July 8th 1969
Change and decay in all around I see, O God who changeth not, abide with me. Birth, change, decay, and death seem to be the beginning and the ending of all life upon the Earth plane, and it is true that this is the natural law upon this, the Earth plane. A man is born, he lives, he creates in his own way, he changes, and the rot seems to set in, as it were, inevitably and death takes place.
When you think of this you must feel a great sadness concerning those whose eyes are closed to reality, those who cannot see with the inner eye. Who have no inner vision. Who knows not. What a cruel, relentless, awful thing life must be for such as these. It is easily understood why the ignorant and the fearful and the little ones who see only birth, change, decay, and death. It is quite easy to understand why they cannot accept a God. And why they cannot accept God as love.
And it is this terrible, appalling ignorance, this taking the seeming for reality, knowing not that they are seeking and chasing forever after shadows. It is this great pall of ignorance that we are fighting to overcome. And this in why the enlightened ones, the seekers after truth, are becoming more and more valuable at this same time, because, very soon, if we do not destroy and do our very best to destroy, through, the agents upon the Earth, this ignorant materialism, it will destroy the world.
Because men are beginning to reason, and we have been listening to your previous conversation, people are educated, people want to know, people are not content any more with just a blind faith.
It is not enough for the elder to tell the younger generation that they must believe, that they must be seen and not heard, that they must not ask questions, they must just do as they are told. This age is dead.
But there are, through the education, and through the stronger development of the reason, stronger enquiries, more enquiries being made, more questions being asked. But who is there to answer?
It is I who will answer, It is I who will answer through the mouths, the minds, and the hearts of those who have opened the door unto me. Those with whom I have supped. Those with whom I have broken bread. Those who have accepted the food from my hand. For thought and for the nourishment of their minds. Those who have found me. Who have searched for me. Who have been determined to make me their very own. And who have found me in the innermost secret chamber of their own hearts. And these are they who no longer fear birth, change, or decay, or so-called death. For in very truth they, I and God are one. The Spirit relying upon itself, the greater Spirit. And the body and the different, so-called appetites appertaining to the flesh are beginning to succumb to the Spirit which is in control.
Albeit, the fight goes on. When the flesh and the things of the flesh and the so-called mirage of the world, has been seen for what it is, then one can sit quietly and allow the greater self, the Spirit, to take its own place and to control. But there are many things which put up, as it were, a terrific fight to maintain their own position, and they all fight for their own particular place in their own particular spheres. When the Spirit begins to take control, this does not mean that all the burdens, all the troubles of the world will be taken from the soul. And one cannot just sit back whilst undergoing the Earth experience and say, "I am at peace with God. I have found the pearl of grant price. There is nothing more for me to do now but to sit back and let everything go on regardless!”. It is not so.
You are where you find yourself. And if the environment in which you find yourself is difficult because of others, because of circumstances, because of adverse conditions, then this must be accepted. But the one who sees clearly, and who recognises the materialism, the jealousy, the wrong-doing, the ignorance, and the fear, for what it is, an arid desert, then this one, although in a difficult environment because of this and that, will find he has the power to act upon his environment, upon even his own so-called fate or destiny, and will not allow the environment to act upon him.
And although the body may weaken, the different faculties that one has been used to, begin to get weaker and weaker, one has to sit back, the mind that is still in God and in love, unperturbed. We do not say, that the adverse conditions in the world will not affect the surface, but there is a good depth of quiet and pence which cannot be disturbed. And the weaker the body becomes, and the less that one can co-operate, as it was, with worldly the things, and the less one can be involved in the goings-on of the outer world, If one has sought and found, then the mind becomes stronger and stronger and the body becomes weaker and weaker, and the so-called broken bodies, and the so-called invalid, if the mind is centred on the real self, controlled by the Spirit, open to the influence, and the great influx of the power of love, the whet have you? What have you? A power house, a still soul, a great beacon of pure love, perfectly still in itself, sending forth, sending up, sending down, sending out. Craving nothing, demanding nothing, wanting nothing, only the desire to give of the God, of the Spirit which is flowing so freely and so easily into the quiet, beautiful, mind.
"O love that wilt not let me go, I place myself in thee. I give thee back the life I owe, that in the ocean depths its flow, may richer, fuller, be.”
The transcript opens with Henry Francis Lyte's hymn line, "change and decay in all around I see," and treats birth, decay, and death not as things to be denied but as genuinely frightening for anyone without inner vision — the transcript's compassion here is real, naming plainly how "cruel, relentless, awful" life must appear to someone who sees only surface and change, with nothing beneath it.
Its central claim is direct and, for this collection, unusually confrontational: blind faith and unquestioning obedience — "they must believe... not ask questions" — belong to an age now over, since education and reason have made people rightly unwilling to accept answers on authority alone. The response offered isn't a defence of old certainties but a promise of ongoing contact: "it is I who will answer, through the mouths, the minds, and the hearts of those who have opened the door unto me" — real questions met with lived experience rather than doctrine.
The transcript is careful to correct a possible misreading of its own teaching: finding this inner peace doesn't mean withdrawal from difficulty, or passive resignation — "one cannot just sit back... and let everything go on regardless." Someone who sees clearly retains real power to act on their circumstances rather than simply be acted on by them, even while the body weakens. Its closing image reframes physical decline itself: as the body grows weaker and less able to engage the world, the mind, if truly centred, grows correspondingly stronger — not compensation for loss but a different kind of strength altogether, "a power house, a still soul... craving nothing, demanding nothing," simply giving outward what continues flowing freely within.