The Way of the Lord is Simple
from The Stairs
Martin Cecil June 16, 1974
There is an inclination on the part of many to complain that they don't really understand what the true way of life is—everything is so confusing—just as if no provision had ever been made to make abundantly clear why human beings find themselves in the state which they do, and how they may easily move out of it. The Bible has within its covers an accurate picture of what happened and why, and an accurate portrayal of how any human being anywhere may once again experience the truth. It would seem reasonable to recognize that the Lord has found it difficult to understand how human beings have been so successful in continuing in the pattern of failure. From any rational view, it's utterly amazing! It has taken, indeed, a great deal of effort, much sweat of the face, to keep out of the Way, but the Way of the Lord is simple.
Our Master Himself said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Good Christians certainly don't have that attitude, do they? “Tough, that's what it is!” If it seems that way, then the individual is moving in the wrong direction and it has nothing to do with what our Master offered. When He was on earth He brought it all so beautifully to focus once again, provided the clear understanding, sounded the True Tone. But what have people made out of that? Something that is very obscure. Anyone who has studied what is called theology could certainly testify to that—darkness upon darkness, obscurity upon obscurity. In spite of all the mental gymnastics through which human beings have gone, life continues to operate. Life seems to take very little notice of what human beings do. If they become too obstreperous, which occurs from time to time, then they are simply swept to one side.
However, the beautiful clarity of provision that has been made, relative to what we call the Bible, is not only in what has come down to us from the Master's life on earth but goes way back before that. The outline of the very beginnings of things paints a clear picture, even though those who have read it immediately begin to make obscurity out of it. I was thinking, particularly, of the events described to make obvious the nature of man's failure. This has been called the fall. There are those who object to the idea of a fall. The theory of evolution is one of the ways by which it was thought to set at naught the idea of a fall: man has simply been rising up out of the slimy depths all the way, so that this is the supreme pinnacle of his experience now. And each generation was able to imagine that it was better than the last; it had evolved some more. How nice! How satisfying to the human ego! But how untrue!
It is said of man, when he was first created, that the Lord God put him in the Garden, which had been created eastward in Eden. This has been called the Garden of Eden. Eden is a word for the earth, and the Garden of Eden is the heaven aspect for the earth. The creation included heaven and earth; a two-phase creation, two aspects, but just one creation. And man was placed in the Garden, in the heaven aspect. This relates to what we have been referring to as spiritual Man, the spiritual aspect of Man, where his true identity centers.
Man was placed in the Garden to dress it and keep it. Using this method of describing that circumstance, there is obviously a state outlined which is presently beyond the comprehension of human beings. Abel, spiritual Man, was subsequently slain by Cain; and Cain, material man, remained. This is the same story, but we may recognize that there have been a number of what one might well call descending events relative to the fall—it didn't happen completely, all at once. When you go down stairs it's possible to jump from the top to the bottom, but then your neck might be broken and there would be no more you, in the material sense at least. The fall of man did not mean that he jumped from the top to the bottom all at once. He went down step-by-step, hopeful that when he got to the bottom he would find something better than he thought he had found at the top. But he landed up in a murky basement, an airless cellar, where he has been existing now for a long time. He became accustomed to this state of affairs, and considers it the normal course of events—to live at the foot of the stairs.
But when the first step was taken, by reason of what was described as the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, immediately it was made apparent to him that a mistake had been made, and that therefore repentance or a change of attitude was needful if what had occurred was to be rectified. We know that, regardless of this opportunity, human beings chose not to let the mistake be rectified. They preferred to go on down the stairs. This was adventure, I suppose, after a fashion; it was pioneering. Certainly no one had ever gone down the stairs before, so what marvels might be found at the foot!
So he trudged on down, and when he reached the bottom he had forgotten what was at the top. There was a faint memory of something, recorded through myths for instance, mythology, fairy tales, and what have you—an awareness that there was something other than the basement state. But by then he had forgotten pretty well that there was anything really at the top of the stairs where he belonged, and so, in latter days at least, he has decided that man's fate was to live at the bottom of the stairs until he finally disintegrated there; then, by some magic means, he was to be wafted to the top of the stairs. The one thing that human beings apparently didn't lose when they fell to the bottom of the stairs was a vivid imagination!
This first opportunity, after the immediate step of the fall had been taken, is described in the Book of Genesis—an opportunity that was rejected, of course. We recognize that the fall was consequent upon eating that fruit which had been forbidden, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the idea being that if one could gain enough knowledge about things, one would be able to establish a good state, a good life no doubt, and be sufficiently wise to avoid the evil. Human beings have the idea, to this very hour, that all they need to do is to gain knowledge and this knowledge will be all that is needed to establish a state of bliss, happiness, on earth. This has been the idea collectively speaking, but it has also been the idea individually speaking. It is the usual human effort to gain whatever knowledge he considers to be expedient to enable him to succeed in setting up a particular life pattern which will be satisfying, which will bring happiness, presumably all done by knowledge. Human beings have eaten of this fruit and are still gorging themselves on it. They have become addicted.
