The Bank of England’s survey asks participants to choose their preferred way to receive money as a Christmas gift, showing the options cash, bank transfer, gift voucher and digital currency. At press time, 8,230 people have responded and 70 percent of them have chosen digital currency.Cash is in second place, with 21 percent of respondents indicating it as a their “favorite way to get” money as a gift. Bank transfers and gift vouchers are currently the least popular forms, chosen by 7 percent and 2 percent of respondents respectively.

For the age of biotechnology is not so much about technology itself as it is about human beings empowered by biotechnology

The merely instrumental, merely anthropological definition of technology is therefore in principle untenable. And it may not be rounded out by being referred back to some metaphysical or religious explanation that undergirds it.

The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control.

Everything depends on our manipulating technology in the proper manner as a means.

– Do you know what happened? I’m sorry, Dave. I don’t have enough information.

old man with wrinkled dugs

Unreal

rose and fell

Son of man

While this false vision, inspired by Desire, caused many mis-steps and much trouble andsuffering, and you gradually lost confidence in your Self -- in Me, the Impersonal One within, --in fact, you forgot Me, so that you did not know where to turn in your helplessness; yet it wasonly through your thus losing the memory of your Divine estate, and centering all yourconsciousness in these Earthly conditions, that I could develop your human mind and will, andall your faculties, and provide your human body with the strength and powers that would enableMe to give perfect expression to My Divine Idea on Earth, which eventually must BE

So having fallen or stepped out of your Impersonal or Edenic estate, you yielded completely tothe lure of this Dream World, and now permitting Desire wholly to lead, you no longer werecapable of seeing the Reality or Soul of things; for you had put on a physical body, an Earthlycovering with a human brain, which acted as a veil to your Soul Consciousness, and sobedimmed your sight and clouded your mind that the light of Truth did not penetrate through,and everything was falsely colored and distorted by your human understanding.In this Dream condition you saw all things darkly, as through a mist, and with this mistenshrouding everything you could not see things in their Reality, but only their mistyappearance, which now however seemed to you the real things themselves.This was so with everything you saw through your Dream eyes, with things both animate andinanimate, with everything you conceived in your human mind, with even your own Self andyour other Selves round about you.Thus no longer seeing the Soul of things, but only their misty shadows, you grew to thinkingthese shadows were real substance, and that the world about you was composed of and filledwith such substance

While dwelling in the Garden you were still wholly Impersonal, for you had not yet tasted of thisfruit. Having once yielded to Desire, the Earthly agent of My Will, whose main work is to makeyou eat this fruit, the moment you had eaten, that moment you descended, or fell, or were forcedfrom your Edenic estate (like the chick from the shell or the rose from the bud), and you foundyourself involved in conditions altogether new and strange. For now, instead of having dominionover the lower kingdoms, and of their supplying your every want, you had to till the ground toget it to bring forth fruit, and by the sweat of your brow had you to earn your bread.Having taken upon yourself this Earthly mission, it now became necessary for you to enter fullyinto all conditions of Earth life, in order to develop a mind and perfect a body capable ofexpressing perfectly My Idea on Earth, -- the real cause and reason of your entering into thisDream condition.

all Desire to express in Words that Idea, without the consciousness of My Will being theOne and Only source of Inspiration, is futile. Likewise, all desire to express that Idea in livingacts, without losing all consciousness of your human personality -- of your personal part in theacts, and centering your self wholly in Me, -- is vain and fruitless and will end only in failure,disappointment and humiliation

n Your search for the most favorable conditions for the manifestation of Your particularattributes, You gradually spread over the face of the Earth, each containing many words, and allborn of Desire in the human mind to express in Earthly terms the infinite phases of My Idea eversurging within.The more the human mind strove thus to express " in Words" My Idea, the greater and moreabject the failure

, I think I would have wept over it. Somehow, now that it has happened actually, and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears.

He was made to be worshipped.

