The Transforming Fire
Martin
Cecil April 15, 1979
In the story of
the resurrection of Jesus, His body had been placed in a tomb which was in a
garden. We have taken note before of the symbolical representation which is
here portrayed, because indeed He had accepted the state of mankind into His
own body so that this might be represented thereby, revealing the condition of
the body of mankind in its present state; namely that of being in a coma in a
tomb. But the tomb is in the garden. From inside the tomb, with the stone upon
the mouth of the sepulcher, it would be impossible to tell that the tomb was in
a garden. However from the standpoint of anyone in the garden it was obvious
that the tomb was in the garden. Here we see a rather clear portrayal of what
the experience is in the human nature state in the tomb.
There is a
rather low level of awareness of the tomb state, but no awareness of the garden
state; at least only perhaps in imagination, but in fact, no—because there is
something blocking the connection between the tomb and the garden. This is
portrayed as a stone, and we might be reminded of the hardness of human hearts.
This hardness, this impurity, maintains the cloud cover, the blanket, the veil,
through which nothing can be seen.
This veil is
something of a mirror. The heart merely reflects what is present in the tomb.
The connecting substance of the heart is also the substance of separation
between heaven and earth in the experience of human nature consciousness. It
should be a window through which heaven may emerge into the earth, but it has
rather been a mirror simply reflecting what is present in the earth, what is
present in the tomb state of human nature. Human hearts are all involved in
that. That is the impure heart and the hard heart. It is a stone which blocks
the connection between the garden and what is now the tomb.
What is now the
tomb is not the way it should be. Certainly this has been brought about by what
is called the fall of man—human failure in other words—and is not the creation
of God. The essential factors of the creation of God are all present but the
human nature consciousness has superimposed this veil, so that there is no awareness
of the reality of the garden; just a vague hope perhaps, interpreted in various
ways according to one’s system of beliefs. It is true that there is a garden
but it is of no particular value merely to speculate about it, to build up some
delightful imagination, while sitting in the tomb.
When the stone
is removed from the mouth of the sepulcher it then becomes evident to the one
who is as yet in the tomb that the tomb is in a garden. He can see out through
the window that there is a garden. He can’t see very much of the garden that
way but merely becomes aware of the reality of the garden. In some measure I’m
sure you will recognize this as relating to your own experience: in the tomb,
yet the stony heart in the process of being removed from the gate between the
tomb and the garden, so that a glimpse of the garden is experienced. That glimpse
is not imagination. Of course when a person has such a glimpse there is the
human nature tendency to try to build that up in imagination to be something
more than it actually is. We know that we need to learn to accept the situation
as it actually is without embellishing it with our imagination, because
immediately when we do that we remove ourselves from the present moment and
from the experience of things as they are. We find ourselves then in a realm of
fancy.
I’m sure we
have all reached a point where we are not too interested in indulging in this
sort of fancy. Insofar as we are concerned it should be the real thing or
nothing. So there has been a little glimpse of the fact that the tomb state of
human nature is not isolated in fact from the garden. It has merely seemed to
be so from inside the tomb, as long as the hardened heart prevented awareness
of the reality of the garden. This is the situation pretty well for most human
beings on the face of the earth. Maybe with some there is an occasional glimpse
through a crack: “Oh, there is a garden.” It looks a little far away. You can’t
squeeze through the crack to get into the garden. Therefore the only way to
experience the garden is to die in the tomb and hope that, having died in the
tomb, by some magic means you will be transported out into the garden. This is
a human fancy.
We need to see
what the facts are as these facts relate to our own experience. And if we do
have some sort of glimpse of a garden beyond the tomb, let us recognize that it
is real and that the tomb in fact is in the garden and indeed is rightly a part
of the garden; heaven and earth are one. It is not as though one were going to
demolish the tomb, once out in the garden—“We don’t need the tomb anymore.”
Well it wouldn’t be a tomb anymore if there was no corpse in it, so if the corpse
was found not to be a corpse really but merely in the state of coma, so that it
could be aroused, the stone rolled away, then the experience of the garden
becomes a reality.
You know,
most analogies break down somewhere along the line. Actually it is a matter of
letting the garden come into the tomb. We may see the tomb in different terms.
We have used the word womb to describe it. It is a place of
change, gestation, a creative place in fact, rather than a place of disintegration.
