In this Class we have opened the theme of the Magic of Creation. We have noted the four forces and something of the cycles of outworking wherein each of the four forces is dominant in its turn. All four always work together insofar as we are concerned on earth but each is dominant in its turn; and if you try to make one dominant when the other ought to be, it will not work. Man defeats himself so often because he does not recognize the basic principles of the creative action. It is only as we carry it forward in its proper sequence, proper steps, that we can experience the true pattern of fulfilment. Today I would like to emphasize a point which I touched upon briefly, I believe, and that is that on the fifth day we have again the beginning of the cycle, and we see that on the fifth day the emphasis is upon water. Let us note:
“And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.”
There are several points to be noted here of particular importance to us at the moment, one of course, that on the fifth day we again have the dominance of the water cycle. But let us note what it is that is brought forth by the waters: the fish of the sea, that which is to function in the water itself; and the fowl, that which is to fly in the firmament above the earth, the firmament or the atmosphere. Now we remember that air symbolizes spirit, and the creature that was to move in the air of the spirit was brought forth out of the water. I suppose you are all aware of the fact that there is a definite difference between fish and fowl and what we classify in the animal kingdom, because while an animal will decay, a bird or a fish will evaporate, if they are left dead. The dead animal form will decay but a bird or a fish evaporates. Now what is it that is brought forth by water, or truth, that is supposed to be able to function in the air of the spirit? Birds are used Biblically as symbols of thought. There are the destructive birds and the constructive birds, symbolizing thought or the nature of thought. Thoughtis supposed to be able to reach into or fly in the air of the spirit; but it is brought forth out of the water, out of truth. We need to see that there are those things that function in truth, and you take them out of truth—that is, the basic pattern—and they cannot function; the fish will suffocate in the air. So we need to begin to realize that out of truth there are those things which are brought forth in the experience of our own lives which are supposed to function in one of these two elements: water and air; truth, as such, and the air of the spirit.
Then we note that the next step is air. We remember the establishing of the firmament, dividing the waters that are above and the waters that are below, etc. And on the sixth day, the Lord said, or God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth,” etc. The third step is earth, but the second step in the cycle is air. While these creatures, including the body of man itself, are brought forth on the sixth day out of the earth, what is the primary characteristic of the land animal or of man? The air he breathes. And it is said with respect to man, “And God breathed the breath of life into man's nostrils, and man became a living soul.” The breath we breathe, the necessity of breathing air—and it is the air in relationship to earth that begins to let the pattern take form. And then of course follows again the fourth step. But we begin to see that all these things work according to definite patterns, and the cycles repeat endlessly.
You will recall that while man was brought forth on the sixth day out of the earth, but particularly focalized in relationship to air, we have on the seventh day the pattern of rest. The seventh day would be in relationship to the earth factor itself, and the pattern of rest from the standpoint of the Divine activity, letting the cycle begin in relationship to its own true nature, the cycle of creation continued, and the movement out of the process of being created to the process of sharing the expression of life from the Creator. Now the day of rest—whatever day may be set aside as primary in this regard; there are those who feel that Friday is the day for rest; some, Saturday; and some, Sunday—in any case, the day of rest has been greatly misunderstood. Rest from what? Rest from all thy labors. Rest from all thy labors! That is not rest from the labor that is of God, or from the work, the action. It does not indicate cessation of movement, or cessation of living. God is not glorified by a cessation in living. “Rest from all thy labors.” The commandment there with respect to keeping a Sabbath day was given to a self-active and stiff-necked people. Human beings are, in their self-centered or fallen state, determined to function according to what they want. They insist on laboring according to their idea, for their own purposes; and this day of rest was emphasized in the commandments because of the necessity of man realizing that there comes a time when man must cease from all his labors, all his own self-active labors, and come into a state of oneness with God, which does not suggest that he will cease functioning. It does not suggest that he will become a nonentity and have no meaning.
People wait for Saturday night or for Monday morning, or something of the sort, so that they can plunge back into their labors. They did not learn the lesson of the day of rest, the seventh day, whether it be from the standpoint of a week or a pattern of life, the cycles of being. If we begin to reach maturity as men and women, we cease from all our labors and begin to rest in the Lord, which is to say oneness, which allows the activity of God to manifest through us. As far as we are concerned we utilize every day as a day of attunement with God and, while we allow the pattern of Sunday, because it is the ordinarily accepted pattern, to be a day for a cessation from the regular work, that is not in the true sense keeping the Sabbath. No human being has reached a point of keeping the Sabbath until he or she has matured into a Divine Man or Woman, so that that individual is no longer concerned with his own labors. “Thou shalt not labor”—in the pattern of his own, your own, cycle of function; your own purpose, self-centeredness. We are allowed six days, or six steps in the creative cycle, to allow us to move from the state of the fallen realm to the state of restoration—six steps.
Now we have noted that from the standpoint of the Class we have proceeded to about the third day. These six steps are allowed to all human beings. We, from the standpoint of the Class, have reached a point of about the third day, the point where we can let the waters be gathered together and let the dry land appear; let the manifestation of the substance we are to work with actually appear in the pattern of our lives and ministry so that, through our service in sharing God's creative cycles, we may cause the green grass of life to appear in those whom we serve.
The process of giving an attunement is to gather the waters into one place, let the dry land appear, let the grass be brought forth out of the earth. Until we begin to see the definite relationship between the creative cycles as outlined here, our own individual patterns of fulfilment in moving toward a Divine State of Restoration, and our ministry from the standpoint of serving, we cannot see clearly what we are doing. As we here as a Class permit the waters to be gathered together into one place and the dry land appear we can have the manifestation of new life in ourselves, and all the fruitful things of life, which are symbolized in the vegetable kingdom, in the animal kingdom, in the birds, in the fish, etc., can begin to have meaning in us—a fruitful life, results appearing, something being accomplished. But we cannot have the fifth day, or the completion of the third day even, we cannot have the sixth day of fulfilment, unless we let the first days have their true meaning.
Now with respect to the fourth day, let us remember that it was the clearing of the atmosphere around the earth that allowed the light of the sun and the stars to reach the surface of the earth so that that light could be seen. The sun and the moon and the stars were not created on the fourth day, as some have supposed. That makes it seem that the earth was the center of the cosmos, that it is the most important thing that there is anywhere, and that God, on the fourth day, decided that this earth itself needed some stars out there in the sky. That leaves us with a completely false concept. Actually what happened was that the earth's atmosphere cleared of the heavy cloud blanket, so that the light of the sun and the moon and the stars could reach the surface of the earth, and if man had been on earth at that time he could have begun to see these bodies in the sky; but they were there before that. But the light of them was brought in to the surface of the earth on that day, and the cycle began to move on the basis of the seasons: “And they shall be for days, and for years, and for seasons.” So the cycles of the seasons began to open up on the fourth day. Everything began to fall into its proper place. What is the right season? It is the season where there is the fitness of things, wisdom, the recognition of light, or God's love and creative power causing all things to work out in their season, according to the fitness of things. So when we let the cloudiness of the mind and heart be cleared away so that the light of the Son of Godcan reach us, we begin to reach a point where we can work in harmony with the days and the years, the seasons, so that all things may come in their proper pattern. The fitness of things—until we have that experience and let the fire have meaning in us and to us and through us, we cannot move to the fifth day, where we begin to let the reality of life appear for ourselves and for others. We are still back behind the day of the clearing until these cycles work out.
So our present purpose is to let the waters be gathered together into one place,
let the atmosphere clear, and let the dry land appear
so that the light of the sun can manifest on earth
in relationship to ourselves.
