The Holy Bible

of the

New Age of Love and Peace

Martin’s Original Writings

channeled

through the pen of

Marie Fox O’Brien

A List of Book

Marie’s Story - An Extraordinary Odyssey

Channeled Books

Martin’s Original Writings

Revelations

The Divine Nature of Man

Lessons

A new Endeavor

Concepts

Prayers

Past Lives

Moses

Zorah

Rose

Joseph II

Edam the Elder and Saleh

and Inga - Pala - Bana

Peter and Ann

Romulus

Remembrances-The Holy Family

Martin’s Life Remembered

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all

the pure souls who search for

meaning and purpose in their lives.

Sunday, 8/18/02

Personal Message to Marie

In all the annals of time, my scribe, never has there been a power like yours. Believe this absolutely, my divine scribe, and know that all that your life demands of you is absolutely wondrous. You are brilliant in response, my Marie. It is my wish that you realize this every moment of every day and never permit yourself the least discomfort in all you say and think and do. We are one, my Marie. Is this not perfect reassurance? It should be.

Introduction

These writings came through my pen. The words are not mine. Over a period of time I was called upon to put on paper words which I was told from the beginning were the words of God.

The voice that spoke through my pen I knew as Martin. Starting in late July, 1991 and ending in October of that year, I would be awakened each morning, usually before dawn, and would be told to take my pen in hand and write. I do not know how to describe exactly the actual experience of that writing. I did not consciously hear the words and then transcribe. The hearing, if it can be called that, and the actual penning of the words were simultaneous. The words flowed through me and through my pen with no thought on my part. Rarely was there any interruption in the smoothness of the writing from the first word to the last for that day. Once in a great while there would be a pause and I would simply wait, pen in hand, for the words to come again. These pauses were a matter of seconds, certainly not as long as a minute.

Each morning I wrote for approximately thirty minutes, sometimes more, sometimes less. It did not matter where I was. During the month of September my husband and I were traveling in eastern Europe and and no matter where we were, from Prague to Vienna, Martin awakened me in the dark before the dawn and spoke through my pen.

At the very beginning, I was told after I had finished writing to reread and listen for corrections. These were few, and they were always minor, an occasional change of a single word. Very shortly this rereading stopped and the words as published are exactly those written each morning during this period. The text remains totally unchanged from the original writing to the printed page. It was my habit to use small spiral notebooks, and in time these writings of Martin's filled almost three of these notebooks. I was told at a later date to transcribe these writings onto a computer and I did so. Finally I was told to write an introduction and to put the writings into what seemed appropriate order. By and large they are arranged in the same order in which they were written.

My preparation for this writing was not of my doing either. In May of 1991, my sisters, Cornelia Silke and Louise Long, came to spend a week with me at our beach house in Aptos, California. Both of my sisters are and have been for many years spiritually aware and gifted. I was in no way either aware or gifted. That week my sister Cornelia felt called upon to use the ouija board to communicate with the spirit world, and Louise agreed, although with one exception they had not used the board for many years.

That week I was introduced through the board to both my spirit teacher, whose name is Wanda, and to Martin, whom I first knew as the spirit of the father of my friend Liz Martin, a father she sought to communicate with through the efforts of Connie and Louise on the board. To that point in time I was close to a total skeptic about all things spiritual. It was not that I rejected totally the concept of a higher power, a God. I simply did not know. I had no beliefs at all. Having rejected the Catholic Church at an early age, I had not substituted any other spiritual life. I was content that way.

That week in May changed my life. Within a short time I was granted many gifts, among them the ability to hear in my head the words of Wanda and Martin and to communicate with them and with other spirits through the board. There began a rich dialogue with Martin and Wanda and I began to learn. Martin has described in these pages the nature and abilities of spirit teachers, often angels, and so there is no need to go into detail about that subject, but it is enough to say that Martin and Wanda taught me many things. It was not easy for them. They taught me of the need to love oneself as the first step toward loving God, and Martin lovingly and patiently taught me to pray and to love. I learned from Martin the nature of celestial love and its power. Above all, Martin and Wanda gave me total faith and total love.

It was gradually revealed to me that Martin, who had been described by the other spirits as God's strongest angel and the angel of new souls, was indeed God Himself, and that God had, as is stated in these pages, repeatedly visited earth as man, most recently as Martin Phee who died in Chicago in 1974, the father of Liz Martin in that life. I had been told much earlier that Martin and I had been soulmates over the centuries and then later that we had been separated in this earthly life in order to do what Martin describes as "this holy work", to convey to the world knowledge of God's plan for man in the Age of Love and Peace, to speak of the mysteries of life and death heretofore unknown, to reveal the reason for earthly existence and the inevitability of oneness with God. In one sense this is a manual for living in the Age of Love and Peace, a set of principles and practices which if adopted will inevitably lead man to the love which is essential to both perfect happiness and perfect peace.

I asked before this work began who would believe me if I wrote these things as I was directed to and I was told that everyone would, that the world hungered to know of God's plan for man, of the mysteries of life and death heretofore unknown. I agreed before this work began to be undemanding, to accept direction step by step, to accept what I was given in understanding and not to expect more. It has been made easy for me to believe. I have received constant affirmation and manifestations from the very beginning. I have been blessed with a faith I would have described as totally impossible before this work began. Wanda is always with me and has taught me much more, I think, than I realize. My life is both brightened and enriched by her wit and wisdom. Martin is always with me, and my love for him knows no bounds. He is my father, my son, my spouse, my God.

Often in the course of these writings, the Others, who are described in these pages, tried to stop, delay, and interfere in various ways. This book is testimony to their failure. They did not want to see these words written. They fear exposure.

This book is, then, God's gift to man in the Age of Love and Peace, words of love written by a God of love to His children. There is no greater gift.

January, 1992

Book One

Chapter One

Creation

In the beginning heaven and earth were created not in a day but in billions of years. God created man to inhabit this earth and he too God created over billions of years. Man is made in God's image. He reflects God's love for him. He reflects the goodness God saw in him. He reflects the vast array of talents God granted him to serve His will. Man is a creature that takes many forms. He lives many lives that span the centuries. He exists to serve God in these lives and to progress in spiritual perfection until his final mortal death when he joins God in heaven for an eternity of perfect love.

Soulmates

To this end, each man and woman has a soulmate. They live with each other through the course of their many lives in many relationships within the family. The family is a sacred covenant dear to God's heart. The family exists to provide a framework of love in which man will progress toward spiritual perfection. When this framework is sundered, spiritual progress is impeded. Love flourishes in a happy family. Family structure can be of many kinds provided that the essential element of love is present.

Love can be of many kinds, but in all cases it must be giving and joyful. The love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man is the most sacred gift. The love of soulmates endures and grows through the centuries. God watches carefully the progress of these relationships, and after each mortal death the soulmates are reunited in heaven and given the choice of their next life. God permits them to stay together in various relationships. They may be husband and wife, father and child, mother and child, sisters, brothers, or brother and sister, but always they are bound by love, and in each incarnation the love grows stronger until in the end they have reached the spiritual perfection that allows them to choose to spend eternity with God and with each other in perfect joy and oneness.

God’s Plan for Man

In the beginning man was by created by God to populate the earth, and God designed man in such a way. God sent these soulmates chosen by Him to found the dynasty of man. He sent them to all corners of the earth to evolve into the divine being that is now man. On the way all the creatures of the earth evolved. These creatures appeared and disappeared over the millennia as earth approached its zenith, but man endured always, distinguished from other creatures by his God given soul. This spark of divinity was passed on generation to generation along with the need to love and be loved.

Understand that love is the key element in God's world and was from the beginning. With love there was harmony on earth. Without love there was chaos. Throughout the history of the world there has been evil only in the absence of love. God wills man to love, and when man listens to the voice of God, peace prevails in that man's soul. When he becomes separated from God and fails to know love and to give love, anguish and pain prevail. When nations fail to do God's will and love one another, war erupts and all men suffer.

The answer to all the problems of the world today is love. This has been said many times by many people, but few have listened. Man has edged closer and closer to self destruction as he has failed to hear God's admonition that without love there is nothingness, but there is a great hunger growing among all the peoples of the earth for a world of love and peace. There is a hunger for knowledge certain of God's plan for the universe, and God has decided that it is time to satisfy that hunger. He will reveal in these pages the divine plan in the hope that all the peoples of the world, all His beloved children, will listen closely and be guided back to the power, the overwhelming power, of love ---- love for self, love for each other, and love for God above all. Love creates miracles. Love brings joy and exultation. Love heals. Love binds us together and brings us happiness. God's plan is a plan of love.

Book One

Chapter Two

Teachers

Before long God saw that man had not realized the importance of love. Before long man had succumbed to the temptations of greed and he had forgotten the absolute necessity of love. God saw that the only option for man was to relearn the lessons of love, and He chose to send His angels to earth to remind man of the need for love. These angels took human form and became teachers. They were born in the normal fashion and lived normal human lives but emerged as great spiritual leaders. Their names were Mohammed, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Telemachus, Horace, and Brigham Young. There were lesser teachers, but these angels become man were the notable leaders. They reminded man of his origins, and reminded him that he had a duty to love God and his fellow man above all other things. They established religions designed to constantly remind man of the infinite power and presence of God and to persuade him to set aside worldly things and to turn to things of the spirit. In some cases these religions succeeded in this persuasion, but in all too many cases those in charge of administering religious affairs set themselves up in positions of authority and got between man and his God. The concept of love as a ruling force was lost in a maze of dogma. Man was left with rituals devoid of meaning, and left with the illusion that he was worshiping God when he was truly worshiping himself. He lost the sense of brotherhood that is an essential part of God's plan, and he turned to violence instead of to love to achieve his aims.

Religion did little to stop this destructive behavior. In all places there were men and women who heard the voice of God and heard His admonition to love themselves and each other and above all God Himself, but these men and women were as voices crying in the wilderness. Their voices were drowned out by the babble of greed, lust, and violence that marked the departure of man from the protection of God's love.

Through the ages, this violence came to exist on all levels. Man fought with man. Nation fought with nation. Cataclysms of war shook the universe, and there seemed to be no room in the world for the word of God that spoke of love and brotherhood. Science joined in the spread of violence until the weapons of destruction threatened the very existence of the planet.

Throughout this God waited patiently, welcoming His children as they died and came to Him to learn the lessons they had failed to learn in their brief life spans. Central and essential still was the need to learn to love instead of to fear, to trust in God's love for them, and to learn to love each other without limit or conditions. The most difficult lesson to learn is love of self as one of God's creatures. If the soul achieves love of self, all else follows as night the day on earth. If the soul fails to learn to love itself, no other learning is possible.

Peace Through Love

God in His wisdom sees the plight of man today, and in His mercy sends His love and His power to help. Throughout the world humans of all ages, all colors, all creeds are hearing the voice of God telling them that the path to peace is through love and through love only, and that this love must live in the heart at all times. It does not know fear. It does not know intolerance. It does not harbor violence in any form. Peace begins with man's kindness to man in the name of love. There is no other path to peace. Governments cannot achieve peace if love does not exist in the hearts and actions of their people. Love must come as a mighty wave sweeping across continents, moving all in its path, to an era when love is the motivating force for all men, when their actions are true reflections of the love in their hearts. To know how to love is the ultimate achievement. God is waiting for man to learn this. When he does he need do nothing else. All else will follow.

Spiritual Communication

After God established the fact that love was the answer to all things, He devised a method to get man to listen. He sent His angels as teachers to live in the hearts of men and tell them of God and His love. These teachers know the hearts and minds of their students. They know their every thought every hour of every day. They speak to their students of God's love and God's will and make every effort to have the students hear their messages. These teachers work very hard to help their students make spiritual progress. In some cases they are able to communicate directly with their students who are able to hear the voices of their teachers in their heads. In other cases a method of communication is needed, and a ouija board serves the purpose. The ouija board is a much maligned instrument of communication. It is most often treated as a toy. It is not a toy. It is and has been in different forms through the centuries a medium of communication for spirits to reach humans.

The board is not to be used lightly or irreverently. The board will not respond to all persons equally. Every individual has the capacity to use the board for spiritual communication, but this ability is more developed in some humans than in others. It is not a matter of practice. It is a matter of openness. If the board is used with reverence by someone to whom the spirits will respond, communication with the spirit world is there for the asking, but this communication at no time should be treated frivolously. There is a great need for some humans to communicate with the spirit world, and there is a great need for some spirits to communicate with their loved ones on earth. Both purposes are served by the board. There is, however, a dark side to the use of the ouija board, even by those who are reverent and receptive.

Book One

Chapter Three

Progress Towards Oneness

After death the spirit is admitted to heaven and learns what is required of him to progress to the spiritual perfection necessary for oneness with God. All spirits receive some teaching on arrival. Some new souls are very spiritually advanced and move quickly toward oneness with God. Other new souls realize that they must return to live earthly lives again to learn lessons not yet learned. Those who choose to return to another life on earth are required to recognize what it is they need to learn and to choose a life that will best teach that lesson. They choose the family into which they will go and agree to live that life in such a way as to best achieve the required learning. This is essentially a contract between God and the soul. Sometimes the soul returns quickly to earth; sometimes it can take years, even centuries. Most often the soul chooses to return to the same family it left when it died and elects to wait until this is possible. In the meantime the soul is required to work on its weaknesses and make all possible progress toward oneness with God.

God in His wisdom assigns each soul a teacher on its arrival in heaven. This teacher counsels the soul and helps the soul in its spiritual progress toward God. In some cases this progress is rapid; in others it can take centuries. But let it be known that in heaven time does not exist in the same linear fashion as on earth. Heaven is timeless. The past, present, and future are all one, and it is called eternity. The concept of eternity is beyond the comprehension of the human mind, but this does not make it any less of a fact that man must accept about God's kingdom. And kingdom it is. God is not pure energy. He is not a vague entity changing from time to time as fashion dictates. He is not the anthropomorphic God of the Old Testament who rules through terror. God is a being of total love. All souls must eventually become one with God. There are no exceptions. No soul born as man is allowed to stop his progress short of total oneness with God.

This spiritual progress is easier for some than others. Those who love God, themselves, and their fellow men in their worldly existences progress rapidly. Those who as men forget to love and who indulge in violence and dishonesty are impeded in their progress and must live repeated lives until they realize that love must be the ruling factor in human life before it is possible to progress to God.

There are those souls who are not compelled to return to the earthly plane but who choose to do so out of love for those of their family they have left behind. God's love for the family permits them to do this rather than to exercise the option to stay in heaven and progress there with the help of their spiritual teachers. These souls that return to a family of love and caring are special in God's eyes because their motives are pure. Love is the dominating motivation, and they take this love to a world that needs reminding of its necessity.

The Others

There are some souls who arrive in heaven angry, confused, and prone to violence. At death the soul leaves the body with much of the human personality intact. As the soul progresses toward oneness with God, it grows in love and understanding but does not change the essential personality that it had in its earthly form. These new souls who are not receptive to progressing with their teachers' aid are called the Others. They band together or act individually in anger and arrogance. They refuse to believe in the power of God because God does not retaliate against them and their defiance. They mistake love for weakness and despise those spirits and humans who are doing God's work in a spirit of love and willingness to obey God's wishes. The Others do not persist in their arrogance indefinitely. One by one they realize the futility of their rebellion and surrender themselves to the will of God. They turn to their teachers and ask for help on the long road back to oneness with God.

The Others are, like all spirits, capable of the kind of communication referred to as telepathy. All spirits communicate through telepathy, and all spirits are equally endowed with this ability, although some may be more clever, as in life. The aim of the Others is to create doubt, confusion, and unrest in the minds and hearts of humans. They can do this in many ways. They have easy access to the mind of any human they choose, and they are able to draw on the memory bank of that person. That permits them to create the illusion that the thoughts which they implant in the human brain are the product of the brain itself when indeed they are not.

There are several ways that the Others create doubt, confusion, and unrest. They invade the minds of humans and tell them things that are not true. They choose their victims carefully and attack mercilessly. The human in emotional crisis is the easiest victim. The Others seize upon the fears of this individual and whisper insidiously within his mind. They sow doubt and confusion and magnify his fears. The individual hears these inner messages and not knowing of the Others mistakes them for his own thoughts.

In a troubled marriage sacred to God the Others wreak havoc. In minds already ravaged by doubt and insecurity they tell the individuals that the spouse they love does not love them. They tell each of the parties to the marriage that it had better end rather than continue in a loveless state. They continue to badger the individual until the tension erupts and the marriage is doomed. The Others hate a happy marriage. They use every opportunity to sow doubt in the mind of each spouse about the faithfulness of the other. They sow unrest by insisting to each of the spouses that he or she is the better and is being taken advantage of in the union. They are merciless in their attacks. They stay long enough to create an impossible situation, and then they feel free to leave and find another victim.

The Others are lost souls who roam the world while they refuse to acknowledge the power of God. God in no way uses His power to retaliate against the Others or their actions because He is a God of pure love and the Others must realize this. Eventually each one of the Others realizes the inevitability of oneness with God and asks to see God. God tells him that he must repent his actions before he can progress toward oneness with God. The Other expresses his repentance, and God accepts his repentance, and the soul returned to God is given a choice of returning to this earth to learn the lessons he must learn and take a long time but find it easier or stay in heaven and learn there, knowing that it will be more difficult but a shorter time before the soul reaches oneness with God. Those souls who elect to stay in heaven are assigned a teacher and begin the long slow progression toward God. There is little unhappiness in heaven, but these souls can suffer from a sense of how slowly they are progressing.

After death the soul is confused, and God assigns a teacher to each soul to teach the first lesson, that of self love. This is the most difficult lesson for the soul to learn, and the teacher tells the soul that God loves the soul and that God makes no mistakes, and that God's love proves that the soul is worthy. When the soul feels it has learned self love, it goes to God and tells Him that it has learned the lesson of self love. God can tell if the soul is sincere, and if it is not God sends the soul back to work with its teacher to try again. This is repeated until God is satisfied that the soul has truly learned self love.

Reincarnation

The soul goes to God when it feels that it is ready to return to earth and asks God what lessons it needs to learn in its next life. God tells the soul to decide what it thinks it needs to learn and the soul then tells God what it thinks it needs. Together God and the soul decide on the life that is best suited to teach the soul the lessons it needs to learn. Then the soul chooses its parents, usually in the same family the soul came from, but not always. God tells the soul that He will arrange for its rebirth into the world and the soul waits for the time to come. The parents give the child a name at birth, and this name is the one the spirit is known by after death. At birth the soul has full knowledge of God and the lessons it needs to learn, of the sorrows, problems, and joys that lie ahead. The soul is fully aware of its origins. This knowledge and awareness is lost as worldly memories crowd the brain.

The soul then lives its life to learn the needed lessons and at death goes to God to say the lessons have been learned. God asks the soul if there are other lessons not yet learned, and if so, the cycle of rebirth and learning is repeated. When the soul feels that all the needed lessons have been learned, God tells His angels to bring the soul into His presence. The soul tells God that he has learned all the lessons he needed to learn and if God is satisfied that this is indeed the truth, He takes the soul into His bosom and tells the soul that He is satisfied with the love that the soul feels for itself, its fellow man, and above all God Himself.

God loves all souls equally at birth and as much as it is possible for God to love a human. God loves His spirits more because they love God more than any other spirit or any human regardless of what the human relationship was in life. God tells all spirits that they need to feel the oneness that God feels for all mankind and tells them that they must learn to feel this oneness with all men regardless of the individual's worth. He tells them that they must go into the world among humans and teach them the love that God finds so pleasing. He tells them that they must communicate with humans and he tells them to use any means they can.

He tells them that the ouija board is an acceptable means of communication. It is not the ideal way, but it is acceptable if the board is used reverently by someone who is open to the messages of the spirits. There is no question that the best means of communication between the spirit and the human is telepathy. And there is no question that many humans have this ability, but many do not use it and they thereby deprive themselves of communication with the spirit world.

Simultaneous Lifetimes

Each soul can live an infinite number of human lives. Each soul has the capacity to live many lives at one time. Each time the soul elects to live an earthly existence it agrees to the terms and length of that existence. Souls are not created as perfect images of God. They must undergo experiences in earthly lives that teach them lessons that they need to learn to reach oneness with God. In each earthly life the soul is expected to embody God's love for man and by his example to create and spread love among his fellow men. This is not as simple as it sounds. The soul must at times agree to an existence that makes it very difficult to love or to be loved. Some lives are less difficult and the soul can make easier, more gradual progress toward oneness with God. In all cases the soul and God agree upon judgment after human death to determine the extent to which the soul has learned the lessons of love which permit progress toward oneness with God. Each human life is lived in total ignorance of the soul's divine origin, of the contract with God, or of any other human lives the soul may have chosen to live to achieve progress toward oneness with God.

I have spoken of soulmates. In each case soulmates must agree on the sharing of these single or multiple existences. Their progress toward God is inextricably linked together until one or both achieve oneness with God. If one or the other achieves oneness at an earlier time, the other must continue to live subsequent human lives until all the lessons of love have been learned. The soulmate who has achieved oneness with God waits patiently for his soulmate to join him for eternity.

It is not an easy task for the soul to live an earthly life, ignorant as it is of its divine origins. All too often the soul succumbs to the worldly temptations it encounters and strays from the path it had formerly agreed upon. At death the soul must confront its failure in the eyes of God and admit the need for additional earthly experiences to achieve the perfection necessary for oneness with God. If the soul is close to perfection it may elect to remain in heaven and try to compensate for its former failings by learning in heaven with the aid of a teacher the lessons of love it failed to learn in its previous life. This is very difficult, and the soul is aware of this difficulty when it chooses to try. All too often the effort fails, and the soul must agree to return to an earthly life to complete its lessons of love. If the soul chooses it may decide to spend multiple lives learning the lessons of love necessary for its progress toward God. This election of multiple lives is made with the knowledge that if any of the lives it chooses to lead fails in any respect, that failure cancels progress it may have made in the other life lived simultaneously. In other words, the risk is greater in electing to lead simultaneous lives, but if the soul manages to fulfill its contracts then the risk is justified and progress toward oneness with God is more rapid.

During the time that the soul is experiencing a worldly existence, the essence of the soul remains in heaven in a state of suspension, neither progressing nor regressing in its progress toward oneness with God. This not an unpleasant state, but it is an inactive state, a sort of limbo as the term is generally understood, and the soul waits patiently for its human manifestation or manifestations to return for judgment and subsequent decision. If over a period of time, a period of time which varies enormously, the soul fails to make significant progress, it becomes necessary for the soul to choose a more difficult, more painful life than it has prior to this time. If the soul succeeds in learning the lessons of love in a very difficult human life the rewards are greater and he progresses more rapidly toward oneness with God.

There is no impatience or intolerance in any of this plan. The options the soul has to choose among are great. The soul is endowed with the capacity to discern the advantages and risks in the life it chooses to live. It most often, as has been said, chooses to remain in a familiar environment. The soul has full memory of its immediately previous life or lives, if there are simultaneous lives, and the soul retains knowledge of the human relationships it has known in that life or in those lives. These relationships do not continue to be significant to the soul after death provided that in life these relationships have been ones of love freely given and freely received. If this ideal relationship has been the case, the love survives and there is no need for further exchange. If, on the other hand, human relationships have been marked by strife, the soul must compensate for any of its failings in that human existence by reaching a relationship of total love with those individuals before it can progress further. If the spirit can communicate with the surviving human or humans, then progress can be made on the basis of that communication if total mutual love is achieved and expressed. If there is no communication between the spirit and the earthly world, the spirit cannot make progress toward perfection until the death of the person or persons with whom the spirit did not achieve the harmony of love that God demands. After death the two spirits, or more than two if this be the case, can reach a state of mutual love to their mutual blessing.

Spiritual Communicationa and The Ouija Board

This is one way in which the ouija board can be of help. A person who is able to use the board to summon spirits, and they must be summoned by the person who wishes to communicate, can aid in permitting humans to speak with those they loved on earth who are in the spirit world. The spirit is able through the board to communicate its needs and its love to the earthly individual who invites the communication. If the spirit needs help it can ask for it and can indicate the exact nature of the help it needs. If the spirit is happy and has achieved oneness with God or is progressing satisfactorily toward oneness, the spirit can communicate this information to the human who summoned it. In all cases communication with the spirit world brings comfort to both the spirit and the human. Each is able to express love given and received. The spirit is able to offer the human affirmation of the eternal nature of the soul and the human is comforted in knowing that death means not an end to existence but merely a transition.

In some cases the soul summoned will not be available because it has returned to another earthly life, and in these cases the person doing the summoning will be told. Often, but not always, the human will be given an indication of the current or future human identity of the soul that has been granted reincarnation.

The other chief communication offered to humans through the ouija board is of an individual on the earthly plane and his or her teacher on the heavenly plane. A teacher will be granted to all who seek knowledge of the spirit world whether consciously requested or not. This teacher may have many students, a few students, or one student. Teachers are spirits who have achieved a high degree of holiness and oneness with God, and it becomes their duty when they become teachers to aid their students in making spiritual progress during their earthly lives so as to better prepare them for death and their existence in heaven. Above all the teachers emphasize the need for love, always in the same order --- love for self, love for one's fellow man, and love for God above all. Without the first, the second is difficult, and without the second the third is impossible.

Teachers will try to help their students in other ways as well. They will teach them about the Others and offer them warnings and advice about how to handle the Others when they attempt to create doubt and confusion in the human mind. They will offer solace if solace is needed, wisdom if wisdom is needed, and love at all times. Constant communication with a teacher is desirable but not absolutely necessary. Once contact has been made through the board, the spirit teacher will make strong efforts to communicate directly with the student through telepathy. If the human has an open and receptive mind he will in time be able to hear his spirit teacher directly. This is the ideal, but difficult for some humans. For most it will take time and effort to achieve spiritual communication.

At all times humans desirous of communicating with the spirit world should be wary of charlatans, those who would take advantage of this very human desire to make a profit. While there are some individuals who have a genuine gift for communication and charge a price, the great majority of those who make a business of psychic communication are not to be trusted. Most are, to put it simply, fakes. On the other hand, there are many who are capable of aiding in communication with the spirit world both with and without the ouija board who regard their talent in this area as God given and offer their talent and aid freely to those who are seriously desirous of communication with the spirit world. In addition there are innumerable humans who have the capability of using the board for this serious purpose and are unaware of their talent. These people should seek out someone well acquainted with the use of the ouija board for help in understanding the few simple rules that govern effective use of the board as a means of communication.

