March 1972
..listening to that which is good brings it own reward, reaps its own harvest which can only be its own likeness. And because you have devoted, as it were, your time over the years, to seeking that which is good, and for truth as you can accept it from time to time. You bring unto yourself the rewards of the spirit because you have sought for the spirit and you have looked into darker realms through the unknown, and you have kept in front of your vision at all times, the light of love. And you have gazed upon it from time to time and recognised its greatness and it's purity. And in it and through it you have seen and felt the great spirit, the Creator of all creation, and you have known and recognised your own kinship with all that is true, with all that is good, with all that is perfect.
And yet, although you come face to face with these truths, you recognise also your weaknesses, your faults, your human failings, and those things which you feel in your very make-up to be alien to the pure and the perfect. And yet, because you have sought within the depths of your own being, because you have been, as it were in the pit itself, the pit of doubt, and the pain and the uncertainty and of all those things which have caused you in the past, anguish and anxiety, all these things are necessary trials, are necessary training for the receiving of the stone itself.
All the digging and delving brings to the surface, for the one who truly seeks, this gem. And although to others it would seem but a coarse piece of rock with no beauty and no meaning, this is simply because their eyes are closed to the things that really matter. Their eyes are closed to reality. They select only those things appertaining to the flesh which will bring them peace as the world knows it, and plenty as far as the world knows it, and they store up their treasures in the coffers of the Earth and with the coin of the Earth. And so that stone which you have made you own is not pleasant to their material, physical, vision.
But you can take this treasure unto yourself. And you can take of it all that is old and all that is now, because it was created before the beginning and will go on for over, because there is no end to its power and to its potential for within it, for within it are those things for which you came to Earth to make your own.
And this will be your warmth, this will cool you when the heat of the world is too strong, this will feed your spiritual soul when it feels hungered and your spiritual thirst when you feel a little dry. Because the Earth itself and the conditions and the psychic impact can become like a barren desert, dry and lifeless, with no beauty and no place of shade and no place of peace. But if you have taken the stone, if you have searched for it and found it, and if you have made this your very own, then no-one can take it from you. It belongs absolutely to the self who has discovered it, and this is your key, this is the symbol, this is the power of your real self, which will never die, which you can take with you into all the other worlds wherever you may travel spiritually. It will be there as a token of your training, of your accomplishments spiritually, of your virtues which have been developed of compassion, tolerance, patience, simplicity, and a lack of craving for the untrue, for the unreal, and for the childish things. This, in very truth, in itself is a great blessing. For without craving you are at ease. You are at ease mentally and spiritually because your hands crave no longer to grasp those things which will perish, which will die.
And so what have you? What does the earning and the gaining of the stone give unto you? It gives you the pearl which is peace, peace of mind. The peace which Jesus said,
"I give you my peace, I leave it with you, but not as the world knows it."
And because this peace is not of the world, and as the world knows it, it cannot at all times keep you from physical pain, from physical tiredness, and from those anxieties and depressions which you must needs feel in the physical, because of the psychic impact, the dark, greedy, avaricious thoughts of others, and the conditions prevailing which are created through this longing and craving of all those around you for the unreal, and for the childish, and for the silly stupid things which they feel, must be made their very own.
But so, even though you possess the stone, even though you have made your own the pearl of great price, you cannot but keep it quietly within yourself. And this in itself will cause a certain amount of mental pain, because you know that you have within your grasp the very thing which will take away all craving and unrest, and which could bring peace, a quiet peace to others.
And if you could do this the conditions around you and around others would be made infinitely better and the peace would spread. But the pain comes because you cannot do this. You cannot cast your pearl because it will not be received, it will only cause more dissension, more arguments and more chaos. And so all we can say is, take that peace which you earned, take thine own stone and thine own pearl, and be quiet, knowing that power emanates from these spiritual gifts, these spiritual symbols which only you know of, which only you yourself are aware of their very being.
But it does not alter the fact that power is being created from these spiritual achievements within yourself and that others that come in and around your house, in and around your conditions, will feel and will know that there is something which gives them a certain amount of unexplainable pleasure. They are not seeking for peace, but pleasure, and they feel this, and wonder why. Because perhaps, at this time or that, they have not actually received things of the world from you, and from your store, and yet, this certain something, this upliftment they are aware of.
And we shall not take away the cloak of protection. We are nearer than you think, closer at the times when you feel tired and depressed than you will ever know. The barrier, the so-called barrier, is simply of the physical, but when sleep holds you, and the real comes into it's own, then you know. And this is why, no matter how weary or how tired, when you go, as it were, to your bed, the morning does bring, the day following at some time or another, does bring the knowledge that something has been found, something has been gained, and the courage which you prayed for has been made your own. Many long years ago and it has carried you and kept you, and you have passed it onto others and they have felt stronger for partaking of that which you give out so freely and so willingly.
