We Are Vitally Concerned With Essences

We  Are  Vitally  Concerned  With  Essences

from  The Essences of God

Martin Cecil   November 4, 1979

Recently we have used the word essence to describe the reality of God within the range of human experience. The reality of God is also beyond the range of human experience. We have spoken of undimensional God, which is a way of describing an ultimate reality. It is only as this ultimate reality comes into the range of experience as essence that we may begin to have a knowing of it. We are, then, vitally concerned with essences.

Human nature has been concerned with forms. There has been a certain recognition of the fact of essences relative to those forms, but the form has been prominent in consciousness—primary in consciousness. If there was any recognition that essences carried importance it was presumed that those essences could be found by examining the form and seeking to trace essences back of it. As we are well aware, this is the usual reverse attitude which human beings assume: they stay at the bottom and occasionally look up. They stay at the bottom because the primary interest and concern is with forms.

Should a consideration of spiritual things begin to assert itself in consciousness then the idea initially is to try to seek out the essence back of the form. This is sometimes done in the personal sense by an attempt to turn within one's own form in order to find whatever is there, in order to make contact with the reality, the spiritual reality. In other words here is an approach which is seeking to find the essence back of the form but proceeding from the level of the form. However the fact of the matter is that essences always precede form, so if we make the reverse approach we are always too late and we never discover anything of any particular value, other than that it may be useless to seek the essences back of the form. Apparently rather few even arrive at that point; they earnestly spend their lives seeking essences back of the forms, but the form is always the prominent thing, the important thing. They just want to know a little bit more about the form, and therefore it seems necessary to discover what the essence is back of it. But the form is the most peripheral aspect of whatever this creative process is, which doesn't proceed from forms—it isn't an evolutionary process in that sense; it proceeds from essences.

It has seemed very difficult for the human mind to grasp—impossible in fact—how the intricate mechanisms of the human body work. Only forms are being examined and it consequently appears that to understand one must have an immense store of knowledge about every aspect of every detail of everything that is occurring. This would require, I think, in these days at least, a considerable computer, and even then it could never be done. Of course if you are making a physical approach to the situation it seems as though there must be somebody present, perhaps designated as the subconscious mind, who has all this tremendous knowledge about the chemistry of the body. This is a very mysterious thing if one is making a physical approach but a very simple thing if one is concerned with essences. If the essences are permitted to provide what is necessary at that level then the physical requirements automatically follow suit, and nobody has to go to an institute of higher learning to discover all that is involved.

We see this happening relative to the humble spider who spins his web and does it most accurately on the basis of know-how; not because the spider has attained an engineering degree but because what is happening is happening on the basis of essences. Simple! What heavy weather human beings make of everything by attempting to manipulate forms, when the right handling of essences permits the form to reveal what has been established in the essence.

Whatever needs to be done relative to this body of mankind is certainly not going to be done because there are those who gain the necessary knowledge in order to program super computers which will then explain what should be done. As I have emphasized before, the attempt to solve problems making an external approach multiplies problems—if you solve one problem then you find you have ten more, and there is an exponential curve beginning to develop here.

I am sure we are all aware, theoretically at least, that the physical approach, what has sometimes been termed the approach of the First Sacred School, is not the one that will now achieve what is necessary. It wouldn't really have achieved what was necessary at the time of the Israelites, but it would have then offered a useful starting point which was acceptable and capable of being understood at the level where people were then. Then, step by step, changes could have been wrought so that a larger vision might have been known, leading into the point where essences would come into the picture insofar as human consciousness was concerned. Of course essences have always been in the picture, whether anyone knew about them or not.

We have noted how the initial steps toward this true spiritual experience were lost, rejected, so that there was only one approach left. This required a direct participation in the reality of essences. The rigmarole of trying to discover what the essences are, back of forms, was never the way to go, even in the First Sacred School or the Second Sacred School, but the approach which was offered there made possible—if it had been allowed to work, which it wasn't—a conditioning of human consciousness so that the experience of the handling of essences might have easily come on a widespread scale. Because those opportunities were lost, then it became obvious that the approach would necessarily have to be made in this field of essences on a very small scale, because there would be very few human beings whose consciousness was adequately conditioned to make this approach. Yet for anything of value to occur there must be the right handling of essences at the level where human beings are, even though it be but by a few. So we find ourselves at this point, with this matter of essences being emphasized to us.

I am sure we can see that the use of the word essence relates to the use of the word Word. It relates also to Spirit, but spirit is incomprehensible to human beings in the human state until there is the essential vibratory substance with which it may combine so that it comes within the range of human awareness. I am not speaking necessarily at the moment of the range of the human mind. The human mind has some definite restrictions. There is something beyond this, obviously. We would say that God is beyond the human mind. The human mind is a very little thing relative to the vast field of essences. Some of those essences are at the level of the human mind, but there is far more of essences beyond the human mind than is capable of being encompassed by the human mind. The human mind is a capacity within which certain vibrational levels of essence may be included, but there is much more which cannot be included there, at least not directly.

