Into The Presence Of The Lord

Into  The  Presence  Of  The  Lord

Martin Cecil   June 2, 1974

Some of the saddest words to be found anywhere in all of the world's scriptures are these: “And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord.” This brief passage summarizes the human condition and the reason for it. Cain represents material man, the mankind that inhabits the surface of this planet at the present time. Mankind is out from the presence of the Lord. Every human being is aware of this, either consciously or subconsciously, and all have undertaken to produce some sort of substitute to help assuage the emptiness which the fact of being out from the presence of the Lord produces in human hearts. Man, symbolized by Cain, went out from the presence of the Lord after he had slain Abel, Abel representing spiritual man. Spiritual man was lost to the experience of material man. The brothers belong together. If Abel is absent there is naturally and inevitably a sense of void.

Now, human beings, as I say, have undertaken to fill that void with substitutes of various kinds, but the experience has never been satisfactory — of course not; it is make-believe. Some have felt that the void could be filled by religious means and so a religious approach was made, imagining that somehow this might resurrect Abel, but it never has. Others felt that an intellectual approach would be more profitable, the sense of emptiness perchance could be filled with the substance of knowledge; and while knowledge has certainly been multiplied, the emptiness remains. Then there were those who supposed that material means would be satisfactory, the satisfying of the physical desires in various ways: eating, drinking, sex, the development of a pleasing environment of some kind. But Abel wasn't resurrected; the veil remained thick and impenetrable, with a mysterious and possibly mythical God the other side of it somewhere — and all of this consequent upon what was summarized in that statement: “And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord.” He found himself in a state of isolation.

Human beings everywhere know something of this experience consciously. Each person seems like a little separate entity somehow, necessarily on the defensive. There is a feeling of insignificance and an endeavor to make some sort of significance, a feeling of lack and an endeavor to fill that lack by all these various means. But all this is, in fact, living a lie, living in an unreal condition.

In the story, as it is recorded in the Book of Genesis about Cain and Abel, it seems as though Cain was inevitably banished from any true and satisfactory experience in life, without hope of possible change, possible restoration. This is not, in fact, the case, although there are necessarily cycles which must be allowed to unfold and work out if opportunity for restoration is to come. One cannot arbitrarily expect that at the moment of repentance restoration will be the immediate experience. There is a vast backlog of failure to be cleared; but if it is ever to be cleared it can only be done as there is repentance, a recognition that by none of the methods of men — religious, intellectual, material — can the task be achieved.

It has seemed at times in the past that when a person had established a more or less stable condition, apparently, by having a balance in his own experience with respect to religion and intellectual development and physical satisfaction, here was all that could be expected in human experience. I suppose one example of this was what was current in the so-called Victorian age when the world apparently was a stable place, but underneath was corruption, no matter how good it may have looked on the surface — “full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.” This doesn't mean that in that particular time this was exceptionally the case insofar as human beings were concerned; it has always been so. The human condition is that of uncleanness and corruption: the condition of Cain, who went out from the presence of the Lord.

And human beings know not the Lord. Those who are religiously inclined have engendered within themselves a picture of something or other in which they believe, but it is, fundamentally, a state of imagination. Others who do not look upon themselves as being imaginative in that sense have a different false god, whom they worship just as earnestly, whether that god is in the realm of the human intellect or in the realm of material achievement. And all this corrupt state composes human experience. The Lord is not known; Abel has been lost, and Cain finds himself in a condition that is difficult to bear. He complained a little on that score when he went out from the presence of the Lord; he complained to the Lord that his situation was going to be more than he could bear. Well, he's borne up so far, chiefly by developing substitutes to make himself feel that he is worth more than he actually knows he is; for material man without spiritual man is a husk, and all that human beings on the face of the earth know is the husk state. Husks have something to do with swine.

