Spiritual Values – A White Eagle Teaching

Spiritual Values A104 Sunday Address 3rd May 1942 St Mary Abbots Place, London Sunday Service The text of this address is as issued in the magazine Angelus after it was given, apart from correction of errors Text: from Angelus, June 1942, with the actual date given as 2 May 1942. In fact, the first Sunday in May that year was 3 May, so it has here been corrected. Context: the third sentence confirms for us that this is an evening service; during the War it seems to have alternated between an evening time in the summer and an afternoon time in the winter. General Notes: the first part of this address is a most eloquent statement about overcoming fear, and subsequently about the difference of a spirit perspective from an earthly one.

There are useful statements about how we cannot ignore the sufferings of others as we progress. References: for the first Temptation of Christ, see Matthew 4 : 1-11. ‘Whatsoever a man soweth’ is from Galatians 6 : 7. White Eagle’s Address: At this season of the year the message of nature speaks to you of love, harmony and beauty; you cannot look upon the bursting buds and flowers without joy and happiness. What a gift is yours! – the gift of the springtime with its song of life and resurrection.

Tonight we have a message, we hope to you all a simple message, but then we are simple folk, desiring simple truth, all of us. All the world yearns unknowingly for such simple truth as this, since it is the secret of happiness, but which casts out all fear from human life. Now that in itself is something mighty, for the great sorrow which has come to humanity is born of fear; yet there is nothing to fear in life except fear – fear of losing loved ones, fear of losing health, of losing security, of losing possessions. All these torture the human heart and provide a root of suffering, evil and darkness, until human hearts learn of something which will disperse this bogey of fear. Wars are bred through fear, physical suffering is brought about through fear, sorrow of parting through fear and the greatest enemy of all, death, is an ever-present fear of the living. What does the world need today? It needs a revaluation of life, an understanding of spiritual values. When we come down to bedrock and give ourselves time for quiet meditation, for a turning of thoughts inwards instead of outwards, we find truth, life, God. Our minds are eager for knowledge, our minds are inquisitive, we are searching, searching, searching for the unknown. We rush hither and thither, we become tired and weary of the search. We chase after butterflies which elude us, we chase illusions, hoping to find satisfaction and peace and a solution to life’s problems. Perhaps when we become old, perhaps when we have shed the physical body, we think we shall have time for a little meditation and contemplation. Then we find, after all, that what we have been seeking lay close beneath our brain: we find in our hearts a deep quietness, a silence which up to now we have feared. In that silence a voice speaks words of comfort. If we could once adjust ourselves in youth to this mighty truth and each day at sunrise and sunset enter that inner chamber and heed the voice of the silence, we should lose all fear.

What would you give my brother, my sister, to rid life of fear? Can you picture your life thus cleansed? It would be like living in heaven. Yet this is what all humanity is unconsciously seeking; this is what humanity will sooner or later realise. Why then spend our lives in rush and bustle, in fear and anxiety, when all the time God’s jewel, God’s treasure, awaits us? We shall not have to journey over the face of the earth to find this treasure. We have only to be still, quiet in the body, in the mind, in the emotions, and with that deep intake of the essence of life on all planes of being, we shall come face to face with reality. God is that knowledge which holds all the power of life. Let us then think seriously; let us strive henceforth to seek the inner reality; let us seek the core, the foundation of life, and rebuild or readjust life’s values. All the world is seeking a readjustment of spiritual values. Some people lay stress upon the physical life of three score years and ten; others lay greater stress upon the life immediately beyond this physical death. They think that all man has to live for is the hereafter; but as soon as man has touched the depths within his own being, for him there is no life here nor life hereafter.

This seems a peculiar statement from one who is presumably a spirit. But think: life, my brethren, is without beginning and without end, an eternal circle. The voice of the silence will tell us this. It will reveal to us that we are Now. There is no time, no past, no future: all is now – here and now. When this fundamental truth has awakened within us, we see that life holds a virtual meaning as an experience of joy and beauty and growth. There is no death. Change there may be, different manifestations, but no death. Once mankind can look upon the physical body as a clothing which the soul wears for a purpose, man will not grieve when that dress is outworn – although there are many people who neglect their clothes, particularly those well-equipped with this world’s goods. Being accustomed to everything they need, they do not value that which they already possess. Their clothes are apt to become worn and out of shape because they do not value them and they discard them quickly. This should teach us that the clothing of the soul, the physical body, is something which must be cared for.

This is one of the spiritual values which we have to learn during our many, many incarnations. We have to treat the physical body with respect, not to drive it until it falls in the race for money, position and power. We have to treat the physical body with wisdom, to give it its due, but not too much attention, feed it with fresh, clean and wholesome food, to cleanse it daily, to breathe into it the vibrations of pure life-forces and to keep it in harmony by thinking God-thoughts towards life and towards ones brethren, human and spiritual. We in our school of teaching do not believe in chastising the flesh, but in preserving its beauty, harmony and holiness or healthiness. This brings to our mind the teaching of the Christ. You will remember at His initiation He was tempted by the angel of Satan, who said ‘If Thou be the Son of God. cast Thyself down from this tower; for it is written, He shall give his angels charge over Thee, to bear Thee up, least Thou Thy foot against a stone’. The Christ in Jesus answered, ‘Get thou behind Me, Satan; it is written, though shalt not tempt the Lord thy God’. This is an important lesson, particularly for those on the spiritual path. for there is a temptation to overstrain the body and ill-treat it in a well-meaning way to court risks, thinking, ‘God will take care of me’.

