August 31, 2015
“But the Lord is in his holy temple.”
This is as true now, in this moment, as it has ever been. “Let all the
earth”—the physical body, the capacity for physical action; the mind, the
capacity for mental action; and the capacity for spiritual expression—“let all
the earth keep silence before him.” Let all these capacities for physical,
mental and spiritual action, present in every human being on the face of the
earth, tremble to obey the Lord.
What that
means has been long unknown in human experience. We are concerned to allow this
knowing to be present in our momentary living, in this moment of living; after
all, we have no other. We have been aware that the mental capacity in us has
assumed the position of control in our existence on earth, and this has been
true of all human beings everywhere. This control has been, partly at least, a
factor of inheritance: we have our heredity. The mind of man has long governed
on earth in human experience.
The order
which human beings obey, or against which they rebel, is preset, established by
the human mind. This is the world as we know it. What has been so preset also establishes
the meaning and the purpose and the security of human beings. Human purposes
may be to enhance, adjust, modify the particular pattern of social order which
is in effect. They may, on the other hand, be to destroy it and substitute
something else. In either case, human purposes are established by reason of the
social order. A great deal of human effort is poured into the modification and
adjustment of the particular order in question.
So, we have
this state of affairs, and within the scope of the social order human beings
have their goals. Any goal that anyone may have was established by his human
mind; it is a preset concept; but usually, as human existence unfolds, goals
change. But all human
function, in the systems of the world, is based in goals. Goals are judged to
be good or bad, depending chiefly as to where you sit. But we need to see
clearly that where there are goals the human mind is still in charge. Does it
not seem almost incredible that human beings could live fulfilled lives without
any goals? To the extent that such an idea does seem fantastic there is clear
evidence of the fact that one has been, and is, subject to the human mind;
because it is the human mind that develops and establishes these goals, and the
goals relate to the collective social order.
Now, we have
the whole situation here clearly under the government and control of the mind,
and yet there could be no life, there could be no experience of consciousness,
there could be no mind, if it were not for the pulsations of life which are
already working in human experience. At those levels where the conscious mind and the distorted
patterns of the subconscious mind do not have the primary influence, the pulsations of life
control. The pulsations of life are present in human beings; they are present
everywhere. The movement of the whole universe is based in whatever those
pulsations may be, except when it comes to human experience on earth where the
mind tries to govern. It can only try to govern because the pulsations of life
are present. It couldn’t even do that if it weren’t for the pulsations of life.
We wouldn’t have any minds; we wouldn’t have any capacity for spiritual
expression; we wouldn’t be anything, in fact.
So, the
pulsations of life are present; life is on the move. Life is the basic action
of the whole universe. Now, action does not occur without a means of action,
nor does it occur without the power of action. We have come to realize the fact
that love is the power of action, the truth is the means of action, and life is the action; and
that action is present throughout the whole universe and is present insofar as
human beings are concerned.
“The Lord is
in his holy temple: let all the earth,” the triune earth, “keep silence before
him,” that the pulsating action of life may bring forth whatever should be
brought forth physically, mentally and in spiritual expression. But how can it
if the mind is there with its preset concepts, its preset goals, its preset
intentions? This hard stone of self-centeredness in human experience ignores
the pulsations of life. Even though the mind, which establishes these hard
patterns, exists because of the pulsations of life, it imagines that it can reach
its goal by ignoring the pulsations of life. It is inconceivable to the mind, apparently, as to
what it would mean to move with the action of life. “But the Lord is in his
holy temple.” Holy temple—that would include all the earth.
We see that
this is the case, because we would have no living physical bodies if the Lord
were not in His holy temple. We would have no capacity of mind if the Lord were
not in His holy temple; we would have no ability to give spiritual expression
if the Lord were not in His holy temple. He is! But there is more to His holy
temple than the physical body, the mind and the capacity for spiritual
expression. This is the earth—“let all the earth keep silence before him.” But
what about the heaven? There is no need to give any instruction to the heaven,
because it’s already doing it; it does keep silence before Him, so that it is
moved by the pulsations of life. This is already present in every living person
or the person wouldn’t be living, because the experience of the fact of life,
if not the real quality of life, is evidence of the heaven, the heaven that is
already present in which there is the movement of life.
Because there
is the movement of life in the heaven, some of it filters through into the earth.
It filters through the body sufficiently to develop the capacity of mind,
because the mind emerges out of the body. As the body develops, the mind
develops and, properly, the capacity for spiritual expression should develop.