As a tomb it is a place of disintegration. As a womb it is a place of
integration. It participates in the creative process. It is included in the
garden in other words; it is not separate from the garden. And what is happening
in the earth relates to what is happening in the heaven. The action of the
heaven engenders a creative process in the earth, so that there are changes wrought
in the earth in what was before considered to be a tomb. Human beings really do
consider this earth to be a tomb. They are going to die here. It is a great big
graveyard.
We belong in
the garden, but the tomb is in the garden; so the tomb is part of our
environment but we no longer see it as a tomb. We see it, as I say, perhaps as
a womb. We see it as a part of the creative process. This earth is not meant to
be a receptacle for disintegration. There is some disintegration going on,
obviously, and this is right, under the circumstances as they are; but it
really is a matter of integrating what is now present in the earth with heaven.
Here is the process of change, a process of transformation, a process of
transmutation, a process of resurrection. This is what should be occurring
relative to the earth.
Things have
been at a standstill pretty well for quite some time insofar as this creative
process is concerned. Human beings, looking at it now, see it pretty much as a
circle: human beings are born to die and all the rest of nature seems to be
following out the same sort of circle; lift the earth up a bit and then down it
goes, round and round. This is not the true creative process; this is something
that is in effect now because human beings are not man. Human beings restored
to the state of man provide a facility by which the true creative process can
work. This can be described as a spiral rather than as a circle. But for the
moment we have to settle for the way things are and the way things have been
for a long time. Human beings always see things they look at through their own
state of consciousness. This state of consciousness might be described as a
circle state of consciousness, going round and round. So, looking out through
this circle state of consciousness a circle is seen, and of course what is so
seen is accepted as though it was what is really there. In a sense it is what
is really there if one is in the circle state of consciousness, but it is not
what really should be there.
It
could be said that things have been held in abeyance on earth for a long time
for the sake of fallen man, that the restoration might
put in an appearance. In order for this to happen human beings have to be kept
from destroying themselves utterly. They’ve done their very best in this
regard, and they have almost succeeded a few times, but our presence here this
evening witnesses the fact that it was a near miss. Man is rightly the means by
which God acts on earth directly with respect to the creative process. Man created
in the image and likeness of God allows this to happen. There was indeed a
period of time when it did happen, but obviously in that situation, while it
cannot be imagined as to what it actually was, it could be seen that a very
great vibrational intensity of power was in focus and in expression by reason
of man. There was no veil between heaven and earth. The substance of love was
maintained in the experience of man, and we have described that substance as
fire, the fire of love, the substance of love, an intense fire.
This is the
creative fire, the fire of transmutation, the fire by which the creative action
of God through man could transform the earth. That process of transformation
was initiated, and we have some evidence of it in this beautiful earth. Take a
look at some of the other planets and you won’t find anything comparable in
this solar system. The earth is the way it is, not merely because it is a
certain distance from the sun, following out a certain orbit, but because man
has been present on this planet, making possible the creative process. The
creative process, under the hand of God through man, is a very intense affair;
in other words the furnace, the fire, is very hot.
When man removed himself
from his position as the means by which this fire might be maintained at its
proper heat he no longer was the channel for the expression of that fire, and
so things began to cool down. This was partly because of the fact that man was no longer a clear channel for the fire, but it is also partly so
that man himself would not be destroyed. Man fell to a level where he did not
belong. He fell into the earth, out of heaven into the earth, where the fire
burns, where the transmutation is occurring, and even though the fire had been
reduced in intensity it was still hot. All human beings since that time can
testify to this fact. Experience in the world is supposed to be experience in
the valley of the shadow of death, experience of inevitable suffering—famine, war,
miseries of all kinds. This is the historical state of affairs insofar as human
experience and memory of it are concerned. But the fire was reduced to be
one-seventh as hot as it was wont to be.
In the story
about Nebuchadnezzar, you will remember that it was heated up as though that
was the unnatural condition, but the fact of the matter is that that is the
natural condition, that the fire should be seven times hotter than it now is in
human experience. If it were seven times hotter right now, how many human
beings do you think could stand it? How many would there be left in a week’s
time? Yet if there is to be restoration this reheating of the furnace must occur.
The reheating of the furnace means that human nature can no longer exist. Human
nature is burned up: human nature is cast into the lake burning with fire and
brimstone. This is supposed to be hell, or a picture of hell, the devil’s
domain. But this is the way the devil is eliminated.
