Vol. 48 No. 25 - Mark L. Prophet - June 19, 2005
The Purpose of Life
Is to Be an Overcomer
Part 3
I know that the testings are in the physical. And they’re torturous. And they test the mind and they test the reason and they test the mettle, the substance of which you are made, to see whether you have the courage to go through or whether you wish to be pampered and carried on a platter into the kingdom of heaven on a bed of roses. When you got there you’d be an imbecilic creature, unable to cope with even the glories of God. You’d be an unformed creation, a half-witted embryo that could never endure the beauties of heaven because you would never appreciate them.
The only way you’re ever going to appreciate heaven is by passing through the fiery trials here and mastering your environment. When you master your environment you become a master. And if you are not a master of your own destiny, you are not going to be ready and willing and able to enter in to the kingdom of God.
And what will happen? You’ll just keep right on coming back here until you either pass through the second death—and that isn’t so easy to get if you wanted it. It’s far harder to commit cosmic suicide than it is to commit earthly suicide. Therefore, you keep coming back and keep coming back and go through this and worse, because every time you create a karmic happenstance in this world you have to face it afterward.
So why should I tell you something that is not true and thus send you straight to the place that you don’t want to go? I have to tell you the truth. And the truth is that we all, one and all, must face with hardness of mind. And I’m not talking about hardness of heart. I’m talking about the tempering of consciousness that can have enough love for the masters to realize that this is not an easy course and still say, “I’m going through and I’m going to win.”
I couldn’t preach this sermon tonight if we had a group of worldly people here.1 They’re far more foppish than we are. We’ve at least been exposed to a little of the grain of truth. But what we have is precious little compared to what it ought to be. And I see this every day in the happenings that go on around here as well as in the world at large. And I believe that the sharp cutting-edge of the two-edged sword of the Spirit is the only thing [Mark pounds his fist.] that is going to give us our freedom! I believe it’s the only way that we’re going to win. And I believe that the substance of winning is within you. I believe it is within you if you can quit pampering the flesh. And it is the pampering of the flesh that causes all of our problems. You better believe it, because it is true.
We have got to utterly crucify the flesh. We have got to put the flesh to open shame. But what has happened in the world? Always the reverse of what should happen. The spirit is put to open shame and the flesh triumphs over the spirit. And the spirit moves out because the flesh takes command. Fleshly desires precede spiritual desires.
Did you ever hear of anyone going for thirty days or forty days or six months or a year without food or drink? People cannot go a few hours, in most cases, without food or drink. They can starve their souls. They can fail to receive the word of life that God wants to impart unto them.
And please don’t chasten me with your thoughts because I do the will of Morya El tonight in what I tell you. He has said to me, “Pamper them and you lose them for God. Let them know. And if they have enough resiliency of spirit and love of spirit to recognize it, they’ll see the truth of what you say and they’ll determine that they’re going to win. And it’s the consciousness of winning to which we are dedicated.”
Every sermon that the masters give us is not the same. And tonight is not the time for back-patting; it’s the time for back-kicking. I want to kick you in order that you’ll go ahead. I could kiss you and you might love me but you wouldn’t move ahead. I’m not interested in just sensual love nor am I interested in mere physical human affection or even the affection of your minds as much as I am in the progress of your souls—and that is immortal. And there is no travesty in this. And this is what the masters want us to sense. Because when we sense it we are going to come into consonance with the law of obedience. To obey is better than sacrifice.2
So I want to wind this up with something that I think you ought to remember. Tonight you have heard words, and these words that you have heard are the selfsame words that you would hear if you had been granted an interview with one of the great masters and then in the midst of that interview had said, “Great Master, tell me honestly what must I do to be saved? How must I conduct myself ? What can I do that will assure for me that I obtain the kingdom of God?” This is what the master would have told you.
And if you had gone all the way to the heaven of heavens, face to face with the Father, the laws he would have given you would have refuted every human thing of which we spoke and would have inspired you to find your goal in the great light of the present hour, in the reality of God that in this present hour is living and is the source of our being. In other words, you could have gone to the feet of the greatest master and he would have told you the selfsame thing that I told you tonight word for word, more or less, give a little, take a little, very little variation—in essence, the same. In sense, absolutely the same.
