You may wish to read this first with the headings and then without them, and see which way the cumulative message comes clearer.
REFORM.
We have come to the beginning of a new era, another period of cleansing.
REFORMERS.
Reformers can be very uncomfortable companions, but they are in 3D, not of it. They work for eternity.
ARMS.
The reformers’ arms against the world are insight, veneration, and valor, any two of which without the third are undesirable.
HERESY.
Reform “substitutes things for words, laws for usage, ideas for idols” – and is condemned for it.
SIMPLICITY.
The just man’s words condemn the false by showing him to himself.
PERSON.
No one but God is more than partial. The more we identify ourselves with the divine, the more of a person we become.
PORTRAITS.
The portrait of your ideas is what you seek. The self you actually are is shown by what you do.
PERSONALITY.
Truth speaks in general impersonal terms. But when the shoe pinches, you know it.
POPULARITY.
As Jesus said, you can love God or the world, not both. One or the other must come first with you.
FAME.
Recognition of virtue and genius takes time to manifest. For one thing, the great “create the organs by which they are to be seen.”
TEMPTATION.
The man of sublime gifts may be tempted to use those gifts to achieve external rather than internal goals, but he resists the temptation.
LIGHT.
If the world were entirely real in the way that it seems to be real, then evil and sin would be equally real, and would be treason in a divided reality.
PROBITY.
The upright man stands alone, untempted by the lures of 3D existence.
SOPHISTRY.
The genuine always has to compete with the sham. Temptation wins some people, but new innocents are always being born.
BREAD.
In 3D, false things pay, perhaps more often than true ones. But “he has bread in his exile which mammon knows not of.”
LABOR.
We are in 3D to work, and cannot be happy in idleness. But the point of work is to exercise our faculties, not to pile up results.
DIABOLUS.
Alcott, unlike the popular thought of his day, says the voice of the people isn’t the voice of God, but of the devil. “Seek God in the seclusion of your own soul; the prince of devils is in the midst of multitudes.”
DOGMATISM.
Group-think always overrates its intelligence and knowledge.
GENIUS AND SANCTITY.
Genius and sanctity define character. These, not other characteristics, are what the world sees of you.
CHARACTER.
Immortality comes from following God, not fashion or worldly example.
LIFE.
Life cannot be compressed into a formula. Trying to do so distorts.
BARRENNESS.
Deeds, not opinions, are the fruit of the tree – and the fruitless tree is accursed.
SCRIPTURE.
Scripture is the record of life, as scared or profane as the life it records.
SACRED BOOKS.
Ignorance and passion work their way into sacred books, which must be revised and purified periodically by prophets in direct communication with the truth.
RESURRECTION.
Resurrection means resurrection of the soul from the body, not of the body from the grave. People who have experienced life in full – in non-3D and 3D together – know life, but are not believed by those who have experienced 3D only.
MIRACLES.
Only those with spiritual sight and insight discern miracles clearly. To them, miracles are not tricks, nor supernatural intervention, but reality.
FACT AND FABLE.
Life cannot be written down, or reported. As pure fact, it can only be lived.
REVELATION.
We perceive through the senses or through intuition; that is, indirectly or directly. “The worldling” processes through brain rather than receiving directly.
PROPHET.
The prophet “addresses the divine in the breast.” His being inspires reverence.
TEACHER.
The true teacher guides his pupils away from his own personal influence. “He will have not disciples.”
EXPERIENCE.
Our idea of God corresponds to our ideal of ourselves. We might say, God is made in the image of man.
OBEDIENCE.
Obedience is functioning as you were created to function. Obedience to your own nature is not tyranny; disobedience is missing the mark.
RETRIBUTION.
Divine law, unlike human law, takes everything into account, hence is always just. Divine retribution is thus inevitable cause and effect, never something arbitrary.
WORSHIP.
The soul’s relation to God, to man, to nature, and to itself shows in the ritual of its 3D life. The soul aims ever at heaven, “and the spirit of God descends to kindle her devotions.”
BAPTISM.
Born of water (3D life and its trials) and of the spirit (non-3D participation in 3D life), life is both purification and regeneration. Sanctity, not merely sobriety, is necessary for sight. The way to sanctity is: “Repent, abstain, resolve.”
CARNAGE.
Man may live among carnage and slaughter now, but after purification, he won’t.
TRADITION.
Tradition offers many paths to be trodden, some leading upward, some leading downward: Which we choose to follow is up to us.
RENUNCIATION.
The shared subjectivity offers you a downward course or an upward course. What you don’t want, you renounce. Becoming in the world by not of it gives us the needed distance to make what is unconscious conscious.
VALOR.
We are helpless only if we think ourselves so.
MEEKNESS.
The meek shall inherit the earth, no matter that the once-born disbelieve it.
GENTLENESS.
The 3D isolation of our lives hides the fact that we are better than we appear. Beneath passions and lusts smolders divine fire.
INDIVIDUALS.
All “creeds, usages, institutions” are sacred just as far as they “cherish and reverence” the individual, and no farther. Woe to the person or institution that oppresses the individual.
MESSIAS.
People are always steering by the wrong star, seeking a ruler from the world rather than from heaven. But this state of affairs won’t last forever.
CHRISTENDOM.
In a few words, Alcott lays a sweeping and accurate criticism of a religion that is loyal to tradition rather than conscience.
CHRISTIANS.
Christianity goes wrong by leaning on Jesus rather than on the soul as he instructed.
PENTECOST.
Alcott says the time grows near when souls will listen not to men but to the Holy Ghost.
IMMORTALITY.
The immortality of the soul implies the repeated mortality we experience in 3D life.
OBITUARY.
It is not the 3D that is important, but the non-3D visitor who lived here a while. Everything of 3D is an emanation from non-3D archetypes.
ETERNITY.
The soul is as timeless as God. We don’t remember, but we know. Nobody really thinks he will die, nor will he. Our 3D references paint one picture, but the non-3D paints another.
SILENCE.
Silence – the absence of words – is the way to wisdom. Speech explains, but it does not originate. Silence leads us to the gestalt rather than sequential analysis. When we learn to silence the chatter, we begin to hear the “voiceless oracles.”