Since man, male and female, chose to deny the Lord and betray the purpose for their being on earth, the door to restoration has been open. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/the-ministry-of-seth.html] When this failure first occurred those concerned were very conscious of what they were doing, although at that point they had no awareness yet of the effects of what they were doing. It may be said that there was originally a state of bliss; that is a way of describing the particular situation at that time. Subsequently, due to the increasing separation so that the consciousness of man no longer accommodated fully the consciousness of God, the condition of suffering was introduced. Bliss is a state of Oneness with God; suffering occurs according to the extent of separation. There has been much of this over the ages. If originally there had been quick repentance there could have been quick restoration. This didn't happen and so it has become progressively more difficult for human beings to participate in the restoration. The difficulty is not from the standpoint of the Lord but is consequent upon a fading memory of what had occurred, and why it had occurred, and also an increase of tribulation and suffering. So all around there was more difficulty. However the door to restoration has always been open and the Plan by which it might come about has always been in effect. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/the-third-and-last-time-is-offered-to.html]
Within that Plan of Restoration there are various sub-aspects, one might say. Certainly, even though this has been in effect, advantage has not been taken of the opportunities that were provided. The result of course has been that various particular opportunities were lost; what was happening to allow for the restoration was aborted. This has been done repeatedly over the ages. We are ourselves aware of this occurring in more recent history: at the time of the Israelites, for instance, and later at the time of Jesus.
When abortion has occurred there is no way by which it could be made not to have occurred—at the point of abortion the damage can't be repaired. Always before abortion occurs there are what might be called warnings. If the warnings are taken to heart and something is done, then perhaps there will be no abortion. The point I'm stressing now is that when an abortion actually occurs then that opportunity is finished; it can't be repaired and reinstituted.
As I say, there have been repeated such abortions along the way; I mentioned two of them. But always within any aspect of this creative cycle of restoration there are what might be called lesser levels of abortion—the opportunity extended by reason of the Israelites only finally came to an end because there had been countless sub-abortions within that pattern, until eventually the greater one occurred and that was that. This final step took place at the time of Solomon—about 1000 B.C.
When such a major failure is finally established it is likely to take quite a little time before a new way can be developed. In the overall sense the cycle of restoration was established at the time of man's first failure. In the universal sense there are creative cycles at work that have nothing to do with the particular failure of man. This failure is within something much vaster, obviously. By reason of this vast creative movement throughout the whole universe the cycle of restoration insofar as man is concerned could easily be put into effect. What would ultimately be the experience remains unknown, but there would be restoration—whatever that might mean at the time that it occurred. In other words, there isn't anything that man could do to defeat God.
In establishing the creative cycles of restoration there were apparently a number of failures. Now, looking back on those failures, we may say, “Well it all worked out as it should. If what went before hadn't all gone before we wouldn't be here now.” However it is also true to say that the things that did occur in the past needn't have occurred that way. They did occur that way and we're here. All right. But we certainly could learn something from what has happened before.
If we look at the ministry of Jesus on earth we may recognize, easily enough I'm sure, a few of the lesser abortions that occurred in that ministry before the final one. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/the-third-and-last-call.html] There was an occasion when it is said that He wept over Jerusalem. He saw the end of a particular creative cycle that might have worked out in a particular way. It was aborted, so it couldn't work out that way. And He said, “Your house is left unto you desolate.” Another occasion was when Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus; here was another point of abortion. Oh yes, Lazarus came forth from the tomb, that was fine, but there was something else of much more importance present then. We have noted that this related to His own subsequent experience of mistrial and crucifixion.
Whenever a creative cycle does abort it is a sad thing. But it is no use indulging in what-might-have-been nostalgia; nothing would be gained by that. The fact has to be accepted. Always, at any point of abortion the greatest effect falls upon the one who provides the point of focus. Usually if a person becomes aware of the fact that he or she played a particular part in bringing about the abortion it is imagined that the experience of that one is the most devastating. Oh but it isn't! The most devastating one always relates to the point of focus. We might see this particularly from the standpoint of what occurred in our Master's experience: He went through what He did; and one might say it would be difficult to top that. The one who provided a special point of failure was called Judas. He wasn't alone in this; he represented something that was certainly present in the whole body of mankind; but he did initiate what occurred in our Master's experience. When he finally saw what he had done he was devastated and took his own life. But in a sense it could be said that he had it easy. It was much more devastating insofar as the Master was concerned. In other words, always it falls on the point of focus. Usually when a person awakens to some sort of failure, and there is remorse, it is mostly self-pity. It isn't a real recognition of what had occurred.
For a creative cycle to be maintained there must be no, what one might call, ultimate failure. Even that devastating experience of Jesus on earth was not an ultimate failure. In fact it proved to be a victory. It opened a door in a more particular way for mankind. This could be so because there was a larger creative cycle at work, one which encompassed what He undertook on earth. What He undertook on earth was aborted, but because there was something larger than that in operation even that situation could be used to advantage. It could be used to advantage to allow an emergence of something new. All that had gone before, of failure, could not be put together again. The parable of Humpty-Dumpty is quite accurate. Once the eggs are scrambled you can't unscramble them. But always there is the necessity, if one is to participate in what will now emerge, for repentance. Repentance is not just remorse. As I say, a lot of remorse that people experience is merely self-pity.
Repentance requires that one honestly acknowledge what the situation was and one's own part in it, assuming responsibility in the matter. There may go with that some genuine remorse, but the remorse is not going to change anything. If something is aborted it's gone, but there is an opportunity for something else to emerge provided that there is repentance, so that forgiveness may be received. But forgiveness relates to participation in what it is that is now emerging. So many people in the depths of their remorse remove themselves entirely from what would now emerge. They're plumbing the depths of self-pity. What would now emerge isn't the same as what could have happened before if there had been no abortion. But there needs to be the acknowledgment of the fact of the abortion if there is to be the emergence of whatever it is comes next. I suppose these things are obviously clear relative to our own experience in the unfoldment that has taken place in the Emissary ministry over the years. There was a point when a certain cycle was obviously aborted.