We remember that the only begotten Son of God is everywhere, at all times. Some people have imagined that the body of Jesus was the only begotten Son of God, and we see how they have by reason of that superstition, that false idea, nullified their own lives. There was a revelation of the only begotten Son of God, but we are to be sons and daughters of God, and Jesus was not, in His manifest expression in form, the only begotten Son of God, in the sense of a being. But He was revealing that which issues forth from God all the time. The only begotten Son of God—that is, that which issues forth from God all the time—is the spirit of God, the reality of His wisdom, His intelligence, His understanding, all that issues forth from God at all times. That was revealed through our Lord on earth. But He as a being was not the only begotten Son of God. He was the focalization for Deity in relationship to this earth, and He still is. So in that sense He could be called the only begotten Son of God. But the idea that He, as a separate being, was the only Son that God ever had is an utterly fantastic superstition. We have to begin to realize that the only begotten Son of God is just as much available to us in this moment as it was to Jesus, which is to say that that which is issuing forth from God in this moment is available to us. Well then, when we let a clearing in consciousness take place on the fourth day, the light, the fire of God's love, that which is of God, reaches us. The sun, the sun in the sky, is a symbol of the only begotten Son of God. Without that which comes from the sun we could not live. Just so, without that which is the only begotten Son of God we cannot truly live; we exist for a moment and die.
So now we are at the point where we can begin to let these things be a reality in us, if we will—if we will let the petty divisions be set aside, if we will reach a point where the water of truth blends the pattern of consciousness into one thing, so that we can let the dry land appear and the light of the sun reach the surface of our earth, coming from God through us into the world—not just coming down from the outside but coming through us, from the inside out. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/from-within-outwards.html] The light of the Son, the only begotten Son of God, begins to reach the surface of us not from the outside, but from the inside expressing outward. Once we begin to see that and let the reality of the spirit of God, that which is issuing forth from God, have manifestation through us because we are sharing in the reality of the only begotten Son of God—which is not in any sense limited to Jesus Christ, although the God Being who was manifest through that body was and is our LORD of Lords and KING of Kings, the focalization of God Beings for us—but the moment we let that which is issuing forth from God have manifestation through us we become a son or daughter of God, and so our relationship with God is established and we can begin to move into the reality of the fifth day, and finally to the sixth, which leads at last to the seventh, the place where we come to rest in oneness with God. Now the Master said, "My Father and I are one. We are one.” And He said, “Follow me.” He, the outer, was completely at rest in the inner Being, so that He was not laboring as a man; He was letting God do the works. “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”
Until we reach the point where we have followed Him through these recreative cycles
to the point where we let the Father do the works,
we have not fulfilled our initial mission on earth;
we are not ready to begin to truly serve.
Let us correlate this with the basic, fundamental principles that are revealed in relationship to the day of Pentecost. We see that the Four Forces were at work in their natural sequence, and after ten days, “They were all with one accord in one place. There came a sound as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared as if it were cloven tongues of fire sitting upon each of them.” Now let us go backwards, so that we see clearly the pattern of manifestation in relationship to what our LORD pointed out would be the manifestation of power. For He said, “And ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you.” Mankind today does not have that power. The churches do not have the power; they just talk about it, but it does not manifest. It began to manifest, but they violated the laws, the cycles, and threw it away. They allowed it to come to the point of the fourth day; but they violated the principles of the first four days and refused to let the fifth, sixth and seventh days manifest; so it was not the fulness of the coming of Pentecost. They only thought it was. So the fifth, sixth and seventh days did not manifest in relationship to the disciples; they did not let it manifest. They threw the power away, and the churches since that time simply have not had it. Now it is time for us to let that power manifest. How shall we do it? By following out the cycles of creation.
Let us note what they did do. The fourth of the four forces is fire. “There appeared as if it were cloven tongues of fire which sat upon each of them.” That is the fourth step. Let us back up. Something filled the whole house where they were sitting—the house, the physical aspect of being, or the earth. And then we go back of that: “And there came a sound as of a rushing mighty wind.” Wind, air. So we have fire, earth, and air. We are backing up now to find the starting point. “When they were all with one accord in one place”—"Let the waters be gathered together unto one place”—"there came a sound”; there is movement. Remember how it was in relationship to the beginning of creation: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters; and God said, Let there be light.” So we have water, air, earth, and fire. The same cycle was used exactly. Water—”with one accord in one place.” And the moving—”There came a sound as of”—what?—”a rushing mighty wind” (“And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”) “and it filled the whole house”—earth—“where they were sitting. And there appeared as if it were cloven tongues of fire sitting upon each of them.” The four forces at work, clearly portrayed in relationship to the day of Pentecost. And they came in their right sequence: water, air, earth, and fire. But the disciples did not let the cycle continue; they did not even let these fully manifest. They did not go to the fifth day, and then the sixth, and then the seventh, at which point they would have reached a state of oneness with God, which would have allowed them to carry on the work of our LORD on earth. The work of our LORD has not been carried out on earth since He left. The disciples let it get partway, to the fourth day, and then they spoiled it.
They spoiled it, and the work of the LORD has not been done by any of the churches, by any of the people of the churches. They have been playing children's games. The power of God has not been made manifest through any church, no matter what it was called. Whether it was Buddhist, or Mohammedan, or so-called Roman Catholic, or so-called Protestant, it makes no difference. No one of them on the face of the whole earth is letting the power of God manifest in any real sense—not in the sense that the LORD intended. Why? Because they have not stopped to see the reality of the creative cycles—the Magic of Creation. They have not recognized our relationship to those cycles. They have not even seen how Peter spoiled it. The power disappeared almost at once, and yet they still imagine that Peter was doing a wonderful thing. He spoiled it; he did not do a wonderful thing. He led those who followed him into patterns which violated the laws of God and the creative cycle. And the power was lost, and man still does not have it. He imagined that he had it, but he did not. What he had was not the real manifestation of power, the power of God at work on earth. And it does not come until the reality of the day of rest—that is, when man goes through the cycle of restoration.
This creative cycle, then, is something which must manifest through us. It is not something we can ignore and have the power. If we follow Peter of old, and his impulsive nonsense, and his sacrilegious defiance of God's laws and principles which the Master had clearly revealed to him, we will not have the power. There is only one waythat that power can manifest, and that is according to these laws and principles of being. And so we begin to give heed to them; we begin to realize that until we pass through the third day—and we are just in the third day here—and the fourth day, and the fifth day, and the sixth day, and come to the seventh day, we will not have the power. We will not be in the Garden of Eden. We will not be letting the things which God prepared, in the future, come into manifestation through us.
Man has wandered around in the wilderness, he has had all kinds of fantastic concepts, he has followed fanatics, he has been governed by prejudice and fear, and has failed to let the will of God be done on earth as it is in heaven. He has failed to let the Kingdom come. It is not here. They talk about a spiritual kingdom: “It is not supposed to be here; it is just a spiritual kingdom.” No, it is a Kingdom on earth. “Thy kingdom come” into form on earth. So until we realize these things and see what they did at the time of the day of Pentecost, why they failed, why the power was lost, we cannot go through the cycle successfully and let the power reappear. Now this opportunity is open to any man or woman anywhere—anywhere, at any time, if they will follow through in the cycle. But man has been trying to leap from the state of mere existence to the state of being a son or daughter of God. And since he could not do it while he lived, he did it when he died. It is just foolishness—plain, simple foolishness. We must begin to realize that unless we individually and collectively take these steps we are not going to have the manifestation of power. Unless we see this cycle working in relationship to what the disciples did do, letting it start—they spoiled it, they threw it away, but it did start—we cannot possibly have any real hope for doing better. But we should be able to do better than they did. If we do not, it is just too bad. Someone had better do better sooner or later, and if it is to be someone else, why are we here?