That ultimate
elimination cannot occur until the normal level of heat has been restored. The
normal level of heat comes again into the earth because there is a facility in
the human sense to make this action of God or earth possible. We see what is
required perhaps and we also comprehend in some measure our own responsibility
in the matter. Human nature is going to be burned up whether human nature likes
it or not. It won’t like it! It doesn’t like it now, does it? One of the
favorite human pastimes is complaint, certainly. So the fire has burned at a lower
intensity and man has survived in consequence—not man; fallen man. Human beings
have survived in the tomb. The body of mankind is still there, not really
alive, just in a coma. There is a vast difference between a human being in a
coma and a human being
leaping upon the mountains and skipping upon the hills. So the state of man as now known, the
fallen condition, is in no way revealing of what the true condition is, the
true living condition of man as a living soul.
Physically
speaking there is a collective body present, recognizable still, after a
fashion, as having the potential of man. If you see someone lying in a coma in
the hospital there may be a recognition that there is a potential person who
might again be up and about. So it is with the human state now, the state of
human nature now. It is the coma state in the tomb. The precedent has been set
by which the experience of the coming forth from the tomb could occur. You may recall
that Mary Magdalene came early in the morning into the garden and approached
the tomb while it was yet dark, yet she could discern that the body wasn’t in
the tomb anymore, the body of Jesus. Because it was dark in the garden, when
she became aware of a figure standing by she assumed it to be the gardener. Of
course we know that it was in fact the Master, and when He had spoken her name
she recognized Him, and she fell in front of Him intending to touch Him, take
hold of His feet perhaps. But He warned her, “Touch me not.” Why? Because here
was the fire, here was the process in operation, with the fire being heated
seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated in the human nature condition.
And that could, and would, have been fatal to Mary if she had touched Him.
There was something happening. This transmutation was going on.
Human beings
may be very thankful that the fire heretofore hasn’t been any hotter than it
has. It has been bad enough, hasn’t it? You have only to look at the fiction of
history to tell that there has indeed been a lot of suffering on earth down
through the ages, but never sufficient to eliminate human beings altogether.
The fire wasn’t that hot. But for the restoration to occur, for man to be
resurrected, he must again be man, through whom the normal intensity of fire
finds expression. When he is restored man, that intensity of heat doesn’t
bother him because he is not in the area where the transmutation is taking
place. There is some intensity for a time while he comes out of that area. This
relates to our own experience. Some have been hopeful that they
could skip right into heaven. But even emerging into the garden, in whatever
measure this is done, just as with the Master’s body, there was still something
happening in it when He was in the garden; the transmutation was occurring
still. This was all a continuing aspect of what had been experienced in the
crucifixion and the events which immediately preceded the crucifixion, all very
painful. The fire was already in the process of being heated and it was
necessary to pass through that. So He didn’t bypass that experience and somehow
maneuver His way into the garden. He had to go through the way He had to go through,
thereby setting a precedent for the body of mankind. But it can be seen that
the body of mankind established for itself the suffering aspect which may allow
for the transmutation in the garden.
These things
have been set by human beings long ago, and what has been sown must be reaped.
Yet it isn’t the annihilation of the human race; it is the resurrection of man.
Who is to say what the composition of man restored would be? Is there any value
to speculation?—for instance to wonder whether it would include four billion
people, or maybe only four million. Who knows? What is the point of speculation?
Whatever it is it will prove itself out, and it will prove itself out exactly,
and there is nothing that human beings can do to change it. Individually
speaking we have a choice, but in the overall sense human nature is going to
pass away. All those individuals in the body of mankind, subject to human
nature, have a choice. God is not willing that any should perish. Let me read a
passage from the Second Epistle of Peter. He is leading up to something here:
“Knowing this
first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their
own lusts. And saying,
Where is the promise of his coming?”—the coming forth of the
angel, the coming forth of the Archangel, the coming forth of the Son of
God—“Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all
things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they
willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God”—now here we are; we are
concerned with the Word of God—“For this they willingly
are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth
standing out of the water and in the water.” Here is this different state of
affairs on earth than is known now. “Whereby the
world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” There is the
passing of one world. “But the
heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store,
reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
“Reserved unto fire”—the fire has been at a relatively low temperature so that
the world could be reserved for the high temperature. “But, beloved,
be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand
years, and a thousand years as one day.” Don’t be impatient. “The Lord is
not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is
longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all
should come to repentance.” He is not willing that the human race should pass
from the face of the earth.
“But the day of
the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass
away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the
earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” There are those
who have examined this particular verse and have seen the fulfilment of the
threat of nuclear war. That could be too. The way this is put, it looks very
much like it, doesn’t it?—the elements melting with fervent heat. But we also
see it from the standpoint of the substance of love, the fire of love, the
intensification of the fire of love, so that human nature may be burned up and
all the works of human nature may be dissolved. This is what is being said.