That was the point when Uranda left this sphere of things
August 4, 1954
Clearly it couldn't work out on the basis of Uranda anymore, because he wasn't there. That's a clear-cut example and nobody would try to fool themselves—although some did for a little while—that somehow or other he could be inveigled back into the pattern again. No, it's gone—abortion—but it didn't abort everything, because there was some means of allowing the emergence of something new, something which was not a repeat of what could have been or what might have been on the basis of the previous cycle. It's not difficult to look back and see what might have been, but let us not indulge in that sort of nostalgia; it achieves nothing. We could do this with respect to any aborted cycle; even in this ministry there have been many.
One of the problems that I have had over the years is to convince people—particularly those who were involved in a particular pattern of abortion—that something had been aborted. There is a great reluctance to honestly acknowledge the fact. “Surely we can repair this somehow.” No! Not once it's gone, you can't repair it. This emphasizes to us the immense care that we need to take so that these situations of abortions do not arise.
We have come in the cycles of time to the conclusion of the forty-ninth year since the inception of this ministry. We have seen this as seven cycles of seven years each. There is a conclusion here which rightly leads into what comes next. We need to be very sure that this conclusion is not an abortion. I do not anticipate that it will be. The door has remained open regardless of sundry failures along the way. There has been a continuing movement and unfoldment. But we need, individually, to see our personal responsibility in these matters; if there is some aborted cycle, why do you think it happened? Because of individual human beings—us. When we're thinking of it in terms of what is present in the Emissary ministry, what responsibility is there, then if there are points of abortion they come because of us in some way; and not just us but, ultimately, “me.” The individual lets these things occur. So obviously it is a matter of assuming individual responsibility, never looking at somebody else, so that each one may say, “This is my responsibility,” not merely our responsibility. “Our” has all too often simply been a cop-out. “Our” doesn't mean anything until “my” means something; then we have a viable “our.”
So we come to this time in the creative cycle when we move into the fiftieth year of this ministry. We may see something here relative to the working of the Creative Forces. Theoretically at least, you know something about this: Water, Air, Earth, Fire. The working of the Earth Force related particularly to this last seven-year period. But what comes after Earth? Fire. The fiftieth year: the beginning of a Fire Cycle—I wouldn't say necessarily of seven years; it could be the days are shortened; but certainly Fire.
As is customary in human consciousness, external events tend to claim precedence in human interest. Certain events have been indicated as likely to occur in this coming year. One of them is the Emissary International Congress. This has stirred up a certain amount of interest and excitement in people far and wide. Why? Because a large number of Emissaries are going to be able to get together and rub shoulders for a few days?—“It's so good to be together, isn't it?” But is that the point? Is the external event the thing that should loom in a position of precedence? What would be the point of a gathering of all these people, maybe ourselves included? The point might be said to be largely invisible, in a sense an unknown quantity. Something is coming to focus. Something is being brought together vibrationally speaking, by reason of individual human beings. It is this aspect of the matter that carries significance. Anybody can hold a convention or a congress. There are thousands of them in many places every year. Is this just another such occurrence? If it is, or is to be that, we might as well cancel it right now. There is something else here which is rightly of great significance, something very vital, something which relates to creativeness, and something which fortunately is largely beyond the immediate comprehension of human minds. However there can be an awareness, a vibrational awareness, [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/search?q=intensification] which is not trying to make something out of whatever that awareness is. Let us find out what it is on the basis of the event itself.And the event doesn't stand aloof and alone, to occur for a few days. It is all part of a creative process, being drawn together vibrationally now, and now, and now, because we assume responsibility—the responsibility of honesty.
No one can repent without honesty. Human beings have been repenting, supposedly, for centuries: “Forgive us our sins”—but they don't have the faintest, foggiest notion what the sins are. They have some structured concepts that have been provided to make people imagine that these are the sins. But the sins center in the denial of the Lord to find creative expression in one's own living. That is the sin, isn't it? And where there is that failure, which has been a continuing one over the millennia, then there is at the same time a betrayal of the reason for one's own existence on earth—and so, rather naturally, we cease to exist on earth. This is all taken for granted these days because it has become such a habit.
Now we have the opportunity of participating in the creative cycle which is at work, as yet unaborted. I'm sure if I were to ask the question, you would all say that you are certainly not interested in doing anything to abort this cycle. Well we can say lots of things, which may or may not prove to be the truth of the matter. In any case, here we come to this fiftieth year shortly, the year of Fire, a year of proving. Our concern is not rightly with respect to external events merely; these will doubtless put in an appearance one way or another. There is also the external event of my circling of the globe. Lots of people have gone around the world, no big deal. So it's not the external event of itself that carries significance. There is something related to that external event that does carry significance.
If the human mind gets busy and tries to analyze these things, and tries to fit them into some structure of concept that it has already developed, no doubt with numbers—sevens and twelves and all this—it will contribute to an abortion. Why not let things be the way they are, without human interference? Why not accept the responsibility of repenting for our prior interference? For there isn't one of us here who hasn't interfered in some way, some in major ways, but allin their own individual ways. Repent! That is, acknowledge the fact. Not the fact that “Oh, everybody around me needs to repent,” but that I need to repent, to acknowledge the aborting techniques in which one has indulged. Over the years of this ministry I have been required to handle countless abortions. It's interesting that in these days abortion has become quite a political element in the consciousness of people. This may represent something but it's not the real question.