We have reached the point where we can let the waters be gathered together into one place; we can be with one accord in one place. We can yield to the spirit of God, let the firmament appear, to divide the waters from the waters. We can hear the sound as of a rushing mighty wind. We can let the water be in the sea and let the dry land appear, and it can fill the whole house where we are sitting, right here, just as well in this hour as any other. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2022/04/repose-peace-serenitybe-still-and-know.html] But I know you will probably postpone it a little longer. People always postpone it; they would not let it be today. But it could be now. We could let it reach the surface, we could let the dry land appear, we could let the light of the sun appear, and then we could move on into the fifth day, doing what has never been done by any groupof people anywhere since man fell. Others have reached the point of the fourth day, but no group of people since the fall has ever passed through the fourth day—not one in all history, on the face of the whole earth. And of individuals, our LORD, He showed the way through the Seven Days of the Creative Cycle, and we are called upon to follow Him. People imagine that they are following Him when they say, “I believe that Jesus died on the cross to save me from my sins.” That is sacrilege and blasphemy. They are not following Him. We do not follow Him unless we go through the seven-day cycle and finally come to rest in the Father, as He prayed: “That they may be one, as we are.” But no one knows that oneness until he reaches the seventh day—the seventh day in the cycle, where you come to rest in God and cease from all your labors, and you do not wake up a few hours later and plunge back into your own labors. Once you leave your labors behind it is forever.
And the days of the week have been here to remind man of this down through the millennia and man has ignored the plain, obvious truth. He has imagined that because he stopped working on the seventh day and either made a long face and would not let anyone play at all, or went out and had a game of golf or something, that he was keeping the Sabbath, or the day of rest. The day of rest has not been kept. You find that the Seventh-Day Adventists, for instance, really go overboard talking about keeping the seventh day, but they do not do it. They do not do it. It is not what day in the week you have for rest, if you do not reach the seventh day—and it has to be the seventh day; the sixth day will not work; the first day will not work—come to the seventh day in the cycle of creation, the seventh step, the point of restoration to oneness, the point where we begin to truly let the Garden of Eden appear again on earth. That is what the Master did, and He said, “Follow me.” And human beings have imagined that they were, by keeping some day of the week—Friday or Saturday or Sunday. From the standpoint of relaxation it is all right; we use it as a period for meditation in services, and so on. But you cannot find in a day of the week the day of rest; for the day of rest comes as a cycle, a step in the creative cycle. Until we begin to actually see this, and know it, we will keep on deluding ourselves.
Whether it takes six months or six years to get through the first six days for any individual, he will come to his day of rest when he lets himself be restored to oneness, when he reaches the point where he ceases from all of his labors and lets the Father do the works from then on. And there will be no return to doing your works on Monday morning. The cycle was not completed by the disciples; they spoiled it; they did not let it appear. Man has thrown it away time after time down through the ages, and he is doing it still. Of all the millions who think they are following our LORD, unless they are moving through that cycle to the day of rest from self-activity they are not following Him, no matter what they think, or what church they belong to, or anything else. The smug self-righteousness which bars the way of man if he would really move forward! Until we come to the day of rest—rest from all our labors, rest from all self-activity—and from that day on let the LORD do the works, we have not kept the Sabbath. A day in the week can be used as a symbol of the Sabbath, but a day of the week is not the Sabbath. The commandment is not talking about the days of the week. “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, or any of thy family.” No. The six days of creation, which are not twenty-four-hour days for us, fortunately—if you had to do it in six twenty-four-hour days you would not have a chance—but the six days of creation must work out through you if you are to come to your day of rest, rest in the Lord, oneness, letting the Father do the works from that moment onward.
We have reached the third day in six months. In six months we have reached the third day. But you have not yet let the waters be gathered together into one place. You have not yet let the dry land appear. You have not yet let the sun appear at the surface of your earth, and that is just the fourth day. Unless we go on through the days of creation, individually and collectively, we will not come to the day of rest; and unless we come to the day of resting in the Father we will not have the power. The power started to appear so that they could have their fifth day and their sixth day and come to the seventh day, but would they let it come? No. Impulsive Peter, and all the others that followed him, went out and started dissipating it, violating every law of God and throwing away the rich blessings which would have changed the world nineteen centuries ago. It was not until after that—after all of this waste, after they had failed to let God's will be done on earth as it was in heaven—that the Book of Revelation was written. The cycle was opened so that man would have another chance, and we are living in the days of that chance.
That is why I am here.
That is why you are here.
One more chance.
If man does not take this one he will destroy himself—not because God so ordained it, but there is no other way of reaching man. All of the religious concepts in the world mean nothing from the standpoint of the coming of the Kingdom or the fulfilment of the will of God: the outworking of the seven days of creation in man that we might come to the Sabbath. We cannot have a Sabbath just by resting on Saturday, or Sunday; that is not the Sabbath. The Sabbath is that step in the creative cycles where you come to rest in God, where you have finished all of your labors and from thenceforward you let the Father do the works.
So the question is, What will we do about it? What will you do about it? How important is it? Is something else more important than going through this creative cycle and reaching the Seventh Day, the Sabbath, where we come to rest with one accord in one place? I could not begin to describe to you the joy and the glory and the wonder of that privilege of coming to the Sabbath, the real day of rest, the things of God restored on earth, and you restored to the state of Divine Men and Women. But you will never get there unless you take the path that leads through those six days of creation, unless you let the creative magic have meaning in you. Otherwise you will go the way of all the millions that have existed on the face of the earth for a moment and died. What shall it be? The way of God or the way of man? The way of life or the way of death? The way of failure or the way of victory? Only as we go through the cycles and come at last to the Sabbath, which is symbolized by the days of the week, can we know what it is to be what God created us to be.
We have been blessed with a beautiful rain; it still continues a little. I'm sure you understand what is meant when the statement is made that God is nowhere. God pertains to the undimensional realm. Perhaps using those words seems like a contradiction. If it has no dimension how can it be a realm? God is nowhere dimensionally speaking. Through His spirit He is now here dimensionally speaking. As a means of portraying something of this the point which has position but no magnitude has been used. God has no dimensional magnitude but He has position. That position may be seen in terms of omnipresence. No matter where you may go dimensionally speaking, God is there and yet He is still nowhere; but through His spirit now here. Out of this point which can be found anywhere springs all that is contained in the dimensional world or universe. We have a certain awareness of seven‑dimensional being, all of these dimensions, whatever they are, generated out of the point. The point is the position in the dimensional state which merges into the undimensional state. Out of God is generated the dimensional world.
We can see this in a certain way by utilizing the process which emerges out of the point, the point which has position but no magnitude. Generated out of that point can be a series of points. A series of points produce a line which has length but no breadth. Out of the line may be generated a series of lines which produces a figure which has length and breadth. You can take a plane which has length and breadth and generate out of the plane another figure which is a solid. It has length and breadth and depth. Out of the solid you can generate another figure which has length and breadth and depth but another dimension. It begins to become a little obscure to the human mind at this point but it is describable perhaps as a persistent solid. It stays there; it is not just a momentary figure. One might say that time comes into the picture. There is another dimension in this sense. The reason why the figure persists is by reason of another dimension. It is because of life. In other words we have a three‑dimensional figure which persists and is alive. We recognize that the universe is alive, the earth itself is alive. It is part of a living organism. We have physical bodies which persist for a while and reveal the fact of life. So life comes into the picture as a further dimension. A three‑dimensional figure which persists in time and is alive is capable of reproduction, of bringing forth. This is true of ourselves with our three‑dimensional bodies which persist for a while and are alive and capable of reproduction in various ways. When all this is put together we come back to the point again because it allows the experience of identity. I—One.
