Taking the Steps to Knowledge

We would like to speak about learning and living The Way of Knowledge as a fundamental spiritual focus and practice and application in life. To begin with, let Us speak about what Knowledge is and why it is so important for you.

Knowledge represents the deeper spiritual Mind within you, the Mind that knows. This deeper Mind does not think like your personal mind, or your surface mind, thinks. This deeper Mind does not deliberate. It does not compare. It does not speculate, does not fantasize, does not engage in most of the activities that your intellect is involved in.

Instead, this deeper Mind is really here on a mission. It is here because it is here to do something important for the world. And it will emerge, possibly, later in your life when you have developed yourself as a person and have gained some degree of independence and independent thinking. When this occurs, there is a chance that this deeper Mind, this Mind We call Knowledge, may begin to assert itself and to emerge within your experience.

The Mind of Knowledge is like no other mind. You could think about it endlessly, but your intellect can only imagine another intellect. You could speculate about what Knowledge is like, but really your speculations would still be based upon your intellect, which can only project images that it can conceive of, images of itself.

This is why the deeper Mind of Knowledge seems so mysterious. It is beyond definition. You can describe its manifestations. You can describe any direct experience you may have with it, but really it is so mysterious.

Some people say: “Well, this is all the Christ Consciousness” or “This is Buddhahood” or “This is Universal Mind.” And there is a great deal of speculation on what this Mind is really like, how it functions, where it comes from and so forth. But these are all speculations from the intellect.

They cannot encompass the mysterious nature of Knowledge within you. Nor can they describe really how Knowledge works, how it functions, how it manifests itself, why it is here, and what it is here to serve.

Therefore, for you, you must allow these things to remain somewhat mysterious. It is only through direct experience with Knowledge itself that you will be able to learn what Knowledge is, how Knowledge functions, and why it is within you.

However, there are some very general things that We can say about Knowledge that kind of gives it a context and helps you to understand really what it is within you, and perhaps can enable you to prevent making certain mistakes in the way that you think of Knowledge or in your practice and study of The Way of Knowledge.

Knowledge, in essence, is really God within you. God has given you part of God’s consciousness. It is within you. This consciousness is not like your intellect, however. It is not constantly thinking, deliberating, planning, remembering, imagining, and so forth.

It is really more an awareness, a state of mind. It is connected to everything in the universe. Your little piece of God contains your connection with God. It is to assure that while you are living in the world in a state of seeming Separation, you cannot really be apart from God.

So Knowledge really is your God connection. This deeper part of your mind is your God connection. You cannot really connect with God through your intellect because your intellect was not created by God. It was created by you and by your environment. What was created by God is Knowledge within you, this deeper Mind that We are describing.

So for now, be content to realize Knowledge is your connection to God, it is how you can experience God most directly, and it is the part of you that really has come into the world for a mission.

In other words, Knowledge contains the memory of your Creator, the memory of your purpose for being here, and the blueprint for your mission in life. There really is a greater activity that you are here to accomplish.

Now there are some people who say: “Oh, I know what my mission is. It is to do this or to do that.” But this is not yet Knowledge. Perhaps they are moving in the right direction. Perhaps they have learned step one or step two of the many steps that they will have to take, but your mission is not simply a definition. And only if you are very advanced in taking these steps can you say with any real certainty and honesty: “This is my mission.”

So at the outset, do not claim what your mission is because you really do not have it yet. Even if you are moving in the right direction, you do not have it yet. You will not have your mission until you are firmly established within it; until you can experience what it is on a regular basis; until it directs your life, your activity, your relationships, your understanding, and so forth.

Knowledge knows. Knowledge within you really knows why you are here and what you must do. It really knows who you must meet and where you must go. And yet Knowledge is dynamic. It is not simply having a pre-recognition of things. It is moving in dynamic relationship with the movement of the world.

So if things change, which they are, if circumstances require a different set of actions, well, Knowledge responds immediately. So it is not like you have a plan that is already pre-described. It must constantly be adapting itself to the changing circumstances of life around you.