“And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord.” He forgot the Lord, except in some blind belief or imagination. Maybe that belief and imagination may have sustained him at times but it didn't acquaint him with the truth. He remained under the thick darkness of the veil, which has obscured his awareness of the reality of spiritual man. He has at times supposed that religious man was spiritual man, but that is certainly not the case; at least not as long as the veil remains. Religious man is very little different from intellectual man or material man, but spiritual man is a reality and may be resurrected into human experience when there is repentance.

So many people take the attitude that they really have nothing much to repent about. The repentance relates to the human state, the state of Cain. When there is repentance there is a starting point for something new to begin to emerge through the veil; the veil begins to thin to this extent. What emerges is the first faint awareness of the reality of spiritual man. All too often this is translated into religious terms, so that the human being gets lost again in the material state of religion, and the reality of spiritual man never has a chance of coming into the range of true experience. Spiritual man is looked upon as being religious man; therefore, “If spiritual man is emerging in my consciousness I must become related somehow to the religious state, the religious condition, within the scope of human experience.” But then there are those who have been disillusioned with respect to religion, so they are inclined to say, “Well, I don't want any of that, so to hell with spiritual man!”

But spiritual man is not religious man. Spiritual man has been, insofar as human experience is concerned, dead, unknown, gone, lost. There is the sense of the blood of Abel crying out from the ground — this longing for something, this sense of void and the endeavor to fill it by establishing relationships with other people and developing satisfying conditions in the environment, or becoming all involved in the religious field, whatever. There are hundreds of thousands of methods that human beings have used to avoid repenting, to try to satisfy themselves. Obviously, if a person tries to satisfy himself he has a sense of not being satisfied. He has a sense of emptiness, so he tries to fill it by his Cain-like methods and in the end he discovers — it may take him a lifetime but in the end he discovers — that it doesn't work. Every human being on the face of the earth has finally discovered that it didn't work — ever since Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. Because there has been such a precedent of failure firmly established does not mean that success or victory is not possible. It merely means that human beings have, for whatever reason, been unwilling to repent; they want to have it their own way.

Obviously, if the trouble results from the fact that Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, then the trouble is resolved when Cain returns to the presence of the Lord. There has been a tendency for human beings to convince themselves that the Lord doesn't really exist, therefore there is nothing to return to. Well, it may seem that way when the veil is as thick as it has been, because nobody could see through it. Therefore, with the human kind of logic, the individual says that nothing exists, just because he can't see it. Well, that’s ridiculous on the face of it! There are lots of things we can't see, and know nothing about, that exist; they simply don't exist for us, perhaps. And Abel hasn't existed for Cain since Cain slew Abel; but insofar as Abel is concerned, he exists!

The logical requirement is that Cain should come into the presence of the Lord, and this requires repentance for those attitudes and actions which have ejected Cain from the presence of the Lord and kept him in that condition. Human beings are inclined to think that this is the natural state. If they are religiously inclined, then presumably it is divine punishment of some kind and we've got to wait around until God decides that He's done enough punishing. Human beings are very reluctant to acknowledge their own responsibility in the matter and to admit that if the state of being out from the presence of the Lord continues it is by reason of their own choice and attitude. There is nothing to stop a person from repenting at any moment and deciding that the human endeavors to satisfy oneself by whatever means — religious, intellectual, material — are not the way. There is no satisfaction on that basis, in actual fact. There may be some self-delusion, and human beings really go for self-delusion; but the true state of man requires Abel as well as Cain, and Abel is not going to be on hand unless he is resurrected — resurrected into the experience of material man, so that spiritual man is known in the experience of material man.

So, to come again into the presence of the Lord, repentance is needful, and repentance is an acknowledgment that nothing in the material state of man can bring human beings into the experience of the truth, the truth of oneself and the truth in the collective sense. No religious effort, no intellectual effort, no physical effort, can bring any true result. Any results which seem to appear are in fact unreal, phony, delusions, because the truth requires the experience of both Cain and Abel, of both material man and spiritual man. Material man cannot come into the presence of the Lord without spiritual man, and spiritual man cannot come into the experience of material man without repentance by material man, without acknowledging that the whole state of material man is corrupt. But still human beings, generation after generation, hopefully decide that it isn't corrupt and that somehow or other they're going to manipulate things religiously, intellectually, physically, to attain a satisfactory state, to experience fulfilment, as it is called. But it never has happened and it never will happen that way.

