who is now considered the burden-bearer of all their degradations.

They have compounded a substitute God; cruel, heartless and unjust. This distortion they worship as the ruler of the universe. They believe Him to be living in a far-off sphere to which few will be acceptable and certainly none who fail to believe as they do. They are of the erroneous conviction that the multitudes who refuse to accept their pet creeds will be doomed, damned and destroyed and therefore beyond all hope of redemption.

In one breath they inform us that God, their God, is Love, Mercy, Truth, Justice and Compassion; while in the next, He is made a burning demon, eager to destroy all those Souls who refuse to bend the knee and "loudly praise before men," not God, but the caricature they have substituted in His place. They preach lengthfully and loudly on the fearfulness of the "lake of fire and brimstone" which awaits all those who do not do as they do, ignorant that all their concepts are borrowed from the heathens whom they hope to convert to what they believe to be their own doctrine of faith.

They superstitiously worship a being whom they have never seen, whom they say no man can see, and whom they may never see, for how can a "worm of the dust" ever hope to stand in the presence of the All-Creator; that Light which is not on land or sea? How can a man who undertakes nothing for himself, and depends wholly on achieving "salvation by faith," expect to become the Son of God, At-One-ment with the Father and be blessed by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, that Fire which is, as He Himself has said, God?

Under the circumstances it should not appear strange that throughout the ages man has gradually drifted away from God and His Wisdom and has even lost all concept of what God is, while had he been taught even part of the truth he would be drawn toward the source of all and be on the highroad to an At-One-ment with God.

The mission of the Nazarene, as it is of all men, was to attain this Oneness, but in addition, it was His mission, as it has been of all Avatars, Initiates and Masters to instruct man and help him to restore himself to his rightful place in the universe; to bring him into an understanding of the truth; to show him how he might lift himself from the "worm of the dust" stage into a virile manhood possessing the strength to also accept personal responsibility for all his life's action, as all men should, and to finally attain the One-ness with the One from whom came all.

Conception of the Christ or Christos, the two being one and the same thing, though of different ages, is entirely different from that which the theologians have of Jesus who came out of Nazareth; though Jesus, and the Nazarene, are one and the same. Jesus, the Nazarene, was the man of flesh and sorrow, while Christ or the Christos is the Divine Spark having attained Conscious Individualization as a result of Cosmic Illumination.

Christ - the Christos, never was a man, never existed as a personality.

The Christos is not, never was and never can be, an image like unto corruptible man. It is the Awakened Soul; it is the Conscious Soul; it is the Illuminated Soul having attained Cosmic or God-consciousness; At-One-ment with the Father, a, not the only Son of God.

When the weary wayfarer, man, begins to comprehend what Christ really is, stands for or symbolizes, he will begin to have an insight of what Soul Consciousness will mean, and this is the forerunner, the prophet indicating the coming Oneness.

Then, instead of continuing to drift farther out into the sea of darkness and despair, away from the anchorage and safety of the Light which is life, he will turn about and begin his return journey to truth and reality and seek reconciliation with the Father who is his Creator and ultimately attain to an At-one-ness in his own Soul. He will, as a result of his changing the personality into an individuality, become a part of, and at-one, with the
Father, yet retain his own personal identity.

The Christ is the true, the living conception of the Immortalized, Conscious, Individualized Soul; the mission for which all men are on earth.

Many will ask; do not organized churches teach Christ as the truth and the way?

We have no quarrel with the church, nor any other organization having at heart the welfare of men; but what of the Christ? Has He ever been taught as other than a peculiarly born, especially favored Divine being? A being who, as a result of belief in Him, would save men at the eleventh hour, however grievous their evil? Has it ever been taught, as taught by the Nazarene, that all men may become Christs if they will obey the Law; that within every man there is slumbering an embryonic Christos awaiting to be awakened into life and resurrected from his tomb? Has man been taught that his thoughts, desires and consequent action might awaken this Christos within so that this would be the salvation of Soul and not mere faith without work or reparation for wrongs committed?

Man's thoughts and desires, followed by action, build the Soul, awaken the slumbering Christos into a Christ and "save" him from that much-talked about "hell of fire and brimstone."

Every chapter in this book is written for the purpose of explaining and emphasizing the truth that the Soul is built, formed, molded and created by the thoughts, desires and ideals that have their birth in the mind. It is true that most of the books that compose the Bible repeat the story of creation, the "fall" of Souls and their re-creation or regeneration, NOT by faith in any person, but as a result of their own efforts.

Every Soul that is to continue its existence must be awakened into Consciousness by the mind. The Soul is invisible to the physical vision until such time as the material self has become at least in part regenerated by living the exalted life. Each one seeking to know his own Soul, aye, even see it, may ultimately do so if he is willing to so live as to make this possible. The "lift the veil of Isis" is no idle dream and was the work of all Neophytes undergoing Initiation in Egypt's temples. The Will and the willingness to do this is the Key to Life as it is to Immortalization and One-ness of the human Soul with the Godhead.

Most of those of the Christian faith have accepted Christ as a reality, but only in faith. This is the Christ as has been taught that He would reappear, not as He must be found within ourselves. To these it may be said: "Unto them that look for him [seeing] shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation."

"Without sin unto salvation" because: It does not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that He shall appear; we shall be like Him for we shall see Him [the Soul which has become a Light] as He is.

"And every man that hath hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."