The real question is the aborting of the creative cycles established by God
If that is taken care of, all the other things will be taken care of; but if that is not taken care of nothing else will be taken care of. We are here to see that we, with our emotional states and intellectual backup of those states, cease aborting the creative cycles that are at hand, so that we may move with steady spiritual step, quick to repent as necessary. I said before that if at the time of the failure there had been quick repentance there would have been quick restoration. Once again, now is the time for quick repentance; and with quick repentance comes quick restoration. This has been described in terms of the first flush of feeling, hasn't it? What is the nature of one's own first flush of feeling in any situation? People excuse themselves for wrong first flushes of feeling, very often with the idea that, “Give me a little time and it'll all work out. One day I'll have a right first flush of feeling.” Which day is that? Next Wednesday? Or today, now, in this moment? If it is ever to happen it must happen in this moment. There is no other moment for it to happen. So there is repentance and acknowledgment of these facts relative to oneself—quick repentance.
Human beings are addicted to their emotions, as we recognize. Some of them they deem to be good, others bad. But emotions are emotions are emotions, and none of them are supposed to have dominion in human lives. The dominion of man is the dominion of God, not of human emotions, good or bad. And so as we move into the fire these things are going to prove themselves out. Everything begins to come to a fine point of focus. Where do we stand? This sort of question could be asked, and some may try to give an answer in words, but that isn't the answer that is required. It is in one's own actual experience, in what happens in oneself; not what happens in somebody else, but what happens in oneself. Oh how reluctant human beings are ever to bring it down to themselves! It's always somebody else who is to blame, somebody else that we can complain about. Well what about “me”? What is the quality of atmosphere in my own experience, in my own feeling realm, in what is moving through my mind in thought? Oh yes, people are sold on good works, very often. “Look at all the things I'm doing. I've been taking care of these responsibilities for years; look at me.” Maybe there is one thing that has been lacking. This was pointed to by the Master in connection with Mary, wasn't it? Martha was busy about many things, very efficient she was no doubt, kept the house, kept it in shape, did the cooking; but she lacked the one essential, the pure heart, the clear emotional realm.
So we have before us a year of Fire, and that certainly relates to the emotional realm. The refining fire: what doesn't belong is dissolved. What doesn't belong in the heart is dissolved. If you're hooked on what doesn't belong you're dissolved. That's true of each one. Let's not fool ourselves. Let's not imagine, as it has been put so often, that we're just playing some sort of children's games. It may be said that human beings in the world are in the classification of rather naughty children. They play very dangerous games. But that's not our business. Our business is to reveal a certain level of maturity in the spiritual sense so that we can handle what comes, so that we do not become subject through our emotions to what is happening externally. Lots of things are happening externally, and more to come. But what about our hearts? What about the heaven where we are rightly dwelling? How does it stay heaven? Because someone else injects some heavenly serum into us? No! Because we assume the responsibility of maintaining it ourselves and we accept no excuse for not doing it. Then there begins to be a man or a woman, there begins to be the evidence of the creative process of restoration, of resurrection.
How beautiful to share in this because individually we know—each one says it in personal terms, “I know. This is what I'm here on earth to do and it will be done.” And so I rejoice in this hour that we have shared. I am sure that there is the quality of agreement in the hearts of those here gathered. let us abide in that agreement, that what needs to be done may be done; not according to the concepts of human minds but according to the will of the Most High. We share in the responsibility for letting this be done. I trust that there is great discomfort in the hearts, and in the present experience, of all those who have not as yet allowed the fire of God's love adequately to consume them. Oh, the more discomfort there is, the happier I am! Praise the Lord. Let us move with assurance to let His will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
For so long human beings have endeavored to do what they wanted to do on earth, with little regard for what the real purpose of life was, that it has seemed unnatural to experience spiritual maturity—a state of affairs that has been lost to human experience for so long it takes a little while to get accustomed to the idea. It is the same sort of thing, I suppose, for a baby when it is born into the world, any one of us, to get accustomed to the idea of being in the world; some strenuously object. But we have some increasing consciousness of what the real state is, not so much from the standpoint of our experience yet but at least of a larger vision.
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been!”
For anyone with any measure of spiritual maturity and spiritual vision there are so many “might-have-beens.” Over the years I myself have had opportunity to handle such things in myself when I saw the passing of what easily might have been. One might almost come to the point of tears at times, inside at least. It was said that on one particular occasion the Master wept because He saw what might easily have come in the creative cycles spoiled. Here is something that perhaps we might profitably look at—because while we ourselves may at times have spoiled something, if we do assume mature spiritual responsibility for others we will repeatedly experience the foolishness of others which spoils things. I have seen creative cycles working to a point where something tremendous might have occurred but somebody began to judge or got impatient, somebody quit, and everything in that cycle was lost. I wonder how keenly we are aware that when there is a failure of some kind you can’t repair the damage. I wonder how this could be illustrated for our understanding. Again I am a little cautious about using analogies in case they become a part of the Emissary ritual.
Life moves on. This is the most obvious characteristic of life. There is a connection here between life and time. You can’t halt time, you can’t halt life—it keeps moving. Human beings for a long time have been out of step with life. The result is that a greater and greater lag develops [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/exact-alignment.html] between the human experience and the action of life itself; we are inclined to keep dropping further and further behind. Life moves on, but we’re fiddling around in some restricted area, reacting to this or trying to work something else out; and we are more and more separated from the experience of life in consequence, because life is not going to hang around with us while we do that sort of thing; it just goes on, and we get left behind. If we get left far enough behind, the connection becomes so tenuous that it eventually breaks. We need to see that life has a schedule. Yes, it keeps moving regardless of human beings. There is no one on the face of the earth who can stop it, so we had better pay attention.
Life is a characteristic of God. Life is creative therefore; it builds. We say, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” Life does the building. Life has built a lot, seemingly a lot of it without any help from human beings at all. Nature moves easily because it is alive. What human beings have built on earth, this tower of Babel, is not really alive. It only appears to be alive because of the blood sacrifice which is offered into it. The lives of human beings are poured into this monstrous thing that has been built, so that it appears to be alive. Everyone is convinced that it must be sustained at all costs. Every generation is offered in human sacrifice to this. It is becoming such a sophisticated monster these days that it is found that it is hard to discover more prospects sufficiently trained in expertise to feed into this monster to keep it alive. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/two-pyramids.html] What an unnatural thing. It has nothing to do with the true design. It has resulted from theft: human beings stealing what they are able to lay their hands on and creating something in their own image and likeness. The principal characteristic of the image and likeness of human nature is to be dead.