Peter evidently had some vision in this regard.
But we
recognize that it is not a matter of survival, because human nature is not
going to survive. Only human nature thinks in terms of survival. In the angelic
outlook, why would there be any thought of survival? There is no concern in the
matter. The angel survives; the angel is. So the approach is not concerned with
survival in the human nature sense, because human nature is not going to
survive and the works of human nature are not going to survive. What does
happen then? Do you think human nature can find out? Do you think the human
mind can figure it out? It all looks to be so fanciful. “This has never
happened before!” That’s right! It never happened before. If it had happened
before, this state of affairs wouldn’t be here. But just because something
never happened before doesn’t say that it can’t happen. Mind you, in the human
nature state everything has happened before. There is nothing new under the sun
at all. It has been an endless and boring repetition. But now the earth is reserved
unto fire, and we are here as angels to let the transmutation take place in our
own experience, so that while the tomb still seems to be a tomb insofar as
human nature is concerned, we have the garden experience.
Obviously the
tomb needs to be transmuted, so that it is no longer a tomb. It is a tomb by
reason of human nature and by reason of the works of human nature, so that if
it is to be transmuted so that it is not a tomb human nature and its works must
be dissolved. Here we begin to enter into a realm which is unknown, certainly
unknown to human nature. If it were known to human nature human nature wouldn’t
know it, because human nature wouldn’t exist. Using words, there are all sorts
of apparent contradictions and paradoxes that emerge—you may have noticed
that—but remember, it is not a matter of trying to get understanding from the
words. The understanding comes by reason of the spirit of the words, and when
we share the Word of God in this sense, whatever human words may be used, may
be necessary, can be put to work, and we see no contradiction, no paradox,
because we are not hung up on the words.
The Word of God
is supreme and the Word of God may take many forms. Obviously it does. We have
only to look at this creation on the surface of the earth. The Word of God has taken
many forms. Some of these forms seem to be contradictory; they seem to be in
conflict. Certainly insofar as human beings are concerned this is the case, but
it is assumed, looking at things through the circular vision of human nature,
that conflict is the hallmark of all nature. There is a terrible warfare going
on in the pond down here—so the circular vision of human
nature tells us. But human nature never really knows what is going on, even in
its own affairs.
So we are
concerned to be so clear of our subjection to the human nature state that the
fire of love may intensify to whatever degree is necessary, in other words may
be restored to its original heat. I don’t think any of us would wish this to
happen in a moment. It must happen gradually, but let us not try to make it
happen too gradually, because it is going to happen anyway one way or another,
and if we’re hanging back we’re going to get burned for sure. The true
transmutation which is to be experienced, the resurrection, is not painful,
because there is the acceptance of the angelic nature, which is not being
transmuted. Human nature is being transmuted; it is being burned up; but the
capacity of human consciousness remains for the right use of angelic
consciousness. So there is a transmutation in human consciousness to allow for
the acceptance of the intensity of angelic consciousness, so that the coming
forth of the angel into expression in the world does not destroy the form
through which it comes forth, through which you
come forth.
I’ve touched on
various things this evening relative to the matter of resurrection, so that
there might be some increasing awareness of what the experience is liable to
be. To the extent that we stay true to angelic nature, then we need not be
shocked by the experience, but if we still nourish human nature we will be shocked.
Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. All
people are being forced into a choice, whether they like it or not, because of
the increased intensity of the fire emerging by reason of the fact that there
are some angels in the process of coming forth from the tomb into the garden,
or letting the garden come into their tombs, if you want to put it that way;
because they are really not going anyplace. They are staying right here. It is
certainly not a matter of escape, as you well know. It is a matter of handling
what needs to be handled as angels right here, letting the kingdom come,
letting God’s will be done in earth as it is in heaven. For His, indeed, is the
kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
We all have the
opportunity of sharing in the experience of the substance of love. To the
extent that the veil is still present because of the impure and hardened heart,
that substance is held at bay somewhat so that the heat is not all that intense,
but it is growing more intense in spite of any maneuvering that human nature
may do. Is it not our joy to experience this substance of love, this fire of
love, which we have seen as relating to the matter of friendship? What is so
fearful about that? But at the same time it is an intense fire which burns up
human nature. Human nature knows not the Lord, knows not friendship, knows not
anything. Let it burn up. Stay true to this substance of love. Stay true to the
reality of friendship.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