Spiritual man must be resurrected. Certainly this requires turning toward the Lord, but then the question arises as to who is the Lord? Where is He? How shall we turn in that direction? There have been various doctrines provided in the religious field which are supposed to answer this question, but they don't really. These are all material solutions, which are no solutions at all, for spiritual man is the other side of the veil.

Now, in material man's consciousness, particularly his religious consciousness, this has meant that spiritual man was beyond the grave. Material man had to die in order to come to spiritual man because, of course, material man had a sense of guilt, having slain spiritual man; therefore, spiritual man must be the other side of the grave — this is logic — therefore the only way we could come to spiritual man was to die. Then we'll find ourselves spiritual men and women, or neuter or something, in heaven, wherever that is — a satisfactory delusion to some. Spiritual man is not the other side of the grave; spiritual man is the other side of the veil, and that's quite different. Death, or what human beings see as death, is the end result of going out from the presence of the Lord. Is the end result of going out from the presence of the Lord supposed to bring one into the presence of the Lord? How ridiculous! Spiritual man is the other side of the veil; and the veil, as we have noted, is the impure human heart, which remains impure as long as there is no repentance, as long as the door isn't open so that it could be purified. There is no means of purifying the heart from below the veil.

What is higher is always capable of handling what is lower; what is lower is never capable of handling what is higher. God can handle man but man can't handle God, although he's tried very hard to do it, making demands and requiring God to do this and that through what he calls prayer. It's interesting how human beings make demands upon God. We have this reflected in the attitude of people everywhere these days: they're all making demands upon each other. The lower can't handle the higher; the higher handles the lower. If human hearts are to be purified they are purified by what is higher, not by what is lower; so no religious, intellectual or physical efforts of men can ever purify human hearts. It is the effort to do this that maintains the impurity — it is the arrogant assumption that one is in position to do what is required as the material person. The material person thinks he knows what is best, what should be done.

Spiritual man emerges within the scope of human experience to the extent that the veil thins, and the veil thins to the extent that the real quality of spiritual man is sensed and is not interpreted in religious, intellectual or physical terms, which is what human beings always do. “Well, I sense something of spiritual man; I know what that means.” We have a multiplication, for instance, of Christian denominations on this basis. Somebody senses something filtering through the veil, so to speak, and then proceeds to interpret it according to the concepts of men: “This is what it means.” All the Christian denominations have proliferated on this basis according to the various interpretations of people, which completely obscures the truth and maintains the veil. And while at the initial starting point of some particular denomination some particular person may have sensed something, very shortly it's completely obliterated, and human beings just go along with what has been established, nobody really knowing what it's all about. They swallow the orthodox meal. Some, of course, get indigestion.

Where the attitude of repentance begins to be a reality and the individual no longer thinks he knows, there may be a sensing of the reality of spiritual man. But that first sensing doesn't have any particular form yet; it's a spirit. “Oh, that's a ghost,” is the human interpretation sometimes — and human beings are afraid of ghosts, so let's get it into some sort of a structured form with which we are familiar; then we'll understand what it is. Do you really think so? Then you won't understand what it is; then you will obliterate what it is; you will try to make it into something that it isn't. You need to learn to let the spirit be what it is, and we find that it is capable of emerging. From the standpoint of those who call themselves Christians, they see that that emergence took place through the One called Jesus, but is He to be the only one? If so, it's rather a sad condition for the world. He never implied any such thing. He did provide an example of the reality of spiritual man: in other words, the fact that spiritual man is present and capable of being expressed.

We may move to allow that to occur, but spiritual man is immediately slain if we try to fit spiritual man into material forms, the already established human prejudices — that's what they are — the doctrines of men, the prestructured state of human consciousness. If you try to fit spiritual man into that, you slay spiritual man, and all you have left is a disintegrating corpse; and that is material man separate from spiritual man. We spend our lives disintegrating and we end up disintegrated. 