The Nature of The Spirits

There is also very little question about the ability of spirits to see all that is going on on earth. They are able to be in many places at once. They see and hear what is happening in many places at once. They know the mind and heart of each human and all the memories that human has stored in his brain. The spirits can tell what the human is thinking about almost before the human is aware of his thoughts. The spirit can hear the words of the human just before they are uttered, in the split second it takes for the impulse to travel from the brain to the tongue. There is no question of any of these abilities in the spirit world. All spirits are endowed by God with these abilities.

There is a gradation of power among the spirits. Those who were powerful on earth are not necessarily powerful in the spirit world, but there is some transfer of the capacity to wield power. This is true both of the spirits who choose God and work diligently toward oneness with God and those called the Others who choose to disrupt His work and to reject His love. In both groups of spirits there is a hierarchy of power.

In the world of the faithful spirits who work toward God there is a group of select angels chosen by God for their abilities. There are various types of abilities needed by God to do His work. Some angels are administrators overseeing the orderly progress of souls toward God, assigning work to the teachers and guides that aid souls in their search for oneness with God. These teachers and guides are souls who have achieved oneness with God and spend eternity helping others to reach that goal. They are ineffably happy at all times doing the work of God in His heavenly house. There is no feeling among these spirits but the feeling of overwhelming love --- love for themselves, love for each other, love for the spirits they are helping, and above all love for God. They also share God's love with the humans they encountered in the course of human life.

Other angels have other responsibilities. There is a group of angels in charge of new souls. At death the soul is admitted to heaven instantly. The journey to heaven is swift and painless. In most cases the soul is happy to be released from the body and arrives in heaven willingly. The soul is greeted by many spirits, some of whom the new soul knew on earth and some of whom are new to him. All are overjoyed to welcome the new soul and the new soul is overjoyed to be so welcomed. Love prevails in these cases, and the new soul is swiftly assigned an interim teacher until he reaches the next step in his progression toward God's love.

Some of these new souls arrive in heaven very spiritually advanced, having lived many lives of holiness, lives spent seeking God and doing His work on earth by living out their lives in kindness and love. This not to imply that they led religious lives, but that they led lives of goodness, lives that did no harm to others, and above all lives full of love. These advanced souls are quickly assigned a teacher who has the skill to move them quickly toward oneness with God. This teacher stays with this soul until the soul reaches the point of telling God that he has learned the lesson of self love, and the soul and God decide whether the soul needs to learn other lessons. If there are lessons still to be learned, then the decision is made by the soul as to whether the soul desires to return to the world and learn the lessons there or whether the soul will remain in heaven and take the harder road toward oneness with God.

There are other souls who die unwillingly, angrily, rebelliously. These souls too are instantly transported to heaven, but they arrive unwilling to admit that death has taken place. Some are totally confused, unaware that death has overtaken them, deluded into believing that they are still in the earthly world they clung to so stubbornly. Others are souls blackened by lives of violence and dishonesty and are unable to understand where they are. Some of these souls recognize the need to change and seek to escape from the horror of their earthly lives into seeking forgiveness and love from God. Others of this category cling to their memories of their earthly lives and seek to continue their unloving behavior in heaven. They reject the aid offered to them to progress toward God and use the abilities of all spirits, that is telepathy and the ability to see into the human mind, for purposes which do not serve God. These are the Others.

The Nature of The Others

The Others do not progress towards God. They do not want to progress. They delude themselves into believing that God is powerless to change their hearts and they set themselves in opposition to those spirits who are seeking oneness with God. These Others band together to give each other false comfort and to oppose the efforts of the other spirits to progress toward God, and to impede the efforts of humans to seek God in their lives. They do this in the ways that have been described.

After a time each of the Others realizes the futility of his attempts to deny God and to refuse to progress toward Him, and turns to God and asks for help in changing his actions. Some of the Others refuse to acknowledge God for only a short period of time. With the help of a teacher these souls progress rapidly once they start to seek God. Some of the Others take a longer time to turn toward God. They get caught up in the mischief making and doubt sowing and memory blanking and take pleasure in the discomfort that they cause in the humans they attack. For a time this destructive pleasure is enough to satisfy them, but eventually they see the emptiness of their small triumphs and they decide that God is the inevitable answer. They ask and receive help and start the long road back to oneness with God.

A small number of Others resist God's will for long periods of time, centuries in some cases. These Others become the leaders and they eagerly seize upon the new souls who arrive in heaven confused and angry. They encourage this anger by offering revenge. They persuade the new souls that God is weak and ineffective, and that they, the leaders of the Others, have the strength to prevail over God's will and to take control of the universe. The most angry of the new souls eagerly embrace this concept and join forces with the Others in wreaking havoc on the world.

There are several ways that the Others wreak havoc on the world. By sowing doubt in the minds of man they tell him that love is a useless emotion which will not help him achieve what he desires. They tell him that trust is a weakness and that force is the only weapon he possesses that will achieve his ends. Force becomes the method of preference among humans, and the strongest prevails. The Others also wreak havoc on the world by setting nation against nation the same way they do individual against individual. They cause nations to covet land above all else and see their neighbors not as brothers but as threats to their security. They inspire acts of aggression to possess this coveted land and these hostile acts culminate in mighty wars.

The Others are constantly endeavoring to set man against man in violent ways. They tell him that his neighbor is not to be trusted, that he must protect himself and his loved ones against the malice of his fellow man. He arms himself with lethal weapons in the name of self protection. These weapons proliferate, and the world is seized in a paroxysm of violence. Murder and assault become commonplace, and life is cheaply valued. Society is unable to handle the chaos that follows the constant increase in violent aggression. It builds jails which are not much more than cages in which to place its criminals, and when the jails become full society builds more. Those who are imprisoned are further embittered by being deprived of any loving human company and they become more hostile and violent still. They repeat their behavior and a cycle of violence and hostility is established. Love is an unknown in their lives. Love for self ceases to exist entirely; love for their fellow man gradually disappears; and love for God rarely survives the experience of violence and hostility. In the end society has produced a loveless creature, once filled with promise, now doomed to failure.

The Others whisper seductively into the ears of the young that drugs will buy happiness. They delight in creating the illusion in the young mind that the youth is capable of using drugs as a recreational device, that he can control the drug that gives him so much pleasure and not be controlled by the drug. He tells himself that he is in charge of his life, and gradually as the Others encourage this self delusion, the youth succumbs to the demands of addiction. He loses sense of self and his life is devoted to the acquisition of this means of achieving a type of euphoria, an escape, however momentary, from the cares of life. He reaches the point where he will do anything to acquire the drugs that have become the mainstay of his existence. Life becomes a mania for possession of whatever drug is his need and passion. All else is forgotten and in his pursuit of chemical happiness he loses all sense of self worth, all love for his fellow man, and indulges in any form of violence he sees as necessary to achieve his ends. Murder, rape, and robbery become the means to achieve his goals. In the end, he too is dehumanized by the system and the cycle of despair is established.

Book One

Chapter Four

The Failure of Organized Religions

There are other things that man hungers to know about God's plan for man. In the beginning man existed as a concept only in God's mind. There is little mystery about the evolution of the earth and man. Science has provided adequate answers about this process. Science has been unable, however, to define adequately the difference between the human and the animal kingdoms. They have been unable to explain the divine spark that separates man from the rest of God's creatures. They have no scientific explanation for the soul of man. From the beginning it was God's plan that man inhabit the earth as a means of perfecting his soul for eventual existence in eternity.

Man has designed his world in such a way that he remains unaware of God's plan for him. He has convinced himself that God's primary concern is to be worshiped in churches or synagogues on holy days or the Sabbath. He has established rituals and celebrations to exhibit his love for God. He has erected mighty churches and temples in which to hold his observances. A body of priests, ministers, and rabbis has assumed responsibility for the religious affairs of their congregations and has become responsible for determining the ways in which man will worship God. Sacraments and institutions have been established and rituals have been designed and the manner of worship has been standardized for the faithful. Frequently, all too frequently, religious practices end at the church or synagogue door. The practitioners of various religions all too often feel that they have satisfied their obligation to God by attending church or temple as members of the congregation.

Organized religion has become a mighty force throughout the world. In the past organized religion has been responsible for many bloody wars and for widespread devastation. There have been many holy men sacrificed in the name of God because they protested corruption and evil doing in the churches of the world. Even today in parts of the world religious wars are being fought and blood spilled in the name of God.

The Need for Religious Reform

The time has come to correct this misconception of what God expects of man. Insofar as religious practices facilitate man's communication with God through prayer, they serve a purpose, but this narrow purpose is not enough to justify their existence as religious institutions. The first and only requirement God makes of man is to love --- to love himself, to love his fellow man, and to love God above all. This love can be expressed in many ways. There is no single approach which is pleasing to God. There are hundreds, but there is one absolute requirement. This love that God demands must find expression in action. It is not enough to express love for one's neighbor. It is not enough to declare your brotherhood with man. It is not enough to say that you worship your God. All of these professions of love must be translated into action. Man must act his life out in a constant series of gestures of love -- love for self, love for family and fellow man, and love for God above all.

Love for self is a difficult concept for most humans. God expects man to acknowledge his divine origin. Man is not an accident of science. Man is not a product of errant evolution. Man is not self created. Man is not born to live and die after a single life. Man is created by God and designed to live any number of lives in this world learning the lessons of perfect love as a means of attaining oneness with God in eternity. It is time that man acknowledges both his divine origin and God's demand that he live his life on earth in a constant search for perfect love. He must, indeed, love his neighbor as himself, and in so doing he will find love for God in his heart. He must act in love at all times and in all places. His heart and his purse must be open to the needs of his fellow man.

Organized religions should look to their goals. Empty rituals devoid of love should be discarded or revised. Churches and synagogues should be in the forefront of social action, not just for their own congregations, although certainly these needs should be met first, but for the brotherhood of man. The clergy should take the lead in seeking out areas in which their congregations can act in love toward their fellow man. Society's needs are great in the world today, and the clergy are in a unique position to provide leadership in meeting the needs of the poor, the dispossessed, the troubled, the bereft, the neediest of God's children. Let this become more important than ritual.

There are some religions and some churches and synagogues which have already seen that this is God's way and are actively engaged in meeting the needs of those unable to help themselves in a variety of ways. This is the way of the Lord --- to see yourself as God's child and to see your fellow man as God's child and to know that his need is your need, his cry for help is your call to action. Join with your brothers in carrying out the works of love that God requires. Look to your priests and ministers and rabbis for leadership, and demand that the worship of God be more than words. God is happy to hear the prayers of His children, but He wants more than prayers. He wants deeds of love, of love freely given and freely received. He wants religious institutions to lead the way in this new approach to the worship of God, and to know that religious practice is a daily, even a hourly, obligation and that there is no substitute, no alternative, to the requirement of love freely given and freely received, love which sees its expression in meeting the needs of all of God's children.

There is little more need be said about the obligations of existing churches and other religious organizations. Each of these institutions should carefully examine its effectiveness in promoting love and caring among its adherents and a closer loving and caring relationship with the world outside its congregation.

Christ’s Message and God Incarnate

There are, however, other things to be said about organized religion as it exists today throughout the world. Narrow sectarianism has had a deleterious effect on the worship of God. Intolerance has intruded on relationships between religious organizations. I speak primarily of the Christian sects. Today among these sects there is little observance of the reason why Christ chose to die on the cross. His reason was simple --- to provide mankind with a supreme example of love for all men. By His death and resurrection Christ established the effectiveness of love. In His name millions have worshiped over hundreds of years. His death ushered in what has become known as the Christian era.

Christ's message was simple. Love your fellow man and love God. His disciples wrote that Christ above all demanded good works. He did not demand mighty churches. He did not demand elaborate ceremonies and panoplies. He did not demand a hierarchy of priests. Above all Christ preached simplicity. He preached the need for the lowliest of God's creatures to be treated as the highest. And to that end, God has repeatedly visited the earth in the guise of man. He has walked the streets of the world. He has been your friend, your neighbor. He has been a beggar. He has been a prince. Over the centuries God has assumed human form and lived ordinary human lives, enjoyed ordinary human pleasures, suffered ordinary human sorrows. He has returned, as have all other souls, ignorant of His divine origin with the intention of exhibiting to man the power of love, the absolute necessity of love. He has died ordinary human deaths. He has been mourned by his human families and remembered by them with love. He has watched with sorrow as He saw the message of Christ's death and resurrection forgotten. He has watched with sorrow as the outward forms of religious practices have become in so many cases meaningless exercises. He has watched with sorrow the failure of religious organizations to follow the simplicity of Christ's teaching of love.

This is not to say that all religions are to be condemned in this way. There are a few religions that meet God's criteria. Their actions reflect their faith, and their leaders actively encourage and demand acts of charity. In addition, within many religious organizations there are, as I have said, individuals and small groups that practice God's teaching of love and giving.

I speak primarily here of Christian sects, but beyond these groups there is a need for reassessment of religious organizations. God is not a God of Christians alone. Christ did not die alone for those who call themselves Christians. He died for all men, and he died in protest. He died in protest of intolerance, of bigotry, of man's failure to love his fellow man, of a world not aware of and not practicing the total fellowship of man in love.

What Religious Organizations Must Do

God has decided that the time has come for all religious organizations to reexamine their theological bases and their ceremonies of worship. It is time for all religions to abandon intolerance of any sort and to seek communion with other religions. Intolerance of any kind is not acceptable to God. The time is long overdue for all religions to have active programs of love and fellowship to those in need. Look around you. It is impossible no matter where you look on this earth today not to see need. If your brother is suffering, you are suffering. If your brother is hungry, you are hungry. If your brother is sorrowful, you are sorrowful. If you reach out a hand to your brother in need, you reach out a hand to God. There is no such thing as a totally separate existence in God's world.

The religious organizations need to see these truths as a call to action and to start anew to send to the world the word that God is love and that love must be expressed in word and deed. God needs to hear the prayers and words of love from His children. He also needs to see His children offering words and deeds of love to their fellow men, their brothers. Little more is necessary in God'seyes.

Love in Action

God has taken cognizance of the good works of many of His children. Their efforts to ease the hardships of their brothers will be increasingly recognized and supported by a world which has paid all too little attention to such efforts in the past. In the New Age of Love and Peace it will become customary for each individual to choose a specific task and pursue it in the effort to put an end to loneliness and neediness on earth. These tasks can be either very broad or very narrow in scope, but they must be consistently pursued. They may be an individual effort or a group effort, but they must be selfless and they must be effective. To be pleasing to God, such efforts must become a life long habit.

This is not to say that only the well endowed need undertake such good works. All men are expected to offer love and aid to their fellow men. The poorest and most limited of men has something to offer to his fellow man in love, in enrichment of life, in giving and receiving. Let it be a rule of living that each man each day make a specific effort to do something to aid a fellow man, a gesture of love, no matter how seemingly insignificant, that will express and generate love. It can be as little as a kind word to a stranger. It can be as great as sharing your home with someone in need of shelter. In all cases it must be a gesture from the heart, a statement of love in action.

Think of the consequences of each man on earth making a single gesture of love daily. Think of a generation of children growing with this loving practice as part of their lives. This is not to say, of course, that man should limit himself to a single loving gesture each day, but he must do at least that. Think of the changes in men's hearts that this daily practice of love will cause. Think of the power of love generated constantly in men's hearts by the loving actions of their brothers.

At first it may be difficult to act in a loving fashion at all times. There is in today's world too much impatience, too much intolerance, too much concern with worldly matters for change to be wrought overnight, but the patient use of love as a weapon will work wonders in the end. Look about you each day and see the need for words and deeds of love. Look about you for long range needs to which you can contribute your love and your abilities. Such activities please God to the utmost. Such activities will be the rule, not the exception, in the New Age of Love and Peace. Speak to your brother with words of love and he will respond with words of love. Behave toward your brother with acts of love and he will respond with acts of love. Let anger and intolerance disappear from this earth. Let the light of joy shine through from heaven and let fear be displaced by love. There is no alternative to this in God's plan.

These strictures do not apply alone to those who are members of organized religious groups. All men must respond to this call for action. If man is not motivated by love of God, let him be motivated by love of his fellow man. It is not necessary to have a belief, firm or otherwise, in God as an entity, though all men will come to that belief in the end, but it is necessary that man believe in the essential goodness of himself and his fellow man, and the essence of goodness is love. There is no such thing as evil. There are evil acts, and evil acts are born in the absence of love.

Any man who knows love is incapable of cruelty toward his fellow man. Any man who is incapable of cruelty toward his fellow man is incapable of evil acts. The answer is simple if the goal is to eliminate evil acts from this world. Punish the evil act in a loving way. This is not an easy goal to accomplish but it is possible. Society should make every effort to combat evil actions with the weapon of love, the most powerful weapon that exists in the eyes of God.

Love As A Weapon against Evil

Treating evil acts with a loving response must begin early to be effective. It is perhaps extravagant to describe the minor crimes which typically begin a criminal career as evil, but they are generally characterized by a lack of love, either for one's self or one's fellow man. There is generally a victim for whom the young criminal feels no love. Society's answer today is harsh, and designed to harden the hearts of both criminal and victim. In the majority of cases in which the criminal is apprehended and found guilty, the punishment is incarceration in a place where the only companionship is the companionship of other criminals. Society calls these jails correctional facilities, and yet little effort for correction generally exists.

For the petty criminal, often little more than a child, the first crime is often merely the first step in a life of crime. The path is made clear. Society's punishment is to deprive the criminal of a certain portion of his life's freedom, introduce him into a society of criminals, and then release him back into society. He often takes back into society a hardened attitude, the needs that caused him to turn to crime in the first place, no skills or opportunity to change his ways, and no hope. He is left with little or no alternative to repetition of his behavior and the cycle of crime is established.

If love had been a strong motivation to begin with, the original crime would not have taken place. There would have been no desire and no need for the crime, but once a single act of criminal behavior has been performed, society is faced with a challenge it is not meeting.

Need for Reform of The Justice System

The entire system of justice worldwide must be changed. We call it justice and that is a misnomer. It is rather a series of ineffective attempts to take the criminals off the streets, temporarily in most cases. Society needs to examine closely the root causes of crime. Take drugs. Although the reasons for drug use are varied, they have a few common causes. First of all, escape. Man is constantly looking for escape if his life lacks love and self esteem. The very young are particularly susceptible to the temptations of drug use. Frequently they have no concept of its insidiousness. Often they are responding to peer pressure. In cases where the individual has a degree of self esteem and the capacity to love and be loved, experimentation with drugs remains just that. In other cases, a dependency on drugs grows and becomes a dominating factor in the life of the user.

Drug prevention and correction programs as they now exist are largely ineffective. Sporadic efforts are made with the young to persuade them to avoid the use of drugs entirely and are of limited effectiveness. Programs exist in schools in the classroom while drugs are freely sold and traded in the corridors. This not to say that such programs should be abandoned, but such programs should be revised after a careful examination of their effectiveness. The young should be encouraged to discuss freely with their peers and with their teachers the reasons for turning to drugs, for continual use of drugs. Those who have experienced drug use and suffered its consequences and subsequently recovered can be of particular value in these programs. In no cases should this be teaching from the top down, but total participation by the students, acting on sound information provided by those knowledgeable about the nature and effects of drug use. There should be a continual examination by the participants of the reasons for drug use, particularly among the young. This educational effort should be constant and universal and the aim should be to convince all of society that the use of drugs is undesirable on every basis, that the drug user is depriving himself of full use of his senses and is destroying his sense of self esteem, the basic ingredient of love. This approach to the drug problem should be continued in the case of youthful offenders.

Drug use has been called a victimless crime, and in the narrow sense of the word it is, but the implications of drug use need further examination. Drug use is rampant among the economically disadvantaged because the buying and selling of drugs is a profitable business. The connection between drug use and the crimes of robbery and theft are well established. It is also well established that we have a new generation of entrepreneurs in our inner cities, drug lords who are frequently objects of envy and admiration in their neighborhoods. They do a brisk business and profit enormously from the misery of their fellow man. There is little question that the first step in breaking the connection between drug use and other types of crime is to take the profit motive out of drugs. This would have the effect not only of eliminating youthful drug lords, but it would also put their suppliers out of business.

Legitimizing drugs is anathema to many, but those crying out in protest against legitimizing drugs have no effective alternatives to suggest. Punishment in our legal systems has been seen to be almost totally ineffective. Each society will have to chart its own course as to how it goes about legitimizing and controlling drug use and determining how revenues formerly amassed by dealers and suppliers can be used. The use of such revenues should, however, be primarily involved with continual efforts to eliminate drug use as completely as possible both by continuing education and by eliminating the root causes of drug use. The process will be slow, but progress will be inevitable, and the New Age of Love and Peace will go down in history as the beginning of the end of a drug dominated world. This is God's wish for man.

Book One

Chapter Five

The Divine Nature of Man

There is little that God needs to tell now about the origins of the earth. Science has provided man with the essential facts about the evolution of the earth and the evolution of man. What science has not considered is the origin of the energy involved in this evolutionary process. God is energy. He is more than energy, but all energy proceeds from Him. His angels and spirits are energy. They too are more than energy, but energy is the basis of their powers.

Science has by and large been accurate in tracing the process of evolution and has been reasonably accurate in estimating the number of earth years this process involved, so there is no need to add further details here on that aspect of creation. What science has not considered is the source of the divine spark that separates man from other forms of earthly life. That divine spark is the work of God. Man is God's creation and fashioned in his image of perfection. God designed man to be a creature of love and creativity. He willed him to evolve into the master of his universe, to use his creativity to fashion a living environment to afford man the creature comforts needed by him to live a life of love and sharing. He gave man the gift of creativity to be used in the furtherance of human welfare. Man has not always used this gift wisely.

In many ages through the history of this planet there has been peace and progress. Such an age was the Golden Age of Enlightenment in the ancient world of Greece when men sought to understand the nature of God's love and to apply this learning to daily life. The Greek city state came close to governmental perfection. The people of the Age of Enlightenment rarely knew the cruelty of war and deprivation. They existed in relative harmony with each other and with the universe. They sought to understand the nature of the Supreme Being and to do His work. They created structures of great beauty and they founded institutions designed to further love of self, love of fellow men and love of God. At no time did arrogance and pride interfere with their efforts to understand and to serve their God. This is not to say that their theology was totally accurate, but God is not concerned with accuracy in theology. He is concerned with its effectiveness in leading man into a life of love and holiness. Holiness is defined at all times as a seeking after God.

Man’s Deterioration into War

At the end of the Age of Enlightenment man succumbed to covetousness and embraced conflict as a method of achieving his ends. He forsook the wisdom of his philosopher priests and embraced a philosophy of materialism and self indulgence. The cause of this decline was a growing arrogance, a reluctance to surrender will and to admit to a higher power. In all ages this has been the cause of the decline of civilizations. It is clear today that the world is in chaos because its leaders have assumed for generations that they hold the reins of power absolutely, that there is no power higher than that of earthly authority. The result is constant conflict, with each earthly leader confident that his is the right cause, that he will triumph in any struggle, that he has the answers to man's needs, and that he can achieve his ends with brute force and strength of arms.

Regard the world today. There are few places where conflict does not rage, where people do not go hungry so that their leaders may stockpile arms and the other accouterments of war. Regard the covetousness that rules the hearts of the leaders of the world today, a hunger for personal power, for personal aggrandizement, for constant expansion of national frontiers, and for constant superiority over their neighbors. Regard the failure of the leaders of the world over the past several generations to consider the will of the people. Consider the spilling of blood and the enmity engendered among people, so that when conflict temporarily ceases there has been no solution, only a temporary postponement of further conflict, The peoples of the world are led into the insanity of this kind of constant conflict by their leaders who tell them that their neighbors are their enemies, not their friends, that national borders are to be protected at all cost, no matter how dreadful the toll, and that armed conflict is the total answer. Peace has become a momentary lull in the business of war and exists only temporarily in one part of the world or another. The poorest countries on earth feel that the road to progress lies in emulating their more powerful brothers in the waging of war within their borders, with each leader vying for personal power regardless of the effect on the people of that country. War for the sake of war has become the answer to all national and international problems.

Peace Through Love

In each generation there have been men of peace, but their voices have been lost in the clamor of conflict. If mankind pursues its present course it will destroy itself. The answer lies in a revolution in man's heart. It is time for the individual citizen to rise up and demand to be heard, to demand that his leaders listen to his pleas for peace. That peace must be based on the revolution in the heart that makes love the motivating force in all endeavors in the world of man. There have been peaceful revolutions in the past which have effectively changed the leadership and conduct of individual nations. Now is the time for a peaceful revolution throughout the world. Cast down your arms and embrace your former enemy. Ask each other to understand the empty nature of the enmity which existed between you, and understand its insignificance compared with the promise of peace based on love and understanding. Ask each other for love and understanding, and then give it freely each to the other.

As man moves, so moves the nation. As the nation moves, so moves the world. Man must cease following blindly the old way of problem solving through conflict which simply exacerbates the problem, and instead embrace the new way of problem solving through love. This revolution must start in the family, spread throughout the community and the nation, and finally become the ruling power in the world. Love is the answer. It has always been the answer. It always will be the answer. It is God's way. If love rules man's heart it will rule the nation and the world, and when love rules the world there will be perpetual peace. Man will thrive in the age of Love and Peace. Man will embrace his fellow man in a spirit of love without bounds, in a generosity that has no limits, in a fellowship of giving and receiving freely the bounty of this earth, in a total oneness with each other and with God. This is God's wish for man.

Book Two

Chapter One

The Essential Nature of Love

God has chosen to tell His story to allow all men to change their ways and to turn to Him with love in their hearts. God knows that men sincerely want peace and love. God is insistent that man take the initiative in his own salvation. To this end God has set out rules for living that He has chosen for all His children to follow.

First of all man must love his neighbor. This cannot be an empty love, words devoid of meaning. This must be an active love. It must be a love of good deeds and constant service. God is aware that this has been a teaching of most religions for centuries and that man has failed in most instances to live by this rule. Now God feels that man is ready to regard this rule not simply as a precept but as a daily guide for living.

First, man must throw away his weapons. He must disarm himself and meet his fellow man with love as his defense. There are those who will say that this is foolhardy, that those who pose the most threat will refuse to follow this teaching and will rule by violence even more. God's word is that slowly the use of violence in the world will die out with the abolition of arms. This will not happen overnight, but it will happen.