Thus was born Your human personality, and since its birth have I impelled You to nourish,support and strengthen it, by filling You with longings, hopes, ambitions, and aspirations, withall the various manifestations of Desire; which are but the human phases of My Will, operatingin the preparation and development of a medium capable of expressing perfectly My Attributeson Earth

29Now, perhaps, you can see why this all had to be, why You (Humanity) had to leave the Edenicstate of Impersonal Consciousness and lose Your Self wholly in the Earth illusions of this DreamWorld, in order to be able to create a body and develop in it a personal or self consciousnesscapable of fully expressing My Perfection.

And finally the necessity of Desire casting its complete spell over You (Humanity), that YourCelestial or Impersonal nature might be kept deep in sleep; until, in your Dream, by the free butignorant use of My Will, You could taste and fully eat of the fruit of the so-called Tree ofKnowledge of Good and Evil, and through the eating could learn properly to discriminate andknow its fruit for what it really is; and thus acquire the strength to use the knowledge thus gainedwisely and perfectly in the expression of My Idea onl

And the wisdom of having this influence, through the Serpent of Selfishness (the shape I causedit to assume in your mind), first generate in the passive, feeling, receptive part of You -- Desire,the mortal agent of My Will, which was to supply the motives and the power for the further andcomplete expression of My Attributes on Earth

Now, I shall not tell you in detail how or why it became necessary for Me to "drive" You (nowmanifesting as Man or Humanity) out of the Garden of Eden, other than to remind you of the partthat Desire plays in Earth expression, and its relation to My Will; how it centers your interest inouter things and makes you forget Me within.When you have solved that and comprehended somewhat of My reason, then perhaps you canunderstand the necessity of first causing You (Humanity) to fall into a deep sleep (You havingarrived at the close of another Cycle called a Cosmic day), and of letting you dream you hadawakened, -- but in reality you were and are still asleep, and everything from that day to this,including all seeming Earthly events and conditions, have been but a Dream, from which youwill fully awaken only when You (Humanity) again become wholly conscious of Me within, --and of finding Yourself (Humanity) no longer outwardly one, but two; one an active, thinking,aggressive part, thereafter called a man, and the other a passive, feeling, receptive part, -- awomb-man, or woman

Thus were now manifest all the various mediums for the Earth expression of My Idea; and You,being one of My Attributes, naturally had dominion over all of these mediums, or possessed thepower of utilizing any or all of them, if necessary, for the full and complete expression of Your --My Attributes -- powers and possibilities.In this manner and for this reason alone did You and Your Brothers and Sisters come into humanexpression. While in human form yet Your expression was so entirely Impersonal, that, thoughself-conscious, you still looked wholly to Me within for inspiration and guidance

Shall I explain further? -- That the quickening power within My Idea (your Soul) proceeded toattract to it the various elements of life substance (dust), and, atom by atom, and cell by cell, indue course of time, to mold and shape each into substantial reality, after the pattern of theThought Image composing your Soul Body, thus forming an Earthly outer covering, as it were, --until finally your mortal form actually became manifest to the psychic sense, if not yet to what iscalled the physical sense. Whereupon, all being now prepared for this cyclic moment, You, MyAttribute, breathed into and then through its nostrils (from within) the breath of life, and Youthen made your first appearance of Earth as a human being-- a living Soul (My Idea now able toexpress consciously through a suitable Earth medium), containing within your Self all of MyAttributes, all of My Powers and all of My Possibilities

Before that can be it will be necessary for you thoroughly to know that supposed other self, thatself which You created by thinking it real and separate from Me, and then kept alive by giving itthe power thus to entice and deceive you; yes, that self-created self, with its purely selfish prideand ambitions and imagined power, its love of life, of possessions, of being thought wise orgood, -- but which self is merely your human personality, which was born only to die as aseparate identity, and as such has no more reality or permanence that the leaf, the snow or thecloud.Yes, you will be brought face to face with that petty personal self, and will see with perfectvision all its sordid selfishness and human vanities; and you will then learn -- if you but turn toMe and ask in simple faith and trust -- that it is I, the Infinite, Impersonal part of You, abidingalways within, Who am thus pointing out to you all these illusions of the personality, which forso many ages have separated you in consciousness from Me, Your glorious, Divine Self

saw You in perfect expression, even as I see You now -- the Real You, an Attribute of My Self-- perfect.For in Reality You are an Angel of Light, one of My Thought Rays, an Attribute of My Being,ensouled in Earth conditions, with no other purpose (which is no purpose at all, but a necessity ofMy Being) but the final complete expression of My Idea.