Spiritual man is present and capable of being discerned. The way by which this occurs is not merely an individual matter. Some people try to make it an individual matter, and it certainly does require individual repentance, but the unfoldment of spiritual man in material man's experience is not merely an individual matter. It is an individual matter but not only that; it is also something which occurs collectively speaking. It must occur collectively speaking if it is to occur individually speaking, and it must occur individually speaking if it is to occur collectively speaking. We begin to discover the reality of oneness and that we are not, spiritually speaking, isolated entities; it only seems that way in material consciousness. So, as this purifying of the heart begins to happen it happens collectively speaking as well as individually speaking, and the means by which it happens is of a very specific nature. Human beings are inclined to imagine that somehow it just works on a haphazard basis: “If I pray to the Lord sufficiently He's going to purify my heart; then I'll be home safe.” That's a very self-centered approach, isn't it? That is the approach of material man unconscious of spiritual man. But spiritual man is present and cries out from the ground; there is the longing in human hearts, albeit misinterpreted generation after generation.

So spiritual man is present to be experienced, and he emerges through the facilities of material man. And that emergence provides an example, provides inspiration, provides an open door for those who are willing to repent. This could have occurred when spiritual man was revealed through Jesus, but it didn't, because there was no willingness, really, to repent. Those concerned were always trying to interpret spiritual man into material forms. An example was that inane question that was asked just before the ascension: “Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” — an attempt to translate the truth of spiritual man into some little pocket of human doctrine. “Wilt Thou now restore the kingdom to Israel? Wilt Thou now restore the kingdom to good Christians? Wilt Thou now restore the kingdom to Roman Catholics? Wilt Thou now restore the kingdom to Jehovah's Witnesses?” No! That's the answer. No! The kingdom belongs to spiritual man, and spiritual man is not religious man, is not intellectual man, is not material man.

Spiritual man is spiritual man, something unknown; but the unknown becomes known as the unknown, exactly as it is, finds material expression without busy minds translating it this way and that, in religious terms, in intellectual terms, or in physical terms, commonly called human desires. And human beings are making demands in this field, aren't they? Oh, my! No, spiritual man is, insofar as material man is concerned, New Man, an unknown quantity, but one who emerges into experience in a very specific way which is initially based in the fact of repentance — without that, no emergence. The state of self-righeousness in human beings completely prevents any emergence of spiritual man, and religion has tended to produce that in people. “I'm a good Christian” — what a self-satisfied expression that sometimes is! Or “He’s a good Christian” — very self-righteous! But where is spiritual  man? Spiritual man, when he was revealed by Jesus on earth, was very quickly rejected by religious man and by intellectual man and by material man — all ganged up together! Of course there are those who blame the Jews and others who blame the Romans and others who blame everybody else; and certainly the job was done by all these people, but it is something that has been done ever since in every generation.

Spiritual man, however, does emerge into expression through material man when material man has repented and is not trying to impose his doctrines, his concepts, his ideas, his beliefs, upon spiritual man, telling spiritual man, “Well, if you express in this fashion, then I'll accept your expression; if not I won't.” How that crystallized attitude lingers on in people, even when spiritual man begins to emerge: “So far but no further. I'll let you be free in expression to this extent but don't venture into this field; this is my area, this is my personal field of expression. Don't interfere with my thing!” That is slaying Abel.