This is why static definitions are inherently incorrect because they cannot adapt. People try to adapt their experiences to their definitions of themselves, their definitions of what they are doing in life, but this is backwards.

Knowledge is able to respond in the moment. It is able to change the plan. It is able to redirect you if circumstances require it. That is why the man or woman of Knowledge must learn to live without a lot of personal definitions. “Well, this is who I am, and this is what I do, and this is how I am, and this is what I believe, and this is my belief system, and this is what I think the world means and life means and purpose means and love means, and so forth.”

People who are bound by all these definitions cannot move with life. They try to make life move according to their prescriptions, but they cannot move and flow with life. They are bound now by their own ideas and ideologies.

Therefore, in learning The Way of Knowledge, you learn how to be present in the moment, how to be responsive to your environment, how to follow Knowledge, and to learn to think like Knowledge thinks, and to gain the great awareness of Knowledge, the great power of Knowledge, and the grace of Knowledge because remember, Knowledge is your relationship to God. It is the God within you.

So each person has this mysterious deeper Intelligence within them. Now obviously most people are not aware of this or connected to it sufficiently that it can really affect their thinking and their behavior. So it is really more like a potential even though Knowledge is really there.

You see, no matter how isolated anyone may feel they are in life, which is really the source of all human suffering, no matter how separate or cast out anyone may think they are, or feel that they are, they are still connected to God. They are connected through Knowledge. So it could be said, then, that taking the Steps to Knowledge is like taking the Steps to God—the God within you and the God within everyone else.

Some people try to make every aspect of a person Godlike or connected to God, but this is not accurate. The only thing that God created in you is Knowledge. Everything else is a product of your self-creation and co-creation with other people living in Separation.

Now some people may say: “Oh, I don’t believe that! I think God created everything!” But if you think like that, then you must justify everything, and that becomes increasingly difficult to do if you are really honest and objective in your observations of life around you.

So learning The Way of Knowledge is like learning The Way of God. Taking the Steps to Knowledge is like taking the Steps to God. Living the life of Knowledge is like living the life of God in the world.

So each person has this deeper, more powerful Intelligence. But people do not listen. They do not respond. It is as if it does not exist. People’s minds dominate everything. Their beliefs, their thinking, their social conditioning, their attitudes, their convictions, even their beliefs about God completely dominate a person’s life and perspective, so much so that they cannot really know anything, and the greater Mind of Knowledge within them really is beyond their reach.

They are like slaves to the forces that move people about in the world. They are slaves to fear. They are slaves to desire. They are slaves to their own convictions that are born of fear and desire.

Indeed, everyone who lives in the world has had this experience, and most people still live within it very fully. To break out of the personal hell of isolation, to break out of the domination of the mind and the domination of your social conditioning represents freedom in the most fundamental way. For you can be free in the world, but if you are not free inside, you cannot really take advantage of your external freedom.

Look about you in the world. People seem to be free, relatively speaking, compared to say other people in the world. And look what they do with their freedom. They become lost in addictions, they make horrendous mistakes in their relationships and they abuse themselves physically and emotionally.

Certainly, you have seen this. Even within yourself, you know you are not free. Freedom is not simply having no obligations in life or not being accountable to anyone. Freedom really in its greatest and most real sense is the ability to find and to follow Knowledge because here you are finally free to do what you came here to do, which is the source of all real integrity and satisfaction.

So trying to gain more external freedom without this internal freedom,it will not lead to a good result. For your soul will only be satisfied if you can fulfill what you came here to do. This is the deeper happiness that is the real happiness.

Yes, there are lighthearted moments. Yes, there are fun things to do in the world. But when We talk about real happiness, We are talking about the satisfaction and the sense of integrity that come from really engaging yourself in your greater purpose and mission here. And to do that, you must find and follow Knowledge because only Knowledge knows what it really is.

There are endless beliefs and speculations about spirituality and spiritual purpose and the meaning of your connection to God and spiritual practice and all this. But only Knowledge knows. If you are not connected to Knowledge, no matter how fervently you may believe, no matter how much you may build your idea of yourself upon your spiritual attitudes or beliefs, you do not yet know. And without this freedom to know, you are not really free.