This was written by one who had not reached unto salvation by faith but one who had "lived the life"; that is, had PURIFIED HIMSELF by methods all can follow. Purifying oneself is an act; that which is impure cannot be purified by faith; it requires a cleansing, a washing to become "white as snow." Nowhere is it written that we shall see the Christ (the Soul made Conscious) if we believe, but that we shall see Him if we purify (regenerate) ourselves. This was the doctrine as promulgated by the Nazarene; it has nothing whatever in common with "salvation by faith."

Even so long ago as during the period of the ministry of the Nazarene, the Jews, though despised by others, nevertheless purified themselves, at least outwardly, before they went into the temple. This they did by fasting and prayer. Called the "atonement before the feast of the Passover," it was symbolic of the work of regenerating the entire being and the sanctification of the Soul, the At-one-ment with the Father after the Soul had reached Illumination.

Through this method of fasting and praying, the Jews sought to change themselves from a state of uncleanliness to a purification of mind and body in order to be reconciled with the Father. They failed in this because they did not govern their methods of life with these practices.

No one may become one with God unless and until he purifies (regenerate) himself. This does not have reference alone to the body, nor to the mind, nor yet to the Soul, but to the whole of man. It is the making wholly (Holy) of the entire being.

In reality, man is Soul. The body is, or should be, no more than a vehicle through which the Soul is able to manifest.

The body is temporary. At what we know as death, it disintegrates and returns to its original elements, while the Soul goes "marching on."

The Soul is; it is the Isis, or Is-Is of the Egyptians. The Soul, as we have so often repeated, is built by the mind, as a result of its thoughts and desires. The Soul, this Isis, or mother of mankind, uses the body merely as an instrument through which to function, that it may successfully accomplish its mission on earth.

The first state of man, that is, of the Soul, was that of Fire; for God is a Fire as He Himself has said, and the Soul was part of this Fire for which reasons we call it a Divine Spark. This, like all Flame, was without form, such as we know form to be. It was like a spirit, the wind; was unstable because it was without body, without weight. It was a Divine Spark.

Thus, "the spirit of God moved long upon the face of the earth," then at last it found a resting place by entering the physical form which we know as man. No sooner had it entered this physical form than the material substance chained it; held it and prevented its further flight; but gave it the opportunity for experience; to know "good and evil." Because of its "fall" it must "work out its own salvation" and as a result of this knowledge gained, it "becomes as one of the Gods." "Behold, man has become as one of the Gods."

It is well written: "The spirit is of the Fire - the life spark - love." This spirit moved over the waters and, like the sun, took up the moisture from the water and the forces of the earth, and became possessed of mind. A longing was born, because the mind existed as thought, and desire drew it to earth and encased it in flesh. The "Word" had become flesh.

Man, the physical form, is formed of all the elements: Fire, which is the Soul; Water, which is the Mind; Air, which is the Spirit, or Life; and Earth, which is the Body. All these are necessary in order to make him man; to become foursquare was added the Flame (Consciousness), and man emerges as a God.

The Soul descended in order that it might ascend and carry back with it all that it had learned, plus consciousness of being.

It was one with God at the beginning of Creation, but as a result of its desires, it wandered away from this At-One-ment. It became the Prodigal Son, and must regain At-one-ment before its mission is finished and it again becomes reconciled, returning to God as His own; as One, purified, cleansed and made perfect.

The Soul must be reborn, must be recreated, must become RE-generated. It must rebuild itself in the image and likeness of the Father, in purity, goodness and exaltedness. In this manner will it become At-one with God.

God is in reality the universal, or Over-Soul. He is the Cosmic Soul, and the individual Soul, having gained Consciousness is part of the Cosmic Soul.

The universe may be called the visible body or the material manifestation of God.

When man's mind thinks, plans and creates constructively, it in reality becomes a co-creator with God, God being the Source or the incentive of all created ideas that build for goodness (good use), truth and virtue (purity).

There are oceans of limitless knowledge which the Soul may contact and drink from. The secrets of life and death, of eternal life, of all goodness, may be man's, if he is willing to travel the Path which is open to him and which leads to the Door behind which all mysteries find their solution.

The great universal and almost unsurmountable stumbling block is the selfishness of the self. Man made his greatest mistake when he first permitted the selfish entity that is part of himself and should be dominated by himself, to gain control over his thoughts, desires and actions. This selfish self is now the ruler upon the throne in the hearts of the mass and until it is dethroned and replaced by the spirit of service, good fellowship and brotherly love, little advancement for the benefit of mankind is possible.

Man's mentality and his body are to him the only real things. The comforts and pleasures of material existence fascinate him, blind him and lead him away from the spirit of the real. The more frequently he listens and yields to the demands of the flesh for physical satisfaction and ease not essential to his well-being and greater development, the less will he comprehend the things that are actual and lasting.

It is written: "What will it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?"

Despite this edict with which almost all men are familiar, they turn away from the things of the Soul and seek those that benefit the body only, or that give pleasure to the selfish self. They turn away from the things that concern the Soul even though they know that this is death.

So long as the mind continues to function, a Soul is being created, for, again, is it not also written: "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he"? Here we have the whole mystery of life. How few are willing to listen and to take advantage of the knowledge to be gained?

Temptations are ever present. They are part and parcel of life. They lead man astray by false logic, the logic of profit and pleasure. They induce him to wander continually in uncertainty and darkness. The more frequently man yields to his sensual desires and gross appetites, the weaker becomes the real self and that which would be his salvation.

Quite often awakening comes to the Soul only after it has been sapped dry through indulgence in sensual pleasures. Man then is made aware that he has eaten the apple of Sodom and drunk from the springs of Marah. At-one-ment then becomes impossible for the Soul has sinned, and it shall die (has died).
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