So there is the dimensional universe. Incidentally there were seven steps, you may have noted, out of the point back to the point—an octave. This dimensional world—either of our own external dimensional being or in the collective sense insofar as mankind is concerned, or on the larger scale moving out into the universe—has two aspects. We speak of them as heaven and earth. The substance of the heaven we have called pneumaplasm. Physical substance is the substance of the earth. It is by reason of pneumaplasm that the earth, physical substance, has meaning. We might see this in terms of vowels and consonants. You have heard of the Word, the creative Word which is made flesh. Perhaps utilizing the English language as a basis of approach then vowels would represent the spirit which is discernable by reason of pneumaplasm, and the consonants would represent form. Vowels without consonants are not very informative. Consonants without vowels, in the English language at least, are not very comprehensible; they need to get together. The word that has been perhaps pronounced Jehovah is properly a word of vowels and it can be seen as including the whole range or spectrum of vowels. Je-ho-vah. [Martin chanted] However, spirit has little meaning dimensionally speaking unless there is form. The consonants are necessary to intelligible language, the consonants and the vowels put together.
Pneumaplasm and physical substance are united and the universe consequently has meaning. Human beings have lost a consciousness of that meaning in relationship to themselves because they have tended to exclude the vowels from their experience, and human experience tends to become very brittle in consequence. We recognize that pneumaplasm provides the facility by which there may be creative action springing forth from God. The spirit of God emerges through the pneumaplasmic substance and has an effect on physical substance. We can see this from the standpoint of our own physical flesh. Spirit activates the flesh, but not directly. It is activated by reason of pneumaplasm, because pneumaplasm is sensitive to spirit and physical substance is sensitive to pneumaplasm. Now of course the intensity of the pneumaplasmic substance in its vibrational nature will determine the quality of life that is possible by reason of the physical substance. The intensity is not very great insofar as what we call the mineral kingdom is concerned, but this is not to say then that the mineral kingdom is not alive. It is a level of life expression which is very much less intense than the level of life expression in human beings, for instance. It also may be seen that because of its less intensity it relates to longer periods of time. The changes that occur in what is thought of as inanimate substance are relatively slow because there is not so much intensity of pneumaplasm involved. But as there is movement up the scale the intensity increases. Man, who should be the crowning creation, has a facility which allows for the full range of vibratory intensity in pneumaplasmic substance. Consequently here is the facility made in the image and likeness of God. The whole range of vibratory substance is available for use in the creation which was originally called man. This included both the heaven and the earth of man, the Triune heaven and the Triune earth. This whole range of vibratory expression is capable of accommodating God through His spirit in expression on earth because the whole range is on earth. The physical level is interpenetrated by all the other vibratory levels. So God may walk on earth by reason of His spirit conveyed through pneumaplasm into the various avenues of earthly expression.
Now, the power by which creative achievement is made possible is based in the fact of the heavenly substance of pneumaplasm. Physical substance properly—in its form of manifestation and in the expression which appears through it—is a reflection of the spirit by reason of the pneumaplasm. You may say that earth is a reflection of heaven, rightly. If all these things are working as they should then obviously heaven and earth are indeed one, and the earth is found to be a heavenly place. We have some awareness as to why this is not so at the present time and we have some awareness of the way by which the true state may be restored. The restoration comes by reason of the working of spirit through pneumaplasm. It does not come merely because of some sort of physical manipulation—either a physical manipulation of inert substance or the physical manipulation of human flesh, human beings. It comes on the basis of the creative power of spirit working through pneumaplasm.
Now, in the human nature world this has been very largely forgotten except as there has been some realization of the value of what is called propaganda. Human beings can be caused to do different things on the basis of psychological factors, certain pressures being brought to bear in different ways, so that it is not a direct physical compelling but the physical action appears because of something psychologically established. And people behave in ridiculous ways on the basis of advertising, for instance, and people will do amazingly ridiculous things in order to get money. If you have ever looked at some of these programs that they have on TV, I am sure you will agree—the objective being to obtain money. The idea of money, of course, has appeal because it is the substance that man has utilized as a substitute for pneumaplasm. Having lost his heaven then he had to create another of his own making. His original heaven, of course, was of God's creating. But having lost the divine creation, he gets busy and tries to produce his own creation and in order to manipulate his environment the use of money has been developed for this purpose. As I have mentioned before, there is nothing wrong with money; in fact, money as a medium of exchange was a useful part of the original divine state. But money is now considered to be power. If one has sufficient money one can do anything, at least this is the idea; and within certain limitations this has proven out to be pretty true for human beings because everybody agrees that money is so valuable. These little bits of paper that we use are not intrinsically worth anything very much but everybody has agreed that the money is worth whatever particular value it is given, according to the rate of inflation and so on at the time. And it is entirely a matter of faith, isn't it? Human beings complain that they don't have enough faith—“Give us more faith”—but they have a tremendous amount of faith in money, for instance. There is no lack of faith but the faith has been applied in a manner that is not very constructive. Let us let the faith we have be used constructively and we find we have enough. So money has been used as a substitute for pneumaplasm.
Now obviously, if you, functioning as servers, are to handle your affairs the way they should be handled, you will have to handle money. The handling of money correlates with the expression of spirit through pneumaplasm because money, instead of being a substitute for pneumaplasm, may be anaspect of the physical evidence of pneumaplasm—not the only evidence, by any manner of means, but one that is very important in the consciousness of most people. There is a continuous scramble for money and it seems like a scramble because most people don't have very much pneumaplasm. So the evidence of pneumaplasm seems to be rather scarce in some ways. If money is not scarce, at least continually it is devaluating so you have to have more and more of it to keep your head above water. So this is another realm that we need to look at, isn't it? Money. I have approached it in this way so that we don't spring right into the middle of a consideration of money without any preparation of consciousness, so to speak, because we need to look at it in a little different way to what it is looked at insofar as most people are concerned. Money is kind of a tender subject with most people, because it has become so important to human beings, and is not really seen for what it is.
Money and pneumaplasm properly are very closely related. If insofar as your own experience is concerned the spiritual substance in you is clear and ample, well there will be ample money to allow for whatever is to be achieved by reason of the creative expression that is emerging through the pneumaplasm. Now, it is not just a matter of money. That is one aspect of substance that will reflect what is occurring in pneumaplasm, but it includes all substance and it may seem sometimes that there is very little money and yet a tremendous amount is achieved by reason of other types of substance. So we are not, or should not be, hung up with respect to money. It is an aspect of substance that moves naturally with the spiritual expression appearing by reason of pneumaplasm, just as all other types of substance move in the same way, because pneumaplasm is the realm of control, the heaven insofar as the earth is concerned, and whatever needs to happen on earth happens by reason of what is occurring with respect to the realm of pnemaplasm. Now this is even true from the standpoint of the human nature state.