So this brings Us then to learning The Way of Knowledge. Is The Way of Knowledge one Teaching? No. There are many teachings that teach The Way of Knowledge. Yet they are still the minority of spiritual teachings in the world, for most spiritual teachings only teach belief and attitude, and give prescriptions for positive living or constructive living, and so forth.

Most spiritual teachings in the world do not reflect The Way of Knowledge. Perhaps it could be said that these teachings really are for people who are not yet ready to learn The Way of Knowledge, but this is only an excuse. Do not try to justify it. It cannot really be justified.

So there is more than one Teaching in The Way of Knowledge, but these Teachings are rare, and the real teachers of The Way of Knowledge are hard to find. They are not the teachers who are presenting the teachings that will make you feel glamorous or beautiful or radiant or give you high experiences or moving into other dimensions and so forth.

They are not the teachings that teach physical or emotional healing. These teachings may be very helpful to prepare someone for The Way of Knowledge, but they are rarely The Way of Knowledge itself because most spiritual teachings emphasize belief, attitude and behavior as the main focal point. They have not really hit the mark. They have not really gone to the source of [where] real happiness, wholeness and integrity exists and where it can emerge throughout your entire Being.

It is okay. There are different levels of teaching for different people. But everyone needs to learn The Way of Knowledge at some point, and the sooner the better. Remember, no justification, no excuses.

However, The Way of Knowledge must be presented in certain ways to correspond with the greater events that are happening in the world. It is not like a static teaching. As We have said, Knowledge responds to the conditions of the world and the circumstances of the world in order to fulfill its mission here. That is why Knowledge is wise. That is why it is effective.

Thus, the teaching in The Way of Knowledge must also be responsive to the conditions of the world, and that is why the Creator keeps giving The Way of Knowledge in new manifestations in order to have the greatest impact given the important events that are going to shape and to affect your life.

Such a new Revelation in The Way of Knowledge has recently been given in the Teaching called The Greater Community Way of Knowledge. This is a Teaching that prepares people to engage with the reality that you are no longer alone in the universe or even within your own world. It is the reality that humanity is emerging into a Greater Community and must learn about the realities of life within the universe and the meaning of spirituality beyond the limits of human understanding.

This is a new Revelation of learning The Way of Knowledge. What has changed is the context because the context is changing in your life, and the circumstances of your life are changing. So a Teaching that was given 300 years ago is no longer completely relevant. It must be given in a new expression.

That is why art and literature keep regenerating themselves because the great insights must be given a new form, a new expression. In the reality of spirituality, this new expression must be given at least periodically.

So a unique teaching in The Way of Knowledge about life in the Greater Community and about your emergence into the Greater Community is now being given into the world, and the study of this is through the Sacred Text Steps to Knowledge. The center point of this Teaching is learning and living The Way of Knowledge, which is a much greater task than most people really realize.

Only an advancing student begins to see: “Oh, my God! This is really big!” Only they can begin to see and recognize for themselves in their own experience that really everything has to do with Knowledge, and the denial of Knowledge, and the ignorance of Knowledge, and that the world that you see is really the product of these three things: the reality of Knowledge, the denial of Knowledge and the ignorance of Knowledge.

In your Heavenly state, there is only Knowledge, but you are not living in your Heavenly state. Therefore, the denial of Knowledge and the ignorance of Knowledge are very powerful forces in the world, obviously, or the world would not look the way it does. And it is not merely a matter of perception because when people try to just adjust their perception of the world, what happens is they end up becoming very dishonest and denying whole parts of their experience.

If you only want to see the good and the happy and the pretty things, what happens? You begin to deny the reality of everything else. And you are unable then to respond to the world as it really is. You are unable to respond to yourself as you really are. And you end up becoming really susceptible to manipulation by other people because you are so preferential in your thinking.

