A Selection of Varied Excerpts from The Child Within Us Lives!

Dedicated to the carefree, joyful, triumphant Child within each of us!

If one thinks his religion, his philosophy, or his theology is the means to finding the FINAL Answer, he is mistaken. The Child of Light and Love is the pathfinder, the guide, the wayshower up the mighty mountain in Kwangse Province.

Science, religion and philosophy can take us a great distance, but the Child takes us to Dominion.

It is absolutely essential that we actually get in touch with the eternal Child.

How do we do that? Now we are coming to reason for this book.

Something enormous is soon to happen in the world; there is no sensitive person who doesn’t feel this deeply. In every field---science, religion, philosophy, government, business, or whatever---a strange sense of disquiet is growing, a feeling of Something Imminent. As we look about us, we can see that the world is off course. Many who think they understand, point to drugs, overcrowding, pollution, the overload of information, corrupt government and any number of other possible causes. But what is happening now has a more significant and, as yet, undreamed of cause. The recognition of this deeper dimension comes with a solution for the world’s problems!

This book is about that.

In the mind's eye, we can equate "Child" with PHOTON" which is also, like the Child within us, everywhere in space at once. The Child is everywhere in our experience, not only available to assist our learning, but leading us into and out of experiences in order that we may more fully comprehend the nature Reality. . . DREAM STUFF? My friends, this isn't dream stuff we are talking here.

At this late stage in the world, too much is at stake for metaphysical word games, philosophical and religious half-truths and psychological upmanship. We haven"t much linear time left to stand atop Da Shan in conscious living fact. So we are talking absolute reality now. Truth. Fact. More than that, we are saying something that everyone is going to find is true for himself, all alone, if only when the physical body stops responding to his every whim and is put aside in the experience the world calls death.

.....At this moment, civilization is a little like a field of cotton beginning to bloom: first a boll here, another there, then more and more until one morning we look out and the entire field is abloom. Or, it is like popcorn popping. One kernel pops, then another and another until there is a veritable explosion of the rest. Hard pressed, shaken together and running over, mankind is coming into a conscious knowledge of a subjective sense of things which is certain to alter the course of civilization.

The first 'blooms' have been the prophets, the seers, the avatars, the insightful, those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Now the field is turning white with the ability to perceive subjectively. Confusion abounds at the unrecognized newness of it all. Now that subjectivism is here, no one knows what to do with it. The major divisions of human activity have not made the necessary adjustments to allow the missile the freedom to change course. Neither education, government, religion nor metaphysics has made the full turn demanded of them--and the time is short...….

Joy Is Our Heritage, Our Birthright

We are the children of GOD, so joy is our heritage! Why should we deprive ourselves of the Inheritance by thinking one must perish in the flesh before God's Kingdom becomes God's Kingdom? "And God saw everything he had made and, behold, it was very good"! That good is right here, right now---Good is ours for the anticipation!

But that's not the end of the matter; the anticipation and receipt of Truth is only half the joy. There is much to be done with that Truth once we've received it. That is the subject we'll be into soon.

This experience "I" am living has grown into something quite beyond words. No hyperbole here. Exactly the way it is. Simply an explosion of inner Joy and a continuing confirmation of that Joy beyond anything I had ever known except for the briefest moments. Oh, how to say this? And why? I answer the "why" quickly: I write as a marker for my "others" who dream of such joy. It is true! It happens! It isn't just a "dream of desire along the way." I do not know how lasting in the world's time it will seem to be, but "my" life has been made full.

The other evening at a lovely lady's house one of the guests spoke of going to a concert and suddenly getting caught up in a glorious tingling thrill of joy and delight. Her eyes sparkled as she told of it. Everyone could see her tears of reminiscence and knew what a genuine joy she spoke of. Then she fell silent, her eyes closed, and I heard myself saying, "That's it! That is the joy of the experience everyone calls enlightenment." Some speak of it as illumination---sparks from the Child within. First we recognize those fleeting moments and acknowledge them for being the Light of Life they are. In so acknowledging them, we are faithful to the pennies of such moments and eventually find ourselves trusted with the dollars of them. Greater moments come. And greater. We look around one day to find we are living in the continual confirmation of Joy we have faithfully anticipated.

A Soldier's Song of Light

Da Shan, Mythical Mountain of Seeking and Finding

THE INFANTRY SOLDIER OVERTONE

In the book A Guide to Awareness and Tranquillity, I wrote briefly of my time in warfare and one of the grand lessons about judgmentalism it afforded me. Over the years people have said how much that story meant to them, perhaps more than all the stories I have written.

To the Western set of mind there is a certain incongruity about an old soldier being one to whom a measure of Light has been revealed. I can understand that. Many singular events that I have never written about occurred during those days. I was, after all, a captain of infantry in two long wars. I lived with Chinese infantry troops in the field for nearly three years---subsisting with them, nearly starving with them. The few American soldiers in China had very little support from the United States during World War II. We were at the end of the world's longest supply line, and anything that reached us from home had been flown over Japanese occupied countries, over the great Himalayan Mountains into Kunming, thence to be trucked and packed in by animals to us, wherever we might be.

I didn't live very well during those years. My last year in China, as the great war came to an end, I joined Chinese troops who were actively engaged against the Japanese and fought in the battles that recaptured Ishan, Liuchow and Kwelin.

In Korea, less than ten years later, I commanded King Company, 279th Infantry Regiment. Things were much harder for me in Korea's combat than in the long, strange war in China. Being older didn't help me in Korea, nor did I have wise old Mr. Shieh (William's Chinese interpreter, Taoist Master and teacher) at Korea's great Sandbag Castle or at Vulture's Roost on the 38th Parallel.

