Purpose

Devoted solely to the nurture of genius within mankind and the desire for its creative expression.

Our Mission:

To Preserve & Extend the legacy of Lao & Walter Russell and ensure that every person has the opportunity to awaken to Who they are, What they are and Why they are here on earth. We are devoted solely to the nurture of genius within and the desire for its expression.  We are committed to supporting our many thousands of students through the display and preservation of The Russell’s written materials, archival documents, the 60 tons of sculpture, paintings & artwork housed inside The Russell Museum in Waynesboro, Virginia, and through dissemination of our Home Study Course, books, and online learning opportunities.

Our Vision:

We are dedicated to growing our World-Wide Student Body by being a well-organized, high-functioning nonprofit capable of nurturing our student body through our online community, study groups and offering new publication materials from our extensive archives. Our university recognizes man as a divine entity who vitally needs spiritual food for his Mind, more than encyclopedic information for his brain.  We cannot fail to act as a leavening process for the upliftment of other educational systems toward the spiritual man and away from excessive materialism.

Patterns in Education

The pattern of human education has, been founded upon the building of mechanical humans who must be fitted into our material civilization as operating parts of a material system. There has never been an adequate institution devoted solely to the nurture of genius in man. Educational institutions seldom even recognize a gifted child, and when they do find one there is rarely any place in conventional educational systems to supply his needs. It is noteworthy that the greatest men of all time have come out of obscurity and fought their way into recognition against the resistance of the whole world of materialist man.

Thinking and Knowing

The tendency of past educational processes has been to teach children to remember and repeat instead of to think and know. This has caused educational institutions to develop the brain and its sense reflexes, rather than the Mind and its inspirations received from the Light of the Creator, which centers all men. It is time man learned that he is a mental entity with a physical body created to manifest God’s mind. Today, the generally prevalent concept of man is quite the opposite: it places body first and “educates” man’s senses in all manner of skills and techniques. This does not help him to unfold the Inner Light of omnipotent power which each has, within, from birth. One of the main reasons for this is that few people are aware of their Divine Inheritance.

Genius Inherent in Everyone

Most people think of geniuses as specially born creatures whom they can never be like. They do not realize that every man is born with all that God has to give, and that the only difference between themselves and the greatest geniuses in the world is their measure of God-awareness. In the present stage of man-in-the-mass, there is very little God-awareness.

It is high time that the gifted child is recognized and prepared for leadership in the arts, sciences, industry and statemanship. We must cultivate imagination and inspiration rather than memory. The day has come when many more cultured gentlemen and gentlewomen must again be seen in the streets of our cities and fill our drawing rooms, enriching our civilization to the high standards of the beginning of this century. This is another reason why such an institution as our university is needed. It cannot fail to act as a leavening process for the upliftment of other educational systems toward the spiritual man and away from gross materialism. Men and women whose minds are illumined with the Light of higher cosmic knowledge will give to civilization that grace and charm which are the natural attributes of cultured thinkers. Our university recognizes man as a divine entity who vitally needs spiritual food for his Mind, in excess of encyclopedic information for his brain. The accepted concept of higher education is a more intense, empirical, physical knowledge, whereas higher knowledge is, in reality, the recognition of the cosmic Light which opens the door to awareness of man as a cosmic, spiritual entity.

The fruit of higher material knowledge is the making of man into a better machine, whereas the fruit of higher cosmic knowledge is the glorification of man as a co-creator with God. That is why the curriculum of our university must be quite the opposite of the curriculums of the conventional educational institutions. We have hundreds of conventionally educated engineers, doctors, lawyers, industrialists, and other in all walks of life who leap suddenly ahead when they awaken their cosmic, divine basis through the study of this university’s teachings. Hundreds of these newly exalted students write us that they have been searching all their lives for what they have found in our teachings, and many have said: “I have learned more in these few months of study of your Home Study Course than I gained in years of university study.”

Cosmic Knowledge is Within

There is a profound reason for this. Each man who thus transforms himself is beginning to find that the well of cosmic knowledge is within himself, not outside of himself. The discovery of the Light which centers the consciousness of every man is the greatest miracle that can happen to any man. To help every man to awaken that omniscient Light, which centers his consciousness, is the purpose of this university. The method of accomplishing that purpose is through self-education of individuals rather than through mass education, which submerges individuality. Self-awakening can come only through aloneness of each Self with the One Soul of the universe. The super individual or Person or Being can emerge only from, and through his Self and his mate Self. Fortunate is the one who finds his mate Self to help both unfold as one balanced whole.

Cosmic Illuminates

One who has become “awakened” to the Light of God-awareness in himself is known as an Illuminate. One who is thus illumined by that divine Light has become conscious of the Cosmos. His Mind has become universal instead of limited to what he sees, hears and thinks. Illumination into Cosmic Consciousness is the ultimate goal of the human race. A rare few have already reached that stage during the 10,000 years of human history. It is time, therefore that a university should be founded whose sole purpose is to help those who feel the cosmic urge within them to know how to further unfold it. The entire curriculum of this university is patterned to that one objective.

The Genius Thinks Inwardly

So many ask us what the difference is between cosmic thinkers, who are called geniuses, and the average person. The difference is that every genius is aware of the inner divine Light of his Soul-Self, for he thinks inwardly toward that Light. He thus becomes a deep well of inspired knowledge which flows through him to create immortal gifts for the world. The creations of genius are immortal and endure forever, while sensed-created works of mass-man are soon forgotten. The average man thinks outwardly from himself through his senses. His education is acquired through what his senses see and hear, and the standard of his intelligence quota depends upon how much his senses can remember and repeat. The creator gives us great ideas; the copyist makes use of great ideas in the measure of his ability to remember and repeat them.