This is not the way to Knowledge. This is not the way to find real certainty and stability in life. Lying to yourself and to other people does not produce a good result and makes you very vulnerable to very dangerous and dark forces in the world—forces of ignorance, forces of manipulation and control. The man or woman of Knowledge always will avoid these things, but they will always make sure they recognize what they are and how they manifest themselves.

This brings Us to a very important point here because in learning The Way of Knowledge, you become fundamentally honest. You take life as it is. You face life as it is. You do not try to pretend. You do not say, “Well, I will experience only this part of life and I will tune out everything else,” or “I will only express these feelings but not those feelings,” or “I will only know these things within myself but not all these other things.”

Real honesty requires the willingness to face anything that you have to face. It is this faith in life, it is this trust in your inherent power that gives you the strength to do this. Without this awareness, without this connection to Knowledge, you will be too afraid. You will not want to face things in the world. You will not want to face things in yourself. You will not want to face things in your marriage, in your work, in your health.

You will live in this sort of state of denial that is so destructive to your well-being and happiness and that really prevents you from gaining access to the one thing that is going to bring your life into fulfillment and happiness and integrity—that is finding and fulfilling your greater purpose for being here.

What is that purpose? Knowledge knows. How do you find that purpose? By learning and living The Way of Knowledge. Take the Steps to Knowledge. This is the most important thing. In the process of doing this, many significant things begin to happen. And We would like to speak about this now.

First of all, you develop a spiritual practice. Spiritual practice is essential for learning greater things about yourself and about life. Having philosophies or making assumptions or reading books that fill your mind with more ideas and assumptions, well, that cannot work.

You must build the bridge from your mind to Knowledge, and that bridge is not built in a day or a week or a month. You are undertaking something very great here, and it requires perseverance and a commitment. Therefore, you do not want to dabble with this. “Well, I’ll try it out for a week and see how it goes.” You cannot approach a great Teaching like this and have any hope of learning it or understanding it.

Most people still think they can really understand things with their intellect. Well, you can understand mechanical things. You can understand how your radio works. You can figure out how to follow a map, and there are certain very practical things that the intellect is very, very good at determining and creating and understanding.

But We are talking about the essence and the meaning of your life here. We are talking about the Will of the Creator that lives within you. We are not talking about simple, mechanical or logistical things. The intellect cannot possibly comprehend these [greater] things, and the more it tries, the more convoluted its ideas become, the more complex its theories, the more it must try to deal with certain contradictions that it cannot fathom or move beyond. You have seen this.

There are many, many thick books written about people’s attempt to understand the Creator and the meaning of life with their intellect. The man or woman of Knowledge knows this is not possible. The intellect is a wonderful tool, but it is not a tool made for this task. Here you must find the greater resources that live within you.

So in beginning the study of Steps to Knowledge, the Book of Practices in learning The Greater Community Way of Knowledge, you begin to develop a spiritual practice. This requires first that you show up every day, which means that you must adjust other parts of your life and gain greater control over your circumstances.

This in itself is a very significant step because many people really do not think they have any control over their lives, and beginning a spiritual practice gives you the opportunity to do just that. People go to the bathroom several times a day, they perhaps take a shower every day, they eat food every day. Why not a spiritual practice every day?

You make time for these other things because they are recognized as being important or even necessary. When you recognize that your spiritual practice is important and necessary, you will begin to carve out time to give to it, and this is needed.

This consistent application is really the basis of accumulating learning, aggregate learning. You do not just try to dive in once in a while. You practice every day. If you miss a day, it is okay, but you come back the next day and you keep with it until it becomes part of the flow of your life, until you make a place [for it] in your life. Then things begin to revolve around your spiritual practice rather than trying to fit it in somewhere where there seems to be nowhere.

So every day you practice the Steps to Knowledge. You begin very simply. You begin to practice every day. You begin to make time and give it your consideration and make it a priority for yourself and so forth.

This is an act of personal integrity and personal power to do this. You are not doing this to look good in the world. You are not doing this to please your parents. You are not doing this to make more money. You are not doing this to win favors or get rewards, necessarily. You are doing it because you realize it must be, that you really need it, just like you need to stay clean and clothed and fed and get rest and go to work. It becomes one of the essential needs of your life. This you establish every day you practice.