You could understand how near we are to you and how precious you are to us. And we understand so perfectly, the frustrations which beset you, at this, the eventide of your Earthly life. But as always, we would bring you words of comfort. Words appertaining to the present situation.
And let us think of the words of the Master himself,
"It is not I that doeth the work, but the Father within me."
And before the Father, before the developed spirit can work through Christ, through Buddha, through any of the masters, through any of the ancient sages, through the humble faithful souls, upon the Earth today, these souls must have recognised and realised beyond any shadow of doubt, that the Father is, was, and always has been. That the spirit is absolute, eternal, immortal, and is buried deep within their own being. And this awareness of this great truth is the key which has opened the door, so that the Father within can do the work. Not I, not I, but the Father within.
This Spirit, God whose love, working in his own way with all the wisdom of the whole universe at His command. With the eyes, with the vision that can see into every heart and into every mind.
This knowledge, as we have told you before, this opening of the psychic and spiritual door of the mind, this is the only absolute necessity. So that the Father can do the work.
We have told you time and time again, that the virtue of a pipe is it's emptiness; is the nothingness within, and this is the virtue. So why say you, because the outer shell, the outer pipe, that which encases the nothingness, the virtues of emptiness itself, why say you because this cannot function as you would have it do, how can you say that the Father doeth nothing within you? Surely, surely this knowledge that you of yourself can do nothing is the essence, is the very seed itself.
Is it not easier now that you have to sit and perhaps stare for the Father to do the work? If you had not the knowledge, if through the years you had refused to seek and to search and to believe, and to make the knowledge of everlasting immortal life your own. If you had refuse to do these things, then in very truth the spirit would be as dead as the body itself, and helpless as the body itself. Because free will cannot be interfered with. But the pipe is empty and clean because you know and you are aware.
But what troubles you, and we understand oh so very well, believe us, we understand, is that the limbs of the body cannot function as they did long ago. But believe us. You have a soul within a body which is alive, alert and prepared to work and to serve in any way the Father wills it, is one of the most wonderful things that can happen to a human being in the eventide of His or her life.
The real tragedy is when an aged person, when the pipe is full of rubbish, full of fears, full of fear of the death to come, full of the fear of the unknown, full of the craving to go out and about and to do those things which they think are important to their lives, craving still to store up their treasures which will perish and rust, the material things of the world, these are they in whom the Father cannot do the work.
So again we stress that being still. The depressions, the sadness in your heart, and the heaviness, is not of your true spiritual self, Mary, it is something which you have partaken of, through the flesh of your forefathers. It is partly a fleshy human thing, a biological thing. You have lived your threescore years and ten and have left your mark upon time. There are those who will miss and who will grieve for you. But through your depressions, through your natural inheritance, through this thorn in your flesh, you could have been shut up in a place where people are partly demented. And yet, with a peaceful heart, you admit that you can sit by your own fireside and you can live, think of it, you can live in the peace. You appreciate the written word. You appreciate the Medium which brings to you the beauty of the thoughts and the people and the colourful surroundings…
This transcript gathers the collection's oldest symbols — the stone, the pearl, the pipe — into a single, mature statement of what a lifetime's search actually yields. The stone, dug up through real "doubt, pain, and uncertainty," is described plainly as unimpressive to anyone still looking with worldly eyes, "a coarse piece of rock" to those whose vision is closed to it — but its value to the one who holds it is total: warmth in cold, coolness in heat, spiritual food and drink regardless of surrounding conditions, "belonging absolutely to the self who has discovered it."
Its most honest passage names a real cost of possessing this peace: it cannot simply be given to others who aren't ready to receive it — "you cannot cast your pearl because it will not be received, it will only cause more dissension" — and holding a cure others need, but cannot yet accept, is itself described as a form of "mental pain." The comfort offered isn't that this frustration will lift, only that the peace still radiates, felt by others as an "unexplainable pleasure" even when they can't name its source or ask for its cause directly.
Its central teaching returns to "it is not I that doeth the work, but the Father within me," paired with the pipe metaphor met earlier in this collection, now applied with unusual precision to physical incapacity itself: a body too weak to act, far from being a spiritual liability, is reframed as exactly the emptiness the Father needs to work through — "is it not easier now... for the Father to do the work?" The real tragedy, the transcript insists, isn't inability but a mind still "full of rubbish," still clinging to what must be done and gained; stillness, forced or chosen, is the emptied pipe doing precisely what a pipe is for.
Its closing turn is unusually candid about the low mood itself, naming it directly as something inherited through the body rather than a mark against the spirit — "partly a fleshy human thing, a biological thing... through your natural inheritance." This is a rare moment in the collection where a difficult mental state is explicitly separated from spiritual standing rather than read as a sign of unfaith, closer to the more careful distinction reached earlier around "On Depression," and offered here as its own kind of comfort: the heaviness is not a verdict on the seeking, only a condition carried alongside it.