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Programming  and  Reprogramming

Martin Exeter  September 12, 1982   

I rejoice that we may set the stage for what needs to happen in our administration of the continuing creative cycle.

In a few days' time another year in the Emissary ministry will come to us out of the future. This past year has been the first year in a continuing cycle of seven years. It will therefore be the beginning of the eighth period of seven years of this ministry. I am sure you are all aware that eight represents the union of heaven and earth.

We may see these things in terms of what we think and speak of as the Emissary ministry. The eighth creative day would be symbolized by the fire force. So we have a period of another six years when the fire force is dominant. The fire of love is the power of transmutation, the power by which what is symbolized by base metal may be transmuted into gold, or what is symbolized by gold. Here we see something of what is available in the creative cycles to our experience in these years which are before us.

It is easily recognized that something of this transmuting process has already been initiated in a more intensified sense during this last year since September 1981. What would be described I suppose as changes have occurred quite extensively for most if not all of you, and you are not alone in this. Perhaps the furnace is being heated up. We have seven years—so, seven times hotter by the end of this cycle! You will recall in the story of the burning fiery furnace that, apart from the servants of the king who, following out their orders, drew too close to the furnace, there were no casualties but the bonds with which the three men were bound when they were cast into the furnace. So the purpose is not to produce casualties but to consume the bonds, so that there might be four men, free, walking in the fire, and the fourth like unto the Son of God, the Son of God revealed by reason of the human trinity. This is the transmutation of base metal into gold.

Human beings, ourselves included, have necessarily found themselves programmed into an earthly state which has excluded heaven. All people are thus programmed from the moment of conception. The initial programming may be described as intrinsic. It is present in the very flesh of the fetus, stemming from parents, forebears and the experience of the human race itself out of the past. This is usually thought of in terms of genes, but there is obviously more to it than the physical genes, just as there is more to it than the physical tape in the tape recorder. If that's all there is, then—no particular sound when it is played. But obviously something is imposed upon the tape from some source if there is to be a program reproduced. So it is in human experience. There is this intrinsic program present in each developing form; the music out of the past is there. But as soon as there is conception something else comes into the picture as well as what is intrinsically present at that point. You might call it an extrinsic influence, which is fundamentally the state of the mother; this is imposed upon the developing fetus.

So there are these two aspects, the intrinsic and the extrinsic. During the time of uterine development the extrinsic is more or less indirect, but as soon as the baby is born then direct influences begin to be brought to bear, so that the extrinsic programming continues. All people are programmed in this fashion with these two components, intrinsic and extrinsic. We may see that the intrinsic is more basic, deeper, one might say almost untouchable. It is there, we all know it is there for ourselves; no one is exempt; it is a carry-forward out of the past. It has been described in the Christian religion as original sin, an intrinsic programming coming out of the earthly experience of the past. Superimposed on top of that is the extrinsic programming which subsequently ensues. This is a more surface programming and is capable of being manipulated to a certain extent.

All of us have been programmed in this fashion, together with our fellows in this human world; and the state of the world itself of course is simply a reflection of this fact. It is brought forth by reason of the programming of human beings. This programming, the surface aspects of it, can be manipulated and changed somewhat as influences of various kinds are brought to bear, but the total package is hardly changed at all. Certainly the intrinsic aspect is not changed; it sits there in the very flesh of the individual, which includes what are referred to as mind and emotions. We are all programmed.

The intrinsic program—the main part—requires that human beings die. Everybody is programmed to die; that's why everybody dies. As long as that program exists there is apparently no escape, and of course there is whatever leads up to that ultimate point, which may come speedily or more slowly, as the case may be. But the programming is set, and the result is consequently inevitable as long as that program is there. We have become aware of the fact that man was not originally programmed that way. It is something that has been self-induced back along the way. We don't need to go into that at the moment. We can't do anything about it anyhow. The state of affairs is as it is. We have to deal with the situation as it is.

The original programming, however, could be described as the truth, with the elements of heavenly design and heavenly control. The manifest body and mind and heart, the human soul, is designed to be programmed. So in a sense there is nothing wrong with the fact that there is a program in operation. Only when the program is no longer in operation does the state of nothingness ensue. It is necessary that there should be a program. We are obviously aware that the program presently in effect is a substitute one; it is not the right program. You can't tape a new program without obliterating what is on the tape in the first place. So, clearly, there must be some mechanism by which this may occur if human beings are to be programmed once more by the truth.