It is like saying to yourself, “This is important and I will give this time today.” You will be amazed at how your life will respond to your commands. But you must make some commands to see this.

Steps to Knowledge begins very simply, and then it begins to establish certain fundamental skills. The first skill as We have mentioned is the skill of consistency. Whatever you do consistently, you become good at. Whatever you do consistently requires less and less effort as you continue. Whatever you do consistently makes you available to greater thresholds of learning.

Steps to Knowledge then begins a whole process of self-inquiry, where you look into your experience very objectively. This is so powerful because most people never look at their experience objectively.

Perhaps sometimes after great, sad or traumatic events, they will really do some kind of honest reckoning with their lives. They will look at their lives and they will say, “Yes, I really do need to make some changes in the way that I live. I need to lose weight,” or “I need to change my job,” or “I need to improve myself in some specific way,” and they see it clearly. It is not simply a good idea. It is not simply a New Year’s resolution. It is really, “Yes, I really have to do this!” Sometimes that recognition is enough to propel people into action. Often it is not.

In the practice of Steps to Knowledge, you begin to really look at the content of your experience. You become connected to what you really experience, not what you think you should experience or what you want to experience. You become really, really connected to what you are really experiencing. And all the deception about what makes people happy, and all of the running away from yourself, and all of the trying to hide in this or pretend about that, begin to fall away.

The person only really becomes honest and self-aware when there is no other alternative, when there is no place to hide, when it is seen that hiding only hurts you and prevents you from gaining your real strength.

So in the practice of Steps to Knowledge, you develop consistency, and you begin a long process of self-inquiry. Yet this process of self-inquiry is not simply a conversation with yourself. It is not a psychological process as much as it is a matter of looking and listening.

So at the beginning of Steps to Knowledge and throughout the study of Steps to Knowledge, you learn how to still your mind. You learn how to become observant. You learn how to look, see, feel, and know.

Once your mind becomes still at your command, from the result of you exerting your power, you begin to undo your social conditioning, you begin to undo the domination of your intellect, you begin to see beyond ideas and beliefs and conventions of thought. You see things you could never see before. You hear things you have never heard before.

Yet the things that you see and hear are so resonant, so true to what you really feel and know about life, it is not like you are trying to put some kind of overlay of ideals or beliefs on top of your experience. Really, the contrary is true. You are taking them away.

You begin to feel things that you really, really know. Your perception becomes refined and more objective. Your awareness begins to expand so that you can see and feel and know things that simply could not be recognized [before] because of the constant noise of your mind and the preoccupations that kept you from really seeing and knowing anything about yourself.

You become sensitive to your body, your mind, other people, the world, but in such a way that you have real inner strength. Practicing stillness of mind is really a prerequisite for [getting] in touch with the real undercurrent of what is going on [within] you and what is going on around you.

Steps to Knowledge teaches you how to think about things in a very constructive way. We call this “contemplation.” It is different from meditation. It is contemplation. You are going to contemplate a question about life. You are going to contemplate something, not simply to come up with exciting answers, but really to try to penetrate it, going deeper than the surface where everyone is so caught up.

Your stillness practice is really your meditation because it enables your awareness to go deeper and to connect with Knowledge, which knows. Throughout Steps to Knowledge, you set the stage for this inner connection, and you have an opportunity to build this connection every day in little increments.

Your life begins to change, your values begin to change, and you become more connected to yourself, and you realize that you really want quiet more than stimulation, and you realize you really want integrity more than thrills, and you realize you want relationships that have real strength and real direction rather than just exciting interludes with people. This is all the result of refocusing your attention and redirecting your activities and exerting your power to do this.

Another important aspect of the study of Steps to Knowledge is you are engaging with the Angels who oversee your life. They are speaking to you with every word in Steps to Knowledge. They are not giving you only a set of beliefs. They are really giving you a key into your deeper nature and your deeper power, which are meant to be exerted here in very specific ways.