It is interesting that I've never written about those days,even though I've told of the learning events to seekers who have come to visit here in Alabama. I especially relished telling such tales to the metaphysical "absolutists" or to the young zealot idealists who arrived expecting only gentle words of peace from a Godly teacher. Since stories of strife, warfare and suffering are the last thing those people expect to hear from a "metaphysician," that's often what they got.

Show me a revelation and I'll show you a traumatic event from which that Light emerged. Show me a true vision of heaven and I'll show you a descent into the anguish of hell wherein that vision was tried, tested and found faithful. "Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord...." "Put all things to the test," Paul echoed. And now, having written nearly everything necessary for the final book, I sit me down on yet another Memorial Day to remember my soldiers who fought with me in many battles.

Let me write a Glimpse or two from those days. First, harking back to China, Mr. Shieh and I, with five American teammates, were being pursued by a Japanese combat patrol. We were "retrograding," bringing up the rear of our little patrol, trying to get back to the safety of friendly lines. We were close to being captured. In those days, neither the Japanese nor Chinese "gave quarter." That is we took no prisoners. I knew that if I were taken by the pursuing Japanese, it meant certain death. On the other hand, Mr.Shieh might successfully pass himself off as a Chinese peasant. Oh, I cannot write this story! At this minute it is enough to remember Mr. Shieh seeing and pointing out the beauty of those purple blooms on the distant mountain we had yet to climb. I marveled at a man who could see beauty under such oppressive circumstances. I marvel more that he helped me learn to do it.

During the Korean War, an artillery round burst among my men on the left flank. Several bodies were hurled about and I ran to see the extent of the damage and whether the platoon leader was still effective. Sick to my stomach at the sight, I sat down among three of the bodies sprawled along the slope. I became aware of a visual "Presence" hovering beside them. A misty, blue-white light of sorts. A different kind of light, primal, persuasive and powerful. I could not explain what I saw then, nor can I now, but with the sight, and because of the sight, I was absolutely certain within myself I was being shown evidence of the deathlessness of Life--the survival of the Child, the Soul of men. I felt a marvelous sense of relief, almost gratitude, concerning those men and everything happening that day. Within a few minutes of that incident, my regiment, and my part of the line in particular, was hit by an enormous wave of shell fire and oncoming Chinese troops. Hell erupted in a manner that no one can sufficiently describe or picture for another.One simply must experience something like that to fully understand.

But, to the ongoing Glimpse I'd like to write here if I can. In the early moments of that terrible onslaught wherein everything that moved was slaughtered ten times over--advancing troops, men, women, children, dogs and chickens, and every moving creature caught at that place at that time--I was suddenly unable to hear. My world went silent and I was enveloped in an immeasurable calm. In the midst of that horrendous din of exploding bodies and shells, I could hear nothing but my own voice. In some marvelous way, I was caught up in a quiet, tranquil dimension, separate, but attached to the carnage at hand. I had not been wounded. I felt as well as one could be expected to feel under such circumstances. I could hear my own voice and even my breathing quite clearly. I went from gun position to gun position and heard myself giving calm encouragement to my troops. I could see their mouths move in reply and gratitude--and terror--but I couldn't hear them. I heard myself but couldn't hear the shells bursting in my face. I was beset with a wonderful enwrapping calm that let me move fearlessly to do whatever the moment asked me to do, as hideous as those moments were.

Perhaps a man can so detest a situation that his body produces the chemicals which, in turn, erect a barricade between himself and the galling situation. But as this was happening for me on the long day in Korea, there was a clear perception that a superlative Reality stood just behind the events; that there is another Scene just above this one, surrounding it; that Reality was bursting through that corridor of chaos into my own conscious recognition. I walked with a detached courage, as if the mortal body couldn't and wouldn't be hurt. I ran from soldier to soldier, gun to gun. I was knocked down,spun around and stung with rocks and earth, feeling nothing but a calm, clear sense of Life's dominion over the sights and sounds of the world; as though, with the Presence I had sensed and seen moments earlier among the first bodies felled, I was SEEING and FEELING Life's eternal Nature, even in the face of death. Perhaps this was the beneficent calm Mr. Shieh had felt those years earlier when he saw the blossoms on the distant mountain.

That particular hellfire and damnation in Korea lasted four nights and three days, without sleep for my troops and me. I have never forgotten the different time frame and the enwrapping inner peace nor how I was held and supported during that time--or non-time.

More significant, that Peace has not forsaken me since those days, at least not when I was mindful of It nor when the chips were down and I called for It. How do I call for It? I bring forth the Child of Me.

Why I write this now after all these years, I really don't know, but on this Memorial Day when I feel everything necessary for the book has been written, I sit me down and write something that might tell others, like Janice and Bill, that there are times when the anguish of the lesson is absolutely necessary--that leaving the anguish may not be the answer.

Now, with absolute assurance, I can tell people, old and young, their lessons can be learned under the most difficult and trying circumstances. Better that we leave our nets after we've learned their lessons. Better that we call on the Child because the Child knows what to do. The Child and the Presence are the same one Presence and It is right here where we are, transcending this world's time and space.

The final tone in this Overtone: The day I moved King Company onto line in Korea, I was given the Order of Battle of the "enemy" opposing me just across the valley on the next mountain. Facing my regiment, and me in particular, was the Chinese 60th Army, the same troops I had lived with and trained for two years in China. We met again, eight years later, in a terrible and senseless slaughter.

In the apparent world, our friends and enemies are the same--and, sometimes, needlessly, insanely, we try to destroy one another, thence to find that Life is eternal. Like Arjuna, in awful combat, I was instructed in certain of the Mysteries and learned the sense of senselessness. Memorial Day 1985