Man must also be prepared to take any step necessary to see that his neighbor is not in need. If he is hungry, feed him. If he is sad, comfort him. If he is lonely, love him. If he is disconsolate, cheer him. Man must reach out to man with a love that binds him to his neighbor. Love is energy and energy cannot dissipate. Love generates love, and love bestowed on a fellow man is returned tenfold if it is given in sincerity. God is insistent that love not be doled out in petty quantities, measured meanly by the giver. Love must be entire, that is it must be as total a love as the giver is capable of. Each individual varies from his brother in his capacity to know love. Some individuals are not capable of the boundless love that God would have all men know in the end. Their capacity has been diminished by lack of love in their lives as children. If children do not know love, they cannot give love.

When a child is born, it is born with an infinite capacity for love. It comes straight from a God whose love for His children knows no bounds. Who has looked on the face of an infant and not seen love and trust? The relationship between parent and child is the most critical in the development in the child of a capacity to love, but it is not essential. Any loving relationship between a child and an adult or between children will foster the development of his capacity to love. The loving person need not be a relative, although in most cases this is the case. It can be a loving friend, a teacher, a role model, a minister, a neighbor. There is no rule of thumb for the development of the capacity for love in a child. The only essential is that the child receive love in response to its need to love and to be loved.

All mankind in all places at all times comes into this world with an infinite capacity to love and be loved. It becomes the responsibility of those nurturing this child to take what God has fashioned and to love the child as entirely as they can so that the child's capacity to love will be as little diminished as possible. The more love a child receives the greater his capacity for love will remain, until as an adult he is able to nurture his children in a way that will insure that they in turn will retain their God-given capacity to love, and the cycle of love as a prevailing emotion will be firmly established.

The nurturing of children is the single most important responsibility given by God to man. Anyone who ignores the need of a child to be loved fails in his responsibility to himself, to the child, and to God. Anyone who fails to heed this rule limits his own capacity to love and is thereby depriving himself of God's love. The child deprived of love is slowly drained of the capacity to love. If the child does not know love and does not learn how to love, the child will be incapable of feeling guilt. Take the child from a loveless home. He will not be able to resist the blandishments of those who seek to entice him to engage in anti-social behavior because not knowing that he is loved he is incapable of feeling guilt. The unloved child becomes the unloved adult, and inevitably the unloved adult finds a world that is alien and threatening. There is no shelter from loneliness. There is no warmth in friendship. There is no capacity for involvement in the lives of his fellow man.

Some of these unloved individuals live their lives in silent and lonely desperation. Some become involved with groups that promise release from loneliness and fear. They substitute pseudo religion for love and try to persuade themselves that their god is a god of controlled anger, and they persuade themselves that the only road to happiness is the infliction of pain on themselves and each other. They fast and flagellate and otherwise demean themselves in an effort to win the approval of a god they imagine to be their salvation. These groups are devoid of love, and the individual inevitably loses hope in the god he had embraced so willingly at the start and becomes more embittered still.

Other souls who have never known love lose themselves in pursuit of worldly pleasures. They convince themselves that happiness lies in an ever increasing cycle of pleasurable experience, in possession of material wealth and goods, and in winning the approval if not the envy of the world by an ostentatious display of wealth and material things. These individuals too tire eventually of the sound of empty laughter, of idle chatter, and of the clink of coins. They try successive marriages to satisfy the need for love that they feel inadequate to give and their concern for their successive spouses is reduced to monetary consideration. They are forever seeking an elusive happiness that forever eludes them. They die without knowing the glory of shared love.

The lack of love in the human life is a critical factor in the deterioration of society. The unloved individual, incapable of giving or receiving love from any other mortal, is devoid of concern for anyone but himself. His daily pursuits become a meaningless round of activities designed to keep body and soul from starving, but the soul slowly starves without the nourishment of shared love and is an empty shell in the end.

The Responsibilities of Societies

Man needs to consider his options. He can continue to exist in a world where those who are loved as children flourish and those who do not know love as children are doomed to failure and the empty pursuit of happiness, or he can change the world to a caring environment where no single child is deprived of the love it needs to learn to love. The infant is born with the capacity for infinite love, but this capacity needs to be nourished constantly to grow and survive the daily strife the world sometimes offers the individual.

Man can accomplish this end in a number of ways. First, society must rearrange its priorities. It must cease spending billions on arms throughout the world and spend this money on developing resources for its people. The needs are great. No man should be deprived of dignity. Society has an obligation to offer each individual the right to gainful employment. This is not to say that society must create empty jobs to keep people busy as has been done in the past. There is a great need in all civilizations for improvements which have been neglected for centuries.

Cities throughout the world are devoid of warmth and the accouterments of social interaction. Most people of the world today live in concrete canyons, each in his own little box, with little contact with his neighbor and less with society outside his immediate environment. There is a great need to facilitate the development of social relationships among those living in our cities. Money now spent on defense and war should be earmarked for the development and maintenance of facilities designed to allow man to mingle comfortably with his neighbor in an environment of comfort and love.

No child should lack a place to go in time of need. No child should go hungry. No adult should have to live with the knowledge that he is failing his child because of what the world calls economic reality. It is not uncommon for a man, buffeted by the demands of a hostile world and unable to meet these demands, to turn on his child and blame that child for creating the demands that he cannot meet. In anger and frustration he abuses the one thing in his life that does not abuse him. He is incapable of offering love to his child because he does not know love himself. Self esteem is a concept totally alien to him.

It is the responsibility of society to provide for all of its people the means by which the most deprived can achieve self esteem. This can be done in a number of ways. First, construct and maintain these centers where all men, women and children can mingle in comfort and fellowship at all times. The release alone from the tensions of loneliness can work miracles. What has been done in the past in this direction has been done poorly. It is not enough to provide a building, post the hours it is open, and staff it with self professed professionals who approach the people they work with with apprehension and distaste, further destroying any possibility of self esteem for the people they work with, the absolute essential for giving and receiving love. No, these centers must be staffed, directed, and run by the people who use them, neighbors banded together to give love and sustenance to each other. And where, you ask, is society to find the means to do all this? The answer is to reorder priorities. Cease the tremendous outpouring of funds for purposes of war and spend that money to further human welfare. Dismantle the bureaucracy of the welfare state and reorganize to permit the individual to participate as fully as he is capable of participating in the determination of how his life is to be lived.

Tell the politicians that the time has come for honesty in governments all over the world. Cease the struggle for personal power, and look to the needs of the people. Tell each other that the striving for personal power is an empty pursuit. It leads only to frustration and anger. Each time a politician reaches the position of power which he feels gives him security there is another politician striving to topple him from his pedestal and start the cycle anew. Let all politicians realize that their responsibility is to the governed. The good of the individual citizen should be the only concern of the politician who achieves a position of responsibility. His devotion should be to those he governs and not to constant aggrandizement for his personal power and wealth.

We are seeing throughout the world today a revulsion among the people against the frauds and errors of governments as they exist today. The public is looking for new answers, and new answers they shall find. God will find a way to lead the people away from the hypocrisy of existing governments toward purer forms of government. He will enter the hearts of the people and tell them that they must seek new leaders with purer motives. He will inspire them to discard forms of government which are hurtful to the governed and to modify the forms of their governmental structure to permit those in authority to respond adequately to the needs of the people.

There must be no more unquestioned authority. There must be justice at all times in the dispensation of public funds. There must be no more graft, corruption, favoritism, nepotism, or extravagance in the management of government. Those in power must abandon personal aggrandizement and bend their energies toward improving the lot of the people. They must put aside the constant struggle for personal power that characterizes all the governments of the world today. They must tend to the need to streamline the essential bureaucracy so that it is best suited to perform its functions. There must be no frivolity, no undue extravagance, no personal prerequisites that quickly sap government both of its resources and of its effectiveness. There must be a constant honest effort to improve the lot of the individual citizen. Love must enter the hearts of those in power so that those they govern will be able to live in enough comfort and security to know the power of love for their fellow men and for the return of a sense of self esteem to the least economically fortunate of the people.

In the end, all will be enriched. The politician will not be plagued by frustration, scandal, greed, and rivalry. The governed will benefit from an enlightened leadership and will enjoy the material benefits that accrue from a wiser more honest dispensation of public funds.

Let the world know this, that God has spoken in this matter. It is the single most important factor in returning the world to a state of love and peace. It is His intention that man take the initiative in this work and to this end He will enter the hearts of those who will listen and will speak to them of what must be done. They will hear Him say that costly and wasteful elections must cease, that the systems worldwide must be altered and modified so that the candidate with the most money no longer has an inevitable advantage over his competitors. There must be a return to the simpler forms of electing public officials. To this end there must be more power on a local level and less on a national and state or provincial level. In the cities this will be difficult at first. It will be a massive undertaking to overhaul existing wasteful and destructive governmental bureaus. It will be difficult to unseat entrenched politicians. It will be difficult to construct new governmental forms which return power to those who are governed so that they can directly affect both the nature of the institutions and the nature of the individuals who govern.

Those who seek public office should do so with purity of motive. They should seek to help their fellow man. There should be no taint of power grabbing, of ego satisfaction, of personal aggrandizement. Graft and dishonesty should be unknown, and should there be the faintest suggestion of either, immediate action should be taken against the individuals involved to strip them of the power that made their greed possible. There should be no quarter given to those who would ignore the necessity of keeping public service what its name indicates, service to the people governed. It is incumbent upon those in public service to be constantly vigilant. They must at all times realize that their responsibilities are God-given, and they must at all times remember that the needs of the people are their paramount concern.

More attention should be paid in the educational system to the training of students for public service. It should be inculcated in the young that a life of public service is a life devoted to God. As it is, politicians and public servants are a despised lot. The politician is considered a parasite by the public, sucking on public funds, riddled with corruption, receptive to graft, entirely unconcerned with the welfare of those who elected him to office. All too often this is the case. There are politicians who become public officials who are good and faithful servants of the people, who bring idealism and honesty into public service, and who strive against insurmountable odds to put their idealism into practice with the passage of just laws and the equitable and effective distribution of public funds. Such men are unfortunately a rarity today, and they quickly become discouraged and either lapse into ineffectiveness or quit the public arena entirely and leave it to those who aspire to office for less idealistic reasons.

This is the case in country after country. No government today is without taint of corruption. No government truly serves its people as effectively as it could and should. No government today aspires to the high ideals God regards as essential to meeting the public trust. No government can stand that does not conform to the needs of the people to live lives that permit them to exist in an atmosphere of love and peace. That is the message of God, and it behooves man to move quickly to modify existing institutions to meet the needs of the governed and to create new institutions to further the common good by letting the individual have a hand in his own governance.

Steps To Be Taken

Let me be very specific. God's plan is for all the governments of the world, large and small, to take upon themselves the job of reorganization of priorities and of putting forth a massive effort to insure that the trappings of government are shed in favor of governments that are designed simply to serve the average citizen. There should be no concern for public defense, and there should be no need for defense. All the nations of the world should lay aside their weapons of destruction and turn instead to the production of those creature comforts which will permit all the people of each country to live in an environment so adequate that it permits the fostering of self esteem and fellowship among men.

To this end governments should do several things. Each nation must look carefully at its economic structure. Each nation must carefully discern what part of this structure needs to be dismantled or revised. Each nation should decentralize its economic structure as completely as possible as soon as possible. The massive costs of supporting a top heavy often ineffective central government must be reduced if not eliminated. This will not be easy. Those in power and those grasping for power in the capitals of the world will not easily surrender their monopoly on control of public funds. They will not easily surrender their powers of taxation and dispensation of public moneys, but surrender they must. The individual will not much longer tolerate economic systems which destroy individual initiative by punitive taxation when these funds are used in ways which benefit those who govern rather than those who are governed.

There are several steps which should be taken immediately in all nations of the world. Seek to know the most pressing needs of the people. If the most pressing need is for food, fill that need by placing it in a position of first priority on the national agenda. Seek the help of fellow nations both to supply food to the needy nations on a temporary basis and to lend support and skill in the establishment of food sources in the needy nations. Some nations are better endowed than others in the natural resources necessary for the production of food. These fortunate nations should take the lead in food production, not only for their own people but for all the nations of the world. There should be free trade, but the more affluent nations should, as is done somewhat today, lend assistance to those nations not yet ready to supply their own needs. The ultimate goal should be for each nation to be self sustaining to whatever extent its natural resources allow, but inevitably trade in foodstuffs is necessary, and this trade should be both free and honest. There should be no governmental brokers profiting from the needs of hungry nations. Governments should not use this trade as barter for power or allegiance. There should be no meanness among nations in this regard. God's wish is that the love man feels for his fellow man be reflected in the love one nation feels for another. Let no man go hungry. Let no child starve. Let the nations of the world be one in seeing that world hunger is a thing of the past and that the vision of a world sharing freely its resources becomes a reality.

There are several steps in this process. First the most powerful nations of the world must join together and produce a plan whereby the wealth they enjoy as a result of God's bounty is freely shared with less fortunate nations. God does not mean a glorified United Nations with its myriad of agencies each seeking to do good but fragmented and compartmentalized, with a top heavy bureaucracy, but an alliance which will provide funds and training in the means of production to enable the deprived nations to raise the level of living of its citizens above bare subsistence to a level of comfort. This will involve a massive outpouring of funds and a massive human effort. All the talent and ingenuity which in the strongest nations has gone into producing a war machine should now go into producing a peace machine.

Within each nation those governing must insure that the least of its citizens must be housed, clothed, fed, and educated adequately. Each nation must devise social programs to achieve this goal, but it should not be done as it is at present. In nations where there is now adequate wealth to achieve this end, the bureaucracy of governmental control over welfare and other programs must be eliminated. People should be given the opportunity to be gainfully employed, and failing that they should be given funds adequate to their needs out of the public treasury. This not to say that God condones those who are unwilling to work and to contribute to the public good. Indeed work is essential not only to the common good but to the development of a sense of self esteem. There should be programs locally based wherever possible where those not gainfully employed and supported by public funds should be required to contribute time and effort toward making their communities better places to live.

Need for Changes in Education

There is never enough energy within any given community presently to meet its every need. Take schools. The schools in most of the advanced nations are woefully inadequate both in curriculum and in manpower. There should be revisions to the curriculum to meet more closely the needs of the students in the New Age of Love and Peace. That is not to say that the old curriculum should be abandoned. Much of this traditional curriculum is good and necessary for the continuation of traditional values where those values are based on love. Where those values are not based on love there should be change.

There should no longer be the emphasis that exists now on competition and rivalry among students. The emphasis should be upon shared experiences in learning which generate love and helpfulness. This is not to say that discipline should be abandoned. The young need discipline to feel loved and protected. There should be very specific demands made upon each student, but the demands should never exceed the student's ability to meet those demands. A spirit of love and self esteem should be fostered at all times and in all places.

Classes should be small enough for there to be an active intimate interchange between the teachers and the students. This is where society needs to learn to use its teaching resources. Do not keep the community out of the classroom. Bring into the classroom all those who are willing and able to help the overworked beleaguered teachers. Set up a training system so that all citizens with the time and inclination can plan an active part in the education of the young. Willing hearts and willing hands will transform the traditional classroom into a place of beauty and love where learning flourishes.

Take all those who would help and welcome them into the system. Take your artists and let them transform your classrooms into places of beauty and inspiration. Take your artisans and let them design learning spaces suitable to the nurturing of young minds. Do away with the traditional desk and chair furnishing of today's classroom. Instead create areas of learning where the students may learn individually or in small groups aided by loving volunteers trained to best use their God-given talents to best nurture young minds. Provide the tools of learning that are best suited to the subject at hand. Books of all sorts should abound. The latest technologies should be employed to facilitate whatever learning they are able to implement.

Above all, bring into the class room the creativity which is latent and eager to burst forth in every young mind. Do not trammel the young mind with rules and regulations. Do not say that this method of self expression is right and the other wrong. Listen to the words of the young and be amazed and enlightened. Look at the works of the young and praise their beauty and insight. Give the student the means of expressing this creativity, and he shall grow in self-esteem and love of his fellow students and of his teachers. Nurture the young carefully in self knowledge that will permit him to treat those around him with love and courtesy at all times. Above all, love him. Let him be surrounded by those who see him as a worthy recipient of their love because this child is God's child, and they as teachers are privileged to love him and to fashion his mind in the ways of love and understanding.

This is not to say that the discipline of learning is to be abandoned. At all times the hungry mind of the young should be fed with knowledge. This knowledge should be of many kinds. The young should learn of the past. The young should know of their heritage nationally, internationally, and spiritually. The young should know the miracles of science and learn what part their talents permit them to play in its progress. The young should know of the writings of the ancient sages of all cultures and how their wisdom has affected the history of the world. The young should enjoy the literature of the immediate past and the present to savor the creativity of the minds of their fellow men. They should at all times be encouraged to speak of what they read, to discuss their reading with those able to share their joy in their new found knowledge and to help them to a deeper understanding of what they have read. The young mind should be stretched at all times and never underestimated, but it should never be abused with excessive demands, ridicule, or any demeaning methods of control. There should at all times and in all places be a joy of learning which is contagious. There should be a shared exultation between teacher and child in the wonders of the human mind and its infinite possibilities.

This will not be an easy transformation. All too often and in too many places in the world schools have become warehouses, not far removed from jails in some cases, where the young are forcefully detained for periods of time they resent, rebel against, and abuse. The relationship between teacher and student is often chaotic, often destructive, and even the most capable, most devoted teacher is all too often reduced to despair and goes about his work without the sense of joy and dedication he first knew in his profession.

This deterioration in the education of the young is intolerable. Do not think that it will be a simple matter to change from chaos to order, from imprisonment to freedom, from self hatred to self love, but it can be done. Begin with the youngest. Take a new generation of young minds and shape them in the new way. Lavish your love and your attention on the very beginners in education. Let the process start in the first years of schooling and let the new methods follow and grow with the children. All societies will be gratified with the results.

Let it never be forgotten that the essential ingredient at all times in education is love, love shared between the teacher and the student, love shared among students and among teachers. Let it not be forgotten that love engenders love and the love of self is an absolute requirement for love of others. The very young child needs love as it needs food and air. The very young child has an open heart and an open mind. Even the child deprived of love in the home can be sustained and nourished by the love he can find in the school environment.

Do not forget God's admonition that the school as an institution must be revised and expanded to include all segments of society, all those willing to share of their talents and energies in the nurturing and education of the young. There should be no closed doors in the schools. There should be no authoritarian atmosphere. There should be no inflexibility in the lines of authority and responsibility. Each school should be free to adapt to its individual needs with the loving guidance of an individual or a group sensitive to the specific needs of the students. This is not to say that each school should or could be totally homogeneous in its student make-up. Diversity is an essential part of the learning environment, but there are common needs in the most diverse of student bodies.

First, again and always, there must be love. That love must be exhibited in a number of ways. The students must be told constantly by their teachers that they are loved --- loved by their parents or caretakers, loved by their teachers and teacher's aides, loved by each other, and loved by God. That is not to say that there should be any specific religious teaching. God can be defined as the spiritual head of the universe, the being who rules the sun and the stars, the moons and the oceans, and whose love for man knows no bounds. There can be many approaches to God, but the young should be taught that God is love, that God demands that love to be freely given and freely received, that God has no other single demand, for if there is love, there is truth, and if there is love, there is beauty, and if there is love there is peace. If love prevails in the classroom all else follows. There is learning, there is fellowship, there is godliness.

The Doctrine of Individual Responsibility

There is in all of this a doctrine of responsibility. Each man is responsible not only for himself, not only for those emotionally and physically dependent upon him, but for all other men, for all those in need of succor of any kind. This individual responsibility is central to the effective implementation of the New Age of Love and Peace.

Let me recount the ways in which the individual must be individually responsible. First, he must be responsible to himself. He must learn first of all, to love himself as God's creature, loved by a God who makes no mistakes. He was born knowing his self worth and God's love for him. If man does not truly love himself, loving others becomes more difficult, not impossible, but more difficult, and in the end he must love himself in God's eyes.

Next, man must be responsible for his family, those he has chosen to assume responsibility for, those God has given into his care. His earthly duty is to provide for those family members dependent upon him for the creature comforts necessary for them to develop into loved and loving members of the family and the larger society. The monetary rewards of his labor should go first to the maintenance of his family, and after their needs have been met, he should share his worldly goods with others not so fortunate. The responsibility to nourish his family with love and spiritual awareness is as important as his responsibility to nourish them with food. At all times the individual should remember that love begets love, and that the more perfect the love within the family the more perfect love will be in the world outside the family.

The next responsibility of man is to spend his days in harmony and love with his fellow man. All too often the striving for survival, the fear of failure, the anxiety of rejection by society combine to blind the individual to the need to love his neighbor, not with empty words, but with an active love, a love that is expressed in deeds as well as words. Words are a powerful weapon. Each expression of love softens the heart of the giver and softens the heart of the receiver of that love. Who can find it in his heart to strike out at the fellow man who says to him "I love you" in perfect sincerity? Do not be troubled by the fear that expressions of love may be falsely interpreted as hypocritical. The world has largely forgotten that love expressed in words is a vital part of God's plan. Each man should tell his fellow man constantly that he loves him. This is difficult at first. Then comes the recognition that expressions of love not only soften the heart, but also enrich the soul. The very nature of existence becomes softer, gentler, more loving. Man will cease his senseless striving for superiority over his neighbor when he sees love in his neighbor's eyes and hears love on his neighbor's lips.

There are those in the world today who live in love, in total love of themselves, their fellow man, and of God. These children of God are like beacons in a world of darkness, and they cast their light over all who are befriended by them. Look to these people for leadership and guidance. You will know them by their works. They are everywhere waiting to be found, waiting to be helped in their great and small endeavors. Join them in love and fellowship in their valiant efforts to teach the world love and peace and to ease the hardships of those in need.

Finally, man must come to God. He must realize that God's single requirement of man is to love --- to love without regard to reciprocation of love, to love without regard to the lovability of the receiver of his love, to love from the pure goodness of his heart and soul. Purity of love is the ultimate goal. God loves the pure in heart, those who give love freely and unconditionally and whose love never ceases, never demands, never questions. When the world achieves purity of love, the Age of Love and Peace will be here, for what God says of the individual man is equally true of his immediate society, the larger society, and the nations of the world.

Let your leaders become not those who seek power and might and who deal in aggression and war, but those who seek to serve their fellow man in love and peace. Learn to discern these leaders in all fields of society and seek to learn from their wisdom, to emulate their loving methods, and to put your trust in the gentle persuasion of love rather than the brutal persuasion of aggression. The brute of aggression may achieve brief attainment of its goals, but it lies cowering, ready to strike again when man forgets the joy of peace and lapses into the terrors of aggression and war.

Think not that all these great achievements required of man will happen overnight, but happen they will, happen they must. Each of God's creatures must take the first step toward love --- love of self first, love of his fellow man second, and love of God above all last. This is a natural progression. When the first step toward total love has been taken, the second step becomes easier and the soul rejoices in the pleasures of a life of love. Love given is love received. Love nourishes the soul of the giver more than the soul of the receiver, but both are blessed. In turn this love given and received grows in the hearts of the giver and receiver and is freely offered to the rest of the fellow men each encounters. Above all man should remember that love begets love, that love freely offered is God's gift to man and man's gift to man and man's gift to God. This is the foundation of the New Age of Love and Peace. This is God's word. Let man hear God's word in his heart and his mind and let him live in accordance with this word at all times and in all places. That is God's wish for His children --- love and peace.

Book Two

Chapter Two

The need for Community Organizations

The first thing that man must do in the New Age of Love and Peace is to work actively with his neighbors in the establishment of community organizations designed to bring neighbors together in a fellowship of love and understanding. The nature of such organizations will depend on the location and nature of each individual neighborhood or community. In the cities these organizations will be based on proximity. In some cases a single building will support such an organization; in other cases an entire small town will comprise such an organization.

Whatever its size, each of these organizations should have as its goal the furtherance of the well-being of each of its individual members. Needs will vary, and there must be among the freely chosen leadership of such groups a continuing sensitivity to the needs of each individual in each group. The children should be the focus of the attention of the group first. Any child in need of care and love should become the responsibility of the group, and the responsibility should be delegated to an individual of determining what specific steps should be taken to insure that the physical and emotional needs of the child in need are being met.

At first there will be many children in need, and the job will seem overwhelming, but as time passes and the New Age of Love and Peace sees progress in the development of love as a motivating force in society, fewer and fewer children will have such a need for love. Parents loved by their neighbors will love their children and provide them with the emotional security in which love flourishes. One by one the children whose need for love is satisfied will become functioning adults and will in turn help the needy children of the next generation.

These neighborhood organizations should at all times and in all places be managed by those chosen by their neighbors for their abilities and their dedication. These groups should be loosely organized so that at all times there is the possibility of the expansion of the leadership group to include newcomers, either those new to the group or those already in the group who feel newly capable of being leaders. The membership as a whole should discuss the needs of its members and formulate specific goals the group wishes to achieve. Then the membership should determine the best way to achieve these goals and the best delegation of authority to move toward achievement. The membership as a whole should meet regularly to hear of progress made and to hear of new needs that might have become apparent since the last reporting of needs. There should be regular reports to the membership as a whole by those chosen as leaders, and there should be constant interchange of information among the members, each to the other, individual to the group, and the group to the individual.

The activities of the organizations will vary according to the inclinations and needs and talents of the membership, but the members should and must meet regularly in fellowship and love. Such meetings may include the entire membership or may be in smaller groups, again according to the size and nature of the individual community, but meet the members must. They must seek each other out to share in the human companionship of their neighbors and to learn to love each other and to meet each other's need to be loved.

There should always in all cases be specific regular activities for the young, from the smallest infant to the young adults. This group should be the focus of the organization's attention and resources. Each child from birth should know loving concern from at least one adult. He must know that he is loved and valued at all times. If the parent is not able to provide this loving concern and unqualified love, then another in the group should assume the responsibility. This is vital. All children need to be loved unconditionally by at least one adult at all times. Ideally the child is surrounded by unconditional love. This love is never withheld from the child. The adult may deplore the actions of the child or the words of the child but never the child himself. This should be made very clear to all children, that no matter how objectionable their behavior may at times be, they are loved, loved by those responsible for loving them in this world and by God. The child loved in this way will be able to sustain the self love that is vital to his spiritual and emotional well being through the course of his earthly life. This is the wish of God. This is God's way.

The Need for Equal Oppornity

The next thing that is essential to the implementation of the New Age of Love and Peace is to see to it that all men are treated as equals, that is that society offers them equal access to its riches. This is not to say that there should be radical redistribution of wealth, although the inequities in current ownership of wealth need to be corrected, but rather that all men should be offered the opportunity for education and training commensurate with their talents and abilities. Each child should be given the loving education described earlier, and this education should continue until the child reaches adulthood with the skills necessary to achieve whatever life goals he has set for himself. Then it becomes the responsibility of the leadership to insure that he has the opportunity to make a living at all times.