So, now you have heard it. If its meaning is not lost on you, and I pray that it is not, it’s going to result in some stocktaking. If you weren’t sincere you wouldn’t be here. It’s just the quantity of your sincerity that we would bring up. We want to raise the level of your sincerity. No one here questions any of you. I don’t question a person in this room as far as intent. You just don’t have enough intent. You need more of the same stuff that you’ve got that brought you here, all of you, that brings us all here. We need more of it, greater quantity, and then to put it to use.
The final word. The Master said to them, “Will you also depart from me?” And this was the chorus that answered back to him from the disciples, “Nay, Lord, for thou hast the words of eternal life!”
What do we want, a temporal crown or eternal? If we want a temporal crown, this is the wrong place to get it. If you want an eternal crown, this is the right place to get it. But unless a man do what the word of life prescribes, the prescription is of no avail. The doctor can give you that prescription. He can write it out, spell it out. You can take it to the druggist. You can pay from your purse for that prescription to be filled. But unless you take that prescription into yourself, into your flesh, into your consciousness, into your mind, into your heart, into your being, assimilate it, drink it, make it a part of yourself, it will not benefit you. On the shelf, it is meaningless. Used in minute doses, a few drops here and a few drops there, it has little meaning. But if taken according to the prescribed dose it is the cure for all the ills of man.
So grow up! Grow up! Grow up! Be mature enough to face life. I have judged wrongly in many cases and I have thought that people were older and more wise than what they are. And I know now, from the view the master gave me, there is great need for growing in our midst. And with that thought in my heart, I leave you with that hope that you will see fit to direct your affairs to that end, that you use life and abuse it not. Use it as a means to obtain immortal redemption and the reality of the ascended masters.
It would do you no good otherwise to be caught up tonight physically and carried in a conveyance of heaven, a chariot of fire, to some great retreat of the masters, where all the masters were celebrating and rejoicing, where the fires of heaven were pulsing in the atmosphere, the angels were everywhere, beauty was everywhere. This wouldn’t help you one little tiny bit—an ecstatic experience that unsupported would return you to an intolerable state of consciousness.
But if you build step-by-step the consciousness of God into the arena of positive action in the world of self, the veil becomes very thin. The veil becomes thin! It becomes thin and you can walk through it with ease. Death has no terror to you. Hell has no terror to you. Mortal men have no terror to you. Nothing can affright your soul. Because you will have passed in advance through the veil! You will have cast an anchor, as the apostles have said, through the veil. And the hope of your being will be that cast anchor3 and the rope you hold in your hand that you know is tied to truth. And you can walk through the densest fog and know you’re going right after that anchor of conscience.
Set your sail. Steer your ship. Determine your goals. Let nothing deter.
We will now hear from the beloved ascended master Kuthumi.4 His talk is transcendent. His talk is so filled with depth that I urge every one of you to carefully note it. He deals with contemporary problems of this age. He deals with communism and capitalism. He deals [with] the war in Vietnam, with violence in the world. He deals with your soul. He deals with what we must do now. Kuthumi gives great wisdom and great radiation. It came from a fountain of decrees this morning that were issued forth beautifully. And I commend you now to the care of your own Divine Presence and to the great ascended master Kuthumi Lal Singh, one of the team of World Teachers—Jesus and Kuthumi. God bless you.
“The Summit Lighthouse Sheds Its Radiance o’er All the World to Manifest as Pearls of Wisdom.”
This lecture, “The Purpose of Life Is to Be an Overcomer,” by the messenger Mark L. Prophet was delivered on Sunday, August 20, 1967, at La Tourelle, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Parts 1 and 3 are printed in Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 48, nos. 23 and 25.
1. This lecture was given to the staff of The Summit Lighthouse.
2. I Sam. 15:22.
3. This is in reference to Heb. 6:19.
4. Kuthumi’s dictation is printed in Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 48, no. 39.
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