Mark Prophet, The Summit Lighthouse Founder
Plus Is Greater by Mark L Prophet
"He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father."- Jesus Christ
Mankind at one point or another receives from God self individualization. It is the flame at the heart of the atom. It is the nucleus of our life. It is the summum bonum of our identity at the inner core of being. With this endowment of individualization from the Godhead, you have life and consciousness—awareness of life.
As you begin to live, you act and you also think. And hopefully, one of your acts is the act of determination.
You make a determination that you ought to do a certain thing. And when you do it, your act—at first no more than a motive—now becomes crystallized as a part of your own personal recorded history.
If that act that you perform is beneficial, if it is helpful to others, if it contributes to the universe, then you have fulfilled the words that the Lord described in the parable—you have added unto yourself, or added unto life, a plus factor. And that plus factor helps the universe grow with you.
Positioning In The Pyramid of Life
Now, if you were to take a handkerchief out of your pocket, and hold that handkerchief before you and then poke it right in the center and then put your fingers around it and pull it down—you would notice that you have an apex to that handkerchief. That apex is like the apex of a pyramid. It's the highest point, or summit, of that pyramid's achievement.
From an individualized standpoint, we are positioned in life according to whether our acts, our feelings, and our conduct places us at the base of the pyramid or down here even below the base in the subterranean strata of the pyramid. Somewhere we are positioned on that ladder of consciousness, or ladder of life.
If we perform an act that is positive, that adds to the betterment of life, as we perform this act—I don't care if it's only a one one-hundredth or one one-thousandth of an inch—it will make that whole structure rise.
Everybody that does anything constructive in this universe raises this total symbolic picturing of the total being of man. We all go up! And if somebody does something that is negative, it has a tendency to create a drag on the consciousness. Why? Because all rise is in consciousness. Consciousness precedes the crystallization of substance, of acts. In other words, actions must crystallize into the Path.
You start out first with a thought. And the thought at the time that you act is the Path—because now it is an act, not a thought. And after awhile, it is only a memory.
The thoughts, the acts, and the memory constitute various parts of a flow. The flow is a chain. Act One of this chain will be motivation and thought. Act Two will be the action. Act Three is the memory.
Living In The Eternal Now
We can use an hourglass to illustrate this point. We can say that the sand in the top of the hourglass represents our potential—your potential and my potential. There is a nexus in the hourglass and the sand falls through that nexus—the sand of potential. And when it passes through, it is an act and you realize it.
Now then, when you come to the point where the sand is at the bottom of the glass, you have nothing but memory—that is, the memory of what took place. That's why they say most of us live in the eternal now. We live in the eternal now—that's the sense we have of what is passing through the nexus of the hourglass now.
We live in a sense of time as a moving activity. And we ourselves actually swim through the time belt. But it is possible for a man or a woman or a child to go through this time belt and nothing happens.
Parable of the Pounds - Teaching of Jesus Christ
This is why Jesus Christ used the Parable of the Pounds when he was speaking to some people who were of the opinion that the kingdom of God would appear immediately, you see, now that the Messiah had come.
In this parable, Jesus talks about a nobleman who was preparing for a journey to a far away country to receive for himself a kingdom. Before he left, the nobleman gave to his ten servants ten pounds—one each. And he said, "Occupy till I come."
Now, when the nobleman returned he called those ten servants to find out how much they had gained "by trading," he said.
One servant came and said, "Lord, thy pound gained ten pounds." Plus is greater. He added to the one pound that he was given by God ten more pounds. And the Lord in return gave him authority over ten cities.
Then we find the wicked servant taking out his napkin, putting in his one pound, and carefully folding up the napkin. Now he comes back—and he's trembling because he knows how great the Lord is. He takes out his napkin, unfolds it, looks his Lord in the eye (and you wonder how he dared!) and says, "Here is the pound thou gavest me. I've laid it up in a napkin and carefully preserved it because I knew you were a hard man. I knew you were austere. I knew your laws were tough. I knew you were very exacting. I knew you wanted A students not C students. So I have taken awfully good care of what you gave me and I haven't lost a jot or tittle of it. Here it is. I'm not giving the universe anything back—but I'm not taking anything away from the universe, Lord. So please be merciful to me."
The Lord looked at him and leaned over backwards a little bit. And he said, "Out of thy own mouth I will judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest I was an austere man. Why didn't you put my money into the bank so that I could have it back now with interest." And the nobleman said to the other servants, "Take this man's pound and give it to that one over there who had ten pounds."