This can be done in a number of ways. First, society should look to the needs of its citizens and see that no man lacks a decent place to live. If there is a need for more and more adequate housing, the government should take the responsibility for providing such housing and utilize the skills of its citizens in all phases of construction of such dwelling places. This is not to say that the government should have complete control. Control should be in the hands of the citizens, with the government responsible for the conscientious dispensation of public funds. Those who are in need of housing should have a strong voice in determining the type and location of their dwelling places. The demands of space may result in a greater concentration of living quarters in the cities of the world, great blocks of buildings housing hundreds of families, but these huge buildings should be constructed in such a way that light and air pervade each dwelling place, that all have access to an outdoor area, no matter how small, that all are equipped with whatever labor saving devices society boasts of at the time. In other words, the least economically advantaged of citizens should have a dwelling the equal in its basic comforts as the dwelling place of the most advantaged.

How, you ask, can society afford to provide such comfort --- some would call it luxury --- to its most needy citizens, and the answer is that society cannot afford not to. We have seen an era in which great blocks of our major world cities have deteriorated into slums of degradation and danger. We have seen generations of children corrupted by their environment, hopelessly trapped in the atmosphere of poverty, despair, drugs, and degradation. Society must now act or this disease will intensify and spread and those communities will deteriorate further.

Tax and Welfare Reform

When I speak of the orderly dispensation of funds by the government I refer to those moneys collected by the authorities as taxes paid by the citizens in direct proportion to their ability to pay. There should not be confiscatory taxation of the very rich, but they should pay a greater portion of their total wealth. There should be an end to the temptations of tax evasion and cheating in avoiding the payment of just taxes. In some countries the need for reform is greater than in others, but in most countries changes should be made.

The central government should be solely responsible for collecting taxes and these taxes should represent a percentage of the total income of the family. The percentage should be scaled in accordance with the total earnings. There should be generous deductions for dependents of all kinds ---children, natural or adopted, parents, other relatives supported by the individual. Every concession should be made to encourage man to care for his extended family. Beyond that there should be no provision for deductions. Abolish the vast bureaucracies that exist in all countries and call themselves tax collectors. Establish a simple accounting system that controls the process of determining moneys owed and the collecting and dispensation of such moneys. The greatest proportion of these moneys collected should be returned to the communities in greatest need.

This will require a government of total honesty and total devotion to meeting the needs of its citizens. Such a vision is not purely utopian. It is within the grasp of each nation. The mechanics of such a system of taxation and dispensation of public funds will vary from country to country and community to community. In the richer countries a portion of funds collected should be used to help nations less fortunate to produce the means of economic success and to become self sustaining. A portion of funds returned to the community should be used as direct subsidy to those unable to work because of physical or mental disabilities and to those temporarily unable to find gainful employment. This is not to be considered what is now called welfare or the dole, but is to be considered a just return of public funds to the citizens either permanently or temporarily in need of help from their fellow citizens. There should be no bureaucracy involved in this dispensation of public funds beyond simple accounting. There should be no disgrace or humiliation involved. There should only be an awareness that all men are motivated by love of themselves, their fellow men, and of God, and that in the New Age of Love and Peace man will realize in every phase of his life, social as well as economic, that God's bounty is to be shared. There are those good men who now go much further than is absolutely required of them in furthering the welfare of their fellow men through social and charitable efforts, and individual charities should increase tenfold in the New Age of Love and Peace. Each act of charity enriches both the giver and the receiver, and each knows the love that is God's wish for man. There is no limit to the miracles that result from the acts of a generous heart. Joyful giving and joyful receiving are God's wish for man. It is God's plan.

Book Two

Chapter Three

Preservation and Restoration of Earth’s Bounty

There are other things that man must do to insure the coming of the New Age of Love and Peace. Man must at all times and in all places feel the respect for nature and nature's bounty that God expects. Man must cease despoiling the beauty of the earth and must bend his efforts toward restoring the earth to its original beauty. This is not to say that it is possible to return to the forest primeval and the simplicity of Eden, but man has been blatant in his disregard of the limited resources of his environment, and he has been profligate in the consumption of nature's limited resources.

More effort must be spent in finding substitutes for coal and oil as fuel. Industry has not been cognizant enough about the need to develop alternative sources of power. The research into the possibilities of solar power has been rudimentary at best. The research into the possibilities of atomic power has been marred by accidents totally preventable with a modicum of care. Science has the capability of developing both these sources of power and easing the world wide dependence on oil, a resource not only limited but also wasteful and destructive in its use and application.

The failure of man to develop alternate sources of power lies in the economic stranglehold that industry has on research capabilities. One aspect of this stranglehold is the total dependence in the developed countries and to some extent in the underdeveloped countries on the gasoline driven vehicle for transportation of all kinds. In some countries there has been an effort to provide cheap efficient public transit for all citizens, but in most of the world dependence on the individual vehicle is beyond the capacity of society to tolerate it. Cities are polluted, roads are crowded, the consumer is at the mercy of the oil cartels, and eventually the great cities of the world will see see a total breakdown of surface transportation in individual vehicles.

It is incumbent upon society to seek a solution to this problem. First, there should be more effort to locate housing close enough to the place of employment to limit the necessity of vehicle transportation. When new factories are built, housing should be planned in close proximity, housing which is both desirable and affordable for those employed. There should be a mixture of industrial and residential construction so arranged as to create a community of common endeavor and fellowship. Some of the New Towns constructed over the recent decades come close to this ideal. Schools, shops, and other communal niceties should be included in the general plan for development that combines labor and living.

In addition society needs to develop in all urban and suburban areas clean efficient public transportation which is made available to all citizens at absolutely minimum cost. Public transportation should not be self supporting; it should be subsidized by the community it serves. It should be possible for most communities to provide public transportation at no cost to its citizens. The effect would be dramatic. There would be a sharp decrease in the pollution of our great cities. There would be a sharp decrease in the frustration currently experienced by those individuals driving great distances to their workplaces on crowded highways which are constantly in need of repair. The saving of time would result in an enrichment of individual and family life, and the moneys saved in road maintenance would be better spent in perfecting public transportation facilities.

There is an urgency in all of this. Man has not considered the limited nature of earth's resources. He has not wisely husbanded earth's bounty. He has fallen into wasteful ways, satisfying the demands of today and failing to anticipate the needs of tomorrow. The time has come to stop this wasteful and destructive consumption of natural resources and end the despoiling of the environment. Man has the capability of turning from this rapacious plundering of nature and of effectively creating new sources of power and solving the related problem of transportation.

There are other areas of concern. Man has ignored the need to establish ground rules for the use of nature's bounty. Entirely too much waste takes place daily in all parts of the world. There must be an end of waste of all kinds. First of all, food. Man is not yet producing enough food to satisfy the needs of all men, and yet currently man is wasting enormous amounts of foodstuffs daily. He is not harvesting all that the land can produce. Governments are paying man to let land lie fallow and not yield crops in some parts of the world while in other parts men, women, and children are starving. Some of society enjoys a glut of earth's bounty while their fellow men spend their lives with empty or near empty stomachs. This waste and disproportionate enjoyment of what the earth yields must come to an end. All those nations capable of producing foodstuffs should do so to their maximum capacity, and the surplus should be freely distributed to the hungry of the world. There should be adequate governmental subsidies to the food producers to produce rather than to not produce, and the resulting surplus should go to those agencies, governmental and non governmental, that have the capacity to distribute them wisely.

In the same way, those individuals in society who have been habitual wasters of earth's bounty should look to themselves to change their lifestyles to conform to the adage "Waste not, want not" with application to the needy. These wasteful individuals should regard it as their duty to abandon their wasteful habits and make it a part of their lives to provide food to those in need, to see that their fellow men do not go hungry while they waste their excess food. This becomes a very personal kind of charity, and there are now existing agencies and organizations to facilitate distribution of these surplus foodstuffs.

In the New Age of Love and Peace you will see a proliferation of such organizations, all devoted to insuring that no man goes hungry. There will be gratification for all in this endeavor. Those who give will have the reward of knowing the warmth of the donor and the love of the receiver. Those who receive will know the love that motivates the donor and will experience the love of that donor. Both will know the warmth of God's love, and in His name the gift of giving and receiving in the spirit of love will be the hallmark of the New Age of Love and Peace. There will be no need for a child to go to bed hungry. There will be no need for a parent to know the anguish of a hungry child. All of nature's bounty will be shared in love and gratitude, and all those involved will be enriched by the giving and the receiving. This is God's way. Let man listen and obey, and the true rewards of love will be his to know. Let the world not regard these admonitions lightly. This is God's plan for man, and man must listen if he is to enjoy the greatness of the New Age of Love and Peace.

Man’s Responsibilities

There are other things that man must consider carefully. He must become involved with the problem of overpopulation. Nature's resources are limited, and man has been profligate in his use of these resources. It is true that God has designed the earth as a testing place for His souls, but He has also given man free will to use the earth as he sees fit and to control his own destiny. Throughout history man has tended to treat earth without regard for its finite nature. He has made great scientific advances it is true, but he has not accompanied these advances with a concern for their effect on his environment, and he has further erred in not being concerned with husbanding nature's resources in a necessary fashion. Now man is at a crisis point. The demands of the world population are beginning to exceed the capacity of the earth to meet these needs. Man must in many ways become more responsible.

First of all man must recognize the areas of concern. I have spoken about the need for productive nations to aid those less able to produce for themselves. This must immediately become a major effort on a worldwide basis. Those nations possessing the technology must assume the responsibility of sharing their knowledge with the less developed nations and supplying them with both the knowledge and the equipment they need to produce the foodstuffs which will make them as self sufficient as their natural resources allow. There must be an end to famine in this world, and the effort to end famine must be universal, shared by each nation on earth. This is man's obligation to man and cannot be ignored.

Secondly, man must cease to waste nature's resources which are limited in nature. He must devise methods of production which are more effective and enable him to tap those resources which are in greater supply for his basic needs. I speak here of the need, once again, to employ solar and nuclear power worldwide for energy use. These technologies are currently in their infancy, and it is incumbent upon the scientific community to make every effort to perfect the uses of solar and nuclear energy as soon as is possible with the maximum effort. This is a major obligation of all the powers with the scientific capacity to do it, and it is their obligation to share their knowledge and technology with those nations incapable of producing this technology themselves. This effort will require world wide cooperation immediately.

Next, man must consider the question of population control. This is not to say that any government should at any time interfere with man's right to reproduce freely as his heart and mind dictate, but it is to say that he should be given the choice. There is a need for man to recognize that the limited resources of earth dictate a due regard for the demands that an ever expanding population puts on it. To some extent, man is already concerned with the problem, particularly in the more technologically advanced, more sophisticated nations, but on a worldwide basis there is a great need for population planning. Governments should take an active role in supplying their citizens with the information they need to plan effectively. The need for population control should be taught in the schools from an early age. Religions should cease to interfere in this matter and permit their adherents to make individual choices. In some countries religious institutions have more effect in this matter than in others, but in no case is interference justified. This is a matter of individual choice. It is a matter between God and man. In no case should man be deprived of the means necessary to make this free choice.

This is a time of crisis in the history of the earth. Nations unable to produce enough material goods to supply their populations need massive aid in all these areas to achieve a balance between the needs of their people and the capacity of the nation to meet those needs. The effort must involve all nations, great and small. Old animosities must be forgotten in this massive effort, and all sense of rivalry among nations must be discarded. The only rivalry should be to achieve the most in this great effort. The need is clear. Man is in control of his own destiny and he has the God given capacity to do all the things necessary to use well the resources of the earth and to create an environment of love and peace in which all men will share fully in earth's bounty. This is God's plan.

Book Two

Chapter Four

The Problem of Nationalism

There are other areas of concern in God's plan. Man must consider the problems involved in the unification of men in the endeavors of the New Age of Love and Peace. As governments are now constituted, man is bound by nationalistic pride to regard those from other nations as a threat with regard to territory. Man should be mindful of the fact that by and large national boundaries are man made, accidents of history, and not to be regarded as sacrosanct. How is it that when man migrates from one geographic area to another he casts off his old feelings of nationalism and assumes new loyalties to his adopted land? His children, in turn, feel little if any loyalty to the land of their fathers and mothers, and accept totally a new nationalism, that of their land of birth. In some countries the feelings of nationalism are more sharply focused based on ethic identity. Man tends to forget the universal nature of the brotherhood of man and clings to a narrow national, ethnic, or racial identity which robs him of the greater vision of men as brothers.

There is a great need for man to examine closely his beliefs and actions in the area of nationalism. He must search his soul to find justification in regarding his brother as his enemy on the basis of national, ethnic, or racial identity. He must see clearly that conflict results from mistrust and that mistrust based on nationalism is an error in God's eyes. Man must abandon his intense concern with national boundaries and he must cease altogether his covetousness for his neighbor's land or property on both an individual and a national scale.

Some progress has been made in this area in some parts of the world. More must be made. The United Nations has served the world well in the process of peace keeping and it can function effectively as a vehicle for further unification of the world. Men must meet together not only to solve problems already created but to anticipate and prevent problems among nations from developing. This not to say that any global organization should actively interfere with the internal affairs of any nation, however small, but the collective judgment of the representatives of all nations can and should apply moral suasion when it becomes apparent that any nation becomes a threat to its neighbor, and beyond moral suasion it should employ peaceful tactics to convince the erring nation to recognize its error and correct its ways.

Gradually man should work toward the elimination of national boundaries in favor of a worldwide organization of brotherhood. Government should be handed back to the people on as local a level as possible so that true participation in governing may be enjoyed by those governed. This will not be an easy task. There is a need for national and international governmental bodies, but these should be designed to facilitate economic assistance and cooperation, to administer and dispense public moneys wisely and honestly to best meet the needs of all men, and to maintain effective communication among the peoples of the world so that conflict will be avoided, so that fellowship and brotherhood will flourish, and so that man will know the joy of peace at all times and in all places. All of this will become possible and inevitable when man knows the joy of loving his neighbor as himself and acting in that belief. When man loves man there is trust. When man loves man, nation loves nation. When nation loves nation, there is peace in the world. When there is peace in the world love flourishes and man becomes ruler of his own inner kingdom --- his heart and his soul --- and he resists the blandishments of greed and nationalism. He embraces his fellow man in love as his brother, and his brother, receiving this love, returns it tenfold and the cycle of love, having been established in the human heart, rules the world. This is God's wish for man. This is God's way.

The Dangers of Great Wealth

Beyond nationalism, the New Age of Love and Peace is threatened by the covetousness of nations and individuals for possession of earth's bounty whether it be land, resources, wealth or other manifestations of greed. Man needs to learn that once his basic needs have been met comfortably and he is able to meet the needs of those dependent upon him for their material well being, whether those dependents be members of his immediate or extended family or those he chooses to care for, he must recognize that any additional wealth in whatever form should be used for other purposes.

Man should not amass wealth simply for the sake of amassing wealth. Such greed has several unfortunate results. First of all, it corrupts the individual. Society has throughout history witnessed the unhappy downfall of men so dedicated to the amassing of wealth that they forget all else. They become empty shells themselves, devoid of love for anything but the clink of coins and the adulation they feel the world feels for them. In truth, they are generally despised by their fellow men who make a great outward show of respect and attention. There have been some men in history with a genius for accumulating wealth who have not lost their souls in the process, who saw the need to use their great wealth for philanthropic purposes and whose names in some cases are synonymous with philanthropy. Such men have saved themselves from the destruction that the accumulation of wealth can result in by seeing the need to share their bounty with others in ways of their own choosing. Those who have hugged their wealth to them until death finally separated them from this empty pleasure have never known the true meaning of sharing and have never known the satisfaction of money well spent.

The accumulation of great wealth has a devastating effect on the next generation. The children of great wealth are to be pitied more than envied. They are raised, by and large, without any feeling of love from parents whose obsession with wealth and its trappings leaves little time and less emotion for the nurturing of their children. Empty shells themselves, they have little love to share. In addition these children of wealth all too often grow in an atmosphere which demands nothing of them in return for the worldly advantages they enjoy. All too often raised in idleness, expecting much and giving little, observing their parents' concern for material wealth and worldly approbation, their souls wither, and not having been nourished with love, they find it impossible to love themselves or each other and settle into the same worldly pleasures as their parents. Deprived of the need to provide for their own material well being, they all too frequently never have the satisfaction of self achievement. They never know the discipline of having to achieve goals they set for themselves. They never learn the sense of self satisfaction that comes from the effort to achieve difficult ends. All too often they find themselves incapable of relating to their fellow men less fortunate than they in any way, and they feel no kinship with any humans except for a narrow group of fellow pleasure seekers.

You have all seen these people. Perhaps you have envied them. Make no mistake; they deserve your pity, not your envy. The poorest man living in love, giving and receiving love, is richer than the wealthiest of this moneyed group. Make no mistake about this. The Bible says that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enjoy earthly life with love in his heart ---- love for himself, love for his fellow man, and love for God. Greed drives out all emotions but greed. There is no room for love. Greed corrupts and greed corrupts for generations.

This is not to say that man must avoid the accumulation of wealth entirely. There are some better able to make money than others. Many men take pride and pleasure in the pursuits that result in wealth. This is to say, however, that these men must recognize the point of sufficiency and recognize that beyond that point their duty and happiness both lie in the expenditure of moneys to further the well being of their fellow men. There are no strict guidelines on how these moneys should be spent. Part of the pleasure in philanthropy is determining where the greatest need exists at that specific time and place and meeting that need. The more involved the rich man is with the charitable expenditure of his funds the more satisfaction he will know. He will find himself in an atmosphere of love. He will have feelings of love for himself. He will love and be loved by his fellow man. His children will profit by his example and they will in turn emulate his philanthropy and the cycle of love will be established.

Charity in The New Age

The charitable expenditure of great personal wealth will be one of the features of the New Age of Love and Peace. Man will realize the great satisfaction of living a life of sharing, and those with the most material wealth to share will best know the joy of sharing. There will be a revolutionary change in the attitude of the world toward the endless accumulation of worldly goods. There will be an end of wealth so vast that it corrupts generations yet unborn. And this revolution will occur in the hearts of man. Those of great wealth will be moved to look into their hearts to see the emptiness of wealth for the sake of wealth, and to share their bounty with their fellow man in whatever way they deem most desirable. Do not doubt that this will happen. Look around you and see it happening already. It will become a mighty force for good in the New Age of Love and Peace. It is God's wish for man. It is God's plan.

Book Two

Chapter Five

The Need for Family Loyalty

There are other considerations. Man must be aware of his obligations to those to whom he owes loyalty. He owes loyalty first of all to his family. There is no obligation so serious. He should endeavor to meet the physical and emotional needs of all those to whom he is bound by family ties.

To Parents

First of all, his parents deserve life long loyalty regardless of their successes or failures as parents in his eyes. Not all humans are well equipped for parenthood. If they have not themselves been raised in a loving household then they may find it difficult to cope with the inevitable problems that parenthood involves. The child of parents incapable of effective parenting will not necessarily be deprived of love, but he may be deprived of the emotional stability so necessary for the healthy development of the child into a healthy adult. It is a human tendency, no less deplorable than understandable, to blame one's failings on one's parents. To a certain extent there may be justification in this, but it is a meaningless exercise to spend adulthood blaming all faults and failures on a set of parents who were not as perfect as might be expected.

At a certain point in life each individual is responsible totally for his own actions. The only exception to this absolute rule are those mentally and emotionally ill individuals who are not capable of self responsibility at all and need to be cared for at all times. All other men and women should regard their parents with loyalty and devotion and above all with love. Without love there can be no effective ties between adult child and parent. With love and loyalty a rich relationship is possible and in God's eyes desirable at all times. All too often at the time of the death of a parent the surviving child is full of guilt and regret. He wishes desperately for another chance to do the things he should have done during the parent's lifetime, to say the things he should have said, and to express, above all, the love that he felt.

Man should be mindful at all times of the brevity of human existence and he should be mindful particularly of the brevity of his parents' lives once he has reached adulthood. He should at all times express his love and gratitude to those who bore him, nurtured him, gave him his independent existence, and loved him, no matter how effectively or ineffectively he feels they did these things. If in their advanced years his parents need help of any kind, it is man's responsibility to provide this help to whatever extent is humanly possible for him, and his help should be given cheerfully and lovingly at all times and under all circumstances.

In some societies age is revered and it should be in all. The young can learn from their elders, and all children should listen closely at all ages to the words of their parents. This not to say that parenthood automatically bestows wisdom on those who take on the responsibility of raising a child, but the dialogue between parent and grown child should be one of respect and patience and understanding and above all love. The aged parent looking back on his life all too often is aware of his failures and longs for the opportunity to speak to his children of his regrets, of his lost hopes, of roads not taken, of opportunities lost. These parents have an absolute need to communicate these regrets to their grown children, and the grown children have an absolute responsibility to listen, to learn, to understand, and to love.

This is not always easy on either side. The parent is often loath to confess error to the child, now grown and often a parent himself. He may fear that such a confession will result in rejection and alienation, and it becomes the responsibility of the grown child to open such a dialogue in a kind and loving way, to speak to his parents of his childhood and seek to understand the relationship from the very beginning. If there have been problems in the relationship, such a dialogue will create new understandings on both sides. Early slights and disagreements which have been magnified by time will seem insignificant when openly discussed. At first such dialogue may be painful for both parties, but as the dialogue progresses over a period of time there will be an increased understanding on both sides of a relationship less perfect than it might have been, and with the increase in understanding the relationship will achieve the love and perfection it lacked before. In those cases where the relationship between parent and child has been harmonious from the beginning, the dialogue between parent and child has the effect of strengthening the bonds that have always existed and strengthening the love that the relationship has always known.

Age can be a lonely time in today's world, and it is the absolute responsibility of the grown child to ease the loneliness of his parents' old age in all ways he can. Dialogue and constant assurances of love and loyalty are essential ingredients in assuring that an aged parent spends his last days in quiet contemplation of the past, and he needs the assurances of those he has loved, however imperfectly, that he is indeed loved at a time when he may consider himself unlovable.

There are no set rules about how the grown child can offer his aged parent the security and peaceful frame of mind that he needs. Each case must be approached individually, but the two abiding requirements are communication to achieve understanding and constant expressions in both word and deed of the love the grown child feels for his parent. There is no such thing as too much love, and there is no time when love is needed more that when children are grown and gone from the home and when the parent feels the loneliness of old age. In those cases where a grown parent has lost a spouse, the loneliness becomes even more unbearable and the need for communication and love even greater. In those cases where there are loving grandchildren the problems of loneliness are lessened, but that does not diminish the need for communication and expressions of love between grown child and parent.

Man must remember this at all times and in all places. This primary loyalty must be regarded as both an obligation and a pleasure. The closer the communication and the greater the love, the more pleasurable the relationship will become, and on the day that death interrupts the relationship there will be joy, not regret, happiness, not sorrow, and a continuing sense of love. Death is not an ending. It is a transition, and love survives this transition.

To Children

Man must have other loyalties. He must be loyal to his children at all times and never cease to offer them unconditional love. Part of the process of maturing involves apparent rejection of parental control and assertion of independence. This is a difficult period in all parent-child relationships. The child, striving to separate itself from parental ties, does not always behave in a manner acceptable to the parents. Rebellious behavior becomes more the norm than the docile obedience that the parents had come to expect. The parents are hurt and bewildered by this rebellious behavior and interpret it as a lack of love from the child. They, in turn, tend to withdraw their love, and the gulf widens. The deeper the love between parent and child is to start with the more devastating the loss of love is, and as the gulf between parent and child widens, the greater the misunderstandings become. Before long there can be complete alienation.

This is not always the case. Some parents manage the transition of the child from dependence to independence with less than absolute alienation, but there is almost always a degree of alienation on both sides. It is normal development for a child to seek a separate and independent existence, and when this separation begins to assert itself the child finds itself less concerned with parental approval than with the approval of its peers. The parent, sensing this emotional withdrawal, often feels hurt and rebuffed and is tempted to reject this child who has turned to others for love and approval.

This is above all the time for the parent to love his child unconditionally. It is the time of greatest need of the child for love and approval. It is the most difficult time to offer both, but it is essential that the parent do just that. It is a time when communication with the child is most difficult, a time of withdrawing for the child, and this too is difficult for the parent. But if the parent offers the child loyalty and love all through this period of withdrawal and rebellion the transition for the child into adulthood will be eased and the relationship between parent and child will not only survive with love intact, but will survive with love strengthened into a new relationship between two caring adults who are still parent and child.

The essential ingredient here is love and a part of loving is loyalty. This period of separation is perhaps more difficult for the child, who feels the absolute necessity of achieving adult status in the eyes of the world and of surrounding himself with a society of peers who share his problems and his interests. He knows that he must in this process make it clear to his parents that he is no longer totally dependent upon them emotionally, and the easiest way to insure separation is to cause the parent to love him less, to create conflict and misunderstanding, and to thereby excuse himself for separating himself from a relationship which has grown disagreeable and which has become less than loving.

If the parent refuses to be involved in conflict with the child, if the parent makes it clear to the child that there is at all times loyalty and love in his heart for his child, the difficulties are diminished. There will always in even the most loving of parent-child relationships be an emotional wrench involved in the process of a child's becoming an adult, but the love between the parent and the child is neither ended nor diminished. It is transformed into a new loving relationship, one which offers love without restraint, love without possession, love with freedom. Both parent and child are free to mature in their separate directions bound by bonds of loyalty and love strengthened by the experience of separation. Once again, the answer is love, love which begets understanding and tolerance, love which not only survives struggle but is strengthened by it, love which envelops parent and child and creates a deeper bond between them, a bond of love that lasts and grows for their lifetimes. This is God's way.

In Marriage

The relationship most important in human life is the relationship between man and woman, most commonly between husband and wife. Part of maturity is involvement in a loving relationship or series of relationships with an individual of the opposite sex. This is not always the case, and of that I shall speak later, but it is the norm. The onset of adolescence sees stirrings in the human heart that begin the process of attraction for the opposite sex that culminates in the married relationship.

Today in much of the world marriage has changed in nature from monogamy to what could be called serial polygamy. Society has come to condone his serial polygamy, and the institutions of divorce and remarriage are firmly established in most societies. This change creates new problems and new challenges in the relationship between man and woman.

In God's eyes, the ideal relationship remains a single loving relationship between a man and a woman which spans the life of the partners. There is nothing more enriching to human life that the loving companionship of a faithful spouse from early adulthood through maturity into old age and death. To this end, man should not take lightly the institution of marriage. Both men and women should consider carefully the wisdom of joining together in love for the purposes of procreation. It is true that in some cases marriage is childless for a variety of reasons, but in most cases children are expected and desired.

