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The  Nameless  Reality  Beyond  the  Door

Martin Cecil   July 29, 1979

Using these words, spiritual substance, many of you would be inclined to assume that you know what they mean. Assumptions of this sort are constantly being made by people with respect to words, but as we well know, the meaning of words only comes to the point of being known by reason of the experience of the truth back of them. It is a human habit to assume that the words are the truth. They never are. They may provide a door by which the truth may be known in experience. Spiritual substance is only known as a reality through one's own actual experience of it.

We may find ourselves immersed in this substance, not as though it had been laid upon us but because there was a personal experience, individually speaking, of that generation. It isn't something that is laid upon us by God, for instance, according to some human concept, but something which we ourselves have, in whatever degree, been willing to allow to happen within the range of our own experience. 

This spiritual substance can hardly be defined in material terms. The mind may have an idea that there is such a substance, but it cannot lay hold of it, it cannot take it into the laboratory and analyze it. The human mind is not God Almighty and it is not capable of encompassing all things. It may be a little bit shocked to discover this fact, but we should be well aware of it to the extent that the actual generation of substance in our own living experience has provided us with an awareness of a new state of being on earth. 

We might for a moment return to this matter of words. Mentally we can define what can be mentally imagined, with words. We use the word God, for instance. Other people, in other languages, use different words to describe presumably the same thing. But God isn't a thing. The word, whatever it is, describes something. We might say that God is spirit, but still we're not very much wiser. Even though the word may describe something that is true, we don't yet know what it is that is being described, and the description in and of itself never acquaints us with the reality. So we can describe God as spirit without actually knowing what it means. We may feel wise because we can describe it that way. 

We might describe the Word as being spirit in active expression—an interesting thought, but it still doesn't acquaint us with what it is. We might take the word bread. This has many peculiar definitions in human consciousness, but I'm thinking of it at the moment as substance available for the activation of spirit. This brings us into a realm where we have some experience. After all, we eat day by day; we take substance into our bodies which is activated in some way to provide us with what is needful in the way of replenishment for the physical structure and to provide what we call energy. But the bread before it gets into our physical bodies is one thing; it's something else once it gets in. 

We could use the word flesh to describe activated substance. Bread: substance to be activated. Flesh: substance after it has been activated. Now the word flesh need not be seen merely in terms of this pudgy stuff forming the body. There are other levels of activation in human experience. We have some recognition, if not yet very much awareness, of the fact that there are many levels of flesh, in the sense of the whole of what we are, dimensionally speaking. There is what might be described as earthly flesh, but then there is also heavenly flesh. The spiritual substance of which I made mention is the heavenly flesh, in our own experience. If there has been very little generation of spiritual substance we have very little experience of the heavenly flesh. There are spiritual levels of flesh, and it is these levels, spiritual substance, which we see as offering a connection with spirit. This spiritual substance is sensitive to spirit. Earthly substance is sensitive to spiritual substance, because the fact of the matter is that the spiritual substance was generated out of the earthly substance. 

In speaking of these things I am using words. If you merely hear the words and translate them in your own minds to mean thus and so, you will not have yet had the experience of the reality back of the words, but you may imagine that you really know something now, when the fact of the matter is that you don't. You merely know some words which have been put together in a certain way. That is deemed to be information, but the information hasn't told you anything really of the reality, because the reality has to be experienced to be known. And this relates to the matter of living. Many people have imagined that they could get by with beliefs, beliefs which in the general sense had very little relatedness or association with the actual experience of that person's living. The world is full of beliefs. 

We might well set up a creed—it's very easy to do—on the basis of the four words that I have just indicated: 

          I believe in God. I believe that God is spirit.

          I believe that the Word is spirit in active expression.

          I believe that bread is unactivated substance.

          I believe that flesh is activated substance.

There's a nice start for a creed! It could be expanded by all of you, I'm sure, very easily. But a creed is a mental statement of a cult's party line. If it seems to people that there is need for a creed—something to believe in, they say—it establishes a cult; that is, when they find the creed that they can glom on to. 

On the basis of such statements as I've made concerning God, the Word, the bread, the flesh, we can set up a cult. We are not rightly concerned with cults and therefore with creeds. From my standpoint, I think there are plenty of cults in the world without adding to them. If a person is after a cult, well he has a wide choice; but if he is genuinely seeking the truth, that is a different thing. He may imagine, to start with, that the truth will be found through some cult, because it always is possible that a cult will provide the door to the experience of the truth. That's the only way the truth can be known; it can't be conveyed merely in words.

Perhaps we have some awareness of the fact that by reason of this ministry a door is provided. The door, to be useful, must be opened, so that it provides a means of movement from one state of experience to another. Unfortunately, in the cultist world, which is the human world, doors are invariably worshipped. There are many, many doors, many, many cults in the world, some of them enormous, others insignificant. These cults are all doors, but some of them are so tremendously embellished, there is so much to the door, that a person could spend his lifetime examining the beautiful carving of the door in all its details. He could become very knowledgeable concerning the door, know all about it, give endless lectures about the decorations on the door, the nature of the door, what materials it's made out of, the quality of the hinges and the hardware, all these things, without ever realizing that the door maybe had some practical meaning regardless of all its architecture. If it could be opened one might even go through it. Going through it, one has experienced the reason for the door. Then forget the door! 

The door is a cult. There is nothing wrong with cults if we see them as doors, even though many of the doors may be found to be inoperable; in other words they don't open, they just look like doors. So I suppose there is the necessity of finding a door that is operable. For the most part it has seemed that there has been a door of some kind acceptable to everyone. So human beings have existed on earth ringed by these doors. 