The creative genius leads the world and is the greatest power in it, though he may be as penniless as Leonardo. The measure of world culture, power and leadership is mind measure, and not a sensed one. The conventional educational processes can create millions of robot repeaters who eventually become gears in the world’s economic or industrial machine, but the world’s greatest men have come out of obscurity through discovery of the Light within themselves. Practically all Illuminates and geniuses acquire their knowledge cosmically; therefore, a conventional education is not necessary. Even the greatest of university men, who have become leading statesmen, industrialists, scientists, inventors, engineers, doctors or lawyers, found their leadership through inspiration which came to them in the quiet hours of mediation when they were knowingly or unknowingly in communion with God.

Cosmic Knowledge

An average number of conventionally educated thousands rise above the process of trying to acquire knowledge through their senses and become great thinkers. Inspired idea comes timelessly, like a flash of light from the blue, whenever a man is enabled to turn his eyes inwardly and see with inner vision. This is what is meant by acquiring knowledge cosmically. One should bear in mind that all knowledge is based upon IDEA, and that idea can never be taught by conventional educational methods. One should realize that IDEA is the product of the Mind, and not of the senses.

Conventional educational methods are patterned only to imitate other peoples’ ideas through sensed memories of words, which but describe idea. They are not patterned to help young people create ideas of their own. When man has a flash of inspiration he is talking with God, but does not realize it. He may be in his factory when it happens, or in deep meditation in his home, but when it does happen, he has thus transformed himself from the status of a sensed-observer to the status of Mind-thinker and knower.

Intuition

The first symptom of this higher cosmic thinking is commonly referred to as intuition, but ages have passed without a satisfactory explanation of that word. perhaps the most simple explanation of it is that the Inner Voice of the One God is trying to reach through Soul perception to Mind awareness. Many leaders who are strongly intuitive tell you that they “have a hunch” not realizing that they are thinking with their spiritual Mind instead of sensing with their brain.

All down the ages, the seekers of light have asked of Illuminates: “How can I be illumined with the Light?” They asked it of Buddha, and he instructed his disciples in language which they could apply. Krishna enlightens Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita, but his words often prove beyond men’s comprehension. All down through the centuries the world has known its great Illuminates and many more hundreds of geniuses.

Mystics & Geniuses

Whatever culture, righteousness, morality and creative power that has existed in the world has come through its great Illuminated mystics and geniuses, until much of the world blacked out for several centuries of the Dark Ages because of the crucifixion of Love as represented by the Christ and the Soul of man. Then came the great rebirth of many geniuses and a few Illuminates for five centuries, right up to the end of the 19th Century, when, once more, man decided to crucify Love and genius in man in favor of exalting the money ideal by greed, and by harvesting its fruits of hate, fear and war. Man must some day learn that Love comes into the world, and goes out of it, in the measure in which Soul-culture increases or decreases. Ever since the year 1900, world genius and culture have been disappearing, while crime, sex promiscuity and man killing have been increasing in a world of which a large part even denies God.

This is the state of our world today. It is now in the beginning of another Dark Age and nothing will save it except a reversal of human relations to a standard which places spiritual and mental values ahead of money values. Many intelligent people the world over realize that there has been a deterioration in industry, government and other institutions, for moral security has disappeared into a world state of fear. For these very reasons, Alexis Carrel said that the greatest necessity of this age is a university devoted exclusively to the Science of Man. Edwin Markham said: “In vain do we build the city if we do not first build the man.“

There is one thought which has been overlooked, however, in relation to a rebirth of fallen civilizations. That thought is that civilizations fall through the degradation of millions, but when they rise again it is because of the immortality of the very few who cannot be touched by degradation. These few we have among us always. Their untouchable love nature is the glory of mankind, for it impossible for a righteous, cultured “gentlemen”, who has known the Light of his inner Self, to compromise with depravity under any circumstances. This is what we mean by the word ‘untouchable’. A lover of beauty cannot be touched by ugliness, nor can a cultured, righteous man be touched by mass degradation.

Renaissance of Civilization

The great hope for a Renaissance of our civilization lies, therefore, in awakening more and more material sensed-thinkers to cosmic-awareness of the inner Light from which their culture and sense of beauty comes. This is another reason for the need of such a university as ours, which exists for the sole purpose of increasing the numbers of the immortal FEW.

The fact that our present civilization has fallen to a dangerously low level during this century is undebatable. Few realize that the main cause is that no civilization can ever endure which is man dominated. Our warring world of fear, hate and man-killing is the physical expression of the male of the species who seeks power through conquest. It is the innate nature of woman to give love and life. Nature’s law will balance consciousness of the world at large, but until it does, and mankind learns that great lesson of absolute equality of spiritually balanced mate-hood and gives expression to it in every human institution, he will never know the happiness of an enduring civilization, which alone can come from obeying Nature’s inviolate law of equality between all of its created pairs.

Law & Philosophy

The Natural Law and Living Philosophy, which is embodied in the teachings of our university, patterns a way of life which includes a full comprehension of Nature’s scientific ways and processes. Balanced mate-hood is as fundamental a law of Nature as the law of science which says that action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Cosmic Messengers

In spite of man’s utter defiance of the inscrutable laws of Nature, destiny works out its patterns of human relations controlled by those laws. Truly God is patient, but every man on earth must some day come to God though the agony of awaiting is man’s own self-imposed torture. Thus it was that Lao Russell created this world university which Alexis Carrel said was the world’s greatest necessity for the building of a stable civilization of righteous, cultured men and women. An ethical movement had grown from a seed sown by Herbert Spencer and the great American poets of the early 1870’s who at that time prophesied that within a hundred years our civilization would fall into another Dark Age. Walter Russell headed that great movement from 1895 to 1939 when World War II caused its cessation.