Dawn of New Day

An Open Letter from God

What is the Universal Light? What is the True Religion?

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Truth Love Balance Oneness

The Dawn of a New Day in Human Relations

By Walter Russell (1871-1963)

Adapted from the Russell Course in Cosmic Consciousness, A Study of Universal Law, Natural Science, and Living Philosophy written in 1950

A Student’s Question

My hope is that you will expand on the possibility (if any) of direct effect of intercession without the medium of the ordinary senses. When you say that "desire within the Soul will always command the whole universe to fulfill the desire," can this include a direct effect on behalf of our enemies, apart from such efforts to work with the Source as movements for personal or national reconciliations? Is such a direct effect made possible through strongly seeing the oneness of all so that our lives become a divine extension of that one?’

I have deeply valued your lessons and all that you say about love as giving and regiving as an inviolate law. I absolutely agree that we ourselves should work out the desire in action-but please help us on the validity of direct influence in what is usually called intercessory prayer.

Walter Russell’s Answer

It is amazing how little ordinary human reason is applied to the subject of direct effort, direct influence, and direct effect of intercessory prayer. What you are really asking me is this: "Do you believe that by getting enough people to join in love-powered prayer, the Source will fill the enemies, which have been made through unfair dealings with them, with the spirit of brotherhood toward all so that we may continue to keep what we have taken from them by force, and hurt them as much as we want to, without ourselves being hurt?"

In other words, there can be no "love-powered prayers" to the Source by any nation on earth today that asks for protection from or conversion of enemies, for they are based upon selfish motives. Those who do this are seeking to evade the consequences of their own actions by asking the Source for a harvest of peace and love from whirlwind sowing.

Let us consider this. Why do we have enemies that hurt us, steal from us, and kill us? The answer is that we are enemies of other people in whom we have bred hate and fear by hurting them, stealing from them, and killing them. The whole world is the enemy of the whole world, for love has not yet entered it. The whole world is divided against itself because the whole world has tried to build its own wealth and power by robbing its neighbor.

The idea of survival by might is an inheritance from the jungle. The world is in a transitory stage of its unfolding. Every person fears his neighbor, or else he would not lock his doors or police his streets. Every nation fears every other nation, or else it would not spend countless billions in armaments.

This has been so since the dawn of consciousness in the human race. Early history is full of intercessory prayer of every greedy enemy who wishes to smite his enemy or to evade being smitten. Early tribes and nations have asked their gods to take sides with them against other men and nations. The early history of humanity is saturated with cruelty. Tribes killed prisoners by the thousands-including women and children-and condemned countless thousands to slavery.

You, who have asked this question, may possibly feel that the world is now civilized, that the days of conquest and killings have passed, and that part of the world is good and the other part bad. The bad half is what you mean when you say "destroying our enemies by filling them with the spirit of brotherhood."

Let us consider that point of view. We, the American nation, pose as being a righteous nation, with no desire to act aggressively against any other nation. In taking that stand, we do not realize that we have been an enemy of mankind for centuries of cruelty and aggression for the purpose of building our empire. We have fought 117 wars, killed the inhabitants for the lands we wanted, attained more lands by killing and sharp practice, and abducted hundreds of thousands of black men from Africa with untold cruelty, to enslave them for our selfish purposes.

Do not say "but that was yesterday and our forefathers did it, not us," for we are extensions of our forefathers and we are reaping the harvest of that which they sowed. We cannot enjoy its stolen fruits without paying heavily for it. The price we are paying is the blood of ten for every one we have killed. By becoming enemies, we have made enemies. We are hundreds of billions of dollars in debt because of the few billions we stole. We are criminals in respect to the Law of Rhythmic, Balanced Interchange, feigning righteousness in our people, who are being persecuted by enemies, forgetful of our persecution of people as our enemies.

The Law will not allow any people or nation to reap harvests of the luscious fruits of peace and good will who sow the seeds of hate and ill-will. We have acquired our freedom by depriving other people of their freedom, and now we wonder why other people wish to deprive us of our freedom. We call them our enemies and ask in "love-powered prayers" to set aside the Law in favor of us, as one enemy of humanity against another enemy of humanity.

