1. INTRODUCTION

by the author

"KNOW THYSELF"

Perhaps it is best said at the outset that we consider ourselves to be at the earliest beginnings of man's first true awakening. We consider the problems of the world to be rooted in the fact that each individual person has not yet discovered the nature of his own consciousness. The grand awakening, should it ever come, would be one in which every individual person is brought to realization and complete, clear awareness of their own internal workings. We consider that in some point in time this will be required by school and statute. The general maelstorm mankind finds itself in and has to do something to get out of, is the result of all the machinations of projection and transference in which everybody is working their own internal conflicts out on everybody else.

Freud and Jung were the godheads of a new beginning. They pointed a course as to what has to be done to get beyond the mass externalization of stress that results in bloodshed and insane, abusive wealth. Internal disharmony can be traced to being at the root of our problems from starvation to ghetto muggings, and until people are able to be responsible to themselves for themselves, there is not a faint ray of hope. Until something is done about the source of the carnage, there is no hope on earth. Working on your own mind-set and improving your understanding of yourself and others has been alluded to since Grecian times, but it is no longer a pleasure for the idle rich, it is a necessity for every person on earth.

Everyone goes through life picking up from everybody around them pieces of mind-set that are devoted to one's own destruction. That is why you have to get down to the raw elements of where the whole things started and trace it all through. I've spent forty years doing this and believe such a process is the only hope for humanity and a new dawn coming over the earth. In the destroyed condition I've been in and come back from several times in my life, I've seen what is possible and know that there is real hope. There is a process going on we are only at the beginning of.

People talk about meditation, talk about T.M., talk about tantra, talk about prayer, talk about books on philosophy and psychology, talk about discussion groups, talk about this and that and the other thing – but no one makes a clear statement of what they are trying to do. A person is bound to get confused. If you've gotten to a point where you realize that the thing you would like most to find in this world is a steady source of guidance, to help you become your own source of guidance – then that's what you are after. You never find that stated anywhere in simple language.

The key to the whole process lies in the fact that there is a fountain-spring of endless guidance and information within every human being. One only has to learn to get out of its way, to let the consciousness generate in a stilled and quiet mind. Because of our western heritage, I'm tempted to use the term that is common in the A.R.E. and the churches – that the Christ-head reigns supreme within. When you begin to have experiences of the information from within, you learn how perfectly attuned the inner mind is to your immediate and momentary circumstances. It can guide you exactly to the thinking required to deal with the outer circumstances or other aspects of consciousness that is absorbing your attention. It is perfectly attuned to the potential of expanding your total consciousness to its absolute maximum. It is designed to do this. It is endlessly trying to do this. It can't stop doing it. The fountainhead lies totally within. All we discuss here pertains to the methods and particulars that are involved in uncovering the wellhead.

– Jim Burns

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