From: RBNaumann@webtv.net   
      
   "Ever since the dawn of civilization, ever since the first humans began   
   to grasp the significant fact that they were individual beings in a   
   universe that seemed to be more or less hostile to them, the entire   
   search of the human mind, its whole endeavor, has been to get free from   
   evil, from bondage and the shackles of lack, want, fear, superstition,   
   uncertainty, pain, disease, poverty, and fear of the hereafter. And   
   because of this, human systems exist -- organized philosophies spring   
   up, sciences develop, educational systems are conducted, collective   
   security is sought after, and religions are formulated to allay the fear   
   of humankind relative to the soul.   
      
   The great demand in the world today is for a sense of security, freedom,   
   and liberty. But we must be very certain that we do not swap one image   
   of bondage for another. I have read a large part of the religious and   
   philosophic history of the world and I have noticed that almost   
   invariably, when the world traded one kind of religion for another, it   
   didn't get a good deal. The Pilgrim Fathers who came to the shores of   
   New England came to worship God in their own way, but the moment they   
   got there, everybody in the colony worshiped God in the way that the   
   strong-minded members of that colony decided was the way to worship God.   
   That was not freedom.   
      
   Even in our newer religions of the last seventy-five or a hundred years,   
   very frequently we meet people who say they have now found the truth,   
   and then, unfortunately, a large majority of them disclose that they   
   merely have found an idea they liked and called it the truth because   
   they were egotistical, self-conscious, self-righteous people with an   
   attitude of condemnation toward others. That is not the truth. In   
   studying one system of thought after another that has transpired in the   
   last seven thousand years of human history, I have noted how extremely   
   difficult it is for the human mind to conceive liberty without license,   
   without egotism; and we can only give birth to freedom when we have   
   conceived liberty.   
      
   True freedom -- true liberty -- has something cosmic behind it. If the   
   time has come that modern science has proved that we cannot move a piece   
   of paper without changing the balance of the entire physical universe;   
   if we have come to the place where we know that the stuff of which our   
   physical bodies are made is the same stuff of which the planets are   
   made; if we have come to the place where such a profound unity is   
   maintained that physicists believe there is no such thing as disunity in   
   the physical world; then we can easily see what the great spiritual   
   leaders of the ages meant when they told us of that greater unity in   
   which we all live and move and have our being, and that the idea of   
   freedom itself is tied up with the true concept of the unity of good. If   
   our nature is one, if God is one -- and we know that God must be one,   
   for the universe cannot be divided against itself -- then we are all   
   tied into an indivisible unity. We shall have to get back to this unity   
   to find the meaning of freedom.   
      
   Nothing in any part of this cosmic whole could be considered freedom   
   that would destroy the liberty of some other part of it. That would be   
   self-destruction, would it not? As Jesus pointed out two thousand years   
   ago, that would be a kingdom divided against itself. The kingdom of God   
   is one kingdom. So we know that true liberty must spring from true   
   unity.   
      
   We are bound into a supreme unity, we are tied into an immutable law of   
   irrevocable cause and effect -- that is unity moving into action. Cause   
   and effect is something that happens as a result of the use of unity.   
   Consequently we are one even while we are many, and since each one of us   
   is a part of the whole, if we seek to destroy each other we only   
   ultimately hurt ourselves. That is the great lesson of life."   
      
   Ernest Holmes   
      
   Taken from "Ernest Holmes speaks"   
      
   http://cornerstone.wwwhubs.com/ernestholmes.htm   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)