So much for this country. Let us consider England. The history of the building of the British Empire is red with blood and black with infamy. England conquered one nation after another for her personal gain. While sending missionaries to the so-called heathen half of the world to Christianize them, it exploited them for gain. There is no blacker page in history than the attempted degradation of China by the forced sale of opium, which resulted in two opium wars, tremendous bloodshed, and the confiscation of lands as the price England exacted from China to make her pay for trying to save herself from the English terror.

England grew rich and powerful, but not happy. She had created too many enemies to feel secure or happy. No one can gain happiness by taking happiness from another. Like America and the rest of the world, she lived by the sword and is dying by the sword. For centuries, England could never tell which of the enemies she created would strike next, and every such war drained her best blood. As a consequence, England has suffered much, and her empire has disintegrated. This enemy-creating world is a world of hatred and fear. The history of one empire is like another, and modern examples are replicas of the scourgings of medieval and ancient pillagers, who went to wars of killings asking their god’s help, and returned to ask its blessings upon their conquests and thanks for their victories over their enemies.

So long as we are building the kind of world that we have been and are building, we cannot ask that the Law be set aside for the benefit of one country or another. All of us together have built our world, not just one bad half as against a good half. All of us together have created our Hitlers, our Mussolinis, and our Stalins. Our class wars, such as the privileged and underprivileged, gentry and serf, capital and labor, and rich and poor have bred fascism, nazism, and communism.

We have lived by the sword and the decadence of world-death by the sword is evident everywhere. Disunity is multiplying as decadence in weakened nations multiplies. The whole world is facing another dark age. It is on the very verge of it. The only thing which will prevent the world from plunging into that abyss is for humankind to stop being the enemy of humanity and be its friend-stop taking and begin giving, stop fearing and begin loving.

When nations of Law-abiding people become nations of loving people, the world will be saved from world suicide, but not until then. That is why we work to give to humanity the one law for the Cosmic Age now in its dawning-the Law of Rhythmic Balanced Interchange in all transactions of humanity as in Nature.

Humanity has not been ready for this new knowledge until now. In its unfolding it had to progress through the primate age of self-interest to the spiritual age of mutual interest in the brotherhood of humanity.

Through new comprehension of this electric universe, humanity is now ready to know the Law and to comprehend that our self-made suffering has led us to the edge of an abyss from which we must retract and seek the Light. When the day comes that people have really faced the Light instead of the dark, they will pray for their own worthiness to live in the Light and to manifest the Light, and not that other people should be made worthy, as your question suggests.

You can now readily understand that a world condition which is the result of millions of years of slow unfolding cannot possibly be brought to its final goal by what you call "direct effect" resulting from the desire of your Soul, or even the world Soul. In this unfolding universe, all idea is expressed in time cycles and you can no more press a button to complete a cycle of humanity’s unfolding than you can press a button to bring an oak tree into full growth overnight.

Conclusion

However, do not misinterpret this answer on prayer to mean that I do not think that sincere groups who meet in prayer for the purpose of launching good thoughts out into the ether are not doing a very great service to human progress, and especially to themselves.

This is a thought-wave universe. Thoughts have thought-bodies and can be reflected in the thoughts of other people by what is known as telepathy, which is really thought-radar.

When you do this, however, it is your love-thought that extends from you to others. Your love-thought is inspired by your own awareness and desire for the Law to be expressed in all humanity. It is, therefore, your desire, and your expression of love that you are extending from your own Soul to the Souls of others and those thoughts will be reflected in those who are ready for them and will reflect back into your own Soul to influence your own thought and actions.

Remember, however, that your thought and desire for the unity of humanity for remedying the defects of other people. The Law exists and works for you and for all others, whether you request it or not and whether it causes you unhappiness or not.

In other words, when you love your neighbor as yourself and send such thoughts out into the world, you are following and fulfilling the Law. You are extending your desire to other people to unify all humanity.

Reprinted with permission of The University of Science & Philosophy, Blacksburg, Virginia.

Universal Light Institute