The realm of pneumaplasm in human experience has been very limited and very distorted and what has occurred in this thin layer of distorted pneumaplasm has caused whatever has happened in the physical world. If the pneumaplasmic realm of human experience is distorted, colored, disturbed, then these distortions, colors, and disturbances will be reflected in the physical world, and they have been. Of course there has been little realization as to what it was that was happening, because there was no interest, or very little interest or concern, on the part of human beings to let the state of their expression be cleaned up so that the pneumaplasm might be cleaned up and something else therefore reflected. Everybody has tended to have their eyes fastened upon the physical world and saw it apparently getting out of control in various ways, and trying to therefore manipulate in whatever manner was seemingly possible to keep things from altogether flying apart. Everybody has been busy doing this; they have had no time to consider anything else. This is the cry, isn't it, that goes out from people when it is suggested that it might be helpful to take into account the reality of spiritual things. “Oh well, that may be all right but I just don't have time. I'm so busy with all my affairs. I'm so busy mucking up the pneumaplasm that I do not have time to let it clarify and increase!” Letting it clarify and increase is what produces the clarified and rich state in the earthly sense. It might be interesting to read this passage from what is called the Sermon on the Mount:
“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”—little faith in the right direction. “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
The Master was evidently speaking to people with very little spiritual perception, very little understanding. He spoke very simply. He was speaking to children. There is more depth to His words that we can see, but what was heard by those who were present with Him was heard at a very childish level. Unfortunately it has tended to remain that way subsequently, when His words have been read and considered by people down through succeeding generations. He was speaking of physical things. This would include money, wouldn't it, because raiment costs money, and food costs money.
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness”—be concerned about letting the pneumaplasmic substance be cleared and increasingly generated so that there may be the right expression of life, and all these physical things will take care of themselves. As I believe you heard in a tape this morning, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The treasure needs to be in heaven, in this seemingly impractical realm from the earthly standpoint. And note is made here “(For after all these things”—of an earthly nature—"do the Gentiles seek)”. Who are the Gentiles? The Gentiles are those who are subject to earthly heredity. I suppose if you use the duality here, the Jews and the Gentiles, the Jews would be those who are subject to heavenly heredity. If we see that, then it is not a matter of accepting Judaism to become a Jew. There are those Jews who call themselves Jews but are not, but are “the synagogue of Satan,” as it was put. So if the word “Jew” is used in the spiritual sense, it would indicate those who are revealing the reality of heavenly heredity. The Gentiles are those who are revealing the unreality of earthly heredity. So the concern obviously here is to emerge out of that state of earthly heredity, to not do as the Gentiles do, but to "seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness"; that is, be concerned with the heaven, with the realm of pneumaplasm, with the clarification of the distortions in pneumaplasm and the generation of finer substance, that there may be true cause present in one's living. And when there is, the pneumaplasm becomes the medium of control in the earth, the means by which the dominion of God is reestablished, the means by which the government of God may operate on earth.
Obviously this does not require some special sort of political system invented by human beings. The control emerges in one sense invisibly. In its emergence most people do not see what is happening. We may be very thankful that this is so, because the moment people begin to see what is happening they object. As long as they don't know what is going on they'll go along with it. But there must be those who know what is going on, if there is to be something going on, and so we have a responsibility in this regard, with many others, to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. We have a certain understanding of what that means. If our understanding is accurate it is because we have been doing it, not because we have merely been theorizing about it. And with that expression of doing there is the initial cause on earth, functioning from the standpoint of the spirit through pneumaplasm. Whatever needs to be done on earth, whatever mountains need to be moved, it can all be achieved on this basis and it requires no sweat of the face. It is the human nature approach, on the basis of earthly heredity, that involves a great deal of blood, sweat and tears.
And so we are approaching what we do, as angels, on the basis of the facilities that were originally created for this purpose. And the initial facility is the substance of heaven. As our attitudes are clear, as our consciousness reflects the angelic consciousness and we move naturally in the true tone of life, then what we do will be done by reason of our angelic spirit through pneumaplasm, and this will reflect itself in our environment, in the physical sense, the earthly sense. And one of the areas of reflection relates to money. So we approach money from above rather than from below. It isn't the money that is so important; it's the fact that there is some substance at the earthly level reflecting what is occurring spiritually speaking at the heavenly level. Now, in human consciousness, as I say, money is a very delicate subject, just as sex is too, or death for that matter. Well we need to look at these things, but from the angelic standpoint, not from the standpoint of human beings who are subject to money. We will find that there is ample money when our expression is spiritual expression by reason of what is occurring at the pneumaplasmic level. Then everything will move as it should. This requires participation in a proper configuration of all those concerned in the creative cycles. These things are not just individual matters. Now, money has tended to be a very individual thing and a person will say, “Well it's my money!” In theory we know that this is not so. “The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.” A very nice sentiment, but insofar as money is concerned there tends to be very often a little hangup.
One of the major hangups in days gone by was the matter of a tithe. Of course nowadays this is hardly considered at all, but “Ten percent is the Lord's; the rest is mine!” The instruction was given to bring all the tithes into the storehouse—ten percent at the moment (we can look at it this way), ten percent of the world's wealth that we are responsible for bringing into the storehouse. That would be quite a bit, wouldn't it? That would be enough insofar as that aspect of substance is concerned for achieving what needs to be achieved. It isn't a matter of saying, “Well I've got to give ten percent out of my income.” It's a matter of seeing with the overall view which is natural to those who are a part of the facility by which the tithe is brought into the storehouse. We do not have anything that is our own. But we also recognize that the world has a lot that does not belong to it, obviously so; but from our present standpoint a tithe of that is what is required to complete the task which we are charged with. And one way or another we bring the tithes into the storehouse. This does not mean to say that we go out into the world grabbing hold of money here and there and saying, “Well this belongs to the Lord, and that belongs to the Lord.” There is no need to when we see how it works with respect to pneumaplasm. When we are clear in the heavenly sense, amongst other things, our attitudes and viewpoints will be right with respect to money, they will be right with respect to sex; they will be right with respect to every area of function if as individuals we have brought ourselves as part of the tithe into the storehouse. We can bring along ten percent of the population too, but ten percent apparently is not necessary to get the job done—144,000 would do.
But here we begin to have an overview from the standpoint of the angel, who is quite capable of handling money and everything else when allowed to do so. There are all sorts of peculiar ideas that people have, and they are not clear right here on Sunrise Ranch yet. Here, and in various other places, groups in the field—they function in different ways, different groups—but here it works so that the various Unit members receive a certain amount of cash to take care of their own personal needs. As I say, this is the way it works in some other groups as well. So the thought appears that “What cash I receive is mine.” The food, the living quarters, the swimming pool, all the other things that are available on Sunrise Ranch, are ours. Well, that's nice. “We can share all this amongst ourselves. But the money is mine; it's mine to do with as I see fit.” That is really a holdout, isn't it?—because there isn't any division, there isn't any distinction in actual fact. We have responsibility as angels for handling everything, everything. Now, sometimes this is forgotten too with respect to our facilities and with respect to tools, for instance. They may be left all over the place—no sense of responsibility on the part of someone. Of course it may be done inadvertently but somewhere along the way the individual should remember.