The truth was described—or that program was described—as being made in the image and likeness of God. That was the original program, and as long as that prevailed the fact of that particular program was revealed in the experience of man. Now there is another program in effect, and what is revealed is certainly not the same as the original program, which presumably allowed for the reality of God to be made known. The reality of God is not made known by man. Something else is made known, and it has been described in various ways: that old serpent, the devil, and satan, great red dragon, what have you—the human state, a destructive experience, because man is in this state programmed to die. And he goes about it in ingenious ways, but he ends up dead because of the program. Well what is it that ends up dead? Obviously the thing that was programmed. If something is programmed to self-destruct it self-destructs, and it is the human soul that has been programmed to self-destruct. Faithfully over the ages this program has been carried out, generation after generation. It has become so customary that while there may be some fanciful imagination about another state it has never been much more than fanciful imagination.

The fire represents the means by which one program may be eliminated and another one established. It would be useless just to eliminate the first program, because then there would be a blank, nothing. So we are not concerned with trying to get rid of the first program—there is concern for reprogramming. We have these people in the world these days who claim to be DEprogrammers, and they go to work on programmed people. But programmed people going to work on programmed people doesn't really deprogram anyone. Our concern has been to allow the real program, which is the truth, to replace the false program, which incidentally must be a lie if it isn't the truth. One could say then that death is a lie, a very popular one apparently. Yet individually speaking I don't suppose most would describe it as being popular; but the fact shows it is. The false program has been much more popular than the real one. It has reached a state where there is no awareness, for the most part, that there is a real one available.

If we see these things in terms of programming we recognize that there must be certain facilities available to allow the real program to be reestablished. It doesn't happen by magic, in the ordinary sense at least. It doesn't happen because somebody would like it to happen, because one consciously is desirous of being made new. There has been a very firm and persistent objection to this experience, because it requires the fire; it looks dangerous. Of course the fire does consume the old program, but at the same time there is the availability of the true program, and the fire is not separate from the true program.

We have described the spirit of God as being triune in nature: love, truth and life—inseparable. So if you have the fire the truth goes along with it and is available for the reprogramming process to be experienced. But the fire is not the first thing to be brought to bear in its intensity. It should remain in the background for a while. Whenever things have started to hot up a bit the human tendency is to duck out, to seek cover somewhere, to jump into the foxhole. Well, when the fire comes along, the individual needs to be on hand, not hiding.

There has to be an introduction, somehow or other, to the possibility of true programming; probably it hasn't been described that way heretofore, but an introduction to the truth, because that is the true programming. It is a heavenly programming. It doesn't originate in the past, out of the earth; it originates now, in heaven. To experience it one would have to be in heaven.

It is impossible for this spurious self to be in heaven. Mind you, a great deal of effort and theory has been developed so as to make it seem as though somehow or other this spurious self could be saved. It needs to pass away, and we have become aware of the fact that it does pass away anyway; you can't stop it passing away. But there is the possibility of knowing the truth, of having this real program reestablished. As the real program is reestablished, the self that is known is the real self, the real person, the person who is present in the facility that heretofore was wrongly programmed.

There is the necessary period of time for transformation to occur, so that the individual comes to the point where there is a genuine and factual willingness to relinquish the false state of self, the spurious self. Most people are inclined to cling to that till the last gasp. There is terrible fear of losing oneself; that's the fear of death. The son of perdition is lost in any case. That is a false human self, a false human ego. How much effort is put into the preservation of the ego by most people, thereby ensuring their own demise, because the ego is going to vanish away sooner or later. There is not much consolation, if one has had a big, fat ego recognized by many people, to be found in an image and likeness in bronze sitting on a horse in the town square!

There is this reprogramming necessary, and this requires what has been referred to in religious circles as baptism—water—the symbol of truth with which a person must become acquainted. Four barrels of water poured over, three times: twelve barrels of water. A soaking in the truth, that's baptism. It seems to take a little time to go through the process. A person may feel a bit damp and soggy during the course of the experience and complain, “Why can't I dry out now?” No, there are a few more barrels to go yet!

