What Is the MSTA? Part 2
Truth, the Holy Breath, and the Temple
To be a master student of Professor Drew is to experience Truth constantly. We study his divine life, works, and teachings. We study ourselves with an open eye, as well as an open mind.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
The same Professor Drew is the Logos of Allah, or the Word of God. The Logos, or the Word, is not a person. It is not the physical body that it comes in. It is the only thing that changes not. It is Light; it is Truth; it is Love.
We have discussed the body politic corporate, and will now go a little deeper. “But man himself is not the body nor the soul; he is a Spirit and a part of Allah.” The same applies to our Moorish Science Temple of America. It is not a place or an entity existing by authority of government action only. It is so much more, and to truly understand it, we must open our Koran. Let's study Chapter VII in its entirety.
Chapter VII: The Friendship of Jesus and Lamaas
Jesus explains to Lamaas the meaning of Truth
- Among the priests of Jagannath was one who loved the Jewish boy. Lamaas was the name by which the priest was known.
- One day, as Jesus and Lamaas walked alone in Plaza Jagannath, Lamaas said: “My Jewish master, what is Truth?”
- And Jesus said: “Truth is the only thing that changes not.”
We see in both Lamaas' question, “What is Truth?” and Jesus' answer, “Truth is the only thing that changes not,” a presupposition toward something distinguished and not relative to man's ordinary concept of true and false. For instance, it is warm out today, but the same may not be true tomorrow.
- In all the world there are two things: the one is Truth, the other is falsehood; and falsehood is that which seems to be.
- Now Truth is aught and has no cause, and yet it is the cause of everything.
- Falsehood is naught, and yet it is the manifest of aught.
“In all the world there are two things,” and yet “Now Truth is aught and has no cause.” There is no duality in this. What there is, is perception and purpose.
The Holy Qur'an teaches us that Allah offered “the trust” to all living beings, including the Heavens, the Earth, and the Mountains, but all refused to take it. They were afraid of the responsibility, but man took it. The trust spoken about in Surah 33, Ayat 72 is the ability to choose to obey Allah. Accepting Allah's trust initiated the process of unfolding, of learning through experiences, trials, and tribulations. Allah already proved to the Angels and the Jinn that man, having His own Spirit in him, was beyond their capacity when He directed Adam to, “Tell them their names.” In so doing, Adam revealed to them their true nature, which had before been unknown to them.
This seed of “knowing” completely has been planted by Allah in the soil of the human soul, so the ability to become what grows in us is a matter of perception and purpose—our choices. We can choose to perceive the false as real, or we can perceive it as a thing or a drama with a purpose to serve our unfoldment. Allah has trusted us to choose for ourselves.
In this, we begin to understand why Truth, which is aught, manifests itself in various temporary bodies and forms in order to facilitate learning and experience. These bodies and forms are finite things, and they change. They are created, made, born, etc., and one day they will cease to be, having served their purpose. Still, the essence of these is Truth.
- Whatever has been made will be unmade; that which begins must end.
- All things that can be seen by human eyes are manifests of aught, are naught, and so must pass away.
- The things we see are but reflexes just appearing while the ethers vibrate so and so; and when conditions change, they disappear.
Over the course of time, dialects change. Words lose and take on different meanings. Often they fall out of use, while new terms take their place. It is my theory that ether is a word that has lost its meaning in the realm of science today. Einstein threw it out entirely, claiming that it did not exist because it could not be found—or rather, he and his contemporaries could not discover it by their chosen means. They attempted to capture it in light, where we have been taught:
“These planes, with all their teeming thoughts of Allah, are never seen by eyes of man in flesh; they are composed of substance far too fine for fleshly eyes to see, and still they constitute the soul of things.”
They are composed of substance far too fine for fleshly eyes to see. But they are composed of substance—substances like hydrogen, helium, and lithium. Like those that vibrate together to form water (H2O) and other things, the same elements disintegrate just to become something with a different vibration. My theory is that ether is what we call today the elemental chart.
Ether planes are the various classes of the forms of life these elements work to make manifest, e.g., protoplast, earth, plant, beast, man, angel, and cherubim.
“From Allah's own record book we read: The Triune Allah breathed forth, and stood seven spirits before His face. The Hebrews call these seven spirits Elohim. And these are they who, in their boundless power, created everything that is or was. These spirits of the Triune Allah moved on the face of boundless space, and seven ethers were, and every ether had its form of life. These forms of life were but the thoughts of Allah, clothed in the substance of their ether plane.”
Here we learn that “these forms of life were but the thoughts of Allah.” Remember that “all thoughts of Allah are infinite,” meaning that all thoughts of Allah are Truth. It is the clothes that are not.
- The Holy Breath is Truth; it is that which was, and is, and evermore shall be; it cannot change nor pass away.
The literal meaning of Spirit is breath. The Holy Spirit is Truth. As we have just read, Allah's Holy Spirit is in everything, and this is Truth.
- Lamaas said: “You answer well. Now what is man?”
- And Jesus said: “Man is the Truth and falsehood strangely mixed.”
- Man is the breath made flesh; so Truth and falsehood are conjoined in him; and then they strive, and naught goes down and man as Truth abides.
Perception and purpose. Man is at once Truth and falsehood. He is an infinite thought existing in a finite form—a form whose purpose is to experience and to ultimately unfold and become one with Holy Breath. The Prophet Jesus described it thus:
“In flesh of man there is the essence of the resurrection of the dead. This essence, quickened by the Holy Breath, will raise the substance of the body to higher tone, and make it like the substance of the bodies of the planes above which human eyes cannot behold.”
Here we learn that, indeed, the essence is in the flesh.
“Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof.”
It is the Spirit that is in the blood. Hence, all contagions that infect the body infect the blood, weakening the Spirit's hold on the body, or the body's hold on the Spirit. This is why it is important to drink water and eat green vegetables that put oxygen into the blood; why it is important to exercise one's heart to keep that organ, which pumps the blood through the body, strong; and to live clean to keep the blood pure.
Do we begin to see now what the Moorish Science Temple of America is?
Yes, it is composed of parts: Members, Sheiks, Divine Ministers, etc. But the Divine Ministers and Sheiks are all Members. We are all one body. “Those who thus are cleansed comprise the Temple of purity.” We, the True and the Faithful, are the Temple. When an Asiatic proclaims their nationality and joins this sacred Moorish Temple, they become one with the Spirit of our Ancient Forefathers. They become a member of this divine body.
Remember, Moors: it is possible to know the Truth, and then to come to understand it more. As a matter of fact, that is the case with all that we know. As a Master Student, this Knowledge drives us to employ the principles of learning and to make the search for Knowledge foremost. There is no end to it so long as we remain in our present form. Until our Knowledge has taken us to our Father God Allah and made us living manifestations of Him, as it did for the Prophet Jesus, there is much to learn, overcome, and experience.
This is the purpose of the Moorish Science Temple of America: to teach its members to be themselves. To be Truth.
