What  is  Spirit?

from   Worship in Spirit and in Truth

Uranda   September 1, 1953

As we begin this hour of Meditation, we recognize the vital need for a closer, deeper relationship with God. Only as we share the reality of this relationship with God can we hope to attain to that state of living, that state of effective function on earth, which will permit us to accomplish that which is needful according to our calling, to the glory of our King and to the blessing of mankind. We recognize that all of our patterns of Meditation have been in one way or another dealing with this particular subject of man's relationship with God. But here we have certain words recorded from our Lord on earth which need further meditation. “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” Here we have a number of fascinatingly interesting points. The Father is seeking someone to worship Him. “For the Father seeketh such to worship him.”

Before we proceed we should be sure that we have a meeting of minds on this point of worship. What does worship mean? The word, as we know it, does not really carry the true significance of the words originally expressed—something has been lost in translation. We have recognized that we do in actual fact worship that to which we respond. In one sense the use of the word worship here is unfortunate, because the pattern of its ordinary use makes human beings feel that there is a great gulf between themselves and God; that God is the unattainable, untouchable, the far away and the distant, the high, that which is beyond comprehension, beyond knowing. Now there is that which is of God which is beyond the knowing of our minds as we are now, and there is that in God which is infinitely high, and there is that which is in God that is far away, as far away as the uttermost stars of the Cosmos—from bound to bound—but in the direct sense that which is of God that is far away has no immediate meaning to us, not except as God Himself, being near at hand, is near at hand.

The other evening we looked into the clear sky and saw a multitude of stars, the vast sweep of the Milky Way, and we paused to note that man with all of his imaginings could not conceive of a more glorious setting for the earth than that which is, the setting here in the solar system in relationship to that vast array of heavenly bodies. But those heavenly bodies have meaning to us only as they have relationship to the earth, and whatever meaning there is in that vast scope of being must come to focalization here in relationship to ourselves before it can have meaning to us.

When we say that heaven is on earth many human minds jump to the unwarranted assumption that if heaven is here on earth there isn't heaven anywhere else. But we in fact recognize that heaven extends to the uttermost bounds of the Cosmos and includes every star that is seen in the sky—it includes this vast manifestation of distance. Heaven is wherever God is, and God is everywhere in the Cosmos. We do not object to a recognition of heaven in far places, in high places, in places beyond the comprehension of man—no, not at all—for heaven is wherever God is. But human minds seem to imagine that if heaven is far away, then it is not here; for if heaven is here, then they assume that we imagine that heaven is not far away. Heaven extends to a point so far away that it is beyond your ability to have any comprehension of it. That is well and good. But if heaven is there, what is there to deny that heaven is likewise here?

Wherever else heaven may be, it is here. It is wherever God is, and if you can put a boundary on the realm of where God is, then you can perhaps define it. But heaven is here, and if anyone denies that heaven is here, then that person is saying, “God is not here. This is one place in this vast universe, in the cosmos itself, where God is not. God is somewhere else far away, but God is not here.” If we say heaven is not here we must say God is not here. But if we say God is here and deny that heaven is here, then we must acknowledge that we put ourselves in the position of saying that though God is here, heaven is not. This strange quirk of the human consciousness that seems to assume that heaven must be in some little limited space, wherever that is, is something which leads to many misunderstandings. But wherever God is, there heaven is, and let no man or woman think to establish the boundaries of where God is. Tell me the bounds of the Cosmos and I will tell you the bounds of God Himself. Can you with your eyes, gazing into that glorious sky, see all the stars of the Cosmos? Can you see all that there is to be seen? No! There are suns of which the human vision, even with the greatest telescope, is unaware.

So we are not limiting God, nor are we limiting heaven. We never said the only place there is a heaven is right here on earth—never! We only said heaven is here; heaven is at hand; the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And if we deny it we make our Lord and King to be a liar and declare that He knew not what He was saying—for His gospel was that the kingdom of heaven is at hand—and likewise we declare that God is not here. Can you tell me where God is not? Would anyone here suppose that he could suggest that God is not here? God is not limited to here; heaven is not limited to this earth by any manner of means—but heaven is here, and heaven is wherever God is. And according to these words of the Master, God is a Spirit.

Now let us note this does not say God is nothing but spirit. Some people, seeing these words the Master spoke, have assumed, on this same basis of human limitation, that if God is a Spirit, then God isn't anything but spirit, which is a foolish fancy. Regardless of whatever else God is, God is a Spirit. But God is not limited to spirit. What is spirit? Some people have tried to take the attitude that there is nothing but spirit and, as it is put, that physical substance is but an illusion, that there aren't any material things and that we are all suffering from an illusion—we have the illusion that we have a body; we have an illusion that we are sitting in a chair or that there is a roof here; there is no roof there, that is just an illusion! But there is material substance, and material substance has reality to itself. This material substance is not by any means an illusion. It is here surely enough, and it is material, material to itself. But this physical substance is likewise spirit. For what is spirit? Spirit is the vibrational essence of form.