In some societies marriage is part of the cultural environment insofar as the choice of marriage partner is to some extent dictated by the demands of the society, but in today's world this is less and less frequently the case, and the choice of a lifetime is made at an age not marked by wisdom and maturity. The choice is more often than not based purely on emotional response to physical passion. This is not to say that physical passion is an unworthy motivation. On the contrary, it is essential to a happy marriage. This is, however, to say that the young would be well advised to look beyond physical attraction before undertaking marriage. To this end God does not disapprove completely of the physical relationships often enjoyed in society today outside the institution of marriage, provided that these relationships are entered into and characterized by great love between a man and a woman, each for the other, and that there be due regard for the possibility of producing children as a result of the relationship. In today's world children born out of wedlock do not have the stigma that they had previously, but it is still more pleasing to God that children be born in a stable and loving married relationship. This is not a moral judgment. It is based upon concern for the welfare of the child.

Young people, and older as well, would do well to seek the advice of others before undertaking the relationship that marriage involves. All too often in today's world marriage is undertaken with the assumption that if the relationship becomes an unhappy relationship it can be easily dissolved. While his assumption is well based in legality, it is contrary to God's wish for man. The ideal marital relationship from all aspects is a life long loving relationship between a man and a woman, marked by the changes that naturally occur in the course of a lifetime in the emotional lives of the partners.

Marriage begun in youthful passion and shared love matures into a true codependency during the middle years of marriage and parenthood, enriched and strengthened by the demands of society and by the shared responsibilities of family life. Children, born in love and nurtured in love, bring parents together in a common bond of love and shared responsibility. The arrival of a child in a marriage has, however, an effect on the original loving relationship insofar as it alters that relationship. The bond between mother and child is often seen as threatening to the father who finds he must share his wife's love and attention with a demanding stranger who is his child. The mother, on the other hand, must face demands on her time and on her love which she has never before experienced. For some women this is difficult, for others less so. For a lucky few it is as natural as breathing. For both partners in a marriage it is a time of strain and adjustment. It requires that each love the other in even fuller measure than before and offer understanding in fuller measure than before, and know together the fullness of love that the birth and growth of a child brings to the relationship between a man and woman.

With the growth to adulthood of children, the marriage undergoes changes and challenges. At each phase the partners in marriage are sustained by their love for each other and by the responsibilities of parenthood. These responsibilities are best shared as completely as possible. With the departure of children for independent lives, the partners in a marriage are free again to share the love that brought them together so many years earlier, and to enjoy each other's company without the demands of children's needs. Ideally their relationship is enriched by the advent of a new generation of children, sources of joy without responsibility.

In all of these loving relationships it is essential to make constant displays and expressions of love, partner to partner, parent to child, child to parent, and child to child. The early years of marriage and parenting should especially be marked by constant loving reassurances each to the other, a constant recital of love given and love received. If love is constantly reinforced, the marriage is strengthened immeasurably. Love feeds on love. Love regenerates love. Love expressed in word and deed is the food of marriage, the food of parenthood. There is no substitute for love, and love cannot survive without constant expression of love in both word and deed. It should be a custom in every marriage to begin the day with verbal assurances of love, husband to wife,wife to husband, parent to child, and child to parent. A day begun with expressions of love is a day blessed before it begins, and a day blessed is a day that brings happiness to a world starved for love. The love engendered within the family enriches the world. It brings a joy and stability to all the members of that family who are then better able to cope with the challenges that life offers, knowing they they are loved and that nothing in life can challenge or diminish that love. This is God's way.

Book Two

Chapter Six

Divorce

There are other aspects of family life that should be considered. When a marriage relationship flounders for lack of love on the part of one or both partners, the fabric of that marriage is strained. Often the partners continue in a loveless relationship in the belief that they should sustain the marriage for religious reasons. The prohibition of divorce is for some a sentence to a loveless life, a life that can be destructive in varying degrees.

The first consideration in such a situation should be the children, if there are any. While children thrive in the security and stability afforded by a sound marriage they are not insensitive to the insecurities of a strained relationship. If the marriage partners can continue to offer their children the total love that the children need, despite their lack of love for each other, and if there is harmony in the relationship, despite the lack of committed love, then every effort should be made to preserve the marriage until such time as the children of the marriage reach early adulthood. In cases where the partners in the marriage cannot find it in their hearts to maintain a harmonious environment within the family, there is danger to the emotional development of the children.

Children sense discord and fear it. They feel that if the parents have lost love for each other then it is likely that the parents will lose love for them. Insecurity is engendered in the heart of the child and fear displaces love. In some cases the child will cling desperately to one or another of the parents, fearful of the loss of affection that discord in the parental relationship threatens. In other cases, the child will withdraw emotionally from both parents, his faith in their love having been shattered and his faith in their love for him severely threatened.

In all cases where a loss of love on either or both sides threatens a marriage, both partners should make every attempt to restore to the relationship the love that brought them to marriage in the first place. No avenue of reconciliation should be left untried. Often, the problems that eroded the relationship of love will yield to solution if both parties make an honest effort, and the way will be cleared to rebuilding and nourishing to rebirth the love that led to marriage in the first place. In some cases, one of the partners in the marriage finds that love has died for lack of sustenance by the other partner, and no amount of reconciliation will renew the original love. In other cases one or the other of the marriage partners has failed the other so completely emotionally or physically that the wronged partner seeks solace and companionship elsewhere and becomes convinced that another relationship is desirable and inevitable if a life of love is to be achieved.

If partners in a failing marriage make an honest and sustained effort to save that marriage and to restore the relationship which has deteriorated to the point of open conflict, and if all such efforts fail, then the loveless marriage is better dissolved. Both parents should be equally and totally involved in these cases with providing the children of the broken marriage with the security that goes with being totally and unconditionally loved. It is absolutely essential to the well being of the child to know that he is loved and needed by both his natural parents, that they depend upon him for love as much as he depends on them, and the child must at all times be protected from the residual conflicts that a broken marriage engenders.

Provisions for the material and emotional well being of the children of a broken marriage are paramount. No other consideration is as important. The parents should in no case put their personal needs before the needs of the child. If a child has the maturity to make such a decision, he should be encouraged to express his preferences in the matter of custody to the age of independence. Above all, children should not be used as pawns in the game of estrangement. Let no man underestimate the extent of his obligations to his children in the event of a dissolved marriage. At all times both parents in a failing or a failed marriage should communicate to their children the unconditional love they feel for them, and they should assure them that they are in no way responsible for the breakup of the marriage. Communication between parents and children should at all times be open and complete.

In some cases, the children will feel great anger at one or both parents. The parents must deal with this anger immediately and make every effort to overcome the anger with increased love. The child should be encouraged to express this anger and to try to understand its source. In some cases dealing with such anger may be beyond the parents' capabilities and require outside help, but at all times the treatment of the child must be loving, accepting, and totally understanding.

The death of a marriage is mourned by God, but the destructive potential of a marriage lacking totally in love and marred by conflict is mourned even more. Man must at all times and in all places approach marriage as a life long commitment, and if despite his best efforts the marriage fails, he must preserve the relationship of love with the children of that marriage and be responsible for them in every necessary way. In all aspects of marriage and parenthood husband and wife are equal partners and equally responsible in these matters, and each must in all cases attempt to maintain a cordial relationship with his or her former spouse. This is essential for the well being of the children whose loyalties are not then torn in conflicting directions, and the estranged partners will find that a pleasant relationship will help take the animosity out of a failed marriage.

The Single Life

Besides marriage there are other choices for humans to make in their loving relationships. There are some men and women who choose not to marry during the course of their human lives. In some cases this is because they choose a solitary life to pursue a life's work which is so demanding that they see marriage as interference. This solitary life has both rewards and disadvantages. The individual is free to pursue his life's work without distraction, but he may have difficulty sustaining the loving relationships with his fellow man that are so necessary to the spiritual growth of the soul. This is a difficult but by no means impossible task.

Such a man or woman may be motivated by religious reasons and choose to live in a community dedicated to the service of God by serving man. This is highly pleasing in God's eyes for its purity of motive and its selflessness of love given without expectation of return of love, but return there is in the loving gratitude of those served and the great love God feels for these men and women. Such holy lives offer great happiness to those suited to them, and they provide those who are touched by these holy lives with living examples of God's love for man.

There are others who serve God in this holy way without joining a community of like minded individuals, but who live their lives in the service of others, wholly devoted to and wholly motivated by love of their fellow man and of God. There is no single way to serve God, but this devotion to the well being of mankind is singularly pleasing to Him.

Homosexuality and Lesbianism

There are those men and women who choose to have loving relationships with those of the same sex. These relationships have existed throughout history and have had varying degrees of acceptance. These relationships can be characterized by the loving devotion of one human being for the other, a love shared on a permanent or long term basis. Society has not legitimized these relationships, and those choosing to engage in them live in a shadow of non-acceptance by their fellow men, but the world is changing in its attitudes, and in the New Age of Love and Peace there will be a fuller understanding of the homosexual or lesbian way of life. God has designed these men and women to teach the completeness of love, to teach the rest of the world that love cannot be narrowly defined, that love exists in the heart, and that the heart speaks in many ways.

In these relationships, as in heterosexual relationships, there is danger in frivolity and instability. All men and women need the constancy of love, and a loving relationship between two members of the same sex can offer that constancy, but it is harder to achieve in a world which does not universally recognize the legitimacy of the homosexual or lesbian relationships. This has resulted in a militancy among these people which has, on the one hand, resulted in increased awareness on the part of the public, but has also resulted in increased alienation.

There is a great need for more understanding and interaction between the heterosexual and homosexual communities. There are loving souls in each community who know that the human heart is unified in love of God, that a different life style is not enough to separate man from man, and that there is no room for intolerance in the New Age of Love and Peace. It is God's wish that all men and women regard each other as brothers and sisters and that there be no intolerance among them, that there be an active loving relationship among them, and that each learn from the other. Love is not narrowly defined. It reaches across divisions of all sorts to embrace lovingly all those who join in the fellowship of man to find love for themselves, each other and God. This is God's wish.

Solitary Individuals

There are others in today's world who are not easy to classify. These are the individuals who choose not to associate with their fellow man for various reasons. These people are often known as lone wolves, solitary individuals who shun the relationships with their fellow man that other men seek. These individuals have most often been raised in a loveless environment and the capacity for love that they had at birth has withered and died for lack of nurturing. These individuals are among God's children most in need of love. Look around you and you will see these people. Know that they need you, and seek them out to share with them the warmth of your love. Lacking human contact, these individuals often deteriorate into behavior marked by violence and madness. From this group come your most seriously disturbed criminals, solitary individuals who, lacking any relationship with another human, behave without regard for accepted norms of behavior.

The only solution to the problem that this type of individual represents is prevention. The roots of his disturbance lie in his childhood. In every case this type of individual has lacked a single loving relationship in his childhood and young adulthood, has never known a moment of love, and is totally incapable in the end of normal behavior. Society should make every effort to rehabilitate these individuals as adults, but more importantly society should assume the responsibility for seeing that none of its members so lack love as a child that they develop into one of these loveless amoral humans who wreak such havoc on society.

The Mentally Ill

Others in our world today pose a threat to society because although they have not lacked love completely in their childhoods, they have suffered a series of experiences which have so marked them that they verge or descend into what we regard as madness. These individuals may be violent, but they may equally well live quiet lives, invisible to their fellow man but desperately in need of his love and his help. The world has been all too neglectful of these children of God. They should be cared for with the love that is their due as humans. Those given the gift of health should regard it as a privilege to offer them the assistance they need. All too often these unloved creatures are shut away from the sight of society, treated as less than human, and allowed to further deteriorate both physically and emotionally until death intervenes. They are regarded as little more than animals and treated as less in most cases.

Man needs to realize that these helpless children of God offer him a rare opportunity for spiritual richness. There is no greater reward than to see the spark of life in the formerly empty eyes of the mentally ill. A gesture of love can bring that spark. There is no greater satisfaction than knowing that you are loving the unloved with deeds of love. At present, most societies make it difficult if not impossible to help those deemed mad. This must change. The institutions society establishes to care for its citizens declared insane must be reorganized to permit the introduction of human warmth and companionship and love into these institutions. There are many way to do this, but in all cases there should be programs that permit all men to help their less fortunate brothers who are institutionalized. There should be regular visitations of love to these strangers who are brothers.

The institutions themselves need to change. At present in the world these institutions for the mentally ill are large and impersonal and often removed from the centers of community life. There should be a new approach to these children of God so greatly in need. Those who pose no threat to society, who are simply incapable of meeting the demands that life imposes, should be housed in small groups with loving attendants to meet their needs, and these small residences should be so located that the surrounding society can participate in the care of these unfortunates. There are multiple advantages in this approach to the care of the mentally ill, and the results will be dramatic both for those cared for and loved and for those doing the caring and loving.

There are, at present, those individuals in this group of mentally ill who pose a threat both to themselves and to their fellow men. In these cases the answer is to provide the most humane treatment possible with the necessary confinement, but the great majority of those we now house without regard to their emotional needs pose no threat to society. Indeed they offer their fellow man a rare opportunity to know the satisfaction of love given and received. As in many other things, this change will not be abrupt, but it will gradually be clear to society in the New Age of Love and Peace that it is a necessary change and it will come. It is God's plan.

Children Without Parents

Another aspect that man must consider is the problem of children without parents. In society today in some countries there are large orphanages where children are warehoused to the age of young adulthood. Little effort is made to provide these children with the love necessary to their spiritual and emotional development. Little effort is made to educate them adequately to prepare them for independent existence. Little effort is made to provide them with the simple pleasures that all children should know. Worse still, in their earliest years some of these children lack the human contact absolutely necessary for the development of their capacity for emotional response of any kind. Such treatment of children is not so much the result of deliberate cruelty on the part of society as of neglect, a total or almost total unawareness of the problem and the need for a solution. Within these institutions there are often dedicated care givers who find themselves overwhelmed by the magnitude of the responsibilities they face with inadequate staff, inadequate facilities, and inadequate funding.

Society can neither tolerate nor afford this waste of its young. Children abandoned to this treatment are stunted emotionally and are seldom able to cope successfully with the demands of life in their later years. Wherever the young child is treated in this manner there must be change.

First of all, these institutions must be adequately funded by public moneys to provide the loving and consistent care that is the right of every child. The problem must be faced squarely by those in authority and the solutions provided with speed and compassion. There must be an effort to replace these large orphanages with smaller homes incorporated into the surrounding community and staffed with devoted care takers who will be free to provide these children with the care that a loving parent would give. There should in addition to loving care be concern with the adequacy of the children's education and with the degree of stability that their lives are given. Within these smaller groups the children should be taught to function as family members, to first of all treat each other with love and respect, to assume responsibility within the group and in the larger community outside, and to respond to the loving care they receive with love and gratitude toward their substitute parents.

The responsibility for these children without parents must also be shared by the surrounding community. They should be welcomed into the homes of their friends as special guests, as God's children, and receive that unconditional love that is the answer to children's needs. They should participate fully in neighborhood and school life and be included in all the activities enjoyed by parented children.

There are other solutions to the problem posed by children without parents --- foster parenthood, for example, and, most ideal, adoption into a loving family. There is no single answer, but there is a single requirement. Each child must be loved and must be able to give love in return to at least one caring individual on a long term basis. Each child deserves and needs the stability and nourishment of a constant unconditional loving relationship during his formative years and beyond. Without this, the child will not function in society as a giving and caring individual. Without this, society will have lost the chance to enrich itself. Let it be a rule of the New Age of Love and Peace that no child grows without knowing love, that no child fails to learn the lesson of self worth, and that no child fails to learn the lesson of love of his brothers and sisters and of the God who loves him.

The Physically Deprived

There are additional concerns that man needs to be aware of in the New Age of Love and Peace. One of these things is the absolute need for man to be concerned with the welfare of those deprived by nature of the ability to meet their own physical needs. This group of individuals is often not cared for adequately in today's society. I speak here of the physically deprived, the blind, the deaf, the malformed, the physically indigent.

These children of God have chosen to live their lives with their individual hardships both to know the joy of progressing toward God more rapidly and also to afford their fellow man the opportunity of displaying and embodying love of his fellow man. Those who care for the physically handicapped with love in their hearts are special children of God caring for special children of God. This is holy work.

In some parts of the world today great strides have been made in caring for the physically handicapped children of these societies in an attempt to give them the skills necessary to cope with everyday living, but all too often this very necessary treatment is reserved for those who can pay for it, and the economically deprived child does not get the same treatment as his more privileged brother. Much of this care of the physically handicapped has been effected by private groups and institutions, and this is both acceptable and laudable, but more support for these groups should come from public moneys so that the care that they offer can be more universally offered. The need is great and man's response to this need is at present inadequate. More needs to be done and more needs to be done immediately. The child trained from birth to deal with his physical handicaps will mature into a loving independent adult to whatever extent independence is possible. The child neglected in this training is sentenced to exist in a world beyond his capacity to cope, and society suffers the loss of his ability to function effectively, and the individual finds it difficult to deal with his feelings of inadequacy and therefore to feel the love of self that is essential to his well being.

There should be more adequate training than now exists for the education and care of the physically handicapped of God's children. The need is great and those looking for a life of rewarding labor and devotion will find it in this field. There is no single answer in meeting this critical need in today's society. Rather a variety of solutions is the answer. The private and public sectors should join together to seek the best possible solutions to meet the needs of these special children of God. There should be no concern but love of these special children and there should be no goal more important than meeting their physical needs and in this way persuading them that they are worthy of love --- of love for self, love for their fellow man, and above all love for God. This is a mission close to God's heart. Those who undertake this mission are twice blessed, blessed by those they aid and blessed by God in this special work.

Medical Needs

There are other groups of people who need special care and who are the collective responsibility of society. There are those who are so affected by disease that they need medical care. In society today there are tremendous variations in medical care from country to country. Some nations are very advanced in both medical research and clinical medicine. Others are suffering greatly from lack of facilities and lack of personnel. As with food distribution there needs to be a worldwide effort to share the benefits of medical knowledge, and the more advanced nations need to lead the way in aiding those nations in need of assistance.

There are presently, and have been in history, individuals and groups who have devoted their time and talent to helping those in need of medical treatment and medical skills. These private efforts are more than commendable; they are blessed, and they should receive far more support than they now receive from the private sectors of our societies, but the problems are so vast that a major effort is needed that requires cooperation between governments. Those societies with advanced medical knowledge need with the aid of their governments to offer both training and assistance to the less developed nations. There should be a vast interchange of information, and there should be a vast effort to see that the underdeveloped countries find it possible to acquire both the materials and the equipment they need.

The leadership in this great effort should come not from political figures but from those in the medical communities of the world best able to provide the leadership the effort requires. The medical community is quite aware of this need, and it has the talent necessary to meet this need effectively, but it does need funding beyond the capacity of the private sector. Each government must seek the best way to manage this responsibility and the best way to cooperate with the other nations of the world, both those giving and those receiving aid.

The more advanced nations of the world vary considerably today in their methods of meeting the medical needs of their populations, and while there is no need for uniformity in this area, there is a need to meet the needs of all citizens, not just those who can pay for it. On the other hand, it is the obligation of governments to provide medical care for those who can not afford it themselves without in any way interfering with the practice of medicine that the profession deems most desirable. It is not in any way desirable for governments on any level to dictate to the medical profession how they will treat their patients. Medical training should instill into practitioners the social awareness that should animate medical practice. Most men and women caring for the sick at present are motivated by the highest ideals. Most retain these ideals even after repeated experiences with frustration and feelings of futility. There is no other profession which asks and offers so much in the way of learning to give and to receive love. Love animates the practice of medicine, and if occasionally this motivation is forgotten in the modern world, it lies close beneath the surface of consciousness, and it is easily recognized and renewed.

The care of the ill in all its manifestations --- research, education, clinical practice --- is God's work and deserves to be recognized as such. Those who are involved in this work need to search their souls to affirm and if forgotten to rediscover their devotion to the needs of their fellow men. They need to provide the leadership to insure that these needs will be met in all nations for all of their people. In this they need the active aid, assistance, and encouragement of all men. This is God's plan for man. This is God's wish for man in the New Age of Love and Peace.

Book Two

Chapter Seven

Problems of Governmental Interference

Other areas of concern are numerous and need to be dealt with, however briefly. Man must be aware of the need for attention to these problems that exist in today's world and he must use his energies and his talents to provide the best possible solutions to them in the shortest time possible. Rarely is there a single answer to the problems that beset man's world today. Rather there are usually several alternative solutions, and each society must fashion its actions in terms of its own specific needs and its own resources.

Let us begin with the problem of governmental interference in man's conduct of his professional life. In all too many parts of the world today, governments have set up bureaucracies and commissions to determine with absolute authority who is permitted practice of a profession, and, once admitted to that profession, how he shall conduct himself. I speak particularly here of aspects of medicine, but this condition applies as well in the areas of law, business and industry, social work, counseling and even teaching. There must of course be standards and qualifications in all these fields, but it should be the business of each professional group to supervise its membership, to uphold standards, and to monitor internally the delivery of services to all who avail themselves of these services. This is another area in which the apparatus of government control should be dismantled, and rights and responsibilities should be returned to those most able to make wise choices and to plan most effectively for the good of the members of the profession and for the public dependent upon that profession's skills and services.

It is vital that each individual or each group keep in mind at all times that he is in service to his fellow man, using his God-given talents and energies to further the well-being of himself and his brother. This awareness will not only guide his decisions. It will also give him a heightened sense of self worth and an awareness at all times of the brotherhood of man.

Economic Exploitation

A second area of concern is the economic exploitation of those least able to help themselves. I speak here of the very poor, those who rarely have a voice in government, those whose influence must depend upon effective spokesmen. I spoke earlier about the absolute need to eliminate the inequities and indignities of the welfare system as it operates today in many parts of the world, of the need for adequate affordable housing for all, and of the need to provide employment for all who seek it. In addition I have suggested the wisdom of supporting those not able but willing to work or those temporarily unable to find employment with a simple grant of funds out of the public treasury. It is about this last aspect I wish to speak now. Many economists have spoken of the need for a negative income tax, a tax system whereby each citizen will be taxed according to his ability to pay, avoiding confiscatory taxes, and those citizens below a certain economic level will receive funds in proportion to their temporary or permanent needs. These funds should be more than minimum, but not extravagant, and each society must decide for itself the level of return and the means of return. Ideally this program should be administered on as local a level as possible to best meet the individual needs of citizens, but again this is a matter for each community and each society to decide as it chooses. It is a matter of meeting an absolute need in the most loving and efficient way.

As it is now, the administrative bureaucracy of the welfare system absorbs a disproportionate amount of the moneys available for the purposes of supporting those unable to support themselves, and the system currently is generally administered in a manner which robs the recipients of both dignity and hope. Society's aim should be to provide adequate freely given assistance to those permanently unable to help themselves and to provide freely given assistance to those temporarily unable to support themselves, while at the same time doing all that is necessary and possible to assist them to become self sustaining.

In all cases there should be major concern on the part of those administering these economic programs to maintain honesty and efficiency of administration and to demand of all concerned that the dignity of those being assisted be encouraged and maintained. There should never be the slightest hint of denigration. All those involved should be aware that this is nothing more than an equitable sharing of God's bounty, that those in need are God's special children, and that at all times they should be treated as such. Little more needs to be said in this area. It is incumbent upon man to use his best efforts to assure that economic exploitation of any sort comes to an end, and that in the New Age of Love and Peace sharing the riches of society becomes the way of life that all men embrace freely. The giving and receiving should be done with open hearts and both the giver and the receiver will be enriched. There is no room in this new age for selfishness or insensitivity. Man must at all times be aware of the needs of his fellow man and he must at all times work actively to meet these needs in all areas of concern. This is God's wish for man in the New Age of Love and Peace.

Control of Destructive Emotions

In the New Age of Love and Peace man will learn of the need for closer control of his own destructive emotions. Children must be taught of this responsibility and encouraged in the management of their emotional lives. Each time a child performs an act motivated by a base emotion --- greed, anger, envy --- he should be gently rebuked and asked to consider the reasons for his actions. He should be encouraged to recognize the destructiveness of negative emotions and to substitute love in each case. The child is malleable and will respond to such instruction. It is more difficult in the case of a mature adult, but each act of destruction should be handled with gentleness and persuasion by those affected or involved. Every effort should be made to convince the individual motivated by unworthy emotions that he should see the basic error of his ways and turn to love as a motivating force.

Each act of aggression or destruction is a step away from love, and each act of aggression or destruction destroys the love felt by those who suffer from it. Each destructive act must have an immediate response, and that response must at all times be one of love and understanding, giving the clear message that those who are motivated by unworthy emotions will find no satisfaction in their actions, that only love offers happiness, that love is the only acceptable motivation.

This is a matter for each man to consider his own individual responsibility at all times. Meet aggressive and antisocial behavior with love and understanding and you disarm the aggressor. Disarm the aggressor, even temporarily, and you slow his deterioration and give him a glimpse of the power of love. Each time aggression or hurtful behavior is met with the weapon of love, the effectiveness of baser emotions decreases and the effectiveness of love as a force grows greater.

As always, this is most important with the children. Each time a child acts in a way hurtful to himself or to others he needs to understand his reasons for acting as he has. He needs to recognize those emotional forces that cause destructive behavior and he needs to learn that such behavior has no power to achieve his ends. He needs to be taught the power of love as a motivating force and to change his behavior.

All of this sounds simple, and it is, but the power of a loving response should at no time be underestimated, and it is often very difficult to meet destructive behavior with love and understanding, but this is an absolute requirement for man in the New Age of Love and Peace. This must become a habitual response and gradually all men will realize the futility of destructive emotions and destructive acts and will recognize the overwhelming power of love and loving responses at all times. Those who are guilty of actions based on ignoble emotions will eventually be totally disarmed by the power of a loving response and will abandon destructive behavior. They will learn the power of love received. It is but a step further to knowing the power of love given freely. The time is at hand for all men to know this power and to live their lives in this knowledge and constant awareness. This is God's plan for man. It is His wish.