Because Steps to Knowledge is wholly honest and pure, you must become really honest and pure to follow it and to respond to it. And so it seems like things are falling away from you as you proceed, and your burden becomes lighter, and you become less self-preoccupied and more connected to everything around you, more responsive, whereas before you really could not respond to anything very effectively unless it really hit you over the head because you were so caught up in yourself—your plans for the future, your issues with people, your difficulties, your contradictions, your memories and so forth.

Here the mind dominates so much that it becomes like a prison and you cannot get out. It is like you are under house arrest. You cannot leave. You cannot leave the confines of your own personal mind. It dominates you. It restricts you. It torments you. It tantalizes you. And you have no freedom. Even though you appear to be a free person, you have no freedom.

Learning The Way of Knowledge, then, begins to break this all down. That is why it seems like in the early stages, in the early part of the preparation, like things are really falling away and changing. And it can be very unsettling because you have identified so much with so many things outside of yourself. As you begin to break free of these things, it is a very confusing time.

Perhaps six months into Steps to Knowledge, you [might] say, “Well, I thought everything would be clear and my life would be coming together right now!” But what is happening is things are falling away and becoming rearranged, not from the outside in but from the inside out. It is like Knowledge is beginning to rearrange your life as quickly as you will allow it to do so, so that you can set the stage for beginning a new life because you do not jump from one life to another. You really have to dismantle the old life.

It is like redoing your house. You have to take everything down. You strip the walls, and perhaps you really take everything down to the bare essentials, and then you begin to rebuild. This process of tearing down and rebuilding really is the spiritual work to be done. And that is the process in Steps to Knowledge.

Then you will also have times when you are very lucid, and you can really see things, and you understand relationships. “Oh, my God, it is so clear. Human relationships are so simple.” It is so clear to you in that moment, and then the next day, well, you forgot it all and you are back in the soup. But you see, you are breaking through, not all at once, but in pieces. If you break through all at once, you could not adapt.

There are so many things to become unburdened from in the process because you are still not yet free. You are getting free. You are having moments of freedom. You are having days of freedom. You are having incredible experiences of freedom. But you are not yet free.

Outside you, the culture is constantly reminding you of what you used to be and reinforcing old ideas that really cannot help you. And so you have considerable opposition just by the general nature of people’s attitudes and beliefs and assumptions—the attitudes, beliefs and assumptions of your culture, of your family, of your friends, and maybe perhaps of your immediate relationships.

So it is a very, very courageous thing to do to gain your freedom. You do not live in a free world, and you are not a free person. Not really. So Steps to Knowledge really is the road to freedom, real freedom—freedom to be inner directed, freedom to have real integrity, freedom to be able to think freely, to think creatively, to think spontaneously.

Before that happens, everyone thinks according to patterns. They think according to prescriptions. And they generally think what they are told to think through their social and family programming. That is why there is so little original thinking out there. There is so little originality. There is so little real creativity. There is a whole lot of imitation. There is a whole lot of imagination. But it all begins to look the same, doesn’t it?

People are really copying each other. Where is the real originality? Where is the real dynamic thinking? Where is the breakthrough? You might as well be on a chain gang out building the road. Everyone is doing what everyone else is doing. When you look behind and beyond the appearance of personal freedom, it looks like a chain gang. When you look at where people really are in their thinking and their evaluations of themselves, and you see how little originality there is, and you see how people really are just simply going along with everything else, it looks like a chain gang.

The man or woman of Knowledge will see this so clearly once they are able to see clearly. They will not be deceived by appearances. They will not look at beauty and see real beauty. They will not look at wealth and power and glamour and all these things and be swayed by them because they will be able to see through them because their minds have been freed enough to do this.

Because Steps to Knowledge is a gift from God, it is a really mysterious process. It is happening at a deeper level, really. All these things We are describing, well, they are all happening, but something else is really happening too, on the inside, and that is that Knowledge, because you are giving it your attention and your focus on a consistent basis, is becoming stronger and stronger. Its influence is great on you.

