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