So there is this monster. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/as-we-near-climax.html] And there is the true state, which operates in any case on the basis of life, even if human beings are not particularly participating in the operation. They are all involved in their own operation. The operation of what is called nature is seen merely as an adjunct to the human scheme of things. But regardless of all these futile human efforts over the millennia life is still present on earth and everywhere else in the universe, doing its thing. By reason of life there is creation. God creates. In the beginning God creates. In the beginning of each moment the creation continues, and life is the means by which this happens. Human beings have been principally a drag in the matter, falling further and further behind the movement of life, so that what might have been because of the movement of life in human experience could not be. How sad: what might have been.
We seek to present ourselves before the Lord, that life might have an opportunity of working in association with ourselves because we are going to stay with it; we are not going to drop behind. We are going to let life have its way, that there may be on earth the evidence of spiritual maturity. That is the only way it comes. When the human form with its capacities moves in concert with life there really is something on earth powerful and effective. Life merely moving through other forms here on the surface of the earth, forms other than man, achieves a great deal, doesn’t it, in spite of the absence of man. What would happen if man were present, present with life?
We need to come into step. Life is creative; it is a matter of building. In order to illustrate this we might use the analogy of a staircase. There is a staircase of life, upon one step of which we now stand. If we keep standing on that one step, life moves on up the staircase, so to speak, and we can never catch up on that particular staircase. We have to find out where this step, at the level where we have been, fits into another staircase that is moving with life. We can’t linger, we can’t fiddle around, without being left behind. We can look at this simply in the light of delay, but we can also look at it from the standpoint of some sort of reaction. We may have found a step which for the moment has seemed pleasing and comfortable; we want to stay there. Well, that is delay. But on the other hand we may become involved in a reactionary attitude of some kind and eject ourselves from that step. We will land up on another step somewhere but not on the same staircase.
I am sure there have been occasions in your experience when you may have thought of something or other that had occurred as being pleasing; it was in the past now but, according to your memory at least, it was pleasing. There is a sort of lure here. Now you find yourself in a rough world; therefore it seems desirable to get back there into that prior state. That prior state may be way back, or it might even be just yesterday. If one is in the present moment and looks backward to something that happened in the past, desiring to be there to re-experience what had been known before because it was comfortable or warm or whatever, if there is a reversion in this way, obviously it is something unreal; something imaginary; it’s a fancy. This is what happens to many people: reverting into the past and trying to live in that experience. It is better than the one they have now; therefore they try to live in that experience. But that experience doesn’t exist in the present moment; it only exists in the individual fancy. This basically is a factor in virtually all mental and emotional illness, where people are trying to live in a world of fancy. Virtually everyone does it, but most people don’t do it completely; they can be recalled into the present moment.
But every time this is done a person is, to that extent, disconnected from life, which is moving in the present moment. It is not moving back there, because “back there” doesn’t exist in the present moment. So a separation occurs on this basis or, as I say, on reactionary basis of various kinds. Sometimes after some violent reaction a person sees the appalling damage that was done. He is very repentant and he wants to let it all be restored again, but it never can be. That step is lost; that step is gone. That is why it is said that the Master wept on that particular occasion: something was gone. And no matter how much everybody might have liked to have gotten it back, it was gone! We can’t get it back, and we find ourselves on a step at a lower point in the cycle of life than we would have been had we kept moving on that staircase. This lower step doesn’t exist anymore in actual fact in the present moment. Life is moving on that higher step in that particular staircase, so you have to move out of that particular staircase and find another.
This is something that has been repeated and repeated ad nauseam during the course of the unfoldment of this Ministry. I wonder how many staircases we have covered. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/the-stairs.html] Nothing is ever gained by losing connection with the staircase, the step of which one is on right now. Let’s stay on that staircase, not on that step but on that staircase. In other words life moves on and we are to move with it, which means relinquishing that step.
It may be said that there is a little creative cycle which works out for each step. At the beginning of the creation of the heaven and the earth, “The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” That is always the case at the beginning of a step. It is always the case at the beginning of any particular aspect of a creative cycle: it’s dark. Well the human mind wants to know, wants to find someone to tell it what’s happening, so that it can get adjusted to it. But that is not the way it works. Life is doing the building, not the human mind; and life is moving in these creative cycles. It is our responsibility, if we are spiritually mature people, to stay in step with that movement, and we will find, using the analogy of the staircase, a particular step where we are now. But there is one just ahead, and relative to that step just ahead, always darkness is upon the face of the deep; but because we are yielded to the movement of life which moves us onto the next step. We don’t move ourselves onto the next step by any effort that we can put forth mentally or physically. Life does the building. “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” Life propels those who are willing to be propelled, from step to step. Regardless of what the human mind thinks about it, that is the way it works; and it is none of the human mind’s business to try to figure out what it is that is happening or what it is that should work next. Let it be what it is in the creative cycle, and it always begins with darkness. That’s fine. We don’t object to darkness at night, do we? We find that a very satisfying time. We go to bed and we can get some sleep. That is the way it works, isn’t it? The mind needs to settle down, be quiet.
