The Sharp Sword Of Truth – Sri Paul Twitchell

The Sharp Sword Of Truth – Paul Twitchell

August 27, 1964

My Dearest One:

The strange thing about this business of working with truth is that it will turn like a sharp sword against one if not used correctly. Also, the false will do the same to those who try to use it!

What holds the true apart from the false is a great force. This can be illustrated in the works of famous writers, but it is in the case of the great masters of painting that the operation of this instinct to use truth instead of untruth occurs within sight of all of us; and so it may be studied to the best advantage.

Chardin, with a bland intensity, fastened his eye on some object of minor truth, of daily use. Van Eyck showed the same in tense animal absorption and austere tenacity in paintings of Arnolfini and his wife. The true image must be captured as a delicate, minute inventory of truth as each painter saw it.

Renoir studied a field in so much detail that he saw everything in it, including the insects. He was so intense about details that he developed a photographic mind to pick up everything possible for his painting. He was seeking truth in nature, and in man! His metaphysics was that of the eye for beauty.

Because of a pressure as irresistable as gravity, the artist or any seeker of truth must cleave to the truth. The writers of classical literature can also be said to have sought truth; therefore, they were under this same compulsion.

This compulsion is not for a irresistible few. Everyone, to one degree or another, experiences this pressure that is as irresistable as the gravitational pull mentioned above. It is not felt only by some exquisitely sensitive person like Chardin, Bach, or Dickens. Truth is as necessary to everybody as the air we breathe. Naturally it is difficult to explain why this is so.

Truth is similar to the air that our lungs breathe in and expel. Truth enters into the mind, though, and central part of the being. There is an hour-by-hour taking in of truth and pouring it forth again—each day an eventful day!

Truth can be taken in, but it's different from fact or knowledge. It must be poured out again—truth cannot be inhaled constantly and never given out. If it remains within the individual, that person cannot progress. He will go down in health, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Truth enters into Soul. Truth will cling to Soul, but on the other hand, it will be exhaled again like breathing. Only a particle of what entered Soul will remain. But with the next intake of truth another particle will be kept, and the rest exhaled. This process will be kept up until the individual will at last be filled with truth.

Then the individual progresses to a state of being where he is called a master or savior. To progress to this point may take many centuries in the various stages of reincarnation or during life in the spiritual planes. This is the state of being complete. The best discussion on this is in Power Through Constructive Thinking, by Emmet Fox.

Emmet Fox, now dead, went into a discussion of life after death and the various stages of reincarnation. Although I don't think he was experienced in this field, he gave a lot of lectures and wrote a lot of books in the field of metaphysics. He was a really good thinker!

His discussion on the subject drew a lot of readers. In his book he made this point very clear: Soul goes through a lot of experience before It becomes tempered like fine steel to reach the pinnacle of Its goal. It does this by reincarnation—a point with which I agree to a certain degree, but then I part with this by saying that Soul can also get Its experience in the spiritual planes.

Here is a point well worth remembering: reincarnation does not necessarily mean that Soul must come back to the Earth Plane again. It can reincarnate on any plane. Suppose you are on Mental Plane; and after a time, you reincarnate again on the Astral because you are not fully ready to be established on the Mental Plane before progressing to the plane above that.

This is how the individual reaches the higher planes—through the process of leaving his body and going to a higher plane for a little while. If he's not ready for that plane, he will return to the old plane from which he came and go through a certain amount of experience to reach the higher planes.

Now, I want to point out that this body can only last a certain length of time in the Physical Plane. This is also true of the Astral body, Causal body, Mental body—all the sheaths which surround Soul. In order to reach the higher planes, Soul, which is not used to the vibrations of the lower planes, must keep the body which is used on that particular plane. For example, the earth body is for this material plane, the Astral body for the Astral Plane, Causal body for the Causal Plane, and Mental body for the Mental Plane. When It gets above the high Mental Plane, It drops all bodies and becomes Itself.

The Astral body has a certain length of life, and when that is through, the Soul which occupies it goes upward to the Causal Plane. Soul works the same way with the other bodies. Understand?

This is a truth that hardly anybody knows. But it is an important one for you and I to know and understand, because it will give you a knowledge of the workings of the power to be. It shows how the bodies of man can hold a person back until he works through to reach the planes where only Soul exists.

This is the plane which we know as the dwelling place of Sat Nam. It is here that Soul sees Itself in Sat Nam and says, "This Am I!"

More later.