The essences may be seen as a combination of spirit and vibrational substance—vibrational substance from the very finest levels to the very coarsest. The true essences are a revelation of the spirit of God in action. In order for that action to occur dimensionally speaking the spirit of God must be in combination with dimensional substance. The spirit of God cannot be in combination directly with physical substance. The flesh of the human body is not merely physical substance. We have recognized, again theoretically I suppose, that mental substance is not separate from physical substance. All the levels of vibrational substance are not separate from each other. They interpenetrate each other from the top down, so to speak. At the physical level there is an interpenetration of all the vibrational levels of spiritual substance in this dimensional universe. We have recognized the fact of a veil, which excludes experience of the higher levels in the present human state. This does not deny, however, that all the vibrational factors are present; it is just that, because of the veil, human function ignores what is available for the expression of the spirit in living, in other words ignores essences, or only approaches essences from the standpoint of form.

As we have already noted, essences always precede form. Seeing this, again we may reemphasize the simplicity of the true creative process. The lower vibrational levels of substance are moved by the higher vibrational levels of substance; therefore if function is from the standpoint of the highest level of vibrational substance everything is under control. Here is the reality of the dominion which man was created to exercise in the name of the Lord on earth, and it involved no sweat of the brow, just the handling of essences. On this basis, when it was the correct handling of essences, all the other levels fell into their natural order according to what had been established for them. Where human beings now exist there has been a separation from the movement of spirit in the finest levels of essences and a substitute on the part of the human mind of an ersatz heaven which was supposed to produce a satisfactory state in form, but it hasn't. Obviously it could not.

So we come again to essences. There begins to be a clarification of the veil, of the impure heart, to a sufficient extent so that there may not only be a recognition of the fact of essences—most anyone can have that recognition if they really look at it—but an experience of the essences. A recognition of the fact doesn't accomplish much—there must be the experience of it. So presumably our concern has been to let a purification come in the heart so that the veil might be dissolved sufficiently to bring a sensing of the reality of the essences. Now we have some sensing in this regard. The essences are the quality of God.

By the way, I wonder how many felt it wise to look up the word essence in the dictionary. While the dictionary may be useful in providing a definition of sorts which sometimes is more or less accurate, when applied to the reality which we are considering, it of course only offers a concept. This is the approach toward essences from the level of form. Making this approach, in my dictionary the definition was as follows:

1: that which makes something what it is; that in which the real nature of a thing consists; intrinsic or fundamental nature. 2: the distinctive quality or qualities of something.

It went on, but I think that's enough.

Making the approach from the physical standpoint, which is what the mind does, there is the production of definitions along this line. We can see how the definitions apply. We could take something and see if we could discover what the essences are. We won't get very far, but we may be able to discern the fact that there are some essences at the mental level. We could take a tree, for instance. When we use the word tree we think of a form, don't we? It may be some particular tree. Which one shall we choose? Redwood perhaps—that's a very impressive tree. Ah, there's an essence: impressive. It's majestic; we might even call it exalted; and it is enduring, at least from the standpoint of human lifetimes. So immediately there are some essences which relate to this form. We could take some other tree and see some different essences.

We could take the human form and recognize that there are some essences present there of which we have an awareness, somewhat, with respect to ourselves, but more with respect to other people—the character, the quality, the nature, which is made evident by the form. That can be deceiving, can't it? It's not quite so deceiving in trees. They don't dissemble, whereas human beings do. We might have a con man for instance. Here is the appearance of something, of an essence, which certainly isn't the true essence. The actual essence of that con man is his con nature, but he covers that up as far as possible in order to sell the bill of goods. So judge not by the appearance—first of all not by the form, but not by the surface essences either.

How deep do you think you can penetrate into the essences of someone else? Generally speaking human beings don't go very deep. They are not capable of going very deep. Why not? Because they cannot penetrate further than the level of those essences at which they themselves function. Because of this there is usually a tendency to accuse others of what is in oneself. Most people are not aware of this.

So there are various levels of essences even within the scope of the human experience, and this is a very, very small part, a distorted part, a limited part, of the total range of essences. If we see it in terms of a seven-plane, or seven-dimensional, state, then this would relate to the first two dimensions only, and, as we recognize, the higher intensity vibrational substance permeates the lower and always goes beyond it. So it is getting bigger and bigger as we go up, more and more range, more and more scope—a vastly greater field of essences. So let us not think of essences as squeezings! The orange juice you drink in the morning is not really the essence of the orange. Essences are infinitely vaster than forms.

The idea has tended to be that essences are small, narrowing down finally to nothing; but the smallest level of substance is the level of what we call physical substance. We can see this to be the fact if we look at the universe; there's scarcely any physical substance in it at all, really. We may have a star-filled sky, and see more stars through a telescope, but relative to the amount of space there is it's nothing—just a gossamer. The same thing is true for each one of us sitting here: the form is the smallest part of us, and yet what a big thing human beings try to make out of it.