But if the mind intervenes, having developed a little, and decides that it is
going to function on the basis of these preset patterns, then the spiritual
expression has no chance to develop. The mind cuts it off, and all that a
person is then is a physical body with a mind; and that isn’t all the earth,
let alone the heaven. All the earth includes the three levels. Let these three
levels, including the mind, keep silence, shut up! Keep silence before the
Lord, that there may begin to be a sensing of the pulsations of life, so that
those pulsations moving through the mind may be as effective as they are, even
with all the self-activity of human beings, moving through the body.
What is your
goal for the day? Something is being established by the mind. This is not to
say that the work that needs to be done, exemplified by the setting of the
schedule, should not be done. This is the other extreme to which human beings
tend to go, isn’t it? You either are going to be very active—self-active, that
is—or you are going to do nothing; it’s either action or non-action. Well, if
you’re not acting and doing things, what are you going to do? The only other
thing is do nothing! This is all that the human mind sees. If that isn’t
ignorance I don’t know what is!
But there is
something in between which could be described mentally as rest-action. That
seems like a contradiction in terms: you’re either resting or you’re acting;
how can you have rest-action? Rest-action results from a yielding to the
pulsations of life, not maintaining the rigidities of the mind and saying,
“Well, I have these goals now but I’ve got to set these goals aside. Oh, there’s
nothing there, so I must go to sleep, I must do nothing.” Those who first make
contact with this ministry very often get hung up in this. They say, “You’re
not active in all these fields; what are you doing? You can’t be doing anything.”
Well, we’re still alive, and there is what is totally beyond the awareness of
the self-active human mind, namely rest-action. We see an example of
rest-action in the beating of the heart. The heart beats; the heart is active,
doing its thing, because of the pulsations of life.
The heart
is active because of rest-action, not because of the concept of the human mind,
which aggressively tries to make the heart beat. But this is the way it acts
with respect to virtually everything else, isn’t it? We’ve got to get this
done! Even in the beating of the heart as it occurs, there is the symbolical presentation
of a unified movement which is rest-action, contraction-relaxation; but these
two aspects are not separate. It’s not as though we work terribly hard and then
we collapse, as though that were rest-action. Rest-action is the experience
which is known when life, the pulsations of life, govern in all the
earth; that is, in the whole of one’s earth, not only physically but mentally
and in spiritual expression. When life action, which is rest- action, is
present and operating, then there is the experience of what is called man.
We need to
come to the point of awareness, somewhere along the line, that there is no
means of moving with the action of life as long as the mind retains its
concepts and its goals, because the individual will be held rigidly by that and
therefore will be in no position to allow the rest-action movement of life to
occur. Only as there is the emergence of an awareness of the pulsations of
life, so that these become more important in one’s experience than any concepts
one may have, is there any possibility, any hope, for human beings. The
pulsations of life are present but our minds, with the best of intentions,
backed up by the agreement that is present in the social order, maintain a
state which ensures disintegration.
So we look to
rest-action, which is the movement in our own experience with the pulsations of
life. “The Lord is in his holy temple.” He’s in His holy temple, not His unholy
temple. If we maintain the limited state of the body-mind continuum, which is
the condition of most people, we’re unholy, and the Lord doesn’t stay in the
unholy temple. Only as all the earth keeps silence before Him is there
experienced the reality of a holy temple, a whole temple, where the Lord is;
and this is only known to the extent that all the earth, where the trouble is,
keeps silence before Him, trembles to obey. Yet, even in making that statement
there is a tendency to maintain a concept of the mind, because if one obeys
there must be a master and there must be a servant. The servant obeys the
master; but the truth of the matter is that there is only one. There isn’t a
master and a servant; there is just one, one person, a whole, holy, person, or
being, shall we say? The mind doesn’t have the faintest notion as to what that
means, because it has the concept of its own present being—“This is me, after
all!” Is it?
“Let all the
earth keep silence before him.” And when there begins to be that quietness
inside, we hear the tone of life, we sense the pulsations of it; but the
concepts of the mind absolutely prevent that.
How much
experience do you really have of moving with the action, the pulsations, of
life? How much? I think most of the movement that has been experienced thus far
has been on the basis of our concepts of what the goal is. Insofar as the mind
is concerned there rightly isn’t any goal. Insofar as the movement of life is
concerned it is a creative process—whatever that means. We can’t find out what
it means by developing concepts about it. We must move with it. And we can’t move
with it if we don’t sense it, and we can’t sense it as long as we’re rigidly
holding on to our concepts. Preset goals! Let us yield these precious treasures
of ours, which are in fact deadly weights, that we may begin to know the
reality of life.
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