So in this spiritual movement with life, in the creative cycle, life is bringing something forth by reason of the fact that we are present. Let it bring forth whatever it is. It is not going to bring it forth better, or an improved version, because we indulge in a great deal of speculation as to how life works. It achieves absolutely nothing except frustration and futility, which I suppose is an achievement in a way, because it may bring a person to his senses, that he is wasting his time. How much effort has been put into this business of the human mind grinding out all its ideas about God and life! Who cares what way it is from the standpoint of the concept of the human mind? It isn’t any of those ways in fact. Life just merrily goes on its own way, regardless of what human beings are thinking about it; and if we associate ourselves with what is actually happening and not with what is happening in the imaginations of our brilliant minds we move up the staircase. A person who is capable of moving with life up the particular staircase of the creative cycle where he or she finds himself is exhibiting spiritual maturity.
Each cycle starts with darkness. Because it starts with darkness the human mind feels uncomfortable, even though it has experience of being quite comfortable when night falls. There are various aspects to the creative cycle on each step. The initial one is darkness before you take the next step. But then the cycle works out: there is light. We can see what we are doing, we experience what we are doing, we understand what is happening, and it is all wonderful, and we go along with it. But if we decide that it is all so wonderful we would like to just keep on that step, then we are separated once more from life. Life is characterized by movement, and we must keep moving.
Our interest is in life. Our concern is to live. How about having the conviction of life, so that our total interest is in living?—to let life be our experience now so that we move in the natural cycles in which life is moving. When we are with it we move in those cycles. We don’t try to figure them out, and if there is darkness on the face of the deep we are quite content. That is the way it is at that point. That is part of the creative cycle. Leave it in life’s hands but move with it, and very shortly, as you may recall according to the story, the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and the Word was spoken, “Let there be light: and there was light.” Day dawns.
We have these cycles because of the earth's rotation, which are comparable to the steps in which we may be moving with life. These steps are related to what is happening, not only to us but to everything else. That is one type of step in one kind of staircase. We may recognize another type of step relative to the variation in the lengths of the days and the nights during a year. The days are getting shorter; we are moving towards the winter solstice when days are very short. There is a pulsation here, a movement from step to step; and there are various staircases and various steps, but they are all in unison; they all work together. And if we are on one step, we are on all the other steps too. It behooves us to stay on whatever step we are aware of, because thereby we find ourselves associated with all the other creative cycles that are moving. And we are not afraid of the dark. We should have sufficient experience of this happening, over and over again, that we get used to it. Here is the evidence of the creative cycle moving. Let’s find out what it is going to be, by just keeping moving on through. There is no need for trepidation if there is association with life.
There is reason for trepidation if we lose our connection with life. This is what human beings do, because they think it is much safer to hang on to the things that are known. Doing that, there is separation from life to that extent, and it is not safe; it is deadly. The only safe thing to do is to move on and allow whatever it is in that creative cycle to reveal itself. It is in life’s hands. It is in the hands of the Lord. We are not going to buck Him. We are not going to argue about it. We are certainly not going to get into a battle with the Lord about it. We just simply are willing to let it unfold the way it should. How very beautiful this can be, and we need no longer find ourselves considering those words: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: It might have been!” It is sad when a step is missed, because we have to move right over onto another staircase then.
We have some experience of these things. Because of that experience there is a certain understanding of what it is with which we are associated: the real movement of life, the resurrection and the life. It is the only safe thing. We have the opportunity of being with it, a willingness to move from step to step with ease and naturalness. When we move with life we participate in creation. Something is being built, a living vibrant form. We may think of this form in terms of the Body of the Son of God. That’s part of it—life pulsing naturally and easily through that form because all the parts of that form stay with it. Here is the basis for health. There is no individual health that you can somehow extract from somewhere and get it for yourself. We either all are healthy because there is a Collective Body which is healthy and we are participating in that Body—then we know the meaning of health—or, as long as that isn’t so, there is nothing we can do to make ourselves individually healthy in any true way. We can perhaps be a little less unhealthy but what it would be to experience the reality of health is an unknown quantity. So we share this opportunity of moving together with life. We have some experience of it.
This which is being created by life is being created all over the earth but it emerges in a conscious way with certain ones who then have the opportunity of consciously staying with life in the expression of spiritual maturity. Here is the resurrection occurring. And the resurrection is not just of Emissaries, so called. The word Emissary is a good word, it points to something that is quite valid and very meaningful, but it is not exclusive: the resurrection of the body—the body of man, of which we are all also a part—the resurrection of the body of man into the experience of the Body of the Son of God. We play our particular parts in this because our concern is with life—the movement of life, the quality, the character, of life. This is our supreme interest. Nothing else can hold a candle to that. When that is supreme to us we begin to live. We begin to move with life, and because of this life is moving in the flesh on earth freely, to achieve what is needful of achievement because of that freedom of movement.
We don’t have to have a philosophy. You know that it isn’t a matter of philosophy. It isn’t a matter of thinking about life. There are all kinds of humanly created structures based in this business of thinking about God and thinking about life and trying to believe what is thought. We have all the major religions of the world and all the sub-classifications of people thinking about all these things, but in fact most of them doing virtually nothing. So that isn’t the way. We don’t need to study any of the religions of the world; we don’t need to study the political systems of the world, or any of the systems that human beings have created on earth—these dead monstrosities into which life is fed generation after generation. Human sacrifice, blood sacrifice! That didn’t disappear in the past somewhere. It is more massive in these days than it has ever been in the past. Everybody goes along with it. Oh yes, it is to be expected that our children will all be fed into the maw of this monster—Moloch!—just to keep it alive or give it the appearance of being alive. It isn’t alive. The only life associated with it is the life which may still linger on in human beings, and it doesn’t linger on very long.
But being associated with the real experience of life because we are willing to move with it, we are not going to fiddle around; we are not going to waste time fussing about all the things that human nature fusses about. If you are fussing about something, then that is human nature, and you don’t need to magnify what it is you are fussing about as though it was something tremendously important. The fact that you are fussing about it is the evidence of your own subjection to human nature. Leave it behind. Keep moving, so that you don’t miss a step and so that you don’t find yourself under the necessity of moving into another staircase.