There are many levels of spirit, many densities of spirit. In actual fact, we know that this that is material to itself is actually mostly space. Many people imagine that spirit is something that must be very ethereal, but we have noted the scientific fact that if your body were compressed to the point of being an absolute solid it would not be any larger, to say the least, than the head of an ordinary pin; probably less than that. But the head of an ordinary pin would be plenty big enough to circumscribe the space required if the substance of your body were reduced to the state of an absolute solid. The human body is mostly space as far as it itself is concerned. And if the human body is mostly space in relationship to itself, what fills that space? Is it void? Is it empty? No, there is something in that space. And as we begin to consider the higher levels of vibrational Being, we begin to realize that the higher we go the more nearly solid spirit becomes.

Spirit as it manifests in relationship to the physical substance of our body is actually very ethereal. Sometimes human beings imagine it must be something very mysterious that that which is called spirit could penetrate through a solid wall, move through the wall of a room. But the wall of the room is that which is ethereal—it is solid to itself but it is still mostly space, and something more solid than it is can go right through it. For that which is of the higher level is more solid than this that we call physical substance. And it is right here. Because our bodies are so nearly all space, the physical substance of the next level, which is solid to itself, which is material to itself, which is substance to itself, can occupy the same space that we are occupying, because it is more solid.

As you ascend the vibratory scale everything gets more and more solid, until at the point of the Center of the Cosmos—a point of which man is unaware; he has never seen it; he does not know it—but at the point of the Center of the Cosmos, we have the absolute solid. There is an amount of solid in that Central SUN of Suns equal to all of the solids of the rest of the Cosmos. In other words the core, the one point where there is no space in the substance, where it is absolute solid, has in the one point of Being that which equals in density all of the substance utilized in all of the rest of the vast expanse of the Cosmos. And we are way out here, a part of the Milky Way. This earth is a part of the Milky Way, and we are way out here where that which is solid to itself is mostly space.

God is a Spirit. When we speak of vibration, the vibration of a sound, a sound wave, perhaps we can more easily comprehend it. Did you ever speak into an instrument that reveals the wave fluctuations of your voice? I am sure some of you must have. And if you whistle, the wave vibrations are very sharp and very fast up and down. If you speak very low and slowly they spread way out, but with a sharp whistle they come in close together. That gives a vague indication of some of the factors of vibration. But vibration is much more than sound. We are used to vibration as sound, but we come to recognize that everything we know is vibration in a specific form, a specific rate of vibration, and that which has a specific rate of vibration has direct relatedness to that which has a similar rate of vibration. The vibrational rate in the human body has to be within a comparatively narrow range. We have the hardness of the enamel of the teeth, and then the bones and so on, down to the softest tissue, to the lymph moving through the body by reason of the lymphatic system. All of this, from the hardest part of the body to the softest part of the body, the most yielded substance of the body, must be in a range where there is no break between the patterns of vibrational relatedness.

Now there is what we might call a floor, a point below which the substance of the body cannot go vibrationally; and there is a ceiling, the high point of the vibrational range. Every different substance in the body is contained within that which we may call this octave of form. And this octave of form has within it, in a connected pattern, all of the different vibrational factors of which man is immediately aware. Now the manner in which these vibrational factors are established in relationship is a remarkable thing. The vibrational factors which we call light, issuing forth from the physical sun, have a correlation with something in the body, something from the standpoint of the general mechanism—the sun's rays have a definite relationship to the physical substance of your bones. Your eye has the capacity to see the light, to perceive its presence and to see something in that light. If you had no visual relationship to the sunlight, you could not see it. The eye is the instrument by which we have that visual relatedness with the vibrational factors which we call sunlight, and the function of those factors in relationship to the physical substance of this earth permits us to see. But we have noted that it is reflected light.