But there yet remained the final and culminating medium of expression.Up to this point, while each perfectly expressed some phase of My Nature, yet all existingmediums and avenues were unconscious of Me, and were mediums of expression only as a wireis a medium for conducting heat, light and power.The conditions were ripe, however, for the creation of mediums through which My DivineAttributes could find conscious expression, conscious not only of their relationship to Me, but oftheir ability and power to express My Idea.It was at this moment in Time that You and Your Brothers and Sisters were born into existenceas human expressions, coming into manifestation as you did, similarly with all other mediums, inresponse to My concentrated Thought, in which I saw all the infinite variety of My Attributes inactual expression in entitized forms, each manifesting in predominance some particular phase ofMy Being, and each conscious of Me, Its Creator and Expressor

You may wrongly interpret My Desires, My Urges from within, and seek to use them for yourown selfish purpose, but even while permitting this they still fulfill My Purpose. For it is only byletting you misuse My Gifts and by the suffering such misuse brings, that I can make you intothe clean and selfless channel I require for the perfect expression of My Ideas.

I have said that man does not think; that it is I, within him, Who do his thinking.I have also said man thinks he thinks.As this is an apparent contradiction, I must show you that man ordinarily does not think, anymore than he does anything else he supposes he does

You may, with your personality, try a thousand times a thousand times to burst through the shellof your human consciousness.It will result only, if at all, in a breaking down of the doors I have provided between the world oftangible forms and the real of intangible dreams; and the door being open, you then no longercan keep out intruders from your private domain, without much trouble and suffering.But even through such suffering you may gain the strength you lack and the wisdom needed toknow that, not until you yield up all desire for knowledge, for goodness, yes, for union with Me,to benefit self, can you unfold your petals showing forth the perfect Beauty of My Divine Nature,and throw off the shell of your human personality and step forth into the glorious Light of MyHeavenly Kingdom.Therefore I give you these directions now, at the beginning, that you may be learning how torecognize Me

Weigh and study carefully these words.Rise up and free yourself now and for always from the domination of your personality, with itsself-inflated and self-glorifying mind and intellect.For your mind henceforth must be Your servant, and the intellect Your slave, if My Word is topenetrate to your Soul consciousness.I AM come now to your Soul consciousness, which I have quickened expressly in preparation forthe reception of My Word

I, the I AM of you, bring to you this My Message, My living Word, as I have brought to youeverything in life, be it book or "Master" to teach you that I and I alone, your own True Self, AMThe Teacher for you, the only Teacher and the only God, Who is and always has been providingyou not only with the Bread and Wine of Life, but with all things needed for your physical,mental and spiritual growth and sustenance.Therefore that which appeals to YOU, as you read, is MY Message, spoken to your outer humanconsciousness from within, and is but a confirmation of that which the I AM of you always knewwithin, but had not yet translated in definite, tangible terms to your outer consciousness.Likewise, all that ever appealed to You, coming from some outward expression, was but theconfirmation of My Word already spoken within. The outward expression was the avenue ormeans I chose at the time through which to reach and impress your human or self consciousness.I AM not your human mind, nor its child, the intellect. They are but the expression of yourBeing, as you are the expression of My Being; they are but phases of your human personality, asYou are a phase of My Divine Impersonality

It addresses you in terms of your divinity and says, wake up! And it addresses you in the language of your humanity so that you might comprehend it.