It is possible for human beings to recognize the nature of their addiction to the forbidden fruit and face the fact that no amount of consumption of this narcotic will produce a state of happiness. What it does produce is death. It may be that there are those who realize, finally, that the continued consumption of the forbidden fruit is not going to bring happiness, is not going to bring heaven on earth—it is going to kill. And it does. Now isn't that clearly set out here in the beginning of the Bible? It's been there all along; good Christians have been reading it—Jewish people too, and others, have looked into it. There are similar stories in other scriptures in different parts of the world, outlining the same principles, clear and obvious.
This addiction produces irrational behavior on the part of people. Shame was one of the first experiences of those who began to walk down the stairs. When they had taken that first step, nothing too much had really happened yet as a result of their action, so it didn't seem that, immediately, there was anything wrong with what they were doing; everything was going along all right still. So, evidently people weren't ready at that point to admit any failure and turn around to take that first step up. If that had been done, well, we wouldn't be sitting here in this fix now. It is said, here in the story, “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Walking in the Garden. The Garden is the heaven aspect of this true duality—heaven and earth. Man, at this point, had taken the first step out of the heaven aspect, where his true identity is, and where he carried the responsibility of dressing and keeping the Garden.
The realm of spiritual substance, in this dimensional world in which we live, is the Garden, where the seeds are planted, where the essences of what is to take form are established. Of course, in the true state there is no veil between the Garden and Eden. They were one—heaven and earth were experienced as being one by spiritual man in material expression. There was no distinction between spiritual and material man; they were one; there was no veil between. Man was at the top of the stairs and his material facilities were with him. But he started down the stairs by imagining that he could substitute knowledge, as the controlling factor in his living, for God. Now we can say “for God” at this present time and know scarcely anything of what we are speaking, because to know God one must be at the top of the stairs, and as human beings went down to the bottom they lost God. God became a figment of fancy to them; at best all one could do is believe, but apparently never to know. If it is necessary to believe in God it is evident that one doesn't know God. Do you believe in the sun? You don't have to have any belief, do you?
Now, man had started to leave his spiritual identity and he was falling into a material identity, and in this process he was having some new experiences on the way down. These, by their very novelty, were apparently desirable, but he had not yet come to the point of recognizing what the results would be—what it would mean to be a dying soul. He could not have these changed experiences, which he thought he enjoyed for the moment, without the results of his own actions, and the results had not shown up yet. So, as with many human beings even today, he thought he was getting away with it. But the results show up somewhere along the line and nobody ever gets away with anything, in fact. We recognize these principles as being operative in our own experience. While it was something that happened in a peculiar way, a particular way, long ago at the point of the initiation of the fall, it is not something of which human beings have no present experience. It has been true in every generation. And it isn't until the individual calms down, so to speak, and is not gorging himself on the forbidden fruit quite so extensively, that there is sufficient stillness in the heart to discern what is moving in the Garden, in the spiritual substance of being. The voice of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day. When it's not quite so hot in one's feeling realm anymore, then there may be some discernment of the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden, where man belongs.
And here it says: “And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” Obviously, that question indicates that he was not where he belonged. Where he belonged was in the Garden; not hiding behind the trees—in the midst of the Garden, assuming his responsibility to dress it and to keep it. He was ignoring that responsibility and gathering knowledge so that he might direct his own course of life as he saw fit. When he quietened down a little, then he heard the voice of the Lord God—he hadn't gone so very far away yet; he hadn't entirely left the Garden yet—and so he heard and realized that he wasn't where he belonged. This is always looked upon as though there were a number of people around, the Lord God somewhere, and Adam, Eve, and the serpent, but here was something happening inside the person—you, for instance. And you have sensed that you were not really where you belonged.
Most human beings do sense this; there's something wrong. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Well, Adam was on the way down at that point. We find ourselves down by now, at the foot of the stairs, but most human beings still imagine that what brought them to the foot of the stairs is going to save them: the knowledge of good and evil, sufficient knowledge to establish a good state. Isn't this what all the sweat has been about on earth, to establish a good life, whether that is an individual undertaking or a collective undertaking? Human beings want to do that by reason of the knowledge that they gain, and knowledge has certainly been increased in these days. Oh, how much knowledge everybody has, how many experts, how much technological know-how! Surely with all this knowledge we have it made at last! Is that the way it looks? Surely not to anyone who is in the least bit honest. Utter confusion, chaos, disintegration!