We go beyond the earth's surface a little distance and we begin to get into an area where there is no light for the eye to see. The light is there but it does not have the vibrational pattern which permits the eye to see it. Just the last few days a certain man flying in a jet plane flew to a height of over 83,000 feet above the surface of the earth, the highest above the surface of the earth that any man has ever been—83,000 feet; almost sixteen miles up in the air. Now that which is called the outer edge of atmosphere starts at about 75 miles, and that outer edge extends out to about 125 miles from the earth's surface. That does not mean there is atmosphere as we know it, but the edge of the atmosphere extends out about that far. However, the air is so thin when we get out sixteen miles, or 83,000 feet above the earth's surface, that if the oxygen and pressure control in that ship had failed, or been shut off accidentally somehow for 15 seconds, that pilot would have been dead. Why? Because his blood would have started boiling within three seconds of the failure of the oxygen and pressure equipment. His blood would have been boiling and it would have killed him almost instantly. The physical substance of our bodies is adjusted to certain conditions. Out there the boiling point is so low that the normal temperature of your blood would cause it to boil. At sea level, what is our boiling point? Around 212 degrees. You go up here on top of the mountain, on Trail Ridge, and you could boil beans up there for a solid week and the beans would never get done, because the boiling level is so low. You get out 83,000 feet above sea level and the boiling point is below your 98.6 degrees, so your blood would boil almost instantly.

Now that is a part of it in relationship to what we call heat that comes from the sun's rays. But that is not all. Out there it is dark; it is dark although the sun's rays are there, because we see on the basis of the diffusion of those rays in the atmosphere itself, and the reflection factors of the atmosphere, and of the earth's surface. And until the sun's rays go through the atmosphere and have this diffusion and this pattern of reflection, the physical eye of man cannot see those rays. We have relatedness to the sun's rays under the conditions that exist here, but go out there as far as sixteen miles, 83,000 feet above the earth's surface, and it is getting pretty dark. Of course there is a glow from the earth beneath, but it is dark, black on out into space. Why? The sun is up there but our eyes, as human beings, are not conditioned to the light of the sun under those conditions.

The vibratory factors of the sun, which we call light, must go through the process of diffusion in the atmosphere and reflection before they reach a state where they do have vibrational relatedness to the physical organism of the human eye. All of these things, then, are vibrational, and they have meaning to each other only as they have vibrational relatedness. You go out there a little way above the earth's surface and your eye no longer has vibrational relatedness to the sunlight which is coming through space from the sun. If that is true, and it is, then it is easy to see that there are vibrational factors of spirit, of God, which are present in a given place but to which we do not have the same pattern of vibrational relationship. We have that which is supposed to give us vibrational relationship with those things which are called invisible just as light out from the earth's surface a ways is invisible (the sun's rays become invisible because there is no vibrational relatedness) but when we come back down into the atmosphere we see the light, because then it has come into a condition where we do have vibrational relatedness, and then we see it.

This peculiar instrument which we call the physical body—and it is physical and it is material, and it is substance and it is solid to itself—is within this octave of being, this range of vibratory rates, and it has within it those factors which make possible an awareness of relatedness to the vibratory factors above the octave and the vibratory factors below the octave. This is the instrument of perception—if we will perceive it—for the vibratory factors above the octave, which in the ordinary sense as man is, in the fallen state, cannot be seen or perceived or known, do have a relatedness. God is a Spirit. These vibrational factors in the next octave of Being have a relatedness to this octave of Being, and in this physical organism we have the factors, when we learn how to use them, how to function in relationship to them, that let us become aware of certain vibrational factors in the next octave of Being, both up and down.

God is a Spirit, and the Father seeks those who will worship Him—that is, respond to Him—in spirit and in truth. Now, there is the Spirit of Truth, but truth has to do with design and control in form; the form of the level of which we have awareness. But this truth that is of this octave has relationship to the truth of the next octave, of which we do not have, in an outer sense, direct awareness. But by reason of spirit we have a relatedness to the next octave in the vibrational levels of Being. And by reason of the succeeding octaves in the vibrational levels we have direct connection with the Central SUN of Suns, where the only real solid is. That which we assume to be solid is not so.

If your body were compressed to the size of a pin head, it would not yet be solid; it would only be relatively speaking a solid. And in the next level up it is not solid. Actually we could take all of our bodies here in this room and, if we are talking about the solid as it is solid at the Central Point of Being, we could compress all of our bodies to that density of solidity and they would not even make the point of a pin—with all of our bodies put together. So we are not very big, are we? We would not even make enough of a real solid to be as big as the point of a pin. You would need a microscope to see it. That which is above vibrationally is not more ethereal; it is more solid—and we need to remember that. The higher we go in spirit the more solid things become, until when we get to the Center of the Cosmos we have the true solid, and everything radiating out from that Center is more and more ethereal. But at every level in that radiation that which is ethereal in this sense is solid to itself. In every level there is that which is solid to itself, and at every level of spirit, spirit is solid to itself. At every level of spirit, spirit is solid to itself in that level. In the next higher level up it becomes more solid; in the next level down, vibrationally speaking, it becomes less solid.