Over time you begin to realize, almost fearfully: “Oh, my God! There is this great power living within me. I am afraid of it! I don’t know what it is going to do, what it is going to say!” But it is also your Homecoming, and so it is like you are reclaiming yourself. It is beautiful. But it is tremendous and powerful too.

Of course, there are many mistakes to make along the way. People make many mistakes in their evaluation of Knowledge because they are not yet connected to it sufficiently. They make a lot of assumptions about themselves because they do not really know themselves yet.

That is why you do need a teacher periodically because a book can tell you the right thing to do, but it cannot tell you when you are doing it wrong. Even Steps to Knowledge, which as a book is an incredibly powerful mechanism for initiating you into the greater spiritual reality from which you have come, even it requires instruction from someone who is gifted, someone who knows the way and who has traveled the way. And you need other people to help you because this is not meant to simply isolate you further within yourself, but to bridge you to other people who share your great journey.

So having a teacher, such as Marshall Vian Summers, and having others to practice with, and to share your experiences with, and to help you not make mistakes, and to give you strength when you seem to falter—this is all so important.

It is not simply your weakness here. You are overcoming the world. You are overcoming everything the world wants you to think and to believe and to become in order to gain the freedom to become what you really are and to do what God has really sent you to do, and to reclaim your own integrity and to have that come from within you and to have it be verified by others who are free enough to confirm this for you.

You are overcoming belief. You are overcoming convention. You are overcoming the control of governments. You are overcoming the fear of God. You are overcoming your reluctance to say and do and follow what you really know is true.

This is like a revolution. This takes tremendous courage. And yet what else is there to do? Do you want to stay on the chain gang or do you want to break free? Your real happiness and satisfaction will not be achieved in any other way.

You can engage yourself in happy activities all day long, but you will not be happy because you know you are not doing what you came here to do, and only Knowledge knows what it is.

That is why you learn and follow The Way of Knowledge. That is why you overcome your ambivalence and you begin to practice Steps to Knowledge as an essential activity in your life, rather than something you will get to it when you can, when a moment becomes free perhaps. You are gaining your freedom, and you are setting an example for others to regain theirs.

Now Steps to Knowledge has a greater role to serve as well. We would like to speak about this now. Steps to Knowledge, because it is part of a Greater Community Way of Knowledge, is really here also to prepare people for the new reality of your life in the Greater Community. Perhaps this seems way beyond your personal concerns and preoccupations. But what is changing the world and what is altering your destiny are generally happening beyond people’s concerns and preoccupations. That is why they do not see it, feel it and know it.

As you become a greater person, you realize you are here to live a greater life. You are here to live a life that is connected to bigger things in the world and is here to serve greater things in the world.

Before this, people just want to serve themselves and one or two people they care about. But to the man or woman of Knowledge, it is much bigger than that. That is why they broke free from their early life because it was too small for them. It was too confining. They could not be who they are there. They had to branch out and to gain a greater perspective and understanding.

Certainly, humanity’s emergence into the Greater Community is a very, very big event and a very challenging one as well. Yet who is in a position to really see, feel and know what this is? If everyone is on the chain gang, well, they are only following what has been told for them to follow. They are only following the prescriptions. They do not deviate. Perhaps they will rebel against the system, but that is not freedom.

So in studying The Way of Knowledge, you begin to branch out into the world. You begin to look beyond yourself. You begin to look beyond your immediate circumstances to see greater forces at work there. And you recognize that your life is much bigger than you thought it was because this is how Knowledge thinks.

Knowledge does not preoccupy itself with your daily little activities and what you are going to do on Saturday night. It is really here to accomplish something bigger and to connect you with bigger things and with people who have a greater perspective. Even if your ultimate mission is to do something very simple, you do it with this greater awareness, what We call a “Greater Community awareness.” You recognize that you are part of a greater community within the world and even beyond the world as well. And this final realization really liberates you from all the things that constrained you before.

This Greater Community awareness begins to connect you to life on a larger scale. This is how Knowledge thinks. This is what Knowledge knows you to be. And this also is the answer to why people do not connect with Knowledge at the outset because they are thinking so small and Knowledge is so big. They are preoccupied with their own personal needs and wishes, and Knowledge is about the world, you see?