So there are all sorts of divisions in people's consciousness with respect to money because there is still the idea that “a certain amount of money is mine.” The only amount of money that is one's own is the amount that may be rightly used under one's own direct control, because we all have areas where we utilize money and other things under our own personal control, in a direct sense. Obviously, in a rather large operation as it has become here on Sunrise Ranch, each individual cannot directly be responsible for the utilization of money in the overall sense. It has to be somehow brought to focus so that it can be handled efficaciously. But in our living, constantly, we are utilizing things in a direct personal way. We utilize a spoon and fork to eat, just that particular one at the time—a particular plate, particular things we utilize all the time. Now, when we eat a meal we don't look at the plate and say, “Well this isn't my plate. Where's my plate?” We take the plate that is there and use it; it's a good plate. We don't need a special plate. Well, if taken to a larger field, a person may say, “Well I must have my car, my special car.” Well we use cars certainly, and it may be that it is convenient and right that a person should have a particular car. It works better that way because of the hardness of human hearts. In other words if there is a general car and everybody is driving it, nobody takes any care of it. This is an evidence of failure, evidence of continuing earthly heredity in expression, isn't it, because whatever it is that one does directly, it could be said, I suppose, well that is one's own for the moment. This glass of water is mine! [Martin held up a glass of water.] Now if somebody happened to be coughing down there I might hand it over, but it is particularly mine, isn't it? I'm very rich in this moment; I have a glass of water. None of you have a glass of water. We get so that these things are completely flexible. Uranda was talking about something of this nature in the tape before. So we don't really need to pin things down. It may be wise to do it a little bit still because of the hardness of human hearts. Things get spoiled so easily that we have to maintain some sort of protection around things, very often because of the lack of a sense of sacredness in human hearts. Well we see money as being sacred, sacred to us because it is for the use of the Lord, and as angels we have responsibility for using it rightly in His name, in whatever way.
So we may begin to have a freer outlook with respect to money. We may not be so concerned about it, because we know very well that if we behave the way we should as angels there is no problem. If there is the generation of pneumaplasm there is the reflection of money as needful, money and other things. Whatever is needful, all these things shall be added unto you, everything that is required. The Master was speaking to people who—many of whom were very poor in the earthly sense, no doubt—did not know where their next meal was coming from or where to get any more clothes, or any of these things, but He is speaking to everyone else as well. But He put it that way because of the level of consciousness of those who were listening to His words at the time. We need to be primarily concerned with this matter of a clear attitude in all these fields, so that we may begin to make right use of things and thereby generate more spiritual substance. And amongst other things, the spiritual substance is the substance of consciousness, so it gives us a wider vision, a greater understanding. It is through our living that this keeps generating and increasing and expanding. We begin to be aware that as we are faithful and true as angels of the Lord on earth that there is nothing lacking insofar as our living is concerned, because our living is for Him on earth. And He is not niggardly. We squeeze ourselves sometimes into little corners in earthly heredity; but as angels we know the truth, we express the truth, and we are free.
Now I have just touched upon the matter of money, this delicate subject, from the angelic standpoint, hoping, trusting, that I could do so, because it is from an entirely different viewpoint to the usual consideration of money and so we could approach it as a totally new subject. We don't know anything about it, just as sex is a totally new subject. You don't know anything about it! No matter how experienced a person may be in the financial world or in the sex world, in earthly heredity it is almost a blank; that is, the experience of the heavenly state is just about a blank. We need to know how to handle money because this is important in the human world, and we are handling people who are in the human world. We need to be wise as serpents—a bit wiser than most—and harmless as doves. We do whatever it is that is required with understanding, intelligent understanding and effectiveness, because all our expression springs from spirit through pneumaplasm into the world.
Our basic theme is the magic of creation, the magic of the creative life. We are beginning to review something of the basic principles by which God's creative work is carried forward, so that we may understand more clearly how we can share in that creative activity. We began yesterday to note something of the working of the Four Forces—water, air, earth and fire. These words, or names, are of course symbolical of something. They are names of something with which we are familiar. Water we drink every day—or at least most of us; we all should. And we all breathe air or we could not be sitting up here. And the earth is important—the earth of our own bodies, and the earth from which the vegetation grows, the earth upon which we live. And then the fire—the creative fire, or the flaming fire of God's love, symbolized by the fire of the sun, or of the suns which we see.
It is very intriguing, interesting and instructive to note the meaningfulness of these four terms in the symbolical sense. The nature of truth is revealed by the nature of water, the symbol of truth. It evaporates and it is gone. We have a lovely rain and then, if it is too long before the next rain comes, the earth becomes dry, the vegetation parched and wilted, and we lose the effectiveness of our crops. That is why we have the sprinkler system running. We had a little rain recently but it only moistened the top surface of the soil. If that water is going to be truly effective it has to penetrate deeply. And this is true with respect to truth and you. If the water of truth gets on the surface only and doesn't penetrate deeply into mind and heart, we do not have that which will withstand the fire. The fire is important; without the fire we would freeze and life would be impossible. But with the right balance of fire and water we begin to have the conditions essential to life. Just as water becomes stagnant when it is confined, so does truth. As water evaporates, so can truth. We have to let it be a flowing fountain within us and let it penetrate deeply and have meaning to the depths of our own beings if the fire of love is not going to produce some abnormal condition within us.
And then we note the air, the symbol of the spirit. You cannot see air; you can feel it however. You cannot see the spirit but you can feel it working within you. We recognize, in relationship to spirit, that there are many evil spirits, in old-time terminology sometimes called devils or demons. But these evil spirits are not entities, just as the devil is not an entity, not a creature with horns and a forked tail, carrying a pitchfork, determined to send you to hell if possible. Man has created his own devil. There is the devil of the mass consciousness of man, the devil of the individual's own self-active mind, which when it becomes the instrument of God's spirit is no longer a devil but becomes the guardian angel which guards the way into the subconscious mind, so that only those things which are true and real, beautiful, creative, can enter into the subconscious realm of our beings. The air of the spirit. Sometimes the wind comes, the air is in motion, and it becomes destructive. If the human being distorts the pattern of the working of the spirit within himself it becomes destructive. There is no such thing as an evil spirit of and by itself, as a segregated state. In order to have an evil spirit human beings must take the spirit of God and give it an evil form, distort it, spoil it. But all spirit is of God, without any exception.
If man uses the spirit of life, for instance in his own body, to take the spirit of love for instance, and cause it to work through himself in a distorted fashion under the control of his self-centered mind, he can turn it into something ugly, something destructive. The spirit of hate is a distortion of the spirit of love. Then there is the spirit of envy, the spirit of greed, the spirit of jealousy. The spirit of jealousy is one of the most devastating spirits, and in some ways the spirits of hate and jealousy are, almost without exception—I think I could say without exception—present when the cells in the body go wild in the production of what we call cancer. These evil spirits, which human beings themselves produce, are very destructive of the individual who produces them. Sometimes a person feels justified in hating another, and he destroys himself. Hate, fear, envy, jealousy, all disrupt the normal function of the endocrine system, begin to produce adverse situations within the individual, spoil the potentiality of his own life. Jealousy is the cancer of the heart, or the emotional realm. It is just as much cancer in the emotional realm as what we call cancer in relationship to the physical, and if allowed to develop without being restrained or cleared out it will eventually strangle the individual's life and destroy the person who indulges in it. Jealousy is one of the most devastating of all the evil spirits, one of the most horrible. It causes the individual to do such unreasonable things, when he becomes subject to this evil spirit.
So there are many evil spirits which man has made, not in the sense that he can make spirits, but he has taken spirit from God and forced it into an evil pattern of his own making, distorting, spoiling, destroying. Now we are considering the magic of creative activity, the magic of sharing in God's creative work. If we would be creative we must of necessity eliminate from the patterns of our function those things which are destructive. Any destructive spirit has no part or place in the equipment of the individual who would truly share God's creative work. And so we see how beautifully air symbolizes, by representation, the reality of spirit. And then the earth is a little more easy to see—the symbolism here. You know something of the physical substance of your own body, and you more or less naturally correlate all physical substance with the basic substance of the earth itself.
