Joe's Comments at his Birthday Celebration

in response to the "most significant" question

October 8, 1977

That's easy: Clear across the front our people have picked up the leadership of our group; the initiative; a kind of self reliance that rendered totally unnecessary my help. Not that they couldn't use it. This hasn't anything to do with my present situation, though it throws light on it.

I've been amazed all summer and amazed since the summer not just their picking up responsibility but that they have developed the capacity to do so. They've become generals; they've become religious on their own two feet. The spirit talks they gave this summer were proof of that. They Used to have to have permission to do that. That was not there this summer. It was so because they said so. For instance, I never guessed that Neil Vance would turn into an independent religious. He can stand up to anyone now in that arena. And that could be said about many other people in our order.

Someone said to me a year ago last spring, before leaving our group, "You know you have colossally failed in building a polity structure." I said, "No, I am naive enough to think it's more successful than many things we've undertaken." These past few weeks I've seen that our polity structures will sustain us. It will take a few years to work out the bugs. No hurry; if people are patient with one another, the stuff is there for the polity of our future.

There is a practical reason why we must experience totality... Unity. God is one; Mankind is one; I is one. This is not an idea to be enjoyed but an insight to be acted out every day for the rest of Your life.

More and more people are doing their own homework relative to being a religious. Whether they get it done or not they realize that Sun Tsu is to be embodied not understood. It is a waste of time to understand and not embody it.

Now we must prepare to do our top circle; the most dangerous thing we have ever done. We are not out to create a new religion but a new religious mode that can be set in any religion.