Why should God break his laws to take care of some careless son? It is the duty of all to preserve the body in harmony and in health and not to endanger it, trusting the Lord to do that which you and I should do for ourselves. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God! Thy body has been given to thee by God and it is thy responsibility, so that thou mayest be a fit vessel through which the Divine Light shall minister to life on earth. The inner voice speaks thus and teaches man. My brethren, with the realisation that life is eternal, there is no death, no hereafter, but all is now, we realise that every thought, every word and action is a grave responsibility to ourselves and to all life. We are inextricably bound up with what is, with what has been, and what is to be. When man realises that this life is governed by certain cosmic laws, he will readjust his mode of conduct, for he will understand that misdeeds committed now are inextricably interwoven with what he will suffer at some time, somewhere (for the now is eternal). There is no escaping this cosmic truth. All human life is bound up in karma, the law of cause and effect, and no soul can escape what it brings on itself, for it is written, not on paper, but in the universe, whatsoever a man soweth he must reap. The seed planted in the ground grows. The misdeeds of life are not buried with the body, they come up living things to face the soul at some time. Some of you are happy tonight. We have in mind those who have received what you call ‘good news’. Your good news is the result of your karma. You have earned it. Take it, beloved, and enjoy it, realising that a natural and divine law brings happiness.

We would remind you that karma, the law of cause and effect, walks hand in hand with the law of opportunity.

Opportunity comes to all every day, for good, for progress, for service, for opening your innermost being a little more to divine light and divine happiness. Life is governed by the law of karma, reincarnation and the balancing of all good and evil until good and evil no longer exist but become the eternal life of God being expressed through humanity. The voice of the silence is the great leveller of all things. It teaches mankind to finish with controversy and conflict. There can be no controversy in the heart that has heard the voice. That heart looks out upon all the great teachers, the elder brethren of the world and sees truth manifesting through many varied religions; it sees many paths which commence from the outer most edge of the circle, and all the paths are seeking one thing – truth. They all go to the centre, they all meet in the centre; therefore the One in the centre, which is God, which speaks in the voice of the silence, says, ‘All religions are true’. And so, my brethren, the man of the awakened heart, whose spiritual values are adjusted, can go into any place of worship throughout the world and can bow before God.

The awakened brother knows only respect and reverence for his brother’s God, knowing that his brother’s God is his own God. Can a brother of the light live and eat when his brother starves? Man must look with courage to his spiritual values and must not compromise, saying to himself ‘this is the system of government of our country, due to the materialism of the world; we can do nothing about it; it must work itself out’. No. Every soul who becomes awakened and quickened to spiritual values must readjust his mind towards life and human relationships, seeing life and seeing man as it and he truly are: life, a manifestation of God; man, his brother and a child, a son of God. Therefore we look upon man and love him and respect him, not for his position in the world, not for what he possesses (or thinks he possesses) of material things, but as a shining light, a manifestation of the Divine Life. ‘Then what about those people whom we call enemies?’ you ask. ‘Are they not the enemies of all that is beautiful, all that means happiness and progress in the world?’ No, my brethren, that is not so.

All men have within the seed-consciousness of God, of the divine; and right human relationships will cause the sunlight to fall upon that seed, will crack the shell of it, enabling it to grow and bright forth beauty. this applies to every human soul. The divine seed is within you all and within the seed atom is all memory of past experience, is all knowledge of God; and you, my brethren, and we, have this grave responsibility towards life, towards mankind – to quietly, unostentatiously radiate light and love, so that the seeds lying dormant in the hearts of our brethren may be quickened. All men are potentially good, and all men desire to respond. If you do not agree, leave it. Some day we shall all agree on that point. Let us, then, my brethren, henceforth seek a true standard of spiritual values in life; let us have courage to face what is unpleasant. Let us have courage to face renunciation of materialism and our possessions and of all power. Let us have the courage to live, to express God in all His beauty through ourselves. Let us live to draw from our brother man that which we all have in common with him, the God spirit, the God consciousness, the God seed. Yes, it can be done; it shall be done on this earth plane and the sooner man awakens the sooner will come happiness and a loss of all fear; the sooner will come his perfect health, peace, joy, union, re-union, completion. Every effort you make towards this realisation is a big step forward. So much to be said, so little that we can say…. May the blessing of the eternal Father–Mother God bless you, and may the blessing quicken in your hearts and understanding of life. The search matches with either words and phrases, which appear in the text, or the following ‘key’ words and phrases, which are similar in meaning to those in the document: spring, rebirth, faith, mindfulness, calm, confidence, intuition, light within, inner light, living in the now, present moment, ancient wisdom, divine law.