EDL, Incorporated. Now here is a cult for sure; it's a door. That's all it is. There's nothing wrong with it as a door, an operable door. If that's all a person sees it as being he's trapped by the door: "O honorable door! How beautiful you are!" And of course in cults, even in religious cults, there is organization—there are ministers, servers; there is a leader in the person of a Bishop. There are also secular aspects to this, required under law: presidents, directors, boards of various sorts, to govern the affairs of this cult. We need to see these things for what they are—there is no point at all unless it is recognized that it makes possible the opening of a door for an experience which cannot be defined in cult terms. It's the nature of the door that is important: whether it can be opened or not and whether, if it is open, one could go through it. Beliefs may compose some of the elements in the structure of the door but they're totally unnecessary anymore if we will go through the door. And going through the door, we turn our back on it, don't we? We don't keep it constantly in front of us all the time.

We only begin to see people when the door is open and we are not comparing them with our Emissary concepts: "Well, does this person line up? If he does, good, welcome home. If he doesn't, stay out!" With such an attitude one does not have a single eye, that's for sure, and one is still indulging in the eating of the forbidden fruit: "The angel is good, human nature is bad, and I know the difference." Do you? Do we? What one may now imagine the reality to be may in fact be a cover-up for human nature, and what we suppose human nature to be may be a cover-up for the reality; so that if we throw out what we imagine human nature to be—"Get thee hence. I don't want anything to do with this big and broad human nature"—then we may find ourselves throwing out the reality. 

You may recall the parable about the wheat and the tares. The harvesters wanted to go out into the fields and root out the tares. They thought they knew what were tares and what was wheat. But, as was pointed out, in rooting out the tares they'd probably root out the wheat as well. Let it alone! Don't judge. Let it alone, because the state of consciousness present in people is a mixture and, from the human standpoint, we are not capable of discerning what is which. And this might be said also from the angelic standpoint. There is no reason to try to judge it. If we do judge it, well that will be human nature. If we let it alone that will be the truth in expression, the spirit in active expression, which is not judging but letting things sort themselves out. We need to have a very deep and strong conviction that we don't really know. There is nothing present to provide a yardstick in this regard.

The characteristic of the human state, the cultist state, is that of judgment: the arrogant assumption that one is in position to tell what is true and what is not, what is real and what is unreal, what is right and what is wrong. That's arrogance. That is eating of the forbidden fruit, the results of which are fatal. 

We're well aware that there is a mixture here and we are not called upon to get it sorted out. It's none of our business. All we are called upon to do is to provide spirit in active expression. Then the bread comes to us. The bread is a mixture. It gets itself sorted out in us on the basis of our own quality of expression. If that quality is spirit in active expression, then what is used, what is incorporated, will relate to spirit in active expression. It will permit the generation of substance capable of accommodating more spirit in active expression. If the spirit of God is not in active expression in our living but some other spirits are there, then what is incorporated into our experience will be rather miserable; it will get sorted out on that basis. As we are well aware, there is a tendency for people to blame everybody else under the sun for their troubles, when the fact of the matter is that we all lay this trip upon ourselves. Let's be honest about it, always.

When the spirit is right, then the generation will be right. When the spirit in expression because we live is the spirit of God, then our generations will be perfect—the substance will be adequate to accommodate spirit in expression—and that is a transformed experience in living. It is that increase of substance that allows an increase of the spirit in active expression. The spirit in active expression takes the available material that is brought to us in our momentary living, and activates it. The creative process is set in motion, but not on the basis of the judgment of the human mind as to what is good or what is bad, but simply on the basis of the working of the creative cycle. Let it work. It'll sort everything out. Certainly do not take the arrogant view that you know the difference. 

We know only what we express, and when we express the spirit of God, that's what we know, that is our experience. But the extent of that expression will be absolutely dependent upon the extent of the generation of the substance that permits it. And that substance is generated in various ways, but it's all a generation of living. The only reason for any of this is to allow the expression of spirit that is possible now to generate some more substance so that there may be greater expression of spirit. It is that expression of spirit that gets things sorted out. 

It gets things sorted out in our own experience and it gets things sorted out beyond us, so that we willingly accept whatever it is that is brought to us in circumstances and in the people whom we find ourselves associated with. They were brought to us; are we going to look them over and say, "Ugh! I don't like that; that's human nature. Stay away from me"? How do you know? How do you know what will be the actual fact unfolding in someone else's experience on the basis of the true creative cycle which will be in operation simply because you are there giving expression to spirit? Then you trust spirit, you trust the creative cycle, you trust the Law to work, you trust the whole thing to sort itself out. 

In that sorting-out process you may be aware that it is fitting to speak this word, to do this other thing, to handle your affairs with effectiveness and dispatch. This gives evidence of the fact that spirit is in expression, something that allows an introduction to the Nameless Reality behind the door. 

Here is nameless experience—the truth in one's own living, moment by moment by moment. You may meet someone and discern, by reason of your own spiritual expression, that here is an individual who is not far from the door and that there will be the necessity of letting the door be opened so that the individual can go through.

The door is open. But the purpose is not really to join something. You can't join the nameless reality. You either experience it or you don't. You can't join it. The actual experience of the nameless reality doesn't require anything of this nature. All that is required is that one come through the door. When one comes through the door, he knows the reality. There's no question thereafter. It is well that we should understand these things, that we may be in position to serve the Lord on earth, to serve the Nameless One, in our own experience of namelessness.

© Emissaries of Divine Light