Book Two

Chapter Eight

Service to Others

In the very beginning of the New Age of Love and Peace man's concern with material wealth will be tempered. Old standards of success and material well being will give way to an awareness that ephemeral pleasures are by their very nature inadequate to bring lasting satisfaction and meaning to life. This will be a gradual but inevitable and constant shift in generally accepted values. Those who dedicate their lives to the service of others will be given the credit and respect they have often been deprived of in the past. The accumulation of wealth and the ostentatious display of wealth will gradually be regarded as the sign of a lesser person. This is not to say that each man should not strive to accumulate enough material security to insure the well being of himself and those dependent upon him, but that excessive wealth will be regarded as just that --- excessive. There will be a higher regard for those professions and trades which have as their focus not material rewards but the intangible rewards that service, both public and private, offers.

The needs are great. All societies of the world today suffer from a lack of dedication to the concept of living a life in the service of others. This is partly a matter of attitude. Many individuals today are involved, of necessity, in service occupations. In some cases these individuals have chosen their work from a desire to benefit their fellow man. In other cases individuals choose lives of service because their options are limited and economics dictates the choice. In the world today the concept of service is by some considered demeaning. Others feel that it places them in the position of constantly giving and never receiving, and a degree of resentment is frequently felt. There is often the feeling they they are unsung, unappreciated, not highly regarded by the rest of society. They feel that society reserves its highest approval to those whose worth is measured in monetary reward. They feel that their fellow men underestimate their value.

The New Age of Love and Peace will see a sharp and dramatic change in attitudes. Man will realize that there is no higher calling than a life of service to his fellow man. It matters little what the field is. The possibilities are endless, but in each case the motivation must be clear, and the individual must feel a clear sense of purpose. He must of necessity be adequately compensated for his labors, but at no time is the compensation the primary motivation.

The education of the young must reflect this reordering of priorities. It must be made clear to the young in both the school and in the home that service in any field is a desirable calling. The young should be taught that the greatest satisfaction in life comes from working in the interests of mankind, motivated by love and a desire to be loved, and that these occupations of service given cheerfully, willingly, and lovingly are pleasing to God. There should be no feeling that service implies inferiority. Quite the contrary. Cheerful and loving service of any kind elevates the giver and creates a feeling of love given and love received. The world loves a cheerful giver, and the cheerful giver is blessed by this love. In all cases the world is enriched when the need of man to serve his fellow man with love in his heart takes precedence over the need of man to accumulate material wealth. The Age of Love and Peace will be the age of idealism, and the world will hungrily embrace the concept and practice of service to mankind. Selfishness will yield to brotherhood and sharing. Discontent will yield to self satisfaction and the security of knowing a job well done. This is God's plan for man.

The Dicipline of Love

There will be in the Age of Love and Peace an awareness at all times of the relationship between God and man. This is not to say that formalized religious practices are an absolute necessity, but rather that God will live in the hearts of man at all times. Man will be aware of his God as a God of total love, a God who requires only love of His children. But this requirement is absolute. At no time should man forget that love of self, love of his brother, and love of God above all is necessary for his salvation both in his earthly and in his heavenly lives. I have said repeatedly that this love must not be an empty love, that it must express itself continuously in action, that all actions must be motivated by love, and that man will achieve happiness in both his mortal and immortal lives only in this way.

The giving and receiving of love must become a habit so ingrained that it is unthinkable to have any other response. This will at times require an inner discipline. When the ear hears harsh words, the tongue longs to respond with harsh words, and bitterness is born. The heart darkens and love diminishes. Man needs at such a time to remember the power of love and to overcome the temptation to respond to unkindness with unkindness. He needs the discipline of love, and he will then be aware of its power. Consider what happens to anger when its fires are not fueled. It dies. Consider what happens to anger when it is fed by returned anger. It grows and destroys. Consider what happens when anger is met by a loving response. Anger not only dies, but is replaced in the heart by a glimmer of love received, and the awareness of love given and love received transforms the destructiveness of anger into the blessing of love.

This loving responsiveness is not difficult once it becomes habitual, and once it becomes habitual any other response is unthinkable. Habits, once ingrained, are difficult to displace. Once the habit of loving is ingrained, there is nothing to displace. The heart sings with love, the tongue speaks with love, and both man and God are pleased.

Let this, then, be the first and overwhelmingly significant change in the New Age of Love and Peace. The world will be transformed. Men's hearts and lives will be joyful and serene, anger will cease to be a constant threat to man's serenity, and love in action will be triumphant. All these miracles will grow from the simplicity of a loving response in all cases, at all times, and in all places. Patience, forbearance, and kindness will thrive in this age of love. Peace will mark the affairs of man on all levels and will grow from the love in action that all men demonstrate to each other in their daily lives. All strangers become brothers, and all brothers become one with God in total love.

Book Two

Chapter Nine

The Need for Changes in Education

There is little doubt about the need for man to reassess his priorities in the matter of education. As it now stands in most societies, education does not meet the needs of students on either an intellectual or a moral basis. The years spent in schools at various levels do indeed impart a degree of knowledge and expertise to those fortunate enough to have the capability and the opportunity to pursue a course of study which meets their needs and is appropriate to their talents and capabilities, but the great majority of students throughout the world are either inadequately educated or not educated at all. In most societies some education is compulsory, and that is as it should be, but making it compulsory for a child or a young adult to spend a specified number of years attending an educational institution in no way guarantees at this point in time that he will receive an education adequate for his needs.

The deterioration of education has reflected the deterioration in society in general. There has been a consistent lowering of standards in the mistaken assumption that this will result in equality of educational experience. Indeed the opposite has occurred. The lowering of educational standards has resulted in an exodus in some societies from public institutions in favor of private institutions. This is not to say that private institutions of learning do not have a place in society. They play a vital role today as they have through history, but private institutions of learning tend to cater to the economically advantaged and offer little or no benefit to those who need education most. I say little rather than none because there are, increasingly, institutions which make an honest effort and a successful one to include among their students the talented poor. This effort is to be lauded, but it is not enough.

Education as a career has ceased to attract as many truly talented and dedicated teachers as it once did. There are several reasons for this that man is well aware of. Salaries in the teaching profession are in most places too low to support a family comfortably and securely, but this is a limitation that many talented teachers accept, much as they deplore it. The general public, on the other hand, regards teaching as a privileged existence --- short hours, long vacations, simple skills. There is a mistaken assumption that anyone can teach, that it requires little or no special talent or training. These assumptions have a devastating effect both on the self esteem and morale of those in the teaching profession and on the attitudes of the public, who are consequently reluctant to increase compensation even when it is grossly inadequate. This frequently leads to conflict within the community, causing further deterioration in the quality of education offered the student.

Beyond economic consideration lies the most dangerous development. In all too many cases throughout the world on all levels of education, the classroom has become less a place of learning and more a place of detention. It is vitally important that members of all societies take immediate steps to analyze the problems they are facing in schools today, to determine the root causes of these failures to educate the young, and to take steps to improve their places of learning. This must involve the parents, and the authorities must recognize the absolute necessity of confessing failure and of making the parents of the students part of the solution.

There must further be a lessening of governmental interference inside the classroom and within the general system. There should be more flexibility in determining what requirements must be met to teach. More effort should be made, as I have mentioned earlier, to utilize the talents of those members of the community who are not directly associated with the educational institutions but who have talents and abilities which would greatly benefit learning and who are willing to offer these talents freely to the educational community. Gifted volunteers abound in most communities and there should be an end to rejecting their efforts to help on the basis that they are not professional educators. They should be utilized on every level. This will require a new assessment of the powers of administrators to control individual schools. Too many gifted people are driven from education, both teachers and administrators, because they are rendered ineffective by administrative decrees from a centralized authority that robs them of initiative and individualized decision making.

Above all, attention should be focused on the needs of those students who come from economically deprived homes and neighborhoods in urban areas of the world today. In too many cases, the schools are as educationally deprived as the neighborhoods are economically deprived and the students are quickly alienated. There are, of course, commendable exceptions to this rule, and society should, among other things, look to these exceptional schools and school systems to learn the elements in their success.

Again, as I have said earlier, society as a whole must participate in this reordering of priorities in education and participate fully in providing solutions to the problems. The solutions are there waiting to be found, but man must be aware at all times of his responsibilities to the children of society and to their educational needs. It is not enough to assume that a certain number of hours in classroom results in learning. Indeed the learning, if it can be called that, is often negative in quality. Too often the student learns that he is little more than a name and a number in a system which has lost sight of its goals and has grown both complacent and inadequate. The responsibility for effecting change and effecting it immediately must be shared by all segments of all societies and all must insist on their rights and responsibilities in the matter of making education what it is supposed to be --- a leading of the mind.

In all of this man needs to remember the absolute necessity of self esteem to both earthly happiness and spiritual growth. Every effort made to solve the currently existing problems must have as its focus consideration of the extent to which self esteem is fostered --- self esteem in the student, most importantly perhaps, but also in the teachers, aides, and all who have a hand in the development of wisdom and understanding in young minds.

The problems to be solved are complicated, and the changes that need to be made perhaps equally so, but if there is a single guiding principle to be heeded in all of these efforts it is this. If education succeeds in conveying learning and skills in a way that increases the self esteem of the student it has succeeded. If the student fails to achieve and increase a sense of self esteem the system has failed. It is that simple. Without a sense of self esteem the student cannot know a sense of love for others. He cannot develop into an effectively functioning adult with love in his heart without this basic security. Those who are responsible for education of the young, and this should include broad segments of the community, should never lose sight of this basic truth, this basic need of each individual, adult or child.

Let man start now to reorder his priorities in education. There is no time to lose. In order to effectively reorder his priorities in education, man must recognize the essential elements of effective learning. First of all, students need to be aware of their heritage and of the heritage of their fellow students. I do not mean by this that they should know merely the dry facts of history as it is often taught now in the schools, facts which are quickly forgotten once the need to remember to pass courses has been removed. Rather the heritage of students should be taught in a conceptual way, that is to produce an understanding of the world today by exploring the world of the past. All studies should be relevant to the student, both because this will increase his interest and because what he learns must be useful to him in meeting the needs of his everyday life. In order for him to understand and to solve the problems of the world he lives in, he must understand the history of those problems, the factors which created them. An understanding of how the past created the present is essential, and all teaching of heritage should create this understanding. Concepts based on facts is an effective learning approach. Facts in and of themselves are meaningless.

Beyond learning of his heritage and understanding how the past has produced the present, the student should be introduced to the skills necessary to analyze and seek a solution to the problems of society on all levels, local, national, and international. Each citizen in the New Age of Love and Peace should and will feel an individual responsibility for solving the problems of his society, and in order to solve a problem it is necessary to have an intelligent understanding of the causes of the problem and the potential for solution. There should be constant thoughtful discussion among the students of the difficulties the world faces. There should be no set agenda, no specific text. The students themselves should determine as a group what aspects of society they regard as existing or potential problem areas. This determination of areas of concern is the first step in uniting the class into an effective learning group. The teacher should serve as a guiding monitor in this process, helping the students only insofar as they need help in reaching a consensus of their own choosing.

Once this has been established and a list of areas of concern drawn up, the class should be divided into smaller groups, task forces as it were, each one responsible for amassing whatever information on the subject will be necessary and useful to aid in analysis and discussion by the class as a whole. The individual groups will then use whatever resources are available both within the school and within the community to complete its work. Each individual student must share responsibility with the rest of the group for the total effectiveness of the learning. The emphasis in discussion should be focused on understanding causes of the problem before any attempt is made at solution. The teacher's usefulness is in guiding discussion among the students and training them in clear analysis by supplying them with analytical skills through guidance of their questions.

The entire goal of this teaching should be effective problem solving, giving each individual student both the skills necessary to solve the problems he will face in life and an awareness of his own capabilities in this area. At no time should this, or any other subject, be taught from the top down. There is no room for absolute authoritarianism in the classroom, rather a seeking after the truth by students guided by a teacher whose wisdom and knowledge is a resource available to the students at all times in whatever way is most effective. This teacher is then in essence a mentor, and the training of the teacher should have prepared him well for this role. Beyond being a mentor, the teacher should feel an obligation to know his students well enough to understand their needs and capabilities. A feeling of love given and received should pervade the classroom and the learning process. Each student should feel free to discuss his needs and his concerns both with the teacher and his fellow students and feel confident of a loving reception and a loving response.

This approach to education should begin in the earliest grades and be continued throughout the years of education. The youngest child is capable of recognizing a problem when it exists in his narrow world, and he should be encouraged from the earliest age to recognize the root causes of the problems in his life and to seek solutions. A life long habit of thoughtful analysis will enable man to better understand both his own world and the world outside his immediate environment. Mutual understanding among men and a common effort to comprehend and solve the problems of society will mark the Age of Love and Peace, and the foundations for this understanding and action must lie in the education of the young.

At all times as the students are developing the skills of analysis and problem solving they grow in awareness of their responsibilities to their fellow students and of their own importance in the scheme of things. Each student realizes that he is a significant member of his society, that he is needed and appreciated by his peers, and that the feelings of love for his fellow students are engendered by their common needs and concerns and are nurtured by their awareness of their dependence on each other. Common bonds forged in childhood will survive into adulthood. Skills learned in childhood will serve the adult well. The community will profit from each generation's awareness and effectiveness in recognizing and meeting the needs of its society. Above all the spirit of loving concern born in the classroom will survive and grow as loving concern in the world of the adult. All will be enriched.

Love in The Work Place

In the New Age of Love and Peace there will be no room for those unwilling to assume responsibility for his fellow man and to undertake to assist him in whatever way his needs dictate. I have spoken of the need for community organizations to create awareness of needs and to take effective action to meet those needs. Beyond that a spirit of brotherhood and love must permeate the work place.

There are many companies, large and small, in today's society in many countries which are beginning to recognize the benefits of involving their employees in social action of various kinds. In no case should these programs be compulsory, but the business management group assumes the initial responsibility and all employees are invited and encouraged to participate by contributing their time and energy to the effort to provide help where it is needed. These programs vary from company to company and location to location, and at present only a small percentage of the need is being met, but as the Age of Love and Peace progresses so will these programs to the point where the company that does not involve its employees in social action will be the exception rather than the rule. All are benefited by these programs in both their earthly and spiritual lives. The giver knows the joy of love bestowed and grows in awareness of his kinship with the receiver of his loving actions. The receiver is enriched by his awareness of his brother's loving concern and knows the joy of love received.

Stress

Beyond the market place, loving actions and feeling should motivate man at all times in his daily life. In today's society stress is commonplace and in stressful situations love is threatened. To whatever extent possible, man should endeavor to recognize the causes of stress in his life and attempt to minimize and ideally to eliminate it. Stress most often has its origins in excessive demands. Each individual has a limit at all times to his capacity to perform, and when more is demanded of him than he can with maximum effort do, stress occurs. When man suffers from stress, he is destroyed from within. He loses any sense of inner peace. He finds a loving response to his fellow man's demands or requests difficult if not impossible. He loses a sense of balance in his emotional life. All of this results in a sense of frustration and despair which makes it even more difficult to meet the demands placed upon him. His performance suffers, the stress increases, and the self destruction continues. Stress is an enemy which must be recognized and defeated. Stress is not the province of any one segment of society. Stress is not restricted to any one age group in society. It is a threat to all men, at all times, in all places.

The first necessity is to recognize stress, both in oneself and in others. If stress is affecting an individual he must recognize the causes and effectively reduce the demands on him which are causing him to react in a stressful way. He must seek the help he needs to do this. He must be able to put aside those responsibilities or demands which he cannot effectively handle. He must recognize his own limitations and confine himself to assuming only those demands he can successfully meet. Man should also be sensitive to the signs of stress in others and make every effort to aid the individual in coping with the stress in his life with both words and actions. Stress is often destructive to family life, and it is not uncommon in children, particularly in a stressful family situation.

It is unfortunate when children suffer from stress, and this can be the result of various factors. There are some parents whose expectations of their children lead to stress. They demand more of the child, particularly in education, than the child is capable of, and failing to recognize the limitations of the child, they continue to create stress until the child ultimately rebels or fails so completely that the parents are made aware of the unreasonableness of their demands. By this time, much has been destroyed. The relationship between parent and child has deteriorated, and the self esteem of the child has been damaged. A great deal of patient rebuilding of the loving relationship is essential in these cases, and the primary responsibility for doing this lies with the parents whose excessive demands created the stressful situation.

Stress among children occurs for other reasons. The very poor child knows a lot of stress because of the many uncertainties in its life. The child of the poor has a sense of inadequacy as it compares itself to other children who are more endowed with earthly advantages. These children need particularly the kind of nurturing that close loving relationships provide. They need to understand that external factors have little to do with their self worth, and that they will in time know the material advantages they observe in the world around them. They need to know that with love in their hearts they are secure, and they need to be told this constantly.

Stress is often a factor in older life as well. All too often our older citizens find themselves in a world that seems to need them no longer, in a world without focus for them, and they feel the stress of loneliness and the stress of feeling useless and unneeded. These older citizens need the comfort of love to ease their stress much as the children do. They need the kind of activities that community organizations now offer on a limited basis and which should be offered on a much wider basis in all cities and towns. There should be an end to loneliness among the elderly in the New Age of Love and Peace. This is not to say that it is enough for our elderly citizens to engage in activities only with other elderly people. There should be more of an effort to provide additional opportunities for the elderly to function effectively in the greater community. The love and talents of the elderly can and should be utilized in many ways, education and child care among others.

Each community in analyzing its needs should consider its elderly citizens as a resource to be utilized and should provide a variety of opportunities for the older citizens to contribute their time, talents, and energies. This will contribute greatly to relieving the stress which the elderly often feel, and will at the same time enrich the lives of those they help with their loving actions. There is no limit to the ways in which these activities will benefit the giver, the receiver, and the general community. Lives will be lighted with the joy of giving, and love will be generated in both the giving and receiving.

Book Two

Chapter Ten

Of Governments

There are many things that need to be said about the structure of governments today. In many countries of the world totalitarianism masquerades as democracy. In others, the power that should be in the hands of the people is in the hands of those with the most military might. Force rules instead of reason. In still others, anarchy reigns, and the struggle for power and control is continuous. In all of these situations regard for the rights of the individual is sacrificed for the satisfaction of the leaders. In no country today is government ideal. As I have said, government came closest to ideal in the city states of Greece, but the present world is so complicated that a return to this ideal is impossible. It is possible, however, to improve existing forms of government by adopting sets of standards designed to improve the nature of the individual governments.

First of all, governments should be benevolent, that is their first concern should be the welfare of their citizens. This should be the first priority in expenditure of funds. I have already spoken of the need to dismantle the war machine in all the countries of the world, and there is beginning to be an awareness of this need among the great nations. Moneys previously spent on war and preparation for war should be spent on programs to insure the well being in every respect of all citizens, including housing, food, education, and recreation. The function of the central government should be to dispense funds for such programs to the individual communities implementing these programs. There should be decentralization of authority to the maximum possible extent so that both responsibility and control are on as local a level as possible. Bureaucracy as well as procedures demanding bureaucracy should be kept to an absolute minimum, concerning itself primarily with accounting for funds dispensed. The central government should rely on local governments and organizations for an honest appraisal of their needs, and in the New Age of Love and Peace there will be that honesty.

Secondly, those in power should be freely chosen by those ruled by this power. The method of choosing leadership will and should vary from place to place and time to time and it is the responsibility of the electorate to insure that the method of choosing leaders is both fair and efficient. Leadership should result from ability and willingness to assume responsibility in public affairs. All too often in the present world those most able to lead eschew public life because of distaste for the methods used in choosing leadership.

All men should be encouraged to participate in governmental affairs on whatever level best suits their needs and talents, and it should be possible for all men to do this without sacrificing either their careers or their family life as now so often happens. Citizen politicians were more common in the past, community leaders who devoted time and energy to the affairs of government while they earned a living at the same time in their chosen careers. With the advent of full time life long careers as politician legislators, there began to be a decline in the quality of public service both in the motivation and in the awareness of public needs. The politician legislator found that his first concern was in the continuity of office first and meeting the needs of those he served a distant second. He measured his importance by the number of staff, the number of committee memberships, by the public adulation, and not by the effectiveness of his efforts for the common good. This decline in standards did not go unnoticed by the electorate, and the respect for political leadership that existed in the great nations of the world deteriorated into something approaching contempt. Mistrust replaced respect.

Each nation needs to look closely at its governmental forms and practices and take steps to reach as ideal a form as possible, keeping in mind at all times that government exists to serve the people and that at no time should this be forgotten. All else is secondary. Let the people speak, and they will speak with one voice of this obligation. There is no single pattern, no single form of government that will serve all people at all times in all places, but at all times and in all places the purpose of government should be clearly benevolent. There is no exception to this rule.

International Cooperation

Other than benevolence, each government needs to be concerned with its relationships with other nations. I have spoken of the need to end nationalistic fervor and the resulting enmities based on artificial national boundaries. I have spoken of the need for international bodies to regulate the distribution of food, and of the need for international agreements to facilitate the giving of aid by the wealthier nations to nations in need of temporary financial assistance. I have spoken of the need for international arbitration in the event of disputes between and among nations. Now I speak of the need for a body to regulate international cooperation in the matter of the sharing of scientific skills and information.

There is at present a wide gap between the developed and the underdeveloped nations in the capacity for scientific research and development. Up to now there has been intense rivalry and bitter competition in this area, and private enterprise has found itself in a virtual state of war with its competitors. This has served to inhibit any sharing of expertise in the interests of the furtherance of scientific knowledge. The time has come for a spirit of sharing and brotherhood to enter the market place in the world of scientific research and development. There should be established bodies of scientists on an international level to identify world wide needs on the basis of priorities and to encourage international cooperation among both private interests and governmental bodies to narrow the gap in both research and production among the most and least advanced in the brotherhood of nations.

Once again, this may seem to be a utopian dream, but with each passing year the world becomes a smaller place with advances in communication and transportation, and each nation of the world needs to be aware of the needs of its brother nations and of its responsibility to share in meeting these needs. There must be a sense of sharing in all areas of scientific research and development among all nations of the world with the wealthier and more advanced nations assuming the responsibility of organization and leadership of these international bodies. To the greatest extent possible this leadership should be non-governmental. To whatever extent possible these bodies should be self supporting, maintaining to the maximum degree possible freedom from governmental interference and control.

This assumes massive response and responsibility from the world's business communities and a willingness to look beyond immediate profit motive to the longer picture of a world community sharing its scientific knowledge and production for the common cause of mankind, for the welfare of all nations and peoples of all nations. Let the profit motive be diluted with concern for humanity. Let the best scientific minds collaborate in creating a better world for all nations and all people. Let the scientific community speak with a single voice and avow its dedication to the furtherance of the common good on a world wide basis. Let this loving concern see its fulfillment in a world released from the constraints of rivalry and greed, and eagerly embracing the concept of the brotherhood of man, and translating this concept into effective action. When this dream becomes a reality all mankind will be enriched, and both the giver and receiver will know the benefits of a loving response to need.

The world should know of the need for all people to join together in a great effort to secure peace for all mankind. The business of war has been far too long in the hands of the few who govern. These few have for centuries made the choice of war over other means of negotiation when the prospect of conflict loomed, but the price of war was paid by all the people who had no voice in the decision. I have spoken of love as the greatest weapon, of the need for an end to nationalistic rivalries, and of the need to reshape society in ways that will foster the furtherance of peace.

All these are necessary steps to be taken. I have said that if love and peace reign in the hearts of man then love and peace will reign in the hearts of the nation and of the world. This too is true, but in addition to all these steps to peace there must develop in all the nations of the world a constant awareness of the need to avoid the circumstances that provoke conflict. There should be constant unselfish interchange among nations and individuals within those nations so that the citizens of each nation are able to feel love in their hearts for their neighbors in other lands, knowing their needs, their traditions, their patterns of behavior.

International Understanding

Much of the hostility among nations is the product of fear, and fear is most often born of ignorance. Man tends to regard people who are unfamiliar with suspicion and latent hostility. This is true on every level, locally, nationally, and internationally, and in the matter of fostering peace in the world it is on the international level that man must direct his efforts. He must create international institutions dedicated to the furtherance of communication and understanding among nations so that there is a constant interchange of information and ideas among the peoples of the world. This is particularly important among the young. Each man involved in this worldwide effort should become responsible for conveying to his countrymen his knowledge of his neighbor in a foreign land, of allaying fears about the strangeness and the motivations of this brother in a strange country. These citizen ambassadors should at all times be aware of both the responsibility and power they hold in creating a feeling of kinship among the peoples of the world. It is not enough for them as individuals to achieve this understanding. It is their mission to share it widely and effectively.

There should be an end to the stereotypical image of the world's nations. Man must become aware of the common bonds among all men, and must understand that the differences associated with national identity are to be regarded with understanding and acceptance, not with suspicion and rejection. It is not enough for the leaders of the world to be well acquainted with their peers. The peoples of the world must be well acquainted each with the other, and they must speak with a single voice at all times of their hunger for a world of peace. Peace is born in love, and love is born in understanding.

There is no single road to understanding. Let man create many roads to understanding his neighbor in a foreign land. Let him cultivate knowledge and wisdom, and let him share this knowledge and wisdom. At all times let him remember that it is his responsibility to maintain peace in the world, that this responsibility is not to be surrendered lightly to those who rule. Let all the citizens of the world unite in this great endeavor to achieve peace through understanding and love and let them succeed. It is God's wish for man.

Aid to Needy Nations

It is God's wish for man that he be more aware than he is throughout the world today of the need for understanding of those nations riven by internal strife born of deprivation and greed. The disparity between the rich and the poor in worldly terms has never been greater in the history of man, and each passing year this disparity increases. It is in the nature of great wealth to compound itself, and I have already spoken of the need for the individual to recognize the point of sufficiency in the accumulation of material wealth.

Nowhere is the disparity between the very rich and the very poor more apparent than in the underdeveloped nations of the world today, particularly those striving to achieve a stable political system. These nations are particularly vulnerable to the machinations of their self-appointed leaders who may at first be sincere in their desire to provide effective leadership for their fellow citizens but who are soon corrupted by power and the trappings of power. They soon learn to ignore the pleas of their fellow men and set themselves up in positions of authority that they believe are impregnable, backed as they are by armed force. But armed force is not a faithful ally. It finds its challenge, and more frequently than not falls to that challenge, and the cycle of disruption and destruction begins anew.

The citizens of these countries in almost constant turmoil are forgotten by their leaders who, having achieved power, bend their efforts not to the enrichment of those they govern but to the enrichment of themselves and the group of elite supporters they need to maintain their power. Their days are, of course, numbered. No people lies quiescent under such rule. But their days and years of power rob the country not only of stability but also of the riches of the land that rightfully belong to the people.

