Listen  for  the  Word

The  Generation  of  Fine  Spiritual  Substance

Martin Cecil   July 27, 1979    from  Assembly — Sunrise Ranch

The invisible, undimensional, unmanifest Word is completely and absolutely unknown from the dimensional standpoint.

The only way it becomes known is as there is substance in which it may emerge into our own experience.

With that singing I'm sure that all of you, the ones who sang and the ones who listened—I hope the singers were listening too—all of you were very much aware of a sense of blessing by reason of the sound. I suppose it could be said that what was done was of an elementary nature but it conveys the assurance that there is something of great value relative to this matter of sound. First of all there is the matter of listening. Perhaps we have been aware of this more particularly when we speak of the Word. You have to listen to hear the Word. 

One of the primary requirements in our training has been to learn to listen. I suppose it could be said that one of the primary areas of failure has been in the failure to learn to listen. If, as is apparent, there is a rather widespread lack of awareness as to the real sound of the tone, it is simply because those concerned have not learned to listen. One cannot make the sound unless one has first heard it. So listening is the first area of education in any level of schooling—the training in this matter of listening is primary. There are off‑key notes, flat notes, garbled notes, sounded in living which indicate—I'm speaking of the Emissary world particularly now—which indicate that those concerned never really heard the tone. They never listened. We have to listen to the Word if we are to speak the Word. 

As was indicated in the area of chanting, you have to be able to hear your next door neighbor before you are able to provide what is needed yourself, and if your hearing is lost by reason of an endeavor to make the sound yourself, you've lost participation in the whole exercise. We see all these things relating not only to the matter of chanting but to the matter of living. Most people in this human world avoid listening at all costs and there is a lot of chatter, making mostly meaningless sounds. This is sometimes erroneously called conversation. What it usually is, is one person sounding off. All he hears is the sound of his own voice. He is unaware of anything that might be revealing of right sound from the standpoint of listening. He can't listen because he is making so much noise. There are those who sometimes have complained of my somewhat slow delivery at times. Why do you think that is so? Because I need to listen. Anyone needs to listen if he is to make a fitting sound. If you never learn to listen you can't make a fitting sound. So we see what might be called this principle of reality as relating to all our affairs. 

In the consideration of the matter of chanting, as is usual with the human approach, it is with respect to the dimensional world. The indication was that we should listen to the universe, the sounds of the universe. Do you think that's really what we should listen to? After all, that's simply the evidence of something that is happening, if there is a sound to the universe. There is no reason why we shouldn't hear what the universe is sounding but we need to be aware of what it is that is activating that sound. We never become aware of what is activating that sound simply by listening to the external sound.

Our listening is to the Word. Obviously this has not been sounding within the range of human experience so that there is a cacophony of noise and not the true sounds of the universe insofar as human function is concerned. The idea which occurs to the human view is that one should therefore get oneself attuned with what is occurring in the rest of the universe by listening to the sounds of the universe. We are well aware that that is not the way by which we find what the sound really is, because the sound of the universe is simply the reflection of something else and it is that something else with which we are concerned. I suppose it may be said that beyond man, in the creation here on earth, everything else is rather naturally capable of associating itself with the dimensional sound. It is a part of that sound in fact, but there is a distinction insofar as man is concerned, because man is the means by which the Word is spoken rightly. 

So our listening needs to be of another nature. We have a responsibility for all that is present in the dimensional world and to handle that responsibility there needs to be attunement between what we are and the dimensional world, that is true. But usually the human approach is to assume that one can establish that attunement by finding out what's going on in that world and then attuning ourselves to it. But movement is only made possible by reason of the fact that there is what we have defined by using the word spirit—the spirit of action which produces the results of action—but if we merely look at the results of action, and try to attune ourselves with that, we don't know from that what our action should be. We may discover marvelous things about the actions of other things, but we are no further ahead with respect to our own, because obviously the attunement that is required is spiritual. 

