October 22nd 1968
You have foregathered here. You, who have been thinking, talking, concerning your particular problems at this time. And we have brought in friends on this side who are interested and working for your friend, the doctor. They have joined forces with us, trying to help with her everyday problems, and, because of your loving kindness, your strong thoughts going towards her, and your prayers, it is our privilege to bring her help through this little meeting.
There are times when you all feel that you have your backs against the wall. This wall consists of worldly thoughts and influences emanating from the minds of all those about you. This wall is built up of wrong thinking, of jealousy, of greed and selfishness, and this is the very wall against which you stand at times. You cannot possibly find a way around it once you are in the material world, and you have the firing squad facing you, which is made up of exactly the same things, war, wrong thinking, misunderstanding, hate, greed, fear, and ignorance. Now, think if you were in this position physically, and we want you to answer our question verbally, you are standing with your back against a wall, facing a firing squad, what would you feel? What would your response be? How would you re-act?
"I should give myself to God." (Mary)
Would you fear?
"No." (Mary)
You would be thankful that the end had come, would you not?
"Yes." (Mary.)
You have solved all your problems by your answer. Do you see? You have overcome the world. Now, because you have lost all fear of death, you have overcome all this worldly materialism, all this worldly Earthiness, to which you have your back and which also faces you. What have you to lose?
Now, think of this spiritually. Think that you have, concerning the world, been taken away from it. That this spiritually and mentally has actually happened to you. You have stood with your back against the evil and you have stood up against the evil in front, and your Spirit has gone into its proper place already because you accept the situation in your mind. Now you are free, because it is all a state of mind. You have entered into the Kingdom of Heaven within yourself. Now all these things which are behind you, and which appear to assail you, from the front, are not so. You have left them behind. You have forsaken them and you have crucified physically and resurrected spiritually.
This does not mean that the aches and pains and tiredness of the body can be taken from you. Your Spirit is not yet free from this prison, but it is free in the sense that it has staked its claim. It has gone to its proper place. It knows itself. It knows its power and its strength. You have mentally come over. You are here.
Now we will give you another illustration. You have carried your burdens and all these things have gone. Your struggles, your trials, your tribulations, your foolishness, your stupidities, and your fear. These are a bauble in the night of the true vision. You see things and you realise that the seeming is not so. Therefore, like a child with an outgrown toy, which it no longer fascinates but which has become a burden, something else to carry. And so by reaching this state of mind, by becoming free in Spirit by overcoming the fear of death, you have thrown this bauble, because you are tired of it, because you can see it for what it is, into the deep, dark, waters. It is gone forever, and you are free and from now on you can travel lightly.
Another comes, and looks into the dark waters at the disappearing bauble, and says, I would have that. What I could do with it! The pleasure it would give me!'
Would you dive into that dark, grimy, blackness to recover that bauble? for another? And yet, when you absorb the foolish worries, the perplexities, and the anxieties of other little children who are undeveloped, you do just that. You dive in after that which you yourself are finished with and have thrown away. Whereas that one stands, wanting and fretting on the bank, wanting you to bring it to them.
Now we do not say that you should ignore the pleas and fancies of these little ones because they are only at a certain level of development, a level which you yourself have passed through. When you have reached this state, when you have thrown away the unreal and the false, and become a man putting away childish things, and have searched sincerely, and spiritually, but will have the wherewithal to provide, without any trouble at all, the bauble for this child to play with, and to learn through.
Do you understand? You will have to think about this. You will have to listen to these words again and again, and especially our little friend who is so busy, who has had her back against the wall for so long, who is struggling against all the disease, the illness and the poverty, and her own personal problems. She will have to listen again and again, but she will derive comfort and strength from these words. She will have to think about them, because we haven't the time, and neither have you, to go into all that which is hidden underneath these words. But you will get much comfort from them. For remember that you have been shot at, assailed, but you have overcome because your answer was, "I would welcome this."
You already have. It is a mental state. Be at peace.
This transcript works through a live example rather than an abstraction — asking Mary directly to imagine standing before a firing squad, and to answer honestly: would she fear? "No." Would she welcome the end? "Yes." That answer, the transcript says, has already solved everything: fearlessness before death dissolves the wall of worldly opinion behind and the firing squad of hate and greed in front, because both only had power through fear of loss, and there is no more fear of the ultimate loss to leverage. The transcript is careful this isn't denial of physical suffering — "the aches and pains and tiredness of the body" remain — only that the Spirit, mentally, has already gone free.
Its sharpest, most practical image concerns other people's worry. A worry outgrown and thrown away, like a child's toy no longer wanted, sinks into dark water — and someone else, seeing it there, wants it back, wants you to dive in and retrieve it for them. The instruction here is unusually direct: don't dive in. Recovering someone else's discarded fear and carrying it back to them helps no one; the task, instead, is to have "the wherewithal to provide... the bauble for this child to play with, and to learn through" — meeting someone where they are without re-adopting the burden already, rightly, set down. This is the same boundary drawn earlier in "Spiritual Dryness" and the "brother's keeper" passage, given here its sharpest and most concrete form yet.
Its closing address to "our little friend" — struggling against disease, illness, poverty, and her own long ordeal — treats the whole preceding teaching as something she will need to return to "again and again" rather than absorb at once, offered not as a solved problem but as a source of comfort to be drawn on repeatedly through continued difficulty.