"Unto everyone which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away."
The Lesson of Plus Is Greater
Now in this Parable of the Pounds we learn that plus is greater. The plus factor is a very important factor to every one of you because it concerns your life and your identity. It concerns your future.
You can go through life, if you wish, and say to the universe, "You're a bank. And every time I can, I'm going to rob you." That is what people do. They think that the universe owes them a living. I'm not talking about your daily bread and those things. I'm talking about the fact that some people think that because they were created by God and endowed with opportunity that they ought to be taken care of.
In other words, God ought to provide some kind of a relief system for them so they wouldn't have to work. All they'd have to do is go through life and collect their manna from heaven every day. It should descend on them from heaven and just carry them through. And everybody else should be blessed by that and should imitate them. What a travesty this is—as an idea.
I quote from Jesus Christ: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The universe needs to have the plus factor fed into it. You and I are never more than anyone else. But our deeds can be.
The difference between men and women upon this planet is solely one of deeds and correct action and correct thought.
The Path To Becoming God
I don't care whether you believe in Buddha or Christ or just believe in God or what you believe—it doesn't make any difference. I'm stating a law. You can call God any name you want to, he's still Christ. Both God and Christ belong to man, and they are the spiritual instruments by which man is raised above the level of the animal.
You are not an animal. You are intended to be a god—and today you probably are an embryonic god in the making.
The experiences you have are intended to clarify in your consciousness what things are of value to you for the spiritual journey and what things are of harm. So when I say that plus is greater, I mean that it is better to add to yourself a constructive act all the day long than it is to add the lukewarmness of just vegetating or idling the mind and consciousness.
Learning and instruction are for your profit, that you might gain spiritually. But I think it is a gross error that individuals may think in terms of personal growth at the sacrifice of the universe. The universe needs you and you and you—it needs us all! And it needs us as constructive spiritual masons and architects of the new age.
We can understand that God drew the blueprint of the square at the base of the pyramid. We can understand that he put the star at the top of Christhood and the plumb line from that star to the center of our square. But it is up to us to build and to construct these lively stones of our lives into a monumental achievement that may be enshrined by the fires of God and crowned by the capstone thereof to shine in not only the desert places of life but throughout the tabernacle of the whole world.
Problems With Plus Is Greater
There are certain problems that are inherent within the concept of "plus is greater." Let me give you some of these problems.
Boredom. "I am alone. Just me and nobody else. Nobody else can look in the mirror through my eyes. I'm alone." How true. But how universal.
We are all alone. But spell it this way a-l-l-o-n-e and it makes "all one." What it really means is we'll all win together.
In a sense, we are on that bobsled going downhill. And if we drag our feet, that bobsled is going to slow down. And if we all keep our feet up on the bobsled, we'll get there faster.
Now there are people that enjoy dragging the bobsled. They like to create problems and maladies for others because they don't think the universe is really fair. They think that life is rigged. They either know or don't know about their karmic record and so they say to themselves, "Well, I've had a hard time. All my life, I've had a hard time."
The concept of doom and gloom and all of this stuff that goes with it is the result of people's failures to recognize that plus is greater. And so, they are a big minus mark and wherever they go they subtract from the universe. That's what makes a man greedy and hoardy. Why, they would hoard God if they knew how to put him together as a commodity. And they'd put him away in a stocking somewhere and bury it in the heart of the earth. That's a wrong concept.
Begin to look at your life as though it were a beautiful sack just chuck full of goodies—because it is. You begin to bring those goodies out of that sack like your own Santa Claus. And it will be so. You decide that you're going to not just give these goodies to yourself, but you're going to share these goodies with everybody on earth.
Each person should work with their own hands that they may have to give to those that need, said Saint Paul. This means that each one of us should take the hands of divine opportunity that have been given to us and put them to work in a practical manner that we may enjoy an abundance of every good thing as God intended from the beginning.
Creating The Plus Consciousness
A plus consciousness is one that is always acquiring something with the talents we have. If you will just put your consciousness to work at any age acquiring something—it doesn't have to be money, it doesn't have to be reading material, it doesn't have to be but it can be any of these things. It could be crocheting that you're giving away to people at Christmas.
It can be anything—you name it. But it's a plus.
It can be the acquisition of spiritual peace. It can be the acquisition of any of your talents. Whatever it is, is between you and God.