As I say, this has happened over and over again in smaller ways and in larger ways in this Ministry, and it is a sad experience whenever it happens, for anyone who has any vision and awareness of what was taking place. Foolishness! We can easily let go and keep moving with life, the beauty of life, the glory of life, which brings forth according to whatever is true of its own design. We need to learn to trust it, to trust the Lord, so that we don’t think we have to keep improving upon what life would bring forth if we took our sticky fingers off it and let it move easily and freely to bring forth all things new to the Glory of God.
Regardless of where we are geographically speaking we are all together in life, we are all together in the present moment, we are all together in the Spirit of the Living God. Let us move all together on the staircase that is present with us now, so that we do not have to experience unnecessary sadness. How beautiful life really is when we are willing to let this be revealed in our momentary expression to the Glory of God.
Sometimes silence is spoken of as being pregnant. There is an awareness, surely, in these moments of a fulness characterized in the external sense by silence. But it isn't dead; it is living and vibrant. Mention was made of the invisible this morning, the invisible which is one with the visible but which all too often is ignored because of the activity and noise in the visible realms. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/awaken-to-oneness.html]
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We might again take note of the mist which went up on the face of the earth. This is the occurrence immediately before the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Whatever may have been involved in that original creation, we have the present state of affairs. The dust of the ground evidently has already been assembled into the form of man, so that presumably does not need to be done over again. But the mist which went up on the face of the earth, while it may still be present, has not been within the range of human experience for a long time. There has been another state. The first necessity has been to generate this substance within the range of human experience, that the mist might go up upon the face of the earth once more and water the ground.
The distinction in these days to what it was before is that man is already formed but, as we have noted, in a state comparable to coma, a coma state in which he dreams unpleasant dreams. Sometimes the dreams become a little more pleasurable but it's all the unreal state. There is the necessity for re-creation. We have referred to this as restoration, or resurrection. It isn't really a re-forming of man of the dust of the ground. He is already formed but exists in this coma state, dreaming his nightmares the while. We saw the need for awakening, restoration, resurrection, the breathing once again of the breath of life through man's nostrils, or through the facilities that are available for this experience. Man, being formed, is composed of those factors of design within the form which make the breathing of the breath of life possible. Restoration, or resurrection, relates to the living soul experience, a new state.
We have spoken of the present state in terms of a dying soul. If the form is left to its own devices in the coma state it will die, but it may be recalled to life by reason of the breath of life. There are those, you amongst them, who have some awareness of the breath of life, consciousness beginning to return; it is not altogether a state of darkness. There is a natural state of darkness and an unnatural state of darkness. The unnatural state of darkness is this coma state, but there is what might be called divine darkness. Darkness is an essential factor in the creative process. In the beginning darkness was upon the face of the deep. Out of this condition light came. Does that mean to say that when the light came there was no more darkness? The light related to a specific creative process. Where that specific process was not in operation it was dark, and even when it was in operation there was also darkness as a part of the creative process. It was said that light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehends it not. There is a natural darkness which does not comprehend the light.
We have taken note before that the conscious mind only occupies a rather thin surface layer of the total mind composition. The vast majority of it is subconscious, so called: below the level of consciousness. The conscious mind rightly is the enlightened aspect of the mind, which is capable of seeing and understanding. Do you suppose that each individual is supposed to see and understand everything? If a person were capable of seeing and understanding everything then there would be no need for everybody else, would there? It might be said that the extent, the natural extent, the real extent, of the seeing and the understanding of the individual conscious mind is properly somewhat restricted. It would be appalling if consciously we saw everything. That would drive us crazy. We see enough rightly. We don't need to see everything. There are a few others around who can see the things that we don't see. So the conscious mind of the individual is somewhat restricted in its awareness, rightly so. People fuss a good deal about what they don't know, but let us be thankful for what we do know.
Of the total mind the conscious mind is a very small layer. There is vastly more other than the conscious mind, and that is dark. It is supposed to be dark. Of course nowadays human beings are inclined to try to pry into it. The psychiatrists and psychologists are interested in unearthing things out of this darkness, but there is nothing wrong, really, with the state of darkness. And there is a tendency to stir up a hornets' nest if we become too much involved in exploring the dark alleys, so to speak, with our conscious minds. The conscious mind doesn't belong there. Obviously there is something wrong with thesubconscious minds of human beings, just as there is something wrong with their conscious minds, but this is because of a faulty operation, not because the machinery couldn't work the way it was designed to work. It isn't a matter of trying to cause what is properly dark to become light. That messes things up worse than ever. Let us keep our sticky fingers out of the depths of that pie and be willing to let what God created—without understanding what that means either—be the way it is designed to be without human interference. What does need correcting is the manner of operation of this equipment. It wasn't intended to be in human hands when that human state is unreal.
There shouldn't be any unreal state. The real state is something different. We are becoming somewhat aware of the reality, so that we might feel safer in relinquishing the unreality. The question might be asked, "Is it safe to wake up?" That is the question that seems to be posed to human beings, and they are inclined to say, "No, it's safer to stay asleep." Of course it isn't put that way: "It's safer to hang on to what is known than to open the door to something that is unknown." How interesting!
So there is natural darkness and natural light. I suppose this is symbolized by day and night insofar as this planet is concerned. I don't think any of us particularly wish to get rid of night. Even if you live in the high Arctic you still need to go to bed, even though the sun is above the horizon; sleep is required. Then the conscious light goes out temporarily. The sun rises again in the morning, and there we are. So we need to recognize that there is proper darkness and proper light; but there is also improper darkness, and the improper darkness includes the conscious mind which thinks it sees but doesn't. It simply sees something which is imaginary, unreal, a part of the dream experience.