I have spoken also of the need for intergovernmental peace keeping bodies devoted to avoiding international crises before they become critical. There is a need for help to troubled countries, those wracked by internal strife, from such bodies. There are today existing bodies which could assume the responsibility for aiding nations in need of outside assistance to achieve internal stability and prosperity. The tyrant finds his power in a society deprived of faith in itself, faith in its ability to survive, faith in its ability to govern itself in the ways of benevolence, and this lack of faith is most often based upon the failure of the society to supply its citizens with their basic needs, to provide them with a minimum level of comfort and security in their daily lives. It is not, in most cases, that the country's natural resources do not afford this level of material well being. It is that the riches of the country are disproportionately distributed, and when the tyrant seizes power the degree of disproportionate ownership of wealth increases.

The answer to tyrannical rule which robs the citizens of a given nation of their rightful share of the country's riches lies in prevention. Those nations of the world, particularly neighboring nations, can and should through joint effort aid those nations in economic peril. They should cooperate with the freely chosen leaders in developing an economic system and a governmental system, benevolent in its nature, whose entire concern is with the welfare of those governed. This can be achieved in numerous ways depending upon individual circumstances and individual needs, but at all times there should be an awareness of the threat that the tyrant and would be tyrant represents to the well being of that nation and its people, and all efforts should be made to prevent his seizure of power by so bolstering the economic and social fabric of the nation that there is no governmental vulnerability to ease the way of tyrannical rule.

None of this implies a superbody interfering without discrimination in the internal affairs of another nation, but rather an alliance of nations, again preferably neighboring nations, banded together to promote the common good, not by decree but by persuasion and by doing all that is possible to aid a neighboring nation in need. In the world today, all nations are neighbors, but those nations who enjoy geographical proximity generally share common values and common needs and are best suited to aid their brother nation in time of need. The loving concern of one nation for another in need is the answer to the destruction of society that tyranny, intent on its own gratification, brings. This is the way of the Lord. It is the way to peace in the world.

Book Two

Chapter Eleven

The Power of Love in Action

Before long man will see the results of a world motivated by love. Tensions will decrease among nations to the point where disarmament will not seem to be a threat to any nation. Internal strife will slowly lessen and soon reach the point where no man will be willing to take up arms against his neighbor. You have seen some of this already in the great nations where soldiers have defied their leaders' orders to take up arms against their fellow citizens for the political vengeance the leaders sought. Little by little violence among the citizens of individual nations will cease.

There will be those individuals who will need institutional care because they have been damaged beyond recovery. Some will be violent. Some will be simply ill in both mind and body. These individuals become the collective responsibility of society and should be treated with love and gentleness. If an individual cannot exist peaceably in society, if he poses a threat to his fellow man, then he must indeed be institutionalized, but while he is institutionalized he should be given all the help necessary to recover his sanity.

Man must do away with the cell block prisons that darken our current society in favor of smaller more livable spaces, attended by those willing to try with patience and skill to rehabilitate their fellow man. Utopian a vision this may be, but it will happen. With each passing year society will see children born in love, nurtured in love, giving and receiving love freely, and above all loving themselves, grow into fruitful adulthood, shunning violence, treating their neighbors with loving consideration and keeping the word of God in their hearts. Such men do not become criminals. But it must always start with the child and it must always begin and end with love.

There are those now whom society calls the criminally insane, those whose minds are so bent and twisted, whose hearts are so devoid of any feeling, that they commit acts of unspeakable cruelty. These people must indeed be restrained. Society must be protected from their destructiveness, but I say again that within a generation if all children grow into adulthood as loved and loving, these twisted individuals will disappear. The Others cannot invade a mind made peaceful and strong with love. They cannot do their nefarious work in a heart secure in its knowledge that it is fully loved and fully loving.

The individual heart will respond to love in a number of ways. First of all, man welcomes love no matter what its source. A loving gesture from a stranger is as welcome as a loving gesture from a friend. In each case the heart receives a sense of love being given and in turn feels the need to respond with love. An act of love no matter how insignificant it may seem to the giver moves the heart of the receiver, and in turn he acts with love to others. Just as love begets love, failure to love begets failure to love. Acts of hostility create in the receiver a resentment that makes a loving response impossible except in the most considerate of men.

Consider Christ. He taught that you must do unto others as you would have them do unto you. A clearer admonition to love if you wish to be loved has never been given. Take the child. When a child entwines its arms about your neck and embraces you with love and tenderness does not your heart swell with love? Do you not return this tender caress, this gentlest embrace, with a deep feeling of love for this innocent creature, and do you not carry this feeling of love given and received into your life and your human encounters that day? Do you not remember with a smile that giving and receiving of love, and are you not more patient and loving for the remembering?

Man should start each day with gestures of love given and received. These gestures and expressions of love should become as natural as waking in the morning. They should never be ignored or forgotten. These gestures and expressions of love will sustain man through the day and protect him from life's uncertainties. The deeper the feeling of love which starts the day the surer the protection and the more certain it is that this individual will extend his love to those he encounters in his daily work. Love will be freely given and freely received, and the cycle of love renewed will be established in the home and in the workplace and in all those other places where man spends his day.

The gestures and statements of love are more difficult for the individual who lives alone, but he too can begin his day with love, with an affirmation of love for self, for his fellow man and for God, with a willingness to act with love in every way in the day to come. And each of his loving acts through the day will engender a loving response. A courteous gesture to a stranger, particularly in a difficult situation, will inspire a courteous response, just as an angry gesture will inspire an angry response. Which do you choose --- love or anger? Love soothes the heart and makes the activities of the day, no matter what they are, a prayer to God. Anger kills love, and the activities of the day become a burdensome task devoid of love.

What Man Must Do

Man shall not know total peace and love until several things happen. First, all that I have prescribed concerning governments, communities, schools, social living centers, and the family are implemented. In all these areas of human existence man must make alterations and reforms to meet the needs of those served and to insure that those needs are met in such a way that love can flourish. Man in great physical need finds it difficult, though not impossible, to love either himself or his fellow man. He feels himself inadequate to his needs and therefore unworthy of love. If there are others dependent on him whom he feels he is failing, the feeling of self deprecation increases and self love and love of his fellow man ceases to exist. He may still feel stirrings of love for those who love him, but as his feeling of self love disappears he will find it harder and harder to respond to love given to him. He forgets how to receive love and to return it tenfold in the bitterness of material failure.

Therefore it is God's wish that each of His children be well enough served by the institutions governing his well being so that his human physical needs are met adequately enough to permit him to feel love for himself and his fellow man. Love cannot flourish in a bitter heart, and the individual deprived for any reason of the bare necessities of life will find it difficult to keep bitterness out of his heart.

Secondly, each individual must assume responsibility for the well being of his neighbor. This can be done in many ways. First and foremost, each person must at all times and in all places treat each individual one of God's creatures, no matter how lowly, no matter how unattractive and unappealing he may be, with courtesy and love. No man should ever despise his brother or sister. No man should regard himself as superior to his fellow man because he has been blessed with more earthly advantages. He should be mindful at all times that these earthly advantages are a gift from the same God who is Father to his neighbor who is less endowed with earthly riches.

Those most favored with earthly riches and advantages are those who are obliged to do most to help their fellow men. They must give generously of their wealth and their talents to help those less fortunate than themselves. They need to set an absolute percentage of their income for charitable purposes. It does not matter how these funds are dispensed as long as they go to institutions or individuals that effectively and efficiently spend the moneys to improve the lot of those in need. Those able to do so should help those in need in this way. It should become habitual, not an occasional contribution to a worthy cause, but a constant part of their income disposal. In addition, all men should give freely of their talents to help those less fortunate than themselves. There are presently existing many organizations devoted to assisting the unfortunate. These organizations are constantly in need, not only of funds, but also of human energy. All individuals able to do so should habitually devote a portion of their time to doing work as volunteers in these organizations. It will bring joy into the lives of those served, and it will bring even more joy into the lives of those doing the serving.

In addition to these two things, man must learn to practice individual charity. If he sees an individual in need of food, give him that food. If he sees a person in need of money, give him that money. If he sees a person in need of clothing, give him that clothing. This not to say that man must impoverish himself. He must first meet his own needs and the needs of those dependent on him and then consider what he can give comfortably to his fellow man. He should at all times be mindful of this obligation and at all times be willing to meet this obligation. Material wealth is sweeter for the sharing. Greed should not invade the human heart and make the accumulation of wealth an end unto itself. The man who succumbs to the temptations of amassing wealth for the sole purpose of accumulation becomes an empty shell. He lives his life in frantic fear that if his money disappears he himself will lose his meaning and identity and his soul shrivels. When wealth is shared, freely given and freely received, the soul of the giver is nourished. He knows that the true value of money lies not it its accumulation but in wise dispensation. It matters not how wealth is shared. It matters that it is shared.

I speak here now of individual actions, man interacting with man in the free exchange of love. A gift given is love given. A gift received is love received. The giver will find his heart swelling with love. He will know love of self and love of his fellow man. The receiver will find his heart swelling with love and gratitude. He too will know love of self and of his fellow man. And in the presence of these two loves, love of God flourishes and sustains, and once again the cycle of love is established. Once man knows the joy of giving and the love that it engenders, he will not return to selfishness and disregard of the needs of his fellow man. Take heed then of the needs of your neighbor, for every stranger in every land is your neighbor. Meet those needs and you will be repaid tenfold by the love that fills your heart and your life. Give and you shall receive. That is God's way and God's way knows no error, no hesitation, no uncertainty. Listen to your heart and hear God's message of love and giving. Listen and obey. Listen and love. Listen and give. That is God's wish for man.

Book Two

Chapter Twelve

Aids

Within a few years there will be challenges for man that he has not to this point anticipated. These challenges will be concerned with the spread of AIDS throughout the world. Contrary to present opinion, AIDS will not be confined to those groups now considered to be the likely victims. This disease will claim its victims among groups not considered to be the likely victims. There will be world wide panic when this awareness comes to man, and man should be prepared to handle it.

There is very little known presently about the base cause of this disease, and the search for a cure has focused narrowly, assuming that there is a single answer. Indeed there is no single answer. AIDS is not dissimilar to cancer. There are many varieties of this disease, and the search for a solution must be made in many different areas of medical knowledge. Science is correct now in its position that the best cure for AIDS is prevention, but that is, as scientists are aware, not enough. In some countries of the world whole communities will disappear as a result of this disease.

Why, you ask, is this sort of devastating disease permitted by God to be inflicted upon His children? Why did God permit this or any other disease to develop on earth? The answer is, of course, that earth remains a testing ground for the children of God, and their spiritual progress is measured in their response to the trials that human life imposes upon them and to the degree that love survives these trials.

AIDS has caused panic among many groups all over the world. Identified with specific groups, it has caused fear and animosity to emerge in many hearts. It has increased intolerance toward the homosexual community, intolerance bred in ignorance and distaste. This is not pleasing to God. Instead of compassion, these individuals offer contempt toward their fellow man. Instead of fellowship, they demand discrimination and segregation. Instead of assistance, they offer self concern.

Man should look to his response to his brother's suffering and know that it is inadequate if it is not a response of loving compassion and willingness to be of help. Man should bend his best efforts to seek a cause and cure for all forms of this disease and to give generously, both privately and publicly, to this cause. This is now and will continue to be a massive undertaking and one which cannot be postponed or ignored. Man has been given the capability of dealing with his earthly problems, but he must find the will to use this capability. Above all, in this endeavor, man should act in sympathy and compassion and with full knowledge that he could have been the victim rather than the observer. This is a crisis of major proportions, a true trial of man's capacity for patience and love, both for the victims of this dread disease and for their fellow men.

Heed this admonition to join together in a common sympathy, a common awareness that no man exists alone, and a common determination to seek a solution. Let love prevail in all of this, a loving awareness that all men are brothers, that all men are children of God, and that at all times and in all places He is with them, easing their suffering and preparing the way. This is God's word.

Violence and Individual Respoonse

Do not under any circumstances hesitate to speak when you see injustice being done. This is God's law and man must at all times be guided by it. Throughout the history of the world, evil has triumphed only in the absence of love, love translated into action. At no time could evil flourish if man felt love strongly for his fellow man and acted upon it.

Today the world is wracked by violence and destruction. The cities of the world are as if plagued. Few of our great cities offer security and safety to their citizens. The streets themselves are not safe from harm. People's homes are the target of rapacious violence. On a larger scale, the nations of the earth suffer from political and military violence. By and large, man observes this violence and deplores it, but takes no action. He satisfies himself by excusing his inaction. He feel that it is neither his responsibility nor his concern. His silence is often interpreted as consent, and the cycle of violence continues.

The time has come for all men to speak in a single voice in condemnation of violence, injustice, cruelty of any kind, and to affirm their loving concern for their fellow man. Neighbors must band together in mutual love to banish any kind of injustice from their immediate environment. There must be no passive acceptance of violence as a necessary part of human existence, but rather an active opposition to violence of all kinds. If your brother is violated, you are violated. If your brother needs protection, you need protection. If your brother needs assistance, give him that assistance. Any man who passively accepts violence and makes no effort to oppose violence participates in that violence. Any man who chooses to turn aside when he sees his neighbor in danger contributes to that danger. There is no safe haven as long as violence walks the streets of the world, and man must confront that reality and speak and act in opposition at every opportunity.

The world is a small place nowadays, and the planet cannot afford the progression of violence either nationally or internationally. Man is totally responsible for stemming that violence, and each man bears his singular responsibility. He must begin to oppose violence in his immediate environment in every way possible in the name of love. Look about you and see what must be done. Look to your neighbor and ask what you can do to help him. Look to the authorities and demand that they join with you in your opposition to violence. All that I have spoken about earlier of the root causes of evil acts and the need to substitute love as a weapon must be heeded if violence is to disappear from the face of the earth as it must, and each man must realize that he has individual responsibility in this matter. It begins with awareness and grows into action.

At no time should man accept the violence he sees as inevitable. If all men join together in this common cause, injustice cannot triumph. If all men band together in a crusade of love against violence, then violence is doomed. No man should excuse himself from this responsibility. His neighbor is himself. There is no safe refuge. And man, when he recognizes this fact, will at no time stand by and watch injustice in any form with passive acceptance.

The doctrine of individual responsibility is central to this need, and each man must know in his heart the love that motivates him to act in behalf of his neighbor when his neighbor is threatened, whether his neighbor be next door or across the world. Love is, indeed, the ultimate weapon in man's search for a world of justice and peace, and a loving concern for his neighbor's welfare should dominate the heart of man at all times. There is no escaping this responsibility, and when man acts upon this responsibility love and peace will prevail. This is God's wish for man. This is God's way.

The Power of Words

Beyond this, man must be assured of the need to be constantly aware of his powers of persuasion through love. All too often man hesitates to speak and express his opinion out of fear or diffidence. He is uncertain of his abilities and power of expression, and often sits silent in the face of statements or actions with which he vehemently disagrees. He tells himself that perhaps he is mistaken in his feeling that he should speak up and protest what is being said or done that is contrary to what he believes is right and good. He tells himself that it would make no difference anyway, that words are in and of themselves meaningless, that his opinion does not count.

Be assured of the power of words. Words are a weapon to be used for good or evil purposes, and each man has the God given power of words. It is his responsibility to use this power wisely. It is easy to be intimidated by the eloquence and educated speech of another individual. It is easy to convince oneself that rough speech and plain statements do not carry the same weight as polished prose and polished delivery. This is indeed an error, and any man who fails to speak what he regards as the truth in the face of error contributes to the spread of that error by his silence.

There will, of course, be differences of opinion among men where each person is persuaded of the rightness of his opinion and will rarely yield this hard held position, but I do not speak of this. I speak of situations where unloving statements and unloving actions must be met with a loving response, a loving protest. It is not acceptable to stand silently by and hear evil words. It is not acceptable to stand silently by and see evil acts. It is not acceptable to excuse this silence for any reason whatsoever. If the person speaking or acting in an evil way is a person in authority the compulsion to speak is as great as if the person were of no authority at all.

Throughout history we have seen love destroyed by words. We have seen wars created by words. We have seen the power of words to soothe and to heal the wounds of conflict. We have seen the power of words to unite a nation in a common cause. Make no mistake. Words are powerful weapons, and each man has the capability of using this weapon for purposes that serve God and promote the love which combats evil. Words spoken in denigration of another human should be countered by words of love. Words spoken to incite man to hatred and violence should be countered by words of peace and loving concern. Words spoken in anger and condemnation should be countered with words of calm and conciliation.

In all of this man must have a firm concept of his own responsibility to respond to injustice of any kind, injustice in deed or word, no matter what the source. He should at no time feel that a loving response is inadequate or ineffective. He should at all times be aware of the need for truth at all costs, in all places at all times, and of his absolute need to speak the truth as he sees it. In no case should these words of truth be spoken with hostility or anger, but always with love and understanding, always with brotherly concern.

It will not always be evident that words spoken in protest of cruelty or injustice have been effective. Often they have had an effect not immediately observable, but this should not concern man. His responsibility is to use words in the cause of truth and love, to be aware of their power, and never to hesitate to speak in protest or opposition to acts or statements which are negative, hurtful or malicious in any way. Man will know the joy of love spoken in these cases and his individual response will be reinforced and strengthened by the responses of all his fellow men who recognize this responsibility and speak words of loving protest.

This, then, is what God requires of His children at all times and in all places. This is Gods' wish. It is God's way.

Courage

There is at all times a great need for men of courage. At each crisis point in history, the course of men's lives has depended upon such men. Courage can lead and inspire. Courage can work miracles.

Man is by nature courageous. The child knows little hesitance in speaking and acting honestly and courageously under all circumstances, but as he grows older the child all too often loses this capacity. He becomes uncertain of his own convictions and allows himself to become fearful. He is concerned with the opinions of others and loses that sense of righteousness and openness and courageousness that was his birthright.

Man often speaks of someone having the courage of his convictions, and that is exactly what man needs constantly to strive for, the courage to remain constant in his beliefs, the strength not to be swayed or intimidated, the tenacity to withstand testing and hardship in defense of these convictions. This is courage.

Courage also takes other forms. It is a courageous man who will fly in the face of prevailing opinion to speak an unpopular truth, to defend a fellow human unjustly accused or maligned, to adopt an unpopular stance in the name of truth.

Throughout history it has taken men of courage to speak the truth and bring light to the darkness of error, to speak the truth in the name of love and of God, to offer hope in a time of despair. These courageous individuals did not weigh carefully the consequences of their words before speaking, their deeds before acting. They did not shrink from the condemnation that awaited them, from the calumny hurled at them, from the displeasure of those they opposed. Their devotion to the truth was their only standard. Courage was their only weapon. Love was their only motivation.

The world needs courage today, and all men should look into themselves and find this courage. It lives in all souls. It seeks expression. It strengthens. It serves man well, and it serves God well. In all too many cases in the past, the majority of men have permitted themselves to be swept along in popular movements riddled with falsehood and error. They have persuaded themselves that they lacked the strength and effectiveness to oppose that falsehood and error. They have become part of that falsehood and error by their failure to be courageous. And each time in history man has been engulfed by these false doctrines until one of God's children has had the courage to speak in the strongest of voices to expose the falsity misleading his fellow men and to inspire them to find their lost courage and join him in protest and a seeking after truth.

Courage does not weigh advantages and disadvantages. Courage does not know servility. Courage does not know price. Courage knows only truth, knows no obstacles. Courage, like love, engenders courage. Courage inspires emulation, and the weakest of men finds himself stronger when he looks on the face of a man of courage.

Let the New Age of Love and Peace be an age of courage, of courage in the cause of truth and love. Let courage flourish in the hearts of all men and let the world know the joy of courage in all areas of endeavor. Let man never shrink from words or deeds he knows to be right. Let him never hesitate to speak and act when truth and love demand either. Let him know the peace and satisfaction of a life of courage. That is God's wish for man.

Man’s Obligation to His Brother

Man's capacity to help his fellow man at all times should never be ignored or underestimated. This capacity grows with each effort to aid a brother in need and the gratification involved is nourishment. There is no limit to the ways in which one human soul can reaffirm his love for his brother with acts of love.

First of all, courtesy. Each man, as I have said, has a primary need for self esteem. All the trials that life can impose are lightened in the presence of self esteem. Self esteem breeds faith and confidence. Courtesy received bolsters self esteem. Treat you brother with courtesy and kindness at all times and your brother receives the clear message that he is a person worthy of your kindness and love, and his sense of self is strengthened. This is particularly important in the case of one in authority. Those in authority on any level in society should be aware of their absolute obligation to treat those under their authority with courtesy at all times. The destructiveness of discourtesy and unkindness is clearly apparent. Treated with coldness, discourtesy, and in extreme cases with contempt, the individual's sense of self worth is diminished. Continued treatment of this sort is extremely destructive and not to be condoned. Respect for your brother demands courtesy and kindness at all times and in all places.

Solicitude should be extended by man to his brother at all times. Make your brother's concerns your concerns. Make your brother's problems your problems. Always be prepared to listen to your brother's anguish and to lighten his burdens by sharing this anguish. If you can offer and give him aid in other ways as well, do so, of course, but first of all give him your loving attention and concern. There are few feelings more desolating than to believe that there is no other person in the world truly concerned with your problems, your sorrows, your disappointments. All men need the ears and hearts of their brothers in times of anguish, in times of disappointment, in times of challenges not met. All men's burdens are lightened by sharing. All men's love is inspired by his brother's solicitude and comfort. Know the joy of bringing comfort to your brother in time of need. Know the joy of love given and received at such a time.

Know the pleasure of sharing your brother's joys as well as his sorrows. At all times be prepared to share in the happiness of your brother and to feel no twinge of envy or jealousy at his good fortune. There is no room in the New Age of Love and Peace for envy. Each achievement of man, each stroke of good fortune, each happy occasion must be shared if man is to savor it fully, and he needs the praise of approval of his brothers at such moments. It is perhaps difficult to feel joy at your brother's good fortune at times when your own fortunes are at a low ebb, but these are exactly the times when true joy for your brother is most essential both for his sake and for your own. His joy is heightened and intensified by your joy, and your spiritual progress is aided immeasurably. It is easy to feel happy at your brother's good fortune if your are happy with your good fortune. It is not so easy to feel happy at your brother's good fortune at a time when your life is not going well. It is difficult not to feel the insidious tug of envy and dissatisfaction, but it is at these times that a true feeling of happiness for your brother is most essential.

I have spoken earlier of loyalty within the family. Loyalty to your brother at all times is to be desired. There are times when loyalty, too, will be difficult for man to feel toward his brother, but in all cases and under all circumstances he must feel and express this loyalty. Loyalty is akin to love, and like love must survive all challenges. Even if in your heart you feel that your brother is wrong in his actions, wrong in his statements, wrong in his relationships, your loyalty to him must not only survive, but be strengthened in times of his need. This is not to say that you should in any way condone words, actions, or relationships you feel to be in error or lacking love, but you must deplore these words, actions, or relationships, never your brother. Express your disagreement with him if it is proper and helpful to do so, but assure him of your loyalty and love. In no case should loyalty to a fellow man be discarded and abandoned. To do so would damage your brother's sense of self esteem and thereby weaken his capacity to love and be loved. At all times this should be a paramount consideration.

Let it be understood then, that love translated into action is to be broadly interpreted, that it embraces all manifestations of love. Words as well as actions are gifts of love. Gestures are gifts of love. There is no man so poor that he cannot offer his brother these gifts of love and no man so rich that he can fail to give these gifts. All men are brothers, all in equal need of courtesy and kindness, shared joy and shared sorrow, and total loyalty. The world is richer for these links between brothers, and man is bound to man in love by these manifestations of love. This is God's wish for man. This is God's way.

The Divine Plan

Little more need be said about man's behavior toward his brothers. In all places at all times he must speak and act in love and must be aware that this obligation supersedes all others at all times in all places. Man should strive to so implant love in his heart that it is pure instinct to act in love, to speak in love. All his being should be animated by love.

I have spoken earlier of the rewards of a life of love, both on earth and in heaven. There is no greater reward than to live and die in the full awareness of that love. There is no greater reward than the sure knowledge that in your earthly life you are progressing toward oneness with God, the ultimate destiny of all souls.

Know this, then, that all human lives are trials. The most fortunate of men is as surely being tried as the lowliest, most desolate. The man who lives for a century is as surely being tried as the child who dies in infancy. For all things there is a reason. In all things man is charged with the responsibility of meeting his contract with God, a contract freely agreed upon before birth.

This is not a game God plays. There is no frivolity or capriciousness in God's governance of man's earthly existence. For all things there is a reason in heaven. At all times there is a divine plan, but in all of this, man is capable of error, of misdirection, of folly, of ignorance, of evil deeds. This is the nature of his earthly existence and the nature of the free will which exists on both the earthly and the heavenly planes, but it is equally the nature of the soul to seek perfection, and in his earthly life man must work for this perfection, sometimes against odds seemingly insurmountable, but man is born each life with the capacity to do as he has agreed with God, to live the life of his choosing and to progress toward spiritual perfection.

It is not within man's capacity to judge another's progress or perfection. This is a matter between God and the soul. Man must be a judge solely of his own spiritual progress in his earthly life and of the need to hear the voice of God and to heed that voice, for the voice of God is there for all who will listen. I have defined holiness as a seeking after God; that is all -- a seeking. And if man leads a holy life, a life of seeking God, he will find Him. He will find him in love----love of self, love of his brother, and love of God above all. And having found God in love, he need do no more. His life will bring him joy. His death will bring him joy. All the heavens will resound with praise of this man of God, this child of God, who in his earthly life learned the lessons of love and who will join the spirits in heaven in celestial love for all of God's creatures and for God Himself.

This is God's word. Listen well and ponder on all I have said in these pages. The dawn of the New Age of Love and Peace is here. Let all men see the light. Let all men embrace their brother in love, and let all men's actions be guided and motivated by this love. Let the joy of love exist in every heart and let man sing the praises of love. Let no man cower in fear. Love drives out fear. Let no man know loneliness. Love drives out loneliness. Let no man live in need. Love satisfies need. Let no man live in ignorance of love. All men must know love, the giving and the receiving, and all men must know the love of God in their hearts. Love is man's destiny. The perfect love he seeks to find will be his in the end. Seek it now in this New Age of Love and Peace. This is God's wish for man. This is the word of God.