And then the fire. We all know that love is a fire. The nature of the fire that burns in the sun, for instance, is something that has been of great interest to human beings. Generally speaking, the concept is that it is a nuclear fission process, atomic explosion or atomic burning. I do not want to argue the point this morning, but from the standpoint of God's creative processes we do not need to worry about the sun going out, even a few million years from now. But we do find that planetary systems become suns. Now that is the reverse of what human beings imagine. They think that planetary systems are produced by reason of the explosion of suns and the going out of the fire. We are inclined to believe just the opposite. I do not bring that in particularly to emphasize the point of the popular concept but to emphasize the reality of fire. How beautifully love is symbolized by a fire.
If the fire of love burns in your heart it is something that is constant; it isn't just a flickering thing that is turned on and off. One may have a fluctuating pattern of human affection. One can feel affectionate toward some individual one moment and hateful the next. But that is not love, and we must not confuse the mere affections with love itself. The manifestation of the affections as they appear through human beings is a limitation, or a distortion, in the field of love—perhaps sometimes touching into love, but it is what human beings attempt to produce as a substitute for love. And substitutes for love are of no more value than would be a substitute for fire. You need fire to help prepare food, keep you warm. That fire must manifest in some form—the generation of heat. We may have an electric range for our cooking, but it is still the principle of fire.
So, here in these four words with which everyone is familiar, we begin to see the real significance—the significance that is contained in what we might properly classify as the allegorical story of creation. When I call it allegorical I do not mean to say that the processes of creation were not more or less as outlined. But consider the fact that the happenings of one day, in a very small city, or a comparatively small city, occupy a large newspaper—pages and pages of happenings, and not all of them get in the newspaper. One day's newspaper, giving something of world news, something of national news, and something of local news, and we have pages and pages—huge newspapers. The news story—and it is a news story—of the creation of the world, with all of its incidents, all of its outworkings, is portrayed for us here on how many small pages? One chapter, thirty-one verses, tells the story.
Now in the second chapter, we have something about the creation of man, the crowning creation; but everything—and most of this page is taken up by footnotes, which are not of any value as far as I am concerned—but here, just a few words in the middle of this page, just the top half of this page, the top third of this page, a few words here, and you have the record of the story of creation, utterly incomplete insofar as detail is concerned: a simple revelation of basic principle that was utilized in relationship to that creative process. We cannot properly call it, in any true sense, the story of creation unless we modify and say "as contained in the Book of Genesis," because it is little more than a headline, a few subdivisions, but the story isn't there. An outline of basic principle—and that's all we really need. The story of creation, no matter how interesting it might be in an historical sense, would be of very little real meaning to us. But the thing that does have meaning to us is here, the outline of the creative process on the basis of law and principle. That we can use today just as surely as it could be used at any time in the past. So we study this, calling it more or less an allegorical story, because the incompleteness of it tends to produce wrong concepts, wrong beliefs, in the minds of human beings. But once we begin to see it for what it is and realize that all of the books in that set of encyclopedia volumes over there would not contain, could not contain, the whole story of creation, once we realize that you could not tell the whole story—if you knew all about it and wrote thousands of books it still would not tell the whole story. So here we do not have anything like the whole story. We have a revelation of principle and that is important to us today.
We noted yesterday in our meditation that we had reached a point in the outworking cycles where we were in the first phase of the third day, or the third cycle of creation, insofar as this Class pattern is concerned. There is the necessity of gathering the waters into one place. We started out with water, the water of truth. We have considered the air of the spirit. But considerations of truth and spirit have been our primary occupation. In relationship to truth we have looked at the design factors and the control factors for the body, but the physical substance of the earth has not yet really appeared. We have these bodies with which we work, with which we identify ourselves, but they are not the true appearance, the true manifestation of that which God designed us to be. These bodies are limited. Nevertheless we must remember that the body is the Temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in us. There is one of the key points to be remembered always in relationship to our service to humanity, our function from the standpoint of attunements. The physical body is the Temple of God, and the spirit of God dwells in us and dwells in all who live. As long as that spirit is not driven out completely the individual has life; but as soon as the spirit is driven out of the body, the body is dead and is ready to be buried. We need, then, to realize that the body is the Temple of God—the Temple of the Living God, not the dying God. The body is the Temple of the Living God, and the spirit of God dwells in us.
When we are working from the standpoint of attunements and ministry we are working on the basis of those two fundamental facts. The reason for attunements is that the body is the Temple of the Living God. Just from the standpoint of the human being as such, separate from God, what good would healing be? Very little gain, if any. Most people tend to enjoy their miseries, and a great many people deliberately bring illness upon themselves to gain attention or, having developed some illness, they hold it in order to be babied or so that they can be the center of attention or something—all kinds of ridiculous patterns. But the body is the Temple of God, and the spirit of God dwelleth in you. So on that basis we make our approach to the reality of attunements. And if we are going to give an attunement we must be functioning on the basis of Heavenly Magic, the magic of creative processes.
That same pattern holds true with you as a Class. You are here to be members of one body, and this body needs to have a new appearance. I am not thinking of it so much as seeing to it that all the women become beautiful according to their own concepts of beauty, or that the men become handsome according to their own concepts of what it is to be handsome, but that we have a new appearance of the earth. For in the third step of the creative process, which begins to let us have a relationship with the Fire, the Fire of God's Love, we must let the water be divided into one place and let the dry land appear—not just mud. It may be muddy at first; as it first begins to appear it is muddy. And then someone sees the muddy surface of the earth and says, "But this is not what it should be. I expected to find dry land and here it is all muddy. I don't like it." At first it is muddy; we cannot expect it to be anything else. But the dry land must appear, and that means the definite formation or manifestation, appearance, of you as a new person. We remember the creative Word that is given in the concluding portion of the Book of Magic, “Behold, I create all things new.”
The pattern of degeneration is not adequate. The ill conditions that exist are not satisfactory for the new state of being. There is the necessity of creating all things new. If that creation is going to have any meaning to us it is vitally important that we begin to have a consciousness of personal relationship with the magic of creation. And following out this step, we come to the point where it is not enough just to talk about it, just to learn some new principles with respect to the water of truth, not enough just to get some new ideas about the air of the spirit. We come to the point where the waters must be gathered together unto one place so that the dry land may begin to appear. Unless you are a fish—poor fish—you cannot live in the water all the time. You need some dry land if you are going to live. You stay too long in the water and you become fish food, and then you are a fish. It is the truth! It is all right to have water; it is very important; but if you are going to live in the true sense—not just existing in a dying condition—if you are going to live, there must be the appearance of the dry land. The dry land must appear. And then, in this third cycle, something begins to appear on the dry land.
Let us note: “Let the earth”—the earth that has appeared out of the water. It must emerge, and that is the only way it will emerge for you, is out of the water. If you insist on having no truth, you won't have any real earth. “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.” That is the creative word of God's command in relationship to you. Are you going to let the waters be gathered together into one place so that the dry land can appear? How about it? This is the reason why human beings have been perishing. They were willing to let the water inside themselves be gathered together into one place; and then they had water on the brain and could not function. No good! It is the truth with respect to all of us put together that must be brought together into one place, into a place of harmony, accord, mutual understanding, correlation, cooperation.