We all know the difference between what is our state when we are dreaming and what our state is when we wake up. If you are wise you let the dream just simply vanish away. Some people get to trying to analyze dreams, find out the deep, dark significance of them. It is deep and dark and should be left that way. If we actually accept the opportunity to wake up into the state of reality the former things pass away, and no one in the state of reality would be in the least interested in trying to revive the former things or clothe them with some great significance. They had no significance at all, and fundamentally that is true of human dreams. People like to make their experiences seem significant somehow, but in the unreal state none of them are significant. They don't mean anything. I suppose that could be a rather shattering realization if one came to it and remained in the unreal state; then there is no point to anything. Of course there are people who come to this recognition. It's a valid recognition but they don't really understand why it is so and why there is another experience possible then.
So there is light and there is darkness in the true state. The present human experience, the unreal experience, the dream state, is occurring within an already existing body that is to be recalled to life, recalled out of the coma. Within the scope of this body there are those, ourselves perhaps and others, who are beginning to awaken. Consciousness is returning. Just to us? No, to the body of mankind. Do you think that when you wake up in the morning you are totally awake instantly? It may be true that some people wake up a little quicker than others. There are some who claim that they are never awake until after their fifth cup of coffee. Well they're not awake then either! But regardless of the rapidity with which we may seem to awaken there is always a cycle of awakening. It never is instantaneous. Some cells related to the conscious mind are animated first and so the light dawns, the sun rises and conscious experience comes again.
Of course we need to understand that our present experience in the human state may be used as an analogy for what really needs to happen. As long as it's the human state and we are under the necessity of using analogies, we are not yet awake—partially awake perhaps, so that there is sufficient light to observe the analogy. Then we can say to ourselves, "Oh yes, I see," without really seeing yet, because the analogy merely refers to something that is to be experienced and is not the thing itself. But there is an awakening here occurring in the consciousness of mankind at various levels, and this awakening relates to particular people. After all, the consciousness of mankind is the collective consciousness of all the individuals who compose it, and we are amongst those individuals. So as the dawn comes and there is some measure of awakening, there is a new consciousness of breathing the breath of life. If you are asleep you are still breathing but you don't know it. Other people may, who are within hearing distance, particularly if snores arise. But when you awaken, while you may give no particular thought to the matter, you are capable of thinking of the fact that you are breathing. While you are asleep you can't. You may think of yourself as breathing in your dream; that's not the same thing, is it? So breathing in one's dream state, in the human nature condition, may be analogous in some way to breathing the breath of life, but it isn't breathing the breath of life.
Beginning to awaken we sometimes stretch and breathe deeply. Even in the human state it's not a bad idea to do that when you wake up. There begins to be then, as there is awakening to the reality in experience, an awakening to the breathing of the breath of life; and even our individual breathing of air, which is necessary, begins to be seen as the breathing of the breath of life when we are awake to the reality. A person may say, "Well you're just breathing the way you were breathing before." No, not if you are awake to the reality. Then you are breathing in a new way. All that we do is made possible by the fact that we breathe, not only from the standpoint of the oxygen that we take into our lungs but also, as we are aware, from the standpoint of the ingestion, so to speak, of what has been called the negative life essence [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/the-from-steps-uranda-1936-there.html], so that there may be generated within us the essential current that moves over the nervous system, for instance. This also relates to mental activity. You know very well that when you have a head cold you don't think too well. You are not only clogged up in your sinuses but you are clogged up in your mind. There is an inadequate current being generated for essential mental activity. At least this current is one aspect of what is required to permit mental activity. It is the negative aspect. There is another aspect also.
So we may see all this if we begin to live on the basis of the expression of the spirit of God. Because we have awakened to this, our breathing is for a different purpose. Most people just breathe to stay alive and to enable them to do whatever it is they want to do. That's the unreal state. We awaken to a new state, where breathing is not included in our experience for the purpose of enabling us to do whatever we before thought we wanted to do. It is included in our experience now so that we may do what we are here to do, and that's something quite different. Our breathing is required for our thinking; obviously it is required for our physical aliveness; it is required for whatever we may experience in the way of emotion; and it is required for whatever may be possible in the way of spiritual expression. We begin to breathe for a purpose. Purposeful breathing we could call it. Maybe this was the idea back of what has come to be thought of as yoga, at least in the breathing aspect of it. So human nature tries to breathe in some special way, but to what end? Well the mind thinks up something or other that looks spiritual and formulates various ideas which may be included in the human nature paraphernalia. It's all thought of as being great and meaningful. It's all part of human nature still. The awakening doesn't come because the conscious mind gets busy and follows out some technique. If there is a genuine awakening it comes because of the movement and the action of the creative cycle, the creative cycle that is working through what was described as the mist, fine spiritual substance. Therefore our first concern has been to allow the generation of this substance within the scope of our own experience.
We are already here, so we don't need to get the dust of the ground together or have anyone do it. Somebody did it already. All that's been done, but there is the necessity for breathing the breath of life if the living soul is once more to be restored. I'm not speaking of personal, individual restoration. This relates to mankind, and our participation in this process is only meaningful because we are a part of mankind. It is something that is happening by reason of the creative cycle that is moving and comes within the range of the awareness of those who have generated sufficient spiritual substance, sufficient mist out of the earth of their own flesh bodies, to have this awareness, or to begin to have it.
The mind of course gets to questioning: "Well why should some people generate more than others? And why should some people come to this understanding therefore and others don't?" The individual human mind is not supposed to understand everything. Let it stay out of its usual self-active endeavors, because the only way that the substance will be generated, so that whatever understanding is necessary may come, is as the mind occupies its proper position, which is not that of God. So all these inquisitive questions can be flushed down the toilet, because what's going to happen is going to happen. How we will be included in that happening depends very largely on our own choice in the matter, and if we insist upon retaining a busy mind the happening may not be all that constructive in our experience.