For this to become known in experience requires what we have referred to as the generation of substance. Now we need to see the nature of the generation of substance that is required in order that there may be the ability to discern the Word. The invisible, undimensional, unmanifest Word is completely and absolutely unknown from the dimensional standpoint. The only way it becomes known is as there is substance in which it may emerge into our own experience. The substance of discernment is at various levels and of various consistencies. You can hear sound through solid, through bone for instance, or through the earth. You can hear explosions through the earth. You can hear it through the air, you can hear it through water. Sound travels at different speeds through the different mediums. These are more or less elementary mediums relative to what we, in the human sense, call sound. 

But there is something much more than what is humanly recognized as sound. This is clearly so from the standpoint of chanting, for instance. It brings into action something that isn't sound in the ordinary sense. It relates to sound but it isn't sound. We realize that there are various levels, various dimensions, various planes, however they might be described, of substance. This is the way we describe it. We have to recognize that in using a word like substance we're describing something that is not the word. We tend to think that well if I use that word, I know what it means. Well we may know what it means to us at certain levels of our understanding, but we also I'm sure are very aware that our levels of understanding are quite restricted. So with respect to any word we may use there are levels of understanding which will not be experienced as long as we hold on to the idea that we already know what the word means. 

This is what has happened so much in the Emissary ministry, hasn't it?—because there has been so much that it has been assumed that we under­stood, when all we understood was a very elementary aspect of something that is really vast in its wholeness, and we grab ahold of the thing, the elementary thing that we are able to grasp and tend to say, "Now I have it." Well that's nonsense. That's just a little fraction which is inevitably distorted, because it is only understood when it's seen in its wholeness. If we extract anything out and on examination decide that we understand that we are just fooling ourselves because it isn't something all by itself. It's only something when everything that belongs in the whole is present. The usual human approach to understanding anything, which is getting it apart, is seen as reducing understanding rather than increasing it. It may seem to increase knowledge and some people are fooled that knowledge means wisdom. It would seem, rather, that it is only when we begin to relinquish knowledge that we become wise. We begin to let far more come into the range of our awareness and exper­ience than was there when we had restricted it to what we call knowledge. 

Knowledge is always a restrictive thing. We notice how departmentalized it becomes in the educational system for instance, and how many disciplines, so called, there are which never really mesh with any other. Occasionally someone shows up, maybe like Velikovsky, who starts to put the thing together and this is a horror to every­body else because it begins to show up how little anybody knows, in spite of all the knowledge. And there is an inclination to take one's own discipline as though it was one's own: "This is my disci­pline. You go ahead with yours over there but this is mine." What utter ignorance, because no one can possess it anyway, and if you take it out of the whole it loses any meaning. It has no meaning anymore. So most of the things that human beings study are rendered utterly meaningless by this method. 

Our concern is with the gener­ation of substance so that the wholeness which is spirit may have a facility in which to reveal itself. We certainly can't go to spirit and have a revelation simply by reason of spirit. No, the fitting substance of the required quality and at the required level all needs to be present if the wholeness of spirit is to become comprehensible in expression in the dimensional world. So the concern is with the generation of substance for the expression of spirit, not for some human nature purpose of its own wellbeing. Human nature is not going to be very well anyway! So if there is a recognition that through chanting, for instance, a certain level and quality of substance can be generated, thereby making possible the greater revelation of spirit in experience and in expression, that’s fine. We are constantly concerned with the generation of that substance in various ways, but primary of course in the totality of our living, the various departments in our living, but it is all part of our total living. 

We generate substance on the basis of the fact that there is already substance. We have noted this from the standpoint of recreation or restoration. We don't have to start as though nothing had been heretofore. There is the substance here. There is all that is necessary right here, we don't have to start from scratch in that regard. If we had to start from scratch we wouldn't be here, would we? There would be no basis for any human consciousness capable of experiencing the angelic consciousness which is part of the means by which the creation takes place. So we have all this. The substance is here. 