Essences are the concern, and we cannot have any real comprehension or awareness of the true essences as long as the veil separates our consciousness from them. It isn't that we are going to take our consciousness up to some other level. Our consciousness the way it is doesn't belong at some other level; it belongs right where it is and it can't really get out of that. But it is possible to let the levels which are already present come within the range of our awareness, and this happens to the extent that the veil is dissolved, or the heart purified. As it happens we become aware of something vast.

At the beginning of the service I emphasized the vastness, the majesty, the glory of God. It would be quite impossible for these puny little human creatures here to add anything to that. It is what it is already. However what it is can be allowed to appear in whatever the fitting way would be at the level where human beings are. The fitting way wouldn't be an intense blaze of glory, like a nuclear explosion, because that would dispose of human beings, wouldn't it? The fitting way is what is creative at the level where it appears. The fitting way is not a destructive way. It enhances whatever is present at the level where it appears.

The intensity of the creative expression of the finest level of essences must be stepped down, so to speak, from level to level so that it may appear creatively at whatever level it should appear; and for the moment the least blaze of glory would likely be the physical level. There is quite a blaze of glory that we observe day by day going across the sky—or apparently going across the sky—but I don't suppose anyone is at the moment too much interested in emigrating to the sun. So there is something which is fitting here at the present time. Let us not imagine that what is known now on the face of the earth is supposed to be this way forever. We hope not anyway! But even the sorts of experiences that are known are certainly not what really should be known when the essences are allowed to be present within the range of human expression so that the dominion of God is established on earth. Then, I suspect, things would really move. Something would happen. We wouldn't be lolling around on the beach. The world would change in the creative sense.

The first order of business, however, is to find a few human beings who will allow these essences to emerge into expression in their own living; and what emerges will be at a level that is suitable for the occasion, for the state of affairs that is present. Something is emerging here and now in this state of affairs. It is fitting for this state of affairs. It wouldn't be fitting in some other state of affairs. You can recognize that easily enough. We won't go to the beer parlor at Exeter Arms and give a service—it wouldn't be fitting. Conceivably there is something that would be fitting there. You might have to use your imagination! But if for some reason you happened to be in that circumstance, then you would bring into that circumstance what was fitting for that circumstance, and that is true regardless of where one may be.

But there is the necessity of the establishment of a sacred place, as we have noted before, in which the finer essences are safe. We gather on a Sunday morning, for instance now, to allow the borders of this sacred place to be expanded, allow the dust and the cobwebs and the garbage that may be present to be swept out so that it is a holy place, a fitting receptacle for the finer essences to fill, which they will do. In fact they are doing it anyway, but not within the range of our awareness until there is a sacred place in our awareness; then there it is. It doesn't have to come from anywhere—there it is—it was there already. As this is so, and that sacred place is maintained in our living no matter where we are or what we are doing, then there is always something being offered fittingly into the environment, into the world around us, out of this sacred place of fine essence: the expression of God, which never appears as a destructive blaze of glory. It appears as a blaze of glory at a level where it is creative. It doesn't appear as a blaze of glory at a level where it would be destructive.

So we live out of this sacred place, aware of what is fitting to find expression by reason of our living in any particular circumstance. But we cannot know what is fitting, we certainly cannot provide what is fitting, unless there is a holy place, and when there is we will be living out of it. If we are not living out of it, it isn't there. So if there is a holy place, a sacred place, we will live out of it. We will be in it but our expression will emerge out of it into the circumstance of the moment in whatever way may be fitting. And being aware increasingly of the reality of essences, we see that there is much more to our expression than the thing we do in the moment physically speaking, or even the word that we speak in the moment, or even the thought that we think—because, after all, the thought that we think is at the level of the mind, isn't it, and there is something vastly greater than that. But there comes an awareness, as there is a sacred place and the fine essences are consequently present in our experience, that we are living at levels which we had not heretofore dreamt even existed.

If this is seen you can recognize, obviously, that you cannot talk to people and explain all this. If there is any understanding in you it is merely there because, in whatever measure, the veil has been dissolving so that something of the reality can emerge into your own consciousness. Then there it is. It's there not because I put it there somehow by projecting something into you but because you became aware of what was already present there. And this is the way it works, which reemphasizes the fact that nobody is going to get anything from a leader—so why try? Why try to get something? Or why try to project someone into an exalted position, as though he was going to provide something that you could get?

What is necessary is what you are going to provide, what we are all going to provide. Then the essences are present. The essences are not divided up into chunks. The essences are whole. Those whole essences certainly differentiate into expression through this person and that person; but they do not thereby separate themselves from the state of wholeness out of which they sprang, and we all share that state of wholeness. This is the state that is present in the finest level of essences, and as that emerges into our expression because the veil dissolves, then we live in a way which is different obviously, different from the way most human beings live, the way we ourselves have lived. We find something new, and because of this expression of essences all things are in the process of being made new, to the revelation of the glory of God in the manner that is fitting at the level of those who are present in the environment where the expression appears. Let us let this glory be revealed in our living.

© emissaries of divine light