Book Three

Chapter One

Perfect Love

Man has long yearned to know more about life after death, and God has decided that it is wise that he should now know. I have said that earth exists as a testing ground for souls, that souls are required to spend earthly lives learning the lessons of love in order to achieve oneness with God. This is not an easy thing to do. Perfect love is difficult to achieve. It does not know anger, impatience, intolerance, selfishness. It does not demand. It does not waver. It does not at any time restrict itself in any way. It at all times translates into actions. Perfect love is never adversely affected by circumstance. Perfect love responds to anger with love. Perfect love responds to cruelty with love. Perfect love responds to the most evil of acts with love. Perfect love is whole in and of itself and impregnable. Perfect love involves a sense of self love so strong as to be unassailable in the most difficult of lives, and involves total and unconditional love of all men as brothers. This perfection of love is necessary before man's love for God is perfect enough to love God in the oneness of being.

Perfect love as a concept is easy enough to understand. Perfect love as a reality is difficult to achieve. Most souls take centuries to achieve perfect love in a variety of lives. Each life, as I have said, is lived in ignorance of previous or simultaneous lives, and so the lessons of love learned in one life are not of value in the next, but they do contribute to the total learning of the soul and they are considered in the judgment of man for admission to oneness with God. The soul is judged after each life to determine how well the soul has advanced through that life in learning the lesson or lessons it had agreed to for that life and in learning the total lesson of perfect love.

The Nature of Heaven

I have described this process earlier and described the considerations involved in returning to additional lives on earth. Now man should know more of the nature of heaven itself. There is little relationship between descriptions of heaven and the truth of heaven. Heaven is an ideal state, it is true. It is a state in which there is constant awareness of the love of God, and this state of awareness imbues all other relationships with love. There is no emotion but love in heaven. It is the be all and end all of heavenly experience. All actions are motivated by love. All happiness exists in love. All souls are united in love. This love differs in many respects from human love. Celestial love exists between souls. It suffuses the soul with feelings of euphoria, joy beyond belief, and knows no conditions. The soul is constantly motivated by love. Love is constantly expressed between souls, and all souls are united in constant expression of their love for God.

But heaven is a place of action as well. Souls in heaven are totally involved in helping each other and anyone on earth in need. New souls arrive in heaven greatly in need of help, and those souls already in heaven take immediate charge of the new soul to aid in its transition to the heavenly plane. Generally the transition is joyful and easy, but it can be difficult, and in these cases the new soul needs increased assistance and reassurance. Once the new soul has completed transition from the earthly plan to the heavenly plane, the work begins. The new soul must analyze its needs to reach perfect love, and it must with the help of other souls and the help of God begin the work of progressing toward perfect love and oneness with God

There is a period during which the new soul must closely examine all that it did in its previous life. Each action is scrutinized and each relationship examined to determine the extent to which the soul fulfilled its contract with God and progressed to oneness. This can be a long and painful process, painful in the sense that the soul is forced to face its own inadequacy, if inadequacy exists, and to acknowledge its failures in its earthly existence just completed. In all of this, the soul is aided by its teacher or teachers, other souls who have advanced further along the path to oneness with God and who share their wisdom and love with the new soul. This examination of the immediate past life is in no way punitive, though there may be sorrow and pain involved for the soul in acknowledging its failures, but always there is love given and love received, and the soul profits from the insights afforded by this minute examination. At each point in the examination at which the new soul recognizes failure to learn the needed lesson, the soul acknowledges the need for that learning and decides what it must do to achieve that learning.

All the lessons not learned in that life must be learned in another life or learned in heaven, a more difficult task. If the soul decides with the help of its teachers and of God that it needs to return to earth, then the process of reincarnation begins. The soul is allowed to choose its life span, the lessons to be learned, and to some extent its new parents and the time of return. There is a period then of preparation for return to earth, a period during which the soul is reminded of its obligations during the coming life and during which the soul prepares itself for meeting those obligations. This information is not recalled directly by the soul after it is reincarnated, but it remains in his memory during that life.

This process is difficult for humans to understand except in its vague outlines. The learning of perfect love is very difficult and very complicated. The soul, once it has learned perfect love, becomes one with God; that is the soul essentially becomes God. This means, in essence, that each soul has the capability of achieving the status of a supreme being. This is a difficult concept for the human mind to comprehend. Religions have for centuries taught that God is a remote figure, entirely separate from man, unattainable and supreme. God is, in fact, a supreme being, but He is at all times attainable with perfect love.

I have said that all spirits have power, the power to be in several places at once and the power to read man's mind and to draw on his memory bank. Some spirits have greater powers. They can alter nature. They can affect man's health and feelings. They can influence the human mind. They can arrange for events to occur. They can guide and influence the human to act in a certain way. These spirits receive their strong powers from God for the purpose of doing good on the earthly plane as well as on the heavenly plane. Humans are often aware in their lives of events or circumstances or feelings or changes in their lives that they attribute to supernatural influences without knowing what they mean. These events, circumstances, feelings and changes are the spirits at work.

The spirits are free to do whatever is within their power on the way to oneness with God. They watch carefully over the lives of those they loved on earth either in their last life or in previous lives that have been revealed to them. They have particular responsibility to those humans assigned to them as students. As teachers they are at all times aware of their students' lives --- every action, every thought, every word --- and the responsibility is life long. On the death of each student, the responsibility is passed to those in charge of new souls, as I have described.

Oneness With God

The process of achieving oneness with God is also as I have described elsewhere, and it culminates in God's accepting the spirit into His bosom, into oneness, at which point the spirit is imbued with godliness and great power. This status is extremely difficult to achieve, and it is the goal of every spirit. On the way toward oneness with God, each spirit achieves the status of an angel. Angelic status confers both privileges and responsibilities. Angels are teachers, on both the earthly and the heavenly planes. This status indicates considerable advance on the way to oneness with God and an end to earthly existence, although these angel spirits may elect to return to earth for the purpose of spreading God's word of love and serving Him in this way on earth.

It is difficult to describe the varied activities of the spirits on the heavenly plane, but all their activities are involved with their own progress toward oneness with God, with helping each other in this progress, and with helping those on the earthly plane they love, either as those they shared lives with or as teachers, often as both. I have said that all activities lead to oneness with God. When the soul achieves oneness, God accepts the soul as part of Himself and the soul is incorporated into the Godhead. The soul then becomes one with God in every sense of the word. The soul shares in the responsibilities of God; the soul shares in the powers of God; the soul shares in the privileges of God. The soul essentially becomes God.

When we speak then of God we speak of the original creator of all the universe who has over millennia absorbed into his godly being all the souls who have achieved perfect love and who exist for eternity as part of His being. In this status the soul knows perfect happiness and love at all times, has great powers, and is aware at all times of the needs of all those in the kingdom of God on both the earthly and the heavenly planes and of its power to meet these needs

The absorption of all these souls into the Godhead, into oneness with God, in no way diminishes the power and authority of God the creator. On the contrary, the power of God Almighty is augmented insofar as each spirit who has achieved oneness with God is empowered to assume god-like responsibilities. These responsibilities are varied, but all involve responsibility for the progress of spirits toward perfect love and oneness with God.

Much of what is written here is beyond human comprehension in its details, but the broad outlines of God's plan are easily grasped. Each soul must live successive human lives, often spanning centuries, lives which offer a variety of experiences and conditions in varying roles. In each of these lives man must learn the lesson or lessons he has agreed upon before returning to earth. All of these lessons are involved with achievement of perfect love, but man has no memory of his contract with God and has been given free will, so he will often fail in his efforts and fail to learn. After each human life man is judged on that life and the degree to which he has fulfilled his contract. After a period of time which can vary enormously, man returns to earth if it is deemed necessary and the cycle of human life is continued until man reaches the point where no further lives on earth are deemed necessary and the soul can continue its progress toward God on the heavenly plane.

The path toward oneness with God is a path of joy. On the heavenly plane there is total love among the spirits and total love for God. There can be, as I have said, some feelings of sadness and inadequacy in the individual spirit who is disappointed in not progressing more rapidly, but all relationships are relationships of love, of concern, of forgiveness where forgiveness is necessary, and of devotion to God.

Book Three

Chapter Two

The Others

There are many other things to be considered when I speak of the nature of heaven. There is the matter of the Others. Although the Others have been admitted to heaven as have all other souls, they have chosen not to take the path of progress toward God. In some cases they are confused; they have brought to heaven the confusion they felt on earth. In some cases their earthly lives were lives marked by dark and evil deeds. In some cases they failed totally in living up to their contract with God and failed to learn the lessons that their mortal lives were supposed to teach them. In some cases they bring with them the arrogance and false pride that marked their earthly lives. In all cases they choose not to submit to the will of God and they join the forces of the Others to oppose those spirits who have chosen to progress toward oneness with God.

I have described elsewhere the tactics of the Others in their efforts to confuse and destroy the minds and faith of humans. On the heavenly plane they are rebuffed and rejected by the spirits of love in all temptations to oppose God's will. On the contrary, one by one the Others realize the futility of their opposition to the inevitable effort to reach oneness with God, and they turn toward this path and join the spirits of love. There is nothing but forgiveness and love in the hearts of God and His spirits and angels. The repentant Others are welcomed into the rank of those loving spirits working toward oneness with God in total love and harmony. It is a more difficult road for the Others, the more difficult the longer the Other has persisted in his opposition to the will of God. The repentant Others are aided in all ways by the help and love of teachers assigned to them, and there is great rejoicing in heaven when each one of the Others rejects the path of opposition and accepts the path of progress toward God.

Let it be known that in the end all of the Others will inevitably be drawn to God. In the meantime God's children on earth should be aware of the efforts of the Others to cause confusion, doubt, and despair in the human mind, and they should reject these efforts as soon as they recognize the work of the Others. The Others cannot do their nefarious work on earth if they are recognized and rejected by man. This rejection will have two advantages. Man will be freed from the destructive effects of their efforts, and the Others, discouraged by failure, will turn more readily toward the effort to reach oneness with God.

So let man be aware that when doubt, suspicion, envy or any other negative emotion enters his mind it is the Others at work. They cannot succeed unless they find acceptance in the human mind. If man rejects these ignoble emotions the Others fail. If man rejects these ignoble emotions his life is enriched and love flourishes. The Others are intent on destroying love in men's hearts. They cannot do so if man is aware of their efforts and rejects them the instant he becomes aware of them. Do not let doubt of any kind linger in the mind. Reject it at all times. Do not let unfounded suspicion invade your consciousness. Reject it at all times. Do not permit the Others to drive love from your hearts. With love and through love the Others are defeated. They are powerless in the presence of love. In the end the efforts of the Others will be totally defeated by love. That is God's plan.

The Experience of Heaven

In all cases the experience of heaven is joyous. From the moment that the soul passes in transition from the earthly plane to the heavenly plane it is imbued with feelings of euphoria. Even those souls who are confused and angry know the joy of heaven at the moment of death, and it is only when they reject this joy that they know any other emotion. The free will which man enjoys stays with him after death, and the soul in heaven is as free to choose his course of action as the human was on earth, that is he is free to choose not absolutely, but from a number of options open to him at any given time.

I have spoken of the Others. Their choice to oppose the will of God is free choice, and they are able to pursue the course of action they choose for as long as they choose to pursue it. Those who decide to progress to oneness with God through reincarnation are free to choose the type of lives they feel will help them most in their progress. Those who choose to remain in heaven and progress there are free to do so, although in most cases this proves too difficult and the soul then chooses to return to another life. In all these cases, however, the end result is determined, oneness with God, but the path to oneness may be freely selected. In each decision God and His angels make every effort to counsel the soul in his choices and to help him as much as possible in his progress toward God. But in heaven as on earth, the individual soul is responsible for itself.

During its time in heaven the soul grows in wisdom. I have said before that the soul takes with it to heaven the last personality it had on earth, and it is known and recognized by that personality as well as by the last given name it had on earth, but the mind of the soul is enlightened with knowledge and is enriched in many ways. I have spoken of the capacity of each soul to communicate through telepathy with those on the earthly plane and of their capacity to see into the minds of humans and draw on their memory banks. This power is universal among spirits, but God requires that it be used wisely. It is a powerful instrument for good when used in the name of love, to guide humans in the paths they should take, to bring comfort to humans when they need comfort, and to aid humans in many ways of which the human is not even aware. It is of particular usefulness to those teachers who are able to break through the barrier and to be heard by their human students. At all times the spirits in heaven who are making progress toward God devote their energies to overseeing the worldly affairs of those they knew and loved in their earthly lives and in making every effort to help these loved ones.

Be assured that your earthly existence is of great concern to God's spirits and angels. They are trying at all times to communicate their love and concern to you. Think of them often and try to hear their voices. Pray to them and listen for a response. Feel their presence. Love their memories. Love must at all times join heaven and earth, love given and love received. That is God's way.

Celestial Love

When heaven and earth are joined by love totally, the millennium will have arrived. The day of the final judgment will be at hand. This judgment is not the judgment of tradition, the separation of the good from the bad, the casting into hell of the damned and the reception into heaven of the blessed. No, this judgment will be the final reconciliation of God and man, the total acceptance of perfect love by man, the total acknowledgement of all souls that there is nothing in heaven or on earth more significant than love. All men will know the glories of celestial love.

It is difficult for the human mind to comprehend celestial love. It is, first of all, universal. There is no spirit in heaven seeking progress toward oneness with God who does not feel love. The capacity for love varies greatly from spirit to spirit depending upon the extent to which it has progressed toward oneness with God, but all spirits feel the greatest love of which they are capable at all times toward themselves, their fellow spirits, and toward God. This celestial love is a perfect love. It does not know doubt, inconstancy, jealousy, limitations, or conditions. The spirits must greet each other with expressions of love at all times. They must never forget this requirement of God. Each expression of love must be answered with an expression of love. There are no exceptions to this rule.

In no way is there any pretense in this expression of love. It is the way of heaven to express love by saying, "I love you entirely." This means an expression of love as complete as the spirit is capable of feeling at that particular moment in eternity. "Entirely" says it all. It means a modicum of love, all that the spirit is capable of at that time, or it may mean overwhelmingly great love. It is at all times a statement of total honesty.

Man would do well to adopt this means of expression. I have said elsewhere in these writings that the constant expression of love generates further love, and the phrase "I love you entirely" serves this purpose while it also permits total honesty of expression. Honesty is essential in celestial love as it is in human love. Constancy is essential in celestial love as it is in human love. Celestial love is pure and generous in nature. It demands nothing of the receiver at any time. It cannot know the weaknesses of human love. It cannot be distracted. It cannot lessen or change its nature. It is the source of all joy in heaven and the joy is endless. Celestial love is a love of total understanding. It is love of total acceptance. It is love that sustains and nourishes. It is a love shared by God with His souls. In the final judgment all souls will know this love, and all souls will join with God in an eternity of endless love. This is God's plan for man.

It is the nature of God's plan for man that in the end all souls are joined with Him in perfect celestial love, and that in this state they continue to do God's work. The universe is vast, and there are planes other than earth upon which souls exist. These planes are unknown to humans and shall remain unknown to them until after their deaths, but the kingdom of God exists on these planes. The immensity of heaven defies human description and exceeds human comprehension, but this in no way makes it less of a truth. The world as it currently exists is but a testing ground for souls whose existence in these other heavenly planes is God's work and pride. This is a kingdom of love and bliss, a kingdom where love reigns supreme and where there is no emotion but joyous acceptance of God and His works.

The earthly plane is one of many such planes where souls are able and required to learn the lessons of love. The other planes are equally part of God's kingdom, but it is not my intention here to speak further of these other planes. Man needs to be aware that they exist. It is in no way necessary that he understand them.

It is important, however, that man know as much as it is possible for him to know about the nature of celestial love. There are a few similarities between human and celestial love. Human love at its most ideal is a love shared equally between two selfless individuals in a loving relationship, a love that endures hardships and challenges without wavering and which grows and changes in nature with the changes in human existence. Human love can also be the love within the family of a parent for a child, a love of giving, a love of tender concern. It can be the love of a child for a parent, a love of trust and dependence, of unquestioning faith. It can be the love that exists within the family in other relationships, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, each love differing in nature one from the other. Human love outside the family also can be deep and abiding, and ideally should embrace all men. As I have said, the capacity for human love varies as the human is shaped by his earthy experiences. In its most ideal forms, human love prepares man for the intensity of celestial love.

Celestial love is the love of God reflected in the soul. It is perfect love, demanding nothing, rejoicing in its existence, expressing itself constantly, constantly replenished and nourished by love given and received. Celestial love is a love of ecstasy, of heightened awareness, of wonder. Celestial love is the love that binds souls together and binds souls to God. Celestial love is shared by all souls without distinction. Even the Others share in celestial love, although they reject it temporarily and finally realize its force and its joy. Celestial love is energy, spiritual energy, constantly spent and constantly renewed. The capacity of the soul for celestial love is unlimited and the capacity for celestial love grows as the soul comes closer to oneness with God. The intensity of celestial love is the intensity of God's love for His souls.

There is no higher emotion, and each man born to earthly life will, in the end, know this supreme love. The speed with which man progresses to this perfect celestial love, this oneness with God, depends upon free choice on the earthly plane, but progress man must and progress he will. God is patient. God is tolerant. God waits for man to know Him, secure in the knowledge that in the end all men will rest in His bosom. That is God's plan for man.

Book Three

Chapter Three

The Equality of Male and Female

God chose at the very beginning of eternity when time began to be to create not man but man and woman as separate parts of Himself to be His companions and soulmates. From the beginning love was the motivating force in creation, and love found its most sublime expression in the love between man and woman. At all times God has been aware that each is the equal of the other, that woman is the life force equally with man, that she is the life force and nurturer, that she is the divinity in the form of woman. In the course of their successive lives all souls experience womanhood and all souls experience manhood, but at the creation an identity as man or woman is imbued into each soul and the soul retains this gender identity throughout its successive lives on earth, and in its final life assumes the form of its original identity and possesses a personality that is the synthesis of all its previous lives.

There should be no question in man's mind of the equality of male and female in God's eyes. God is both male and female, and when He chose to create His souls He divided His nature into two genders both for the purposes of procreation on the earthly plane and of creating the ideal relationship between souls for the creation and sustaining of both celestial and earthly love.

In each reincarnation the soul retains the characteristics of its essential personality, and carries forward into its succeeding lives some of its characteristics. In each life the characteristics that dominate will vary, but all are essentially contained in the soul, some dominant, others quiescent, for that existence. In all cases the soul retains its capacity for oneness with God from whom it sprang. In all cases the soul retains its relationship with its soulmate, the mirror image of itself, the male and female aspects of God the creator, and each set of soulmates, making a complete whole, enters into oneness with God together as a unit, as they have lived successive lives as a unit. In their human existence man and woman are not always aware of the relationship that each has had with the other as a soulmate, but that does not make the relationship any less of a reality.

In many societies and in many civilizations the balance of power between male and female, an equal balance in God's eyes at all times, has been lost and distorted. There have been brief examples in history of the dominance of the female, and the overwhelming dominance of the male in the annals of time is all too obvious. The reality of daily life has, however, been a very different story. The fabric of each society since time began has depended upon co-responsibility between male and female. Without the one the other is helpless and incapable of procreation, the essence of human existence, but historically in few places at few times has woman been accorded the power she deserves or the credit she has earned.

It is God's will at this time that the world acknowledge the full and equal partnership between man and woman that was the basis of His plan from the very beginning of creation and will continue to be His plan in all eternity. Let all men hear this clearly. All men are born of women. All women derive their powers of procreation from men. There is no inequality in this relationship. There is no inequality in God's eyes. Let there be none in the New Age of Love and Peace. The trinity of the New Age of Love and Peace is the trinity of total love. Mother, wife, daughter in one body and one soul. Father, husband, son in one body and one soul. All roles are sacred to God, and all roles have been known by God in His earthly lives. Let this be known as truth in the New Age of Love and Peace. This is God's word.

The Joyful Transition of Death

Man has hungered for centuries to know with an absolute certainty that life is eternal, changing only in nature and locality. Each human death brings a transition from one form of life to the next. Each soul must and does know the varieties of experience that permit and develop perfect love, love which has met every test of its perfection.

There is no uniformity in the kinds of experience the soul has on its journey to oneness with God. Earthly life offers a wide range of opportunities, and the soul chooses among them freely when determining the lessons its next life has to offer. It is difficult for man with his limited comprehension to grasp the logic of any soul's choosing a life less than ideal, although such lives are indeed possible to choose and achieve. Each soul choosing its life is aware that the more difficult the life, the greater challenge it presents, the more temptation there will be, the more difficult the road to love, but in these lives the rewards are commensurate with the problems the soul has to cope with. The more perfectly a difficult life is led, the more rapid the progress is toward oneness with God and perfect happiness in eternity.

The length of a life has nothing to do with the difficulty of a life. Man has long feared death and felt that early death is a tragedy. Although it is man's duty to live out the years allotted to him as fully and as lovingly as he is able, death at an early age does not bring sorrow to the soul that leaves its earthly existence. On the contrary, death at any age brings joy, and death at any age brings sorrow only to the survivors who mourn the loss of the love they have known for so many years. Each death in worldly existence should be cause for rejoicing, for happiness in the knowledge that whatever the circumstances of earthly life, whatever the nature of the death, whatever the age at time of death, the soul has been received into heaven by God and His angels and His spirits with love and joy. Each soul arrives after death to find love and comfort, if confusion exists as it does in some transitions, and infinite concern. But love above all. The spirit of love reigns supreme in heaven as each new soul arrives recently freed from earthly restraints.

I have described elsewhere the procedures for receiving and judging new souls, and there is no need to reiterate, but only to emphasize again the joyful nature of the transition from earthly to heavenly existence. There are no exceptions to this rule. The basest criminal is received with love and given the opportunity to respond with love, to admit freely the errors of his immediately past life, and to move toward oneness with God by making amends with love in his heart. I have also spoken of the Others, those who reject this love and continue to act in rebellion until that inevitable time when they realize that the path toward oneness with God is the only path, and they in turn ask for love and judgment.

Whenever death occurs, man should be aware then of its joyful nature, and he should be aware that his fear of death comes from his belief that death is the end of all consciousness, that the single life he knows is all of existence. It is from this mistaken assumption that the fear of death proceeds. Let man be aware that he is in total error in his belief that death marks the end of the existence of his soul. The soul is eternal, constantly renewing itself and constantly changing in its progress toward oneness with God. Death is not an ending but a beginning, a transition, and death should inspire not fear but a joyful anticipation of the wonders to come. Death has no sting. Death is a celebration. It marks the end of man's allotted days and years as agreed upon by him with God when he undertook this earthly journey, and it marks his release from the travails and restraints of earthly existence.

The soul newly received in heaven feels no sorrow for the loved ones he has left on earth, for he is with them at all times in spirit form. Love transcends death. Man's grief at the death of a loved one will be tempered if he accepts this truth about the nature of death. Grief is a normal human response to the loss of a loved one, but let your grief be lightened in the sure knowledge that the soul of the loved one has been received into glory by God and His angels and spirits and is surrounded by love greater than any he has ever known, for the strength of celestial love is beyond human imagining and it awaits all those who cross the threshold of death. Know that this is God's plan for man. This is God's word. Heed it.

The Female Aspect of God

There is in God's plan new learning for man about the nature of the Godhead. There has been and there always will be a Supreme Being on the heavenly plane, the God of all creation, the ruler of the universe. I have spoken already of God's division of souls into male and female for the most sublime relationship of love given and received. I have said that God is both male and female, and I have indicated God's wish that man recognize at last the full equality of male and female in God's eyes. There is at all times awareness of this equality among God's spirits and angels on the heavenly plane.

At all times and in all places now should man know that the presence of God on earth in human form has always been both male and female in separate human bodies sharing an earthly existence. Each time that God has visited earth in the shape of a man he has visited earth in the shape of a woman who shared that life. Through the ages the spouse of God the Father has shared His earthly experiences and has been known on earth as woman. She has been a human in all of these lives indistinguishable for the most part from her earthly companions and loved ones, knowing nothing of her divine origin, facing the problems and temptations of earthly life as do all other humans. She has until now shared these earthly experiences in various relationships with God her spouse in heaven. She has been incarnated in all degrees of wealth, all degrees of power, all aspects of human experience. She has in all these lives been charged with the same responsibility as all other souls for conveying the message of love. Some of her lives have been ordinary; some have been extraordinary. All have been judged after human death.

To now God has been content with man's unawareness of the importance of His female aspect, of the true equal partnership between God and his spouse of all eternity, His soulmate since time began, His mirror image, His love of life and death, His beloved of all times and all places. Let man now proclaim that God is both male and female in equal parts, that in all His human manifestations He has shared His life with His beloved soulmate in all family relationships. They have lived among men in countless lives in varying degrees of fame and obscurity, richness and poorness, splendor and squalor, in all parts of the world throughout history, always in a relationship of perfect love. Let man know that each time God walked the streets of the earth, His beloved walked with Him. Let man know that the supreme love of all creation is the love between God and His beloved spouse, His Queen of Heaven, His equal partner in all things of earth and of heaven. Speak her name with reverence and love. She is called Marie.

God’s Charge To Man

It is the nature of heaven that all things transpire in a time frame unknown to humans and incomprehensible to the human mind. There is, as has been said, no past, present, or future in heaven as time is understood on earth, but rather a continuum of existence, a constant awareness of what has happened on earth, what is happening on earth, and what will happen on earth. The future is painted in broad strokes, and man has the capability of changing the future in both general and specific ways. When man listens and knows the will of God in his heart and follows God's path, peace and love prevail. When man fails to heed God's wishes and responds to the wiles and temptations of mammon, destruction follows.

At several points in history man has stood at a crossroads, a crisis point, and God has chosen in the past to send to His earthly children a message, a warning if you will, in His presence on earth. Look back in the history of the world and you will recognize these moments, these crossroads, when God took human shape and endeavored to speak to His children in words that they could understand and heed. The great teachers I spoke of earlier were divinely inspired, spokesmen for God in human form. Some of these great teachers were God Himself in human form, Jesus among them, and Moses at an earlier time in the history of man. And now, once again man is at a crossroads, a crisis point in his history, and God speaks to him now of the need for change in his earthly habits, in his earthly striving, in his management of the environment, in the habits of his heart.

God speaks to His children in this holy work and would have them listen closely to all they have been told, to ponder all that God has demanded of them, and to remember that since the world began there has been no other demand than that man should know love in his heart and let his actions be dominated by this love. Love is the only answer. Love is the total answer. Love is God's gift to man. The New Age of Love and Peace is now upon us. Let man rejoice in recognition of this New Age of Love and Peace. Let him join hands and hearts with his neighbor and let them, joined in the bonds of love, move into this new age with God in their hearts. Let fear and violence wither away. Let love and trust flourish. Let peace prevail. This is God's wish for man. This is the word of God.

Cornelia Silke dba New Light Publishing © 2010