Spiritual man may emerge when he is offered freedom to do so, and through spiritual man we become acquainted with the Lord, we become aware of the reality which is implied by that word. But for most people, when that word is used, “Lord,” a picture, a concept, an idea, a belief, takes form. “This is the Lord,” the individual says. No, it isn't; it's the human idea about Him. What's the truth? The truth comes through spiritual man. This is exactly what Jesus said on earth, isn't it? “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me,” by spiritual man; no one becomes aware of the truth except in this fashion. No one becomes aware of the truth by sitting under the veil in the religious pocket, or in the intellectual pocket, or in the material pocket, or in all of them put together. It's impossible. That's the state of Cain; that's the state of the murderer; that's the state of human beings in this present condition in the world; that is the state! Very often people's hackles begin to go up when they hear that. “Oh, no, not me, I'm a religious person. I believe in God,” and so the opportunity for repentance is rejected, the truth is rejected, and there are all kinds of justifications for rejecting it. Nowadays people say, “Oh, I'm only doing what's natural.” Nobody does what's natural as long as spiritual man is absent. The whole shooting match is unnatural; it's all a mess. There is a good end of the mess and there is a bad end of the mess, but it's all a mess. “Come out of her, my people!” Come out of that state, the state of self-justification. And human beings find no difficulty at all in justifying themselves in every conceivable way, when only one thing is necessary: to come again into the presence of the Lord.

The presence of the Lord is made known to the extent that spiritual man is made known. As spiritual man begins to be made known, the presence of the Lord begins to be made known. In the initial stage it is something that is simply sensed; but if a person is busy justifying all that he is doing, then there's no facility available to sense anything. “Come out of her, my people,” come again into the presence of the Lord. “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. Come near unto me. Come unto me.” This is the word of the Lord, the word of spiritual man. That word is heard by a person by reason of the presence of spiritual man in relationship to him- or herself. Material man, male or female, is nothing of him- or herself. The brothers belong together — Cain and Abel — or should we rather say Abel and Cain? This is typical of human expression; it's always backwards: Cain first, then Abel. But Abel is rightly the dominant one, and Cain is also present. It's Abel and Cain, and when both are present, there is man, a living soul.

To find that state there must be love for the Lord and the experience of friendship with the Lord. Human beings are always trying to have friends. Until you know what it means to be a friend of the Lord you have no friends, whatever you may think. When the Lord is the friend, then there is a basis for friendship with those who are friends with the Lord. That's the only way friendship can be experienced. It may be slightly experienced unconsciously by people who function in a way that indicates there is a certain friendship with the Lord, and therefore one may have a sense of relatedness. All too often, however, the sense of relatedness between people is not that; it is a sense of relatedness between aspects of what is unreal, between aspects of material man isolated from the Lord, agreement with respect to disintegration. And human beings are always agreeing on this score, aren't they? Did you ever hear anyone talking about their disintegrations, all the things that have happened that are so terrible? And oh, operations, what about that? Human beings try to go one better, and they find a relatedness with each other on this basis with respect to the things that are disintegrating. They agree, and they think they are friends because of that. That's not friendship, that's enmity; each person is the other person's worst enemy, destroying each other in the name of friendship. Only when there is friendship with the Lord does integration begin to occur and can there be a basis of friendship with others which will not destroy them. Human beings are intent, in the Cain state, on destroying each other and destroying themselves, quite unwittingly most of the time. They don't hesitate to do a certain amount of backbiting; but that, of course, is not really hurting anyone very much. Isn't it? It's hurting the person who indulges in it worst of all; that's true.

So, to come again into the presence of the Lord is the only answer there is. Spiritual man. “I am the way, the truth, and the life” — that is the word of spiritual man; that is the word of Abel. That is your word in oneness with spiritual man. Let it be your word in the expression of your living.

How set and crystallized is the state of material man in the world which we know. How strongly woven is the impenetrable veil, therefore, which separates material man from spiritual man. Only as these crystallizations dissolve can there be sufficient flexibility in the consciousness of human beings to permit the unhindered expression of spiritual man on earth — unhindered, undistorted, uncolored, unchanged. But how quickly people wrap themselves around with these restricting swaddling clothes which inhibit the true expression of life, and where life is inhibited dying occurs. It is all very natural in that sense, and logical; but where life is free the creative cycle works as it should in both its ascending and descending aspects, but what human beings have thought of as death ceases to exist. It only exists in the trapped consciousness of material man. Spiritual man is alive forevermore.

© Emissaries of Divine Light