The diet of narcotics, which human beings have been eating with such relish, has brought them into this state, and yet they are so irrational that they imagine that eating more of them is going to get them out. Isn't that irrational behavior? Isn't that plain stupidity? And yet, the human intellect claims so much for itself—so wise, knows so much. The forbidden fruit is indeed a narcotic, which brings human beings into a state of stupidity; they behave irrationally.
We have seen these things more or less plainly, but perhaps tonight it can be brought more specifically home, so to speak, and we perhaps heard that word, “Where art thou? What are you doing in this state?” Recognizing the truth of the matter, having heard that question, “Where art thou?” we presumably decided to kick the habit. We become more and more convinced that where we were was certainly where we didn't belong, and we become increasingly conscious of the reality of the Garden, the place where we belong and the place where our true identity is. This evening we perhaps may hear that question a little more clearly—“Where art thou?”—not merely because it is spoken externally but because of our own experience within ourselves. There must be resurrection into the experience of spiritual identity, where we again assume responsibility for the Garden and we are no longer hung up in Eden.
The earth is lacking heaven because man has failed in his responsibilities, in his responsibilities of caring for the Garden. That's where our responsibilities belong; they do not belong in the material realm. Our responsibilities do not require manipulation of material things. Material things will reflect the Garden when man is in place in the Garden, taking care of it. But he's not going to take care of it if he's all involved in material things, and if he imagines that nothing will work successfully in the material realm except he himself is on hand with his knowledge to see that it works successfully. That is the human view. He supposes that nothing would work rightly if he, material man with his knowledge, were not on hand to direct it, and that unless he keeps his hot little hands onto all these things, that everything would disintegrate. Well, that is probably so insofar as his endeavor is concerned to maintain a material state unrelated to the Garden. But it is supposed that if human beings were not doing this, were not giving all their energies into these things, there would be nothing. If this is the view, it is quite obvious that the person that has that view is completely lost to any awareness of the reality of the Garden.
The affairs of men may fall apart if human beings do not put all their lifeblood into them, but would it be such a loss if they did? The universe seems to get along all right as it is without human beings applying their self-centeredness to see that it keeps going. Why not what is right here? It's part of the universe. If the universe keeps going as it should, it is because there is a correct operation from the standpoint of the Garden of the Universe, from the standpoint of the heaven of the universe. That is being cared for by those who have responsibility in the matter, but insofar as this little corner of the universe is concerned, where man supposedly has the responsibility, there is a mess, because there has been failure to assume that responsibility.
So, having heard the voice that reminds us of these things, let us not hide from that voice; let us not insist upon being merely human anymore. The first thing that Adam said in reply to that question was that he was afraid; and this is the state of man. Remember how it was with Cain? He was afraid, too. “Everybody that finds me will kill me.” In other words, he had the attitude that everything was hostile to him. And this is a human attitude, this is the attitude of someone who is merely human: he sees everything as being hostile, and he develops all kinds of defense mechanisms to defend himself from the enemy. He's surrounded by the enemy on every hand, the hostile universe—nature is hostile; we have to tame it. Do we really? No.
Man is hostile. Man, having lost himself, feels that everything's against him. Have you ever felt that way? Everything's against you. The idea of fate developed out of this. The bogeyman is going to get you in the end and he does!—because of man's insistence upon being somewhere that he doesn't belong, in this dank cellar at the foot of the stairs. He has made a bit of artificial light down there and he calls that daylight, but it isn't. He doesn't belong there but in the Garden, to dress it and to keep it, to become aware again that all his responsibilities are in the Garden. When he assumes his responsibilities in the Garden, Eden will take care of itself, and there will once again be the Garden of Eden, in other words heaven and earth, the two phases in oneness, no veil in between, because man is back where he belongs.
We have touched something of the reality of the spiritual substance of Eden, and have become aware, and are becoming aware increasingly, of what it means to dress and to keep that substance. When we dress and keep the substance of the Garden, then we find that Eden is dressed and kept, too. But if we try to dress and keep Eden according to our view of the way it should be dressed and kept, it disintegrates.
We need to come back to where we belong, spiritual Man, true identity, a state that was represented by our Master after the resurrection. One must accept the responsibility of spiritual man and then the material will share it, and that sharing does certainly involve a different state of material experience. It is a different state at the top of the stairs to what it is down in the basement, and human beings find that they are different people. Man is at the top of the stairs. I don't know what's at the bottom—sub-man! So we have the opportunity of returning to the state of spiritual experience in identity, that what had been known before in the material sense may be invited to share that spiritual state. And that's restoration!
