May 24th 1966
Take unto thyself first the things of the kingdom and all other things shall be added unto thee. Do you believe this?
Little children, you have heard it so often, but do you believe.
Think you as to this. So many times we have told you how perfect is the law, and you yourselves think that you recognise this fact as true. You say that you now and believe that the law is perfect, because you have been taught that this is so, because the Master Himself said, "Not one tittle of the law shall be altered. And yet, you profess to believe that as a man soweth, so shall he reap, and yet you are filled with anxieties. Think you not that we do not understand. We know only too well the fears and anxieties that fill the human heart and the human mind. But our work is to bring faith and courage to those that ask for our help. Through the grace of God we give it. But we can only speak the truth as we see it. Albeit, we are standing, as it were, at the vantage point, our Earthly pains, wants, stresses, are over. The physical body is no more.
How, beloved, we ask you to use your imagination. We see things as they really are. We see the dead. We see death. We see change and decay as it really is: Nothing. Just matter going back to the Earth from whence it came. But we see also, the living, breathing, moving, perfect spirit. Oh children, we cannot say otherwise. This is true. This is truth. Only that which endures forever is the truth. And Spirit endureth for over.
Think you not that we are unaware of your pain, of the misery existing in all the Earth world. But we cannot lie. We cannot say this is real. We cannot say this will go on. So few, so very few, ask for our help. So very few are aware of us. And so, beloved, when you come to us asking for bread we cannot give you a stone. We give you love. We give you light. We give you truth so far as we are able to comprehend it.
As you see, the vast sky above you, the glory of nature around you. As you realise the depths of the ocean, the huge mountains that stand so still, so immovable in all their awe-inspiring, silent beauty, you admire and you love these things, but the greatest of all is man. With his hates, jealousies, fears, anxieties his misunderstanding, his mistrust, his lack of faith, his anger, the treasure is always hidden deep, far away from the surface.
And it is because this creation of God, man, this part of God Himself, must know himself, must find himself, must recognise the God within him, that he has to overcome all these things. It is because he is God. He has within him the Christ spirit, the Buddha spirit, the Essence, the Everlasting, the Eternal. And all the other things appertain to the Earth, to the physical, to the human, to that vehicle which must be used to bring to the surface, the pearl of great price. This vehicle is the ocean which houses, in its very depths, as we have told you before, the oyster and the pearl.
Child, fear and anxiety, human problems, are all part of the ocean. Part of the great depths which engulf the precious pearl. But when the time comes, when all these things have been overcome, the pearl will rise, the oyster will rise. It will be opened, and there will be the pearl.
You say, "This does not make things any easier”. You admit, you tell us, that the sea, while the oyster is being tossed and turned in it's depths, that it is real. And we agree. But think you as to this. In the very centre of a whirlwind there is a terrific quiet in the very centre. And the whirlwind must die down leaving again the quiet and the peace.
But before the end of a very fierce storm, it is always at its worst. And so remember that thou art. Thou art. Search into the very depths of your mind and be truthful. Be truthful. What have you sown? Have you really tried to help others? Do you love God with all your heart and with all your mind? Do you hate all things vile and alien to God? Have you compassion in your heart? Do you pray for others? If you can answer truthfully 'Yes' then you have taken to yourself the things of the kingdom, and it has been promised all other things shall be added unto you.
Love will not let you go. God is love and "I am a jealous God. His love will not let you go."
We bring you the lotus flower. Look into it's centre and see what you find there ……. We walk through the temples of light and learning, you and I. And you look into the still waters, the crystal pools, and you laugh with joy at your reflection. If you could remember these things in your daily life, you would be able to laugh at everything that happens on the Earth. But we would comfort you. We would remind you that the planter was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
"Take unto thyself first the things of the kingdom" opens with Matthew 6:33 — but this transcript's real subject is the tension between two things it insists are both true: that the law is perfect and Spirit alone endures forever, and that human pain, fear, and anxiety are, in the moment, entirely real. It does not resolve this by denying the pain. When the questioner objects — "this does not make things any easier... it is real" — the answer is agreement, not correction: "we agree." The reconciliation offered is not that suffering is illusion, but that it is temporary and has a centre of stillness even at its worst — "in the very centre of a whirlwind there is a terrific quiet," and a storm is always fiercest just before it ends.
What's real and what's eternal, on this account, are not the same category. The body, the fears, the whole "ocean" of human trouble, are real the way weather is real — genuinely experienced, genuinely difficult, and genuinely passing. What endures is what the ocean contains: the oyster, the pearl, the Christ or Buddha spirit, "the Essence, the Everlasting, the Eternal" within every person, revealed only after the tossing and turning have done their necessary work of bringing it to the surface. Pain isn't denied; it's given a place — as the very ocean the pearl needs in order to be found at all.
This is close to the distinction Boethius draws in The Consolation of Philosophy*, written awaiting his own execution: between Fortune's wheel, which genuinely rises and falls and cannot be trusted, and the unchanging good that lies beneath and beyond it — not a denial of present suffering, but a claim about what, underneath it, does not change. The transcript's own closing line makes the same move without any philosophy at all: "the planter was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief" — Isaiah's description of the suffering servant (53:3) — offered not as contradiction but as company: even the one who endures forever first passed all the way through this.