The generation of substance, may be seen in various ways. We all have immediate environmental circum­stances. Why do you think they're there the way they are there, for each of us individually? Simply because, in one way or another, we generated them. These are of our generations. This is why it is so ridiculous to start judging them and blaming others for the fact that they are the way they are. If we begin to accept our true state then we are responsible for all our generations. When we assume that responsibility in the expression of the reality of spirit then all our generations are perfect. It doesn't matter how they look. Judge not by the appearance. They're all perfect. There may be a good deal of evol present, which looks like evil to many people, but it is all then part of the perfect creative process that is now in operation because we're there. 

Now obviously in the past we've generated a lot of stuff that we don't like but it's there because we generated it. Of course we don't stand alone in this; we have a world full of generators generating the wrong kind of substance and of such a nature that it is only capable of accommodating the wrong kind of spirit. So obviously there is a need for the transformation of the forms in which the substance is now manifesting and the transmutation of the substance itself so that we fill out the potential design where the substance should be. And when it's there the design is in it because spirit was there already. And we find then the union of substance and spirit in the forms which it should take. So we do generate our own circumstances. We need to begin to look at this absolutely from the standpoint of spirit. We dispassionately observe the circumstances as they are and recog­nize our responsibility in their generation.

Now the circumstances that we see, the material circumstances as we would properly call them, are only a part of the picture. There's another generation going on too, but not very much, relative to the finer levels of substance that are required to allow the clear design of spirit to be made evident. Human beings become expert in generating coarse substance—just look at the circumstances of the world—coarse substance which has to a very high degree been divorced from the working of spirit through fine substance because there wasn't any fine substance. We have the res­ponsibility of generating the fine substance and we discover that there are various ways that this might be done expeditiously when the approach is made from spirit and not from the human nature stand­point which is trying to use anything it can lay its hands on to benefit itself. Human nature feels that it would be benefitted by charging the brain some more, so it uses chanting for this purpose: to benefit human nature. And while there may be a certain amount of the idea that one is doing it to the glory of God, what does it mean? It's just a human nature idea, isn't it?—an idea of the mind. What does it mean, Glorify God? Of course this is all based in the human nature attitude which said, “God is here and man is here.” We begin to see the union. That union becomes obvious because there is the generation of substance which makes it possible of our experience. Just because we don't experience something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It merely means that we don't experience it, that's all. If you are totally deaf you don't hear any sound. That doesn't mean that sound doesn't exist. So chanting, in the true sense—and this is not something that stands alone, that all we do is chant six or eight hours a day as though there was nothing else—chanting can be used, as many things can be used, once spirit is on hand to use these things. 

We do share the responsibility of the generation of substance, as we well know. To let this happen we need to be at the point of the union of spirit and substance. We have spoken of this on occasion as a crossover point. There is something being generated from below and there is something present from above. There has always been what was present from above but what has been generated from below has been inadequate. Something has been generated obviously—we have a material world. Our place, our position, is at that crossover point; and a point has position but no magnitude so this amongst other things would naturally deflate the human ego. It's nothing. It is a point, one might say, of stillness. We have noted this before. “Be still and know. In quietness and confidence are my strength.” 

There is the Word—a reality. There is the generation of substance by reason of our living. They come together at this point which is our proper positioning and we know the truth consequently, so that the activation of the Word may flow forth into the available substance, thereby generating in the returning cycle what is necessary to rise up in union, to ascend. “In quietness and in confidence is my strength.” Here is strength, energy, power, emerging into experience because of the substance that is present. We don't generate energy; we generate the substance which unifies us with the energy that is already present. Then we are not separate from the energy. We do not anticipate that we are going to get the energy by raising our blood sugar level. That may conceivably be a part of the substance that is generated by which the energy is made known. But let us never imagine that any of these things are the energy. Energy does not need to be created. It does not need to be produced. It already is, as with every other aspect of spirit. All that needs to happen is for it to be made known, and it is made known by reason of the substance with which it naturally blends. Then the energy which initially was undimensional is found to be present dimensionally speaking. The energy and the substance are one. Heaven and earth are one. 