Human beings are inclined to say, “Well I'll do this, but I won't do that. I'll go so far and then I'll quit.” All kinds of limitations, petty limitations. Did you ever see a limitation of the mind or heart that was not a petty thing? I never did. Some people keep them for pets; but they are still petty and most of them have a pretty bad odor. They stink, even if you try to keep them perfumed up. The water must be gathered together unto one place; there must be accord, harmony, coordination, so that the truth of you may function effectively with the truth of someone else. And those things that divide and separate are preventing the gathering of the waters unto one place. Whatever you do—at any time, in any moment—that hinders the gathering of the waters unto one place is preventing the appearance of the dry land; and without the dry land, you yourself cannot live. You may say, “But I am justified. So-and-so did thus and so, and I don't like it.” You don't! “So-and-so has done something to prevent the dry land appearing, so I’ll do something to prevent the dry land appearing and we'll all die together.” What a marvelous portrayal of nobility that is! Noble men and women. No. What is the opposite of nobility? It is pettiness! And it is pettiness that maintains these separations. I don't care how justified you may think they are. Just because someone else tries to condemn everyone to a state of fish food is no reason you should. Let us do the right thing no matter what anyone else does. Let us begin to realize that we are not creatures designed to be denizens of the deep. You are not supposed to be an octopus, or a shark, or even a minnow. You were not created to be a whale or a dolphin, or any of the other peculiar creatures of the ocean. You are supposed to live on dry land. You may muck around in the shallow water a little, but it still is not dry land. Let us have some dry land and live; for we cannot live until there is dry land. The grass, the green pastures, cannot appear until there is some dry land—not too dry, but it has to be dry land. It cannot be under the ocean, or there will be no green pastures for you to come to rest in. We want to walk by the still waters, but we do not need to try to imitate the fish; for if you do it too long you will become fish food.
The dry land must appear—in you, in our whole Unit, in relationship to this Class. There must be a getting together of the truth of your being with the truth of other people's beings; and if you are looking for that which is not the truth in someone else and emphasizing that which is not the truth in yourself, and trying to get the limitations together, well then you can say you have two limitations instead of one. But what good is that? It is the truth that must get together, the truth in you that must get together with the truth in your neighbor, the truth in the husband that must get together with the truth in his wife, the truth that must get together between friends, that must manifest here in a true togetherness which all who will may share—the beginning of the gathering of the waters unto one place. It is the truth that will meet, the truth that will blend, and if you try to get together on the basis of the things you are not, the things that are yet absent, the things that have not yet taken form, you will find it will not fit; it does not work. One absent spot in your makeup added to one absent spot in someone else's makeup may result in friction—a little abnormal heat, a little difficulty, a quarrel, a misunderstanding, some more pettiness—but it will not produce the things of God on earth. We must begin to let the waters be gathered together unto one place, and then the dry land can begin to appear. And when the dry land appears, so that it can be said, “It is so”—and it is said here, “and it was so”—we are beginning to be in position where we can see something else appear.
What is the next step? “And God called the dry land Earth.” And what was man made out of? Earth. Your body was made out of the earth. “And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.” It is good to have the seas in relationship to ourselves; and it is good to have the dry land, the earth. But either one without the other is not good. Some people say they like to go to the seashore. In Colorado we have everything but a seashore. It is all we lack in Colorado from the standpoint of scenery—everything else. But we can have our own sea if we will, and have our own seashore. You would be surprised how wonderful it could be if you would let the waters be gathered together unto one place so that we would have a sea; and I am not talking about just a little reservoir that runs dry every once in a while. I am talking about a sea.
“And God saw that it was good.” Now do you have any better vision than God has to say that it is not good, or that you can do better some other way? Let's not be arrogant! “And God said, Let the earth bring forth.” There is a statement for you. “Let the earth bring forth.” The earth is to bring forth something. What? If you read these verses and say, “Oh that just meant God created the grass and trees and vegetation, and so on”—your body was made out of the earth, wasn't it? Certainly. Physical substance. “Let the earth bring forth.” Now reproduction of the race has its part, I suppose, in that bringing forth, but it is supposed to be more than that. What do you bring forth in the words you speak, in the acts, the things you do, the atmosphere you produce, the attitudes, the influence upon others? What do you bring forth? Something that tends to crush them down, or something that lifts them up? Let the earth bring forth, according to the Divine Design. Every human being is bringing forth all the time.
In this perhaps we ought to remember one of the mysteries, or secrets, revealed in the Book of Magic. We remember that verse. I suppose you could all repeat it. Remember it? “Here is wisdom.” And what is wisdom? The sense of the fitness of things. Are you wise? “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding…” Without understanding it doesn't do any good. “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man, and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” 6-6-6. You have seen some of the most fantastic concepts about what the 6-6-6 is supposed to mean. We will not take time now to go into a dissertation on the symbolism of figures, but all through the Bible, numbers, figures, digits, are used to signify something as symbols. A number of itself has no power, no meaning; but as a name, it signifies something. All the way through the Bible we have this pattern of symbolism, over and over again, and six is the symbol signifying the processes of bringing forth, or the revelation of the womb and birth principles: bringing forth. Six is the symbol used to signify the womb principle and the birth principle, the process of gestation and manifestation, or simply bringing forth. And one of these commands is: “Let the earth bring forth.” Bring forth what?
For the moment let us consider the earth of man, the reality of man's own body. “Here is wisdom.” Wisdom—the sense of the fitness of things. “Let him that hath understanding” do something, but let those who have no understanding leave it alone, because they certainly will not come up with the right answer. “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is 6-6-6.” We immediately recognize that this is symbolism in relationship to the processes of bringing forth something. And it is brought forth on a trinity basis—three aspects. It is the number of a man and the number of a beast. God created man in His own image, after His own likeness; male and female created He them. But man took the thing that God had created and made it into a beast. Sometimes you hear people talk about some person. The idea was out that Hitler was the beast carrying the number 6-6-6. Well, he was; but he was not alone. It applies to every man, woman and child on the face of the earth, without a single exception—everyone: 6-6-6—the vibratory pattern of bringing forth. And it is the number of a man and it is the number of the beast.
If your body is used to bring forth beastly things, then it is the number of a beast as far as you are concerned. If your body is used to bring forth the noble, beautiful, lovely, creative things of divine man or woman, then it is the number of a man. Six: bringing forth. And remember, it was on the sixth day that man was created. But six—bringing forth; the vibratory name or symbol of the process of bringing forth. Remember, numbers of themselves have no power, no meaning, no influence, but they are the names of something in the symbolical pattern of the portrayal of truth as contained in the Bible.
And here we have the third day. The third day God said—His third command, by the way, the third command on the third day. His first command was what? “Let the waters be gathered together unto one place.” The second one was “And let the dry land appear.” And the third one is “And let the earth bring forth,” and that applies to us. The third command on the third day: “And let the earth bring forth.” But man was not created yet. So the process of bringing forth related to the manifestation of those things which would let man be created. God did not try to do the impossible—to create man first. He created other things and created man as the crowning creation, to be man and not a beast. But you would imagine, from the standpoint of the general pattern of function in the world, that God had really intended human beings to be beasts; the women to be cats and the men to be wolves. And when you get them mixed up, oh boy, what comes forth! No. The beast does bring forth something in all three planes of his being of body and mind and spirit. But what do you bring forth? You have to come under the classification of man or beast. You must make your own choice and let the earth bring forth something. And if you are going to share the creative process, you have to share it in the same cycle as we see it outlined here. If something is going to bring forth and appear, it must be in relationship to the earth. “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed,” etc. And each thing brought forth was established on the basis of bringing forth seed after its kind. “And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.”
So we begin to see the vital importance of letting all things work together to perfection; not causing them, by reaction, to work together to more turmoil and misunderstanding and difficulty, but to let all things work together to perfection, as they do for those who love and serve the Lord. But for those who love and serve the devil, or some false God, all things work together toward more turmoil, more difficulty, more misunderstanding, more misery, more darkness. What shall it be? All things work together to perfection for those who love and serve the Lord. Blessed ones, what shall it be? Man, or beast? The choice is yours.
