INSTRUCTION PAPER NO. 1
LEARNING TO THINK
I am not suggesting that you should complete the job of learning to think in this hour but that we may find some fundamental points so that you can gain the most from the points presented in all the classes. We will deal with this in various ways as we go along.
I am going to direct your attention to the first six verses of the 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes. Our particular consideration will be with the 6th verse. I suppose all of those who have given any consideration to the Bible in their youth have found it to be a required part of their process of committing things to memory, to memorize this first verse:
"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them."
Millions of young people have been more or less compelled to memorize that verse and I do not think it has ever meant very much to any of them. We might say that the whole purpose of our Servers Training School is summed up there, not just from the standpoint of yourselves as Servers but that you may convey something to others. I think you are beginning to recognize that our program is designed, not just from the standpoint of giving you information but to help you to learn how to con-vey something to someone else, because if it is new and you cannot convey it to another it is meaningless to the other. We will probably come back to this text from time to time, so we will not spend too much time on it now.
"While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain." That relates to vision-while you have clarity of vision. The sun and the moon and the stars are not darkened in the sense that they are not there, but when vision becomes dim you do not see them. They are darkened as far as you are concerned if the human vision becomes dim. So, they are picturing here the pattern of what is generally called old age, on the basis of the human outworking.
"In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble." What is the house? The body. More and more, as we consider the things revealed here, you will find these symbols of value to you. The house is the body. What are the keepers of the house? The hands. Your hands are the keepers of your house, the means by which you take care of your body, by which you dress, by which you do so many things. The hands are the keepers of the house, of your body.
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other side. We are not thinking of it from the standpoint of engineering design, but we are considering a principle.
The cistern spoken of here is that part of your mind by which you remember. We can call it the subconscious for the moment. Next, let us note carefully that water is used all the way through the Bible as a symbol of Truth. Water symbolizes Truth. In order to emphasize this point for your minds, let us recall that the first so-called miracle which Jesus performed at the beginning of His Ministry was at the Marriage Feast at Cana, and they ran out of wine. Wine symbolizes life. Jesus performed what was called a miracle. He changed water to wine-water, Truth, abstract Truth, to a living expression of being. The purpose of His whole Ministry, of all His teaching and example, was to bring out this abstract Truth, which was meaningless to humanity, and change it to a living expression of being, water to wine, the abstract principles of being to the living expression of life. There are many other points that we might use to illustrate this fundamental principle. We will leave it at that, except that I would like to point your attention to this:
The Great Master Teacher said, "And ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free." We will learn what Truth is as we go along, but knowing a little Truth will not allow you to understand all of the factors of life, and therefore you will be bound with respect to all those phases of life where you do not know the Truth. Believing a human concept to be true does not make it so, except perhaps to you in a limited sense; you function as if it were. But believing a human concept that is false to be true does not make it so, and refusing to believe a Truth, or believing that a Truth is a lie, does not make it so. The effect will be in you, yes, but you cannot change these fundamental things. The Truth is true, and that which is false is false. So, we want to remember that it is only as we allow this period we have together to bring consciousness and heart to a point of recognition of the basic points of Truth that we will be making good use of our time.
We cannot cover, in a few short months, anything like all of Truth, but we can establish a well-rounded consideration of the fundamental aspects of Truth, out of which your life expression must evolve; and to the degree that you let yourselves be centered, so that the ALL of Truth in its focalized form can begin to have meaning to you, you will begin to be set free, free not just from limitation which you may have but free to live a victorious life, a life that is real and meaningful to yourself and to others. Freedom is not just freedom from things we do not like. Freedom is free-dom of expression in the reality of being.
