God has all the Trump Cards

An excerpt from the teachings of Eugene Halliday – TTB-II 184-193

 

We are to remember that the Life-force which moves in us and conducts all our activities is the power of the Holy Spirit in us, the Spirit which is God Himself. This life-force is not a thing made of atomic matter, but an organising force which brings together in a functioning pattern this atomic matter. (We must continually remind ourselves that so-called “matter” itself is but a behaviour of energy, energy organised into a pattern of action which allows us to view the world of things as what it is, a highly complex energy system.)

 

All the things of the world are energy patterns in a vast ocean of power. This power has the very mysterious quality of being able to feel its own state and condition. There is nothing in the whole of reality that is not made of this power. This power is the aspect of God’s infinity of qualities which acts as the cause of all things, all events and all relationships of these. Nowhere is this power absent.

 

Because there is nowhere this self-aware power is not present, we say that God is omnipresent, everywhere throughout total reality. Because this power is the only real power, we say that it is omnipotent, all powerful. Because this power is able to feel its own states and conditions, we say it is omniscient. This power is a threefold power, everywhere present, everywhere causative, everywhere self-knowing. Hence we talk of the Holy Trinity, “Trinity” because threefold, and “Holy” because the three aspects constitute One Supreme Reality, the only ultimate Real Being, of which all other beings are derivative expressions.

 

This Holy or Whole Threefold Being is the Way, the Truth and the Life of Itself and of all its expressions as “other” beings. It is called the “Way” because it makes itself, as a stream makes its way through a valley. It is called the “Truth” because in making its way it builds for itself perfect and true forms through which to experience itself. It is called the “Life” because in making its way and building for itself its innumerable forms, and operating through them, it feels its own significance and knows itself to be the one ultimate supreme living Being.

 

Some people find it difficult to think of God as a living Being, but find it relatively easy to think of Him as an intangible intelligence somehow observing the world in a more or less detached way, not totally unconcerned about world events, but not actively concerned in the day to day happenings of ordinary life.

 

This notion of a God not concerned with the events of ordinary every day life is false, because God is the only power in all things, and even the minutest event has actual significance for Him.

 

“Faithful in little, faithful in much”. The tiniest wave on the ocean of life has its own special significance. From the wave-patterns in the Pacific Ocean, the ancient Polynesians could know the presence of islands far away, and sail to them. There is nothing in the whole universe that is totally void of significance. Straws can show how the wind blows, and so the movement of minute visible things can show how the divine Spirit moves. “From things visible we can know the invisible”.

 

Hidden motives may display themselves in the tiny movements of facial muscles. Slight variations of tension in the eyes can show a degree of interest in any subject under discussion. Because power can feel its own condition and can modify its action accordingly, we can see the operations of power in the slight changes in the action of its physical vehicles, the bodies through which we live our lives.

 

Television’s merciless zoom-lenses have put politicians and others on guard and set them trying to control their facial muscles, their gestures and postures in a way not so necessary in the days before the advent of television. Everywhere the celebrities are made more conscious of how easy it is to give oneself away, and the viewing public are becoming ever more critical of what they see. Everywhere there is “feed-back” destructive as well as constructive. Everywhere sensitivity is increasing, and with it the speed of perception. The quick are made quicker, and even the dead (slow of perception) are being wakened and compelled to rise from their mental graves.

 

And so, even with those who do not yet believe in the God that is the Spirit of immediate response, there is happening an awakening, a resurrection from the dead state of mental disinterest. The threat of a nuclear war, a world war of unparalleled ferocity, now stirs in millions of minds to alert them in a way before unknown.

 

In the old conventional wars, the battlefields and armies were more or less outside the towns and civilians could think of themselves as outside the battle zones, and get on with their ordinary lives, perhaps shorter in food supplies, etc., than in peace-time, but nevertheless less endangered than the fighting men.

 

But now all that has changed. The advent of long range nuclear missiles has placed everyone, civilians as well as army personnel at risk. And with this new risk, people’s minds have everywhere begun to wake up. “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity”.

 

Men have been happy in their illusion of separativity for thousands of years. The exclusivist egos have sought to mind their own business, and not that of each other. But the threat of world nuclear war is teaching people that any man’s business is everyman’s business.

 

“No man is an island”. Egoists like to believe in their insularity and the effectiveness of their defences, but it becomes daily more and more difficult for them to mind merely their “own business”. A notice reading “Nuclear Free Zone” does not mean that the nuclear missiles can read, and will respect the directive.