Part of this engages you with a relationship with the world that perhaps was never even there before. Most people in the world today do not even have a relationship with the world. They only have a relationship with the immediate things of their life.

A great Spirit is here to do great things. It is connected to bigger things. So Steps to Knowledge begins to connect you with bigger things in the world, and it is a very natural development because it is all coming from Knowledge within you.

It is like Steps to Knowledge is helping you give birth to something bigger. It is like the midwife for gaining your true creation. You are pregnant with this creation, but you cannot give birth to it. It creates a pressure for you. You carry it around. And as it grows bigger, it becomes more of a burden. But you need help delivering it. Steps to Knowledge is like the delivery mechanism. Steps to Knowledge and the people who can take the journey with you will really enable you to come through.

So gaining your Greater Community awareness then really breaks you out of this little idea of yourself and frees you from the little preoccupations that were really like a crown of thorns on your head, that constantly irritated you, constantly restricted your awareness, constantly kept you self-preoccupied and engaged in activities and relationships that really do not represent who and what you are.

As We have said, humanity is emerging into a Greater Community of intelligent life. Intelligent races from beyond the world are already in the world, intervening in human affairs. This is the big picture now. It is not the little picture for the little person. It is the big picture for a person who is growing bigger.

If you want to know your own heart, if you want to know Knowledge, if you want to know why you are really here, then you must connect to the big picture. Overcome your reluctance, your anxiety, your fear and all the social conditioning that tells you, “Well, you can’t do that!”

Steps to Knowledge gradually takes you there because it is freeing you. And when you become free, then Knowledge takes you where Knowledge wants to take you, within you. Steps to Knowledge does not manipulate you. It simply begins to unlock all the gates so that Knowledge within you can take you where you need to go, which is into a bigger life.

Steps to Knowledge gives you some framework to understand this process, but it does not restrict this process. It gives you some definitions. It gives you some ideas in order that your mind can follow along, in order that you can take each step safely and securely and have some structure to help you do that. Because this is not like jumping off the cliff and hoping that you have a good landing.

This is a journey, and you must be well equipped for it. Knowledge and the Steps to Knowledge tell you what you need, who you need to be with, where you need to go in order to fulfill this journey and to fulfill what you came here to do.

So you become eventually a Greater Community person. Now you are functioning in a bigger arena of life. Now Knowledge can begin to really manifest itself and to really express itself because finally it has the context where it can do this. It is not trying to funnel itself through the narrow awareness of a small-minded person. It finally has the freedom to emerge and to radiate and to cast its grace around you and to express itself through you so that you can become a vehicle for God, a vehicle for Spirit, a vehicle for the Spirit that is truly you. This is the meaning of real creativity. It is the source of happiness and integrity.

It is a gradual journey. You are not going to overcome decades of social conditioning and perhaps personal error overnight. You have to build a new foundation, a new basis of relationship, a new attitude towards work and health, what We call the Four Pillars of your life—Relationships, Work, Health and Spiritual Advancement—all built together to give you a greater foundation so that when your breakthroughs come, you will be able to embrace them. You will be able to pass through the great thresholds that are waiting for you.

This is the promise of the preparation in The Greater Community Way of Knowledge. This is the result of following and applying the Steps to Knowledge. This is the result of having a spiritual practice that comes from God rather than a personal invention of someone.

This is the great promise that is awaiting you. And all the powers that are true in Heaven and Earth are here to encourage you and to support you so that you can fulfill what you came here to do—to become a man or woman of Knowledge, or Spirit, to engage in the Greater Community of your life, and to learn to gain your freedom and to encourage others to do the same.

All the promise for humanity in every field of endeavor, the promise for humanity to become a free and unified race within the Greater Community of life, all depends upon this fundamental association, this reunion that We are speaking of—this reunion, this marriage, between the mind that you think with and the greater Mind of Knowledge that lives within you.

We send our blessings. The Presence of the Teachers is with you.