Elizabeth Clare Prophet, when you talk about ritual, it seems that what you’re really talking about is the drama of life itself. Drama is one of those elements that has been taken out of so many people’s lives. Why has that happened?
I think that people have replaced the great drama of God’s appearing with the melodrama of their own carnal minds parading on the stage of life. When God and Job were discoursing and God answered Job out of the whirlwind, he said:
Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
The point is: Who is man that he can stand and declare that we must eliminate ritual from the universe, when all of life is the great ritual drama of life unfolding—when, as God said, “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy”?
Ritual is the alchemical ingredient of life. It’s the chemistry whereby God becomes man and man becomes God.
And this is the goal of the entire flow of creation over the magnificent figure-eight spiral of infinity whereby Spirit becomes Matter and Matter becomes Spirit continuously in the nucleus of the atom.
It seems to me that Shakespeare and other great playwrights were actually telling us in their dramas how to move from one plane of consciousness to the next, which sounds very much like what you describe when you talk about ritual. Is this the work of the masters themselves?
The soul needs the ritual drama of life and her meditation upon the stars to transcend the mundane and reach for the great Macrocosm of being. On earth today people want instant religion, instant God—like instant pudding. And they want it to replace a process, an alchemical process that must include redemption, that must include the kneeling before Almighty God and confessing, “I have erred. I have gone out of the way of the Tree of Life and I desire to return. I call on the law of forgiveness and I accept the living God in the presence of his Son, the Lord Christ, as my Saviour.”
God answers our prayer with a whirlwind action of the sacred fire that is the coming of the Holy Spirit, the coming of the Comforter. The Comforter gives us the original teaching of Jesus Christ and of the Cosmic Virgin, and we learn of the science of the Word, which is our means of taking dominion over the earth.
When I go to the altar of God, I realize that that altar is a place where I may alter, or change, my consciousness through the great alchemy of the sacred fire.
I know God is the Great Alchemist, even as I see him as the Great Dramatist writing the script of my life. And if I can follow this script and make my will become the will of God, wedded in the alchemical marriage of my soul’s reunion with the Spirit, then I can live my life as the instrument of the LORD.
In her ritual of the rosary, Mother Mary teaches us to follow the greatest ritual drama that has ever been written and portrayed. It is the life of Jesus Christ. In this drama we see the incarnation of the infant Child become the World Saviour. We see him putting on the consciousness of God layer by layer—passing through his initiations, giving forth the teachings and then going through the great betrayal, the crucifixion and the ultimate glory.
There is no finer rendition by any dramatist anywhere of the metamorphosis that must occur whereby that which is conceived of the “earth, earthy” becomes the living Son of God—from the first man, Adam, to the last man, Christ, the Son who is the Real Self of each and every son and daughter of God.
Would you explain exactly how giving the rosary relates to this ritual?
The rosary is our soul’s meditation upon God as we rise to the level of the Christ within the heart. And we meditate alternately upon Mary the Mother as the focal point of our own incarnation of the Motherhood of God and upon Jesus Christ for our realization of the fullness of that divine Sonship within us. Through the Mother and the Son we reach the Father, and in the Father we are reborn according to his immaculate design.
The rosary, then, is for the balance of the masculine and feminine polarity of being. And this is achieved by our contemplation of the life and the experiences of Jesus as we give the adoration of the Hail Mary.
Our meditation upon the events in the life of Jesus and the stations of the cross enables us to also pass through the experiences that Jesus passed through and therefore to participate in this drama—to become the drama with him, walking the stations of the cross. God thereby reenacts within us these most sacred events in Jesus’ life, which is to become our very own life. When we finally are able to totally equate with the life of Mary and Jesus and other saints, then we ourselves will be able to put on their consciousness of victory, of the resurrection and of the ascension.
As we are willing to enter this path, Mary and Jesus, the hosts of the LORD, Archangel Michael and the angels come to us each day. And each day becomes a little ritual whereby we are given an important lesson in cosmic law through a circumstance in our life created by our own karma. This path is called the path of initiation because our souls are being initiated.
We no sooner conclude our rosary in the morning than we are beset with all of the problems of the day and the challenges that life joyously presents to us. We do not walk the via dolorosa because we are not sad, we are not in a sinful sense, we are not in a sense of shame. But we are in a sense of glory because from glory unto glory we know that we are putting on the consciousness of God.
Mrs. Prophet, what is the outcome of this ritual that you describe?
New consciousness, new life—a joy that is indescribable!
If we are denied the ritual, are we denied the outcome of the ritual?
Precisely. This is why the fallen ones have entered into the churches, into the governments and into the economies of the nations and stripped us of the great ritual drama of life, which is such a necessary process. In its place, they offer that old instant pudding—that one-two-three formula and you’ve got salvation. It deprives us of the entire path of overcoming and working toward a goal. It destroys initiative and leaves us absolutely impotent as sons and daughters of God.
So there’s no “salvation made easy” course?
There is no instant pudding at the altar of God. There is a working out of our salvation “with fear and trembling,” as Paul said. And that fear is the tremendous awe of the Almighty and of his power and what this power can do if we misuse it.
The example of Gandhi – a non-violent move for soul independence
Many sons of God have shown us by their example the ritual of becoming one with God. Take Mohandas Gandhi. In his life we see the great ritual drama of his soul moving from childhood closer and closer to God until so much of God is in him that he can move all of the people of India into one united effort for independence.
In his salt march, Gandhi started walking to the sea with seventy-eight of his followers. It became a gathering momentum. He went from village to village and more and more people followed him, until there were thousands. After reaching the coastal town of Dandi, he went down to the water and picked up a pinch of salt from the sand.
This gesture signaled the Indian people to gather salt in direct disobedience to British law, which forbade them to gather or make their own salt. He thus declared the independence of the soul to forge its own God-identity without the superpowers governing it and controlling it, dominating it until it becomes a vegetable.
This is the true meaning of destiny, then, is it not?
Destiny means Deity-established-in-you. It is a process, a ritual whereby we begin with an opportunity given to us by God. By free will we choose to become that opportunity. And working the works of God daily and letting the Father work through us, we fulfill our destiny as one with the immortals, as sons and daughters of God reuniting with him in the glorious ritual of the ascension.
The ascension is our destiny. It is the goal of life whereby we accelerate consciousness, moving from the lesser self to the Greater Self, and find ourselves one with God, hence one with eternal life.