God is a Spirit. God is Spirit—the Father is a Spirit, it says here. Any God Being is a spirit. That which is of God is spirit; that which is of your body is spirit. In other words your body is spirit, and once you begin to realize that, and recognize that this particular spirit is manifest on a certain level according to a certain design, under a certain control pattern, you begin to recognize the reality of your own Being and you can begin to see your relationship to God—that is, to spirit; for God, or the Father, is a Spirit. All right then, our relationship to God is a pattern of relationship to spirit, and that which is of the different octave of Being, vibrationally speaking, is invisible to us, even though it may be present with us. The human eye is not attuned to it. So we must worship, respond to God the Father, in spirit and in truth. That spirit of which our bodies are composed, as well as the higher vibrational factors of spirit of which we are aware in mind, in emotion and in what we ordinarily think of as spirit—the highest edge of the vibrational factors of which we are aware in the ordinary sense—has relationship to truth. But that spirit connects us with spirit, because there is no break in spirit anywhere, not really.

Man, by false function, makes it seem to himself that there is a break in spirit, but in actual fact there isn't a break in spirit; it only seems to man that there is a break in spirit. There is a break as far as man himself is concerned, within the range of his awareness, but there is no break in spirit up or down the line. Spirit is always and forever connected with spirit, whether spirit be of the nature of the physical substance of your flesh as you know it, or the physical substance of the earth, the dust of the ground—for the substance of the earth is spirit too. The rock or the soil, the dust of the earth, water, whatever there is, it is spirit in actual fact. This chair is spirit, and as spirit, it is a solid in relationship to the spirit of the solid of my body. And once you begin to see that spirit is always related to spirit, and you cannot separate spirit from spirit, you begin to realize that our ordinary patterns of perception are simply functioning within the specific range of this particular octave of Being in spirit, and man as he is does not have the capacity to perceive spirit in the lower vibrational factors and in the higher vibrational factors.

There are vibrational factors of spirit which are lower. Oh yes, we are not the tail end of spirit. Didn't you know that? We are not the tail end of God's spirit; it extends on out—and there are some lovely things in it, by the way. But this happens to be the vibratory level of spirit, under these conditions of spirit, which makes possible the manifestation of spirit in physical substance as we know it. And so in this particular pattern (we call it man, woman, animals), “The kingdoms of this world”—animal kingdom, vegetable kingdom, mineral kingdom, kingdom of the gases, etc—the kingdoms of this world, not the governments of this world—“The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.” The man-made kingdoms, like the British Empire or something? Oh no, not at all! Of course the pattern of government must finally come into the realization of the reality. But what are the kingdoms of this world? The kingdom of the human level, the kingdoms of the animal level, the kingdoms of the mineral level, the kingdoms of the vegetable level, and so on—these are the kingdoms of this world. “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ,” signifying that these kingdoms or vibrational levels of Being of which we are aware have been reunited in relationship to awareness, and therefore coordination of function, with the Shekinah Pattern of Being—the vibrational realm.

If we begin to see this, we begin to see that indeed God is a Spirit, wherever God is, whatever His form, whatever the level of Being. But God is here, wherever else He may be, and it is here that we must have our relatedness to God. We, as human beings functioning in this level of spirit, cannot have our relatedness with God on the basis of some other level, no matter how many levels there are—thousands of them, thousands of levels of spirit, millions. How many do you want to say? A trillion? How high do you want to go? There are many levels of spirit, but we, as human beings in this octave of Being in spirit, must find our relatedness to God in this octave, not some other. We touch the octave above and we touch the octave below, but it is in this octave where we are that we must find our pattern of relatedness to God. And once we begin to comprehend these simple, fundamental, scientific truths, we can begin to see something of the wonder and the beauty of our Master's good news, the Gospel. For the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and that is what He said: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” So tonight we have shared a little moment of Meditation on a few of the factors relating to that glorious Gospel the Master gave, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And God is in heaven. Wherever heaven is, there God is; or wherever God is, there heaven is. And God is here, therefore heaven is here. And it is here that we must have our relationship with both heaven and God.

If we get out of this level we are going to be something else; we will not be this. To be this—that is, human beings—we must be here. But we move out of this level in the process of ascension, which we recognize, remember. We go through the process of ascension into another level, and we will not be men and women. Don't kid yourself, because this is the only level where we are men and women. We will be something else, and you don't need to try too hard to find out what it will be. It is, and it is all right. It is wonderful. But there is no break in spirit, even though man has made it seem that there is. So our business is to re-establish the conscious awareness of the fact that there is no break in spirit, that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, that God is here and that we can let that kingdom, that control and that design, have meaning in our lives right here where we are. And thank God we are solid to ourselves, even though we are spirit.

© Emissaries of Divine Light