Excerpt from
The Child Within Us Lives! A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics

by William Samuel

ILLUSTRATION OF THE INCUBATOR

Related Papers 73 -- Illustration of the Incubator By William Samuel

What do we know about Light? Virtually nothing. About God? Still less.

Let me make a parallel illustration that suggests why Everyman knows so little and may one day learn so much. Instead of people, imagine chickens. Instead of the world, imagine a great incubator with the light turned on perpetually and with us chicks scratching around looking for (or not looking for) comfort, first, and the meaning of Life, a distant second.

Let's pretend that an incubator hour is more like a decade, and that for nearly eleven thousand years we chickens have been speculating about the nature of Reality, wondering which version is right. During our long search, the thinking chickens among us have concluded that our well-being has something to do with light. (It might be interesting to note here that the scientist chicken and the religious chicken have apparently opposing ideas. The scientist speaks about the light he can measure; the religionist about the Light of God that can't be measured.)

Well now, how do we stand in the great incubator today? What do we chickens really know about Light/light? There is a precise parallel here. What did we know of childhood when we were children? What does a fish know of water or a bird of air? What do those who have been in the light without realizing it know about the light?

Over the chicken-millennia, thousands of religions have come and gone. Four primary philosophies remain today, one for each corner of the incubator. In the corners are great organizations with grand gurus representing different points of view such as Eastern, Western, Jewish, Catholic and, now that science has found metaphysics in its quantum mechanics, we need to add another corner to the pyramid. Each view insists its way is the best way; some say, the only way. The chicks in the south are diametrically opposed to those across the way. The Eastern view is opposite the Western view. One can imagine how these differences arose by recalling the Illustration of the Pyramid. (See THE GLASS PYRAMID) We remember how those along the north wall see Polaris in a different overhead quadrant than do those near the south wall, and must necessarily describe its relationship to the pyramid differently. The four corners have a common root, but that is about all. Ah, but science has the world's attention. Religious metaphysics hasn't kept up in that respect.

Organizations, using this authority or that, have encouraged us to judge the other views as less enlightened than our own. It is difficult to believe that one claiming enlightenment would call another view heathen because that view sees the North Star at a different angel, but of course, many do. The struggle between science and religion seems unending, science presently dominating.

In search of the true message, some chickens, like me, have gone to every corner of the incubator and to half the religions—only to become more confused. The subjective East doesn't jibe with the objective West, and neither really knows what the other is talking about, but each seems certain of what the other is not talking about. For that matter, the traveling chick learns that virtually no one who calls himself “metaphysical” knows what metaphysics is.

Most of us chickens have no concept about the light that warms us, much less about the Light standing behind that light. We know what we've been told in our own little corner of the incubator—by our parents, our leaders and their holy books, our schools and organizations. Like the chickens, most of us think primarily of our comfort, self-satisfaction and ongoing titillation—which carefully includes the way we make a living. It is said that less than ten percent of the Western world is religious, though one doesn't have to be religious to have a concern for and interest in Truth. Still fewer concern themselves with subjective thoughts such as these, so we wonder what marvel brought the holy books into being or impels anyone to write these things to so small an audience. Yet through the years there have been correct words to guide us to the Light within.

As for the disputes about what the light of the incubator is (or what the Light beyond the light is), the grand gurus learned long ago that it is infinitely better, for their own sakes, to let the chickens debate the meanings of the words in the holy books rather than delve into the nature of Light/light. Leave theology to the theologians, they say. Debate invites schism and schism is hurtful to the organization and its power.

Reader, what DO metaphysics, theology and philosophy reveal about Light? Light is, after all, one of the things so close to us we don't notice it or really know what it is. The Light of Life can't be seen with mortal eyes. It can't be touched. What do people really know about the Light of Life? Like the chickens in the incubator, almost nothing. Only that It IS—and because It is, we are. One can get a powerful argument from philosophers and metaphysicians that even this much isn't certain.

Yet, there is an event that will surely bring every chicken to know about light immediately! When a great storm one day pulls the incubator's plug for a moment and everything goes dark, THEN every chicken in the place will know what light IS from experiencing what it is NOT. In the twinkling of an eye, the apparent ABSENCE of light—and the panic of that absence—will bring everyone to a full consciousness of light. Even those drinking beer, flapping the levers on pinball machines and watching their latest videos will know, from the least of them to the greatest, that light is an integral part of their well-being. And those who are meditating or pinching their noses in prayer, imploring Light to be more Light, will become acquainted with It also.

The Light of Life is just as close to us as the light in the incubator is close to the chickens. We were born into the appearance of time and space with/as It, and we have grown up with It whether we are aware of the fact or not. Light is here, unheralded and unnoticed, living us, supporting and warming us—the very spark of Being Itself. The Child of us IS that Light, here and now.

Strangely, for each us individually and all of us collectively, life must be threatened and common disaster loom before we are willing to be earnest. The religions of the world have so cut and dried the believer's approach to theology, cosmology, debate and discussion (from fear of schism and disloyalty), that one doesn't learn until the end of his personal affairs that the grand gurus in the corners are no longer spokesmen for anything resembling the Original Message; that these servants of the “Living word” have, in the name of the printed word, dismissed the Living Child within themselves. The Biblical Apocalypse says these churches will have served their purposes in the final days of time. Perhaps so. When we see the bickering and warfare that passes for religion, metaphysics and “love”—Christians torching other Christians in the name of Christ—one only wonders when the destruction will be over.

There are unnoticed Lights in the world—religious and otherwise—individuals working diligently, able in marvelous ways to walk the precarious pathways beyond religion and metaphysics—no longer beguiled by the organized bewilderers. There are those who have climbed the barbed walls of orthodoxy and found the Child of themselves again. Those who have found the Child are able to tell us how to find the same Child within ourselves. They tell of the Self within, how to find Its Equation for living, how to receive It and how to give It. We seek these people out and listen to them.

The light in the world incubator has begun to flicker and flutter. I am reminded of the Carpenter who said the day would come when there are two in the field, one taken up and one left behind. Two on a bed, one lives and one dies. Five in a household—three against two and two against three. Perhaps I have been shown some of these things because I know such days will come in the world's “time” if only when the individual faces his own transition. There will be those who are frightened and those who are not; those who will know what to do and those who won't. The unafraid will have found the BALANCE between inside and outside, above and below, first and last, male and female, objective and subjective.

These people may or may not be familiar with the words of the historic Christ Child, but they will know those words are true and faithful, having found the Child themselves.

The Child takes us to the Balance quickly. The Child tells of the Equation wherein life prospers with security, grace and decency. The Child takes us to the non-spatial place of Identity where we EXCHANGE the things Above and give them below, not theorize and talk about them endlessly; where we pass the reports from outside and give them inside. Those who stand on that High Ground will be (are) the final harvest and final seed of the Tree of Life.

Excerpt from "The Child Within Us Lives! A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics"

By William Samuel

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If you would like further guidance in understanding any of William Samuel's work based on Self discovery - you are welcome to contact me, Sandy Jones -- samuelandfriends@gmail.com - Ojai, California -