So there is an increasing acquaintance with the symbol of the truth. It is not the truth yet; it is the symbol of the truth. We have been considering many, many things in a new and changing light over the years, because it wasn't the truth yet; it was simply varying levels of the symbol of the truth. The symbol of the truth comes in words, for instance; but the truth isn't words. The truth is the real program with which man needs to be associated, so that that is established. And that program provides the basis for the creative expression of the one who now is aware and known on earth, the heavenly one incarnate and in expression on earth once more.

So there is water. I think the first seven periods of seven years in the Emissary ministry related primarily to baptism by water. That is a larger cycle, a forty-nine-year cycle. There is another one which has presumably been initiated now: another seven periods of seven years. We are just moving into the second year of the first period of seven years. On the larger scale this relates more to what is occurring in the world. The second force is air: spirit. Spirit begins to become dominant in the world to the extent that there are those who are letting this Program unfold, not merely for themselves. But it needs to unfold in a container, so to speak, that there may be a focus present, a sustained focus present, so that it may occur on the larger scale. It has to occur somewhere first on a smaller scale; it must be real somewhere.

Of course it was real somewhere, back about two thousand years ago, in one man, and that allowed for everything to be set in motion. But clearly it must expand beyond one person. To allow it to expand doesn't detract from what that one person did, or even who He is, but it certainly would give evidence of taking Him seriously and being willing to allow His life to have some real meaning because we share it.

We allow that life to be our life, and we can only do that because there is a reprogramming. As long as the old program is there we can't let it happen; we keep repeating, repeating and repeating the same old nonsense. And we have only to read some history, if we have the time to do it, to find out that it is a matter of meaningless repetition. The whole human world is seen in terms of this repetition: Look back into the past and see what happened, then we will prognosticate what's going to happen in the future. Well that has held pretty true heretofore, because those who were present were simply interested in repetition; they themselves brought it about. I trust we are no longer interested in that repetition but in allowing a new program to be present in ourselves as individuals, which we discover is also a new program present in what we have described as the Ministry. That is just simply a way of describing a collective body which is in the process of being reprogrammed.

Reprogramming does not require deprogramming—we discover this. We may have attempted along the way to deprogram ourselves somehow so that we might get hold of this new program. It doesn't work that way. The old program is there but it only exists as life is given to it. If we stop supporting the old program by giving our life into the expression of it, then there begins to be space for the experience of the new program. The old program is still there; certainly the intrinsic aspect of it is still there. We may have experienced some changes in the extrinsic aspect of that false program, but if we could see the picture as it is we would find that it was really very little.

There is a new program to be put on the tape, and it is put on the tape because the old program has faded somewhat by baptism of water. But it takes the fire to reprogram and to, at the same time, dissolve the remnants of the old program all the way through to the intrinsic aspect, all the way through to the factors of earthly heredity, that these may be replaced by the true elements of heavenly heredity. There is a program to go on the tape and it comes with the fire. We have before us a period of intensifying fire and we have the opportunity of letting it be used to advantage, so that the bonds of the old program are burnt, consumed, enabling us to walk in the fire. The true program is present once more: the truth. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”—to walk in the fire, to walk as an angel incarnate and in expression on earth.

Obviously, at this point, there is still present the old programming; it persists. But we discover how to live without feeding that old program with our life force anymore, because we are aware of the right use of our life force in the expression of spirit at the level of which we are now aware. It is all that is necessary, but it is necessary to be true to that and consistent in the expression of it. Doubtless there are those things which arise emotionally, mentally and physically which would distract us into the old programmed state if we would allow it. All of you have had a tremendous amount of opportunity to be aware of what constitutes that old state, and yet I observe occasionally those who are distracted back into it and begin to give expression to that old programming. Repent quickly!

This has been the element that the old programming has been most resistant to: repentance. “I am damned if I will!” Yes, you're damned—you're damned if you don't! Repent of the old programming. Stop giving it life force and allow the life force to pour increasingly through your present experience of spirit in action. And you have enough awareness of the truth, you've been dunked enough, to know the quality and nature of that spirit, and incidentally, the quality and nature of the old programming.

So we have brought to focus something with respect to another point of transition in the intensifying fire, and I trust that all are happy because of it, are delighted to let the fire burn, to let it be intensified. Oh yes, it will uncover some things that would, if they could, take charge of you again, demanding your life force. Don't fall into the trap but stay true to the truth in delighted experience of the intensifying fire, which comes individually, and it comes for all of us collectively also.

© Emissaries of Divine Light