PUPIL: Since you often encourage us to use the Bible as a standard and a way-shower, can you refer us to a place in the Bible in which we are given a means of establishing this conscious personal intimacy with God?

MASTER: Certainly. The Bible is replete with illustrations of this very principle.

For instance, let's turn to St. Matthew, Chapter 22, verses 36, 37, 38, 39 and 40; and note what Jesus, the Greatest of all Great Teachers, says there. Let us study it and analyze it carefully.

Here it is:

• (a) Verse 36: "Master, what is the great commandment in the Law?" This question, asked of Jesus by the lawyer, was one of vital importance; and in the answer that Jesus gave is the golden key that millions desire.
  
  Note the reply below:
• (b) Verses 37 and 38: "Jesus said unto him: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind! This is the first and great commandment."

Kindly note very carefully, and ponder deeply, the three steps that are united into one through His use of the word "love."

The heart, the soul and the mind constitute all of the spiritual being!

Hence if we really love God with all of our heart and soul and mind, we are in fact loving Him with all of our all! Is this not true? Indeed it is!

Here then we have Jesus' own way, His own method, of establishing within Himself personal intimacy with God!

• (c) Verses 39 and 40 read thus: "And the second (commandment) is like unto it (like unto the first one) Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself! On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Please observe here the tremendous importance that Jesus places upon loving our neighbors as we love our own selves.

There are many who pay lip service to this Divine injunction, and who profess that they really DO love their neighbors as themselves. But when it comes to the crucial test of dividing their possessions in love with a less fortunate neighbor, or of going to any extremity of "trouble" for him, their protestations of love for the neighbors are far too often found to be only mere words, shallow and empty and vain. So remember this: in words without deeds to support them there is no virtue! It is a fact that our neighbors (every last one of them) are as precious in the sight of God as we are; in truth our neighbors are an integral part of ourselves, in other forms.