This movement, this creative cycle, is moving relative to the conscious mind, which, as we have seen, is rather a thin layer. It is also moving relative to what is below that layer of consciousness, and there is a far vaster field there for it to move in. The majority of what is to be achieved by the movement of this creative cycle, spiritual movement, occurs below the level of the conscious mind. Again, the conscious mind, involved in its old habits, will be inclined to look over its shoulder so to speak, or down into the depths, to try to find out, "Well what's going on down there? Is anything happening down there?" What difference does it make to the conscious mind? What is occurring is occurring, and what the conscious mind thinks about it is not going to make much difference, is it? So why bother! Why not let what is happening happen?
Of course this creative movement is doing something in the depths, and occasionally, by reason of that, something pops up to the level of the conscious mind out of those depths. We might perhaps refer to that as a factor of earthly heredity, which puts in an appearance and we become consciously aware of it. Then there's something for the conscious mind to do, if it wants to do something. But that certainly is not to become subject to what it is that arose to the surface and began not only to involve the thinking processes but also the feeling processes. So there is something that the conscious mind can do: avoid becoming enmeshed in whatever it is that is occurring, refrain from becoming identified with it; just let it occur. If it was occurring deep down enough the conscious mind wouldn't know anything about it. It's only when it begins to come up into this twilight zone, close to the surface, that the conscious mind becomes aware of it. But fundamentally the same thing is required in either case: Let it alone; don't become involved with it. But people are inclined to; they get all involved with these emotional experiences and with their mental activity, and it carries them away into outer darkness once again. They sink down into the coma once more and become a part of the state of unconsciousness. To the extent that our living includes the right control of thought, feeling, speaking and acting, then there is the breathing of the breath of life.
In times past I have suggested that it is or may be helpful, particularly if one has breathing problems, to consider that the exhaling of the breath is the offering of a blessing. We are concerned to offer a blessing. Recently there has been a little elementary chanting done. Now you don't chant, very effectively at least, while you're breathing in! The blessing occurs because you are breathing out, and the accompanying sound, when it is fitting, enriches the blessing that is being breathed out. As has before been noted, people who have difficulty with their breathing usually think of it as difficulty with their breathing in. If they would stop being so concerned about breathing in and simply breathe out a blessing the inward breath would be more or less automatic. But people fight for breath, and it's a battle. Breathe out a blessing. One may deliberately do this. It's something that may be done on many occasions, certainly for instance in the attunement field. There is a blessing even in the very air we breathe out. The plants love it.
So we have an increasing consciousness that everything that finds expression and release through us carries a blessing. When it does, here is the experience of the living soul. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/prana-from-steps-to-mastership-uranda.html] Man was created to be a blessing. He has been a curse to himself and to everything else. Well the restoration is the restoration of man to be a blessing, and that blessing is available to the extent of the living soul experience. The living soul experience is dependent upon breathing the breath of life. Breathing is an essential pulsation if we are to live, and when it is the breath of life then every thought, every feeling, every word, every act, is a blessing, an outbreathing of a blessing. We don't need to stop blessing our environment when we breathe in. We don't think too much about breathing in and out when we are busy doing whatever it is we are doing. We don't have to stop doing what we're doing in order to breathe in; so the pulsation is there, but the blessing is continuous. We've seen something of this represented in our unified chanting—the sound never goes away, even though all of us are still breathing and from time to time have to take a breath in without sound.
To the extent, then, that we are participating in this awakened state, the state of reality, there is the experience of the oneness of the invisible and the visible, of God and man, and so the breath of life is breathed into the nostrils of mankind by reason of our breathing. As we noted before, it isn't some external God somewhere who is coming to offer this artificial resuscitation. It is a breathing from within the body of mankind. Are we in it? We can't help ourselves, can we? Well when we begin to breathe the breath of life the body of mankind begins to breathe the breath of life, and there is the initiation of the resurrection in a more specific sense. There are those who are awakening and taking responsibility for the awakening. The restoration is to consciousness, real consciousness; not the phony consciousness which human beings have had until now, but real, the awareness of what is real. What is real is present, so it is the awareness of what is present.
Part of that awareness relates to what is spiritually present, what is vibrationally present, what may be thus sensed so that we may touch in feeling what needs to be touched. This is only possible when the heart is pure. The heart which participates in the circulation of the bloodstream or the lifestream in the body is an essential aspect of the mechanism by which the bloodstream is purified. There are various ways by which the bloodstream is purified. One of them relates to the lungs: the breathing, in other words. But the blood must be purified; when it is purified there is a pure heart. When the lifestream is purified the heart is purified. The lifestream is purified by reason of its movement. If it becomes stagnant it gets filled with sludge and pretty soon it quits circulating. So there must be movement, there must be action. What's that? God in action on earth! Jehovah, isn't it?
Movement, action, purification, breathing, steady breathing, a natural pulsation—all this begins to work within the body of mankind, and on this basis the cycle of resurrection occurs. This is rather a different endeavor, if one could call it that, from those undertaken by human nature schemes in the world the way it is. They don't achieve anything in the end, whereas what is undertaken by the action of the spirit of God gets the job done, so that the coma may vanish by reason of the restoration to a state of consciousness of the real world which is already present, the new heaven and the new earth which have always been here but have been unknown to human consciousness in the coma state. So here is the restoration occurring, to the extent that we are willing to participate in the cycle.
The cycle in which we participate is not another cycle from what is happening in the whole body of mankind. It's the same one. It's all one. But we have a certain experience because of a certain level of consciousness restored, which may not be true of other people. The fact that it isn't true of other people is no reason for judgment. Obviously there is a proper field where it is dark. We have taken note of that fact. There is improper darkness and that passes away, but there are those who participate in allowing the proper darkness to be a reality in the experience of the body of mankind. In other words all people do not need to function at the conscious level. It would be an impossible expectation for all people to do this. It's not necessary. There are those who rightly function at the conscious level, and this perhaps may be seen as relating to what we have called the priesthood. But the priesthood is not something separate from the body of mankind. It is an essential part of the body of mankind, the body of mankind which is man in the image of God, one with God. Here is the restoration. Here is our field of creative responsibility.