All of us have to recognize that we face every day as a fresh new page, right from the hand of God. He made that page. You write on it, by your actions and your thoughts. Your thoughts precede your actions.
Getting back, then, to the fact that plus is greater (which is the thing I want to leave with you), the plus consciousness is the greatest consciousness.
And now I'm going to say something I don't want you to forget—and that is that you and your consciousness are one.
You are basically your consciousness because no matter how great the matrix of God is (and it's very great!), if your mind is a thimble and God is a waterfall of infinite light, you can only hold a thimbleful. Just remember that. But if you enlarge that thimble to be a barrel, you've caught an awful lot more of God.
Putting The Plus Factor To Work
So plus is greater. And, in reality, if our consciousness can become an educated consciousness aware of the opportunities we have for service (PS, that means work!)—if we'll put ourselves to work for God, the plus factor of our life will carry us all the way home.
Well, how are we going to do it? We're going to do it by putting that thimble into a barrel and the barrel into a bigger barrel until after awhile we can hold enough of God that we won't have to worry whether or not we're going to cope with the world's problems.
There is no problem God cannot solve. There is no problem that plus cannot solve.
So the power of positive thinking and the power of positive feeling and the power of positive regeneration—this can give us a different and right attitude toward life. And with that right attitude, we will win the fight. We will win the game instead of being a pawn that everybody pushes around and after awhile we say, "Move me off the board! I don't want to fight any longer."
Don't feel that way. Don't feel that no one cares, that no one loves you. Someone does. But the problem is, you've left out of that thimble of consciousness the knowledge of how much He loves you. It may be in every drop of water that falls into the thimble, but God is so big that there's only a minute dilution of each of his qualities in every drop. So sometimes it helps if you just get a little more quantity in order to enhance your quality. Do you see what I mean?
Get a little more of God so you can see a sample in larger proportion of every quality he has. As Thomas á Kempis said, imitate Christ.
As we learn to imitate him in our thoughts and our feelings, as we learn to have a plus is greater consciousness, as we learn to be a plus is greater consciousness, our world itself will take on those aspects. It'll keep getting better and better and better.
Elizabeth Clare Prophet on Mark Prophet
We who knew and cherished the words of Mark Prophet as they tumbled from his lips into our hearts would say he was Plus Is Greater. He was the greatest plus factor we knew. Not only because he was more of a man than any we'd met—and more of a teacher—but because when we were around him we felt that we were the Plus Is Greater.
His love which flowed into our souls always made us feel we were that much more a person, because he awakened in us our innermost longings for God and our memories of our continuous Reality.
With him we dared to dream that we could become something more than ourselves—that "more" that God holds in store for each one of us until we are ready to deal wisely and lovingly with it. He made us believe in ourselves, accept no limitations except those lawfully imposed by Nature—and what's more, he exuded the joy of self discovery.
When he shared the musings of his heart and the meditations of his soul upon the Great Spirit—we saw the delight of the boy Mark with his first bow and arrow—and a look of ancient seeing into the forgotten past and the unfathomed future. He would tease us and tell us only what we could hold in the thimble or the barrel of our self proscribed identity.
Frustrated by our own sense of limitation, we knew how much more he knew than we did. He was our plus that was greater. We knew it because he allowed us to become a part of him. He enfolded us in his aura and we sensed the sensings of his mind penetrating the mind of God.
And in his heartbeat we felt the universal rhythm of Life passing through us like thread and needle of the World Mother sewing the garment of the Lord by the weavings of the saints and holy ones—our brothers, sisters, our own.
When Mark said, "Plus is greater," he conveyed to me the mystery which is no longer a mystery once you become it—that God in you is greater than yourself. And the key to Life is to let that Greater Love be in you—to let it be yourself and yourself be it. To fuse with it with no loss of self but only gain of Greater Self.
To be in harmony with thy God and thus not be consumed by its all consuming Presence.
To leap into the arms of the Infinite, yet to retain that Self awareness of thyself as the Infinite One. To know that thou art God for having apportioned to thyself but a portion of the All—yet to retain the humility of the dewdrop, content to glisten as the refractor that makes the morning Light a million diamonds on the lily.
Yes, to know the point of Selfhood as the Plus Is Greater is to start a golden spiral to the Sun and know the path that echoes in the air is one that others, by your momentum, will follow to their own expanded Self awareness as spiral upon spiral they, too, become the Plus Is Greater—because you have dared to dream and then to forge and win.
With Mark we could and can experience such thoughts and feelings and climb them to the stars.