 

Just as God has made of one blood all nations, so He has made of the one Universal Soul all other Souls. We are all of one origin, not only physically, but also psychologically and spiritually, and so our fate and destiny are one. There is no escape from this fact: we are all in this world together. Every advance of one national power into the territory of another alerts the whole world. Everyone fears everyone else’s intentions.

 

The cure for these fears is universal love, the same love that God has for all His creatures; but mankind is largely unready for the love. Hence men will bring upon themselves the necessary correctives for this unreadiness. It is by meditation on this human unreadiness that the world’s prophets have been led to make their pronouncements. For just as God, the Supreme Power Source of all powers, is One, so His purpose is one; and this purpose cannot be thwarted by mere creatures produced expressly for the realisation of it.

 

God’s purpose is to make all creatures finally like Himself, lovers of life and of all beings. No creatures can halt forever the realisation of this purpose. Man has only Time to play with; God has eternity. God has all the trump cards.

 

We are of one flesh and blood and soul and spirit. From this fact we can never escape. Our attempts to do so sow the seeds of disharmonies, conflicts and wars. But all these struggles result in an awakening of awareness of our basic interrelatedness with each other. Daily our mental and emotional inertias become more and more disturbed. Psychiatrists talk of the stress produced by the pace of modern living, but it is not only the pace of life that has increased, but also its complexity. Mankind is being driven towards ever more intimate interactivity. The social pattern of interactivities of commodities and services throws an ever-increasing strain on every civilised community. And with this increasingly complex pattern of commodities and services exchange, goes also an increased awareness of the psychological and spiritual interrelatedness of all beings. Everything and every person is being forced by the acceleration of events into a more and more hastened speed of perception. Modern minds are sharper than those of primitives in their awareness of world-danger. Simple tribes in remote jungles know little or nothing of the deep-lying terror of annihilation which lurks in the minds of civilised nations’ inhabitants.

 

Prophets of the past have often cried out, “The time is at hand. Now is the time for repentance!” Their cries have gone largely unheeded. But today’s prophets are in a better .position than were their predecessors. Never has the real danger been so great, and with the increase of danger it becomes progressively harder to turn a deaf ear to the prophet’s words. The time for repentance really is Now. It always was, and always will be in the present Now that repentance is possible and imperative.

 

To “repent” is to re-think our position, to re-hang ourselves on the cross of existence, to make ourselves aware of our real dependence on the power of God. Our very first ancestors had this awareness as an intuitive content of their being, but lost it in the moment of turning away from it and preferring other things of time and matter to those of eternity.

 

Eternity is not simply unending time; it is the threefold everlasting presence of power-wisdom-presence that we worship as God. Eternity is spiritual, intelligent, ever-present power, held by Itself in the infinite, unchanging, divine Now that shall never pass away. The little momentary “nows” of time pass away as fast as they arise. This is the very nature of Time, that it is but a series of finite little “nows” each present one of which is displaced by the one that follows it, as it displaced the preceding one. All these little “nows” are but minute bits of the One Supreme Eternal Now, which never was not, and never will cease to be, but always is.

 

The minds of fallen creatures are tied down to the little “nows” of the Time-process. But the mind of God is not so tied. Fallen man thinks Time and Matter the only realities. The man who can “repent”, that is, re-think his position in relation to his eternal origin, is not tied down to Time-matter. He is released from the inertias of Time, from the deadness of matter, and can regain his lost divine nature. He can become again a “Son of God”, the prodigal returned to his Eternal Father whose ever-open arms lovingly await his home-coming.

 

What is it like to live untied by Time and Matter? Abraham was not fixated in such restrictions. He looked beyond Time into Eternity, beyond matter into the Spirit. Naturally he was aware of the passage of temporal events and of the material world’s resistant objects; but he saw beyond these the eternal wisdom which has created them, and knew why they had been precipitated into existence.

 

Without the world of Time-Matter, the Eternal Spirit would have remained hidden in itself, a Mystery beyond the comprehension of such creatures as we are. But with the creation of the Time-Matter world, the invisible power of God became manifest in a manner comprehensible to us. Instead of the immediate whole presentation of the Eternal Now-Being of the divine Spirit, Time-Matter allows us to experience reality little by little, like the separate pictures that make up a cinema film. Everything is adapted to our limited sense-organs, so that parts of the Eternal Reality can come within the grasp of our intellect and feeling-life. We have but to use our intelligence and put together the multitude of things we experience, and we will see everywhere the signs of a purposeful will, the will of the omnipresent supreme power which is the source of all things and of our own souls.

 

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