We need to see the vast variety of substance that is required to encompass the extent of this power. I just mentioned the material circumstances and that's the very lowest level of generation. But we are constantly generating substance, and incidentally also dissipating substance. We have noted one of the ways of dissipation relative to noise. Some sounds are discharge sounds and some sounds are charge sounds. The chanting is all within the range of the charge sounds, but obviously with the indiscriminate production of sound—noise—in the human nature world the vast majority of it would be discharge sounds, dissipating energy because it's dissipating substance; dissipating the substance in which the energy would be made apparent. And if the energy isn't made apparent it seems as though we have lost energy. But there is no less energy; merely less substance; or less of the right kind of substance. And it is human behavior, its various aspects, that either generates the right substance of the right nature, of the right quality, capable of rising to all the levels that it needs to occupy. Or we can dissipate substance, discharge substance, or merely generate it at certain levels which certainly will not allow an adequate experience of the creative power which is available.

Now human generation, such as it is, any that has lasted any length of time, has tended to be of quite a low vibrational nature and it permits the experience of power of a very limited sort. It's only when we have the whole of this substance at all levels that we discover the reality of power in balance. Here comes the matter of balance again—balance which evidently and obviously relates very much to the hearing mechanism. How clear is it? Here is a physical form of manifestation which may transmit a sense of balance to the physical form, but there is balance at every level, not merely physical level. We need more substance than physical substance in physical forms. We need the substance in all of its levels and in the forms that it takes at those levels when those forms are the design of spirit. 

The physical form of man is originally designed in spirit. It's gone out of whack considerably since then, but basically the design is present and capable of being regenerated—the last thing to be regenerated, incidentally, insofar as human experience is concerned because the power, the energy, comes down from God out of heaven. In other words, it emerges through the higher vibrational levels initially and subsequently permeates all the other levels on the way out. The last one to be permeated is the flesh body. But the substance of the flesh was generated and incorporated into this particular form by reason of this energy. The energy is present: Call it different things at different levels but the energy was present humanly speaking—still is, but the substance has been inadequate and so there could not be balance, real balance. 

We begin to find this balance as there is the generation of the higher levels of spiritual substance so that the spirit at those levels may be incorporated into experience and expression on earth. Then the basics for balance begin to emerge. We don't really know what that balance is yet. We have some aware­ness that there is balance. We have some experience of our own individual balance to some degree, but you also have been aware as of the human tendency for the yo‑yo experience, as it can be described. But I'm sure you're all sure that there is a state of balance. Well you can't get to it. All you can do is to function in balance at this level to this extent so that when you feel yourself getting out of balance you quickly reorient and come back into balance so that there may be the continual generation of the substance which will allow the experience of true balance, total balance, that your gen­erations may all be perfect. 

That's what we are here to do; to generate all that is necessary to accommodate the Holy Spirit, the whole spirit. The whole spirit is not going to arbitrarily come swishing out with a great blast of wind when there is no facility, no capability of encompassing that. The substance simply isn't there. Well the substance has to be there for spirit to emerge, and to the extent that the substance is there the spirit does emerge and there is the experience of design, of control and of power. These three things are the most obvious aspects of the outpouring of the spirit: Design, control and power. Thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory. We don't give glory to God in fact. We could not give God any more glory than He has. All that can happen is that the glory that He has is revealed, that's all. And it takes substance to do it, and it takes our generation of that substance to allow the sub­stance to be present, to the glory of God. 

We delight to listen, and because we listen we hear, and because we hear we're capable of sounding the tone of the Word which we have heard. Actually of course the hear­ing and the sounding are together as one. There is no separation. If we imagine that we hear the Word now and we'll be able to sound it tomorrow, we fool ourselves. If we hear it now, we sound it now. We have to hear it tomorrow to sound it tomorrow.

© Emissaries of Divine Light