Look To The Angel
from Spontaneous Creation #2
Martin Cecil September 30, 1973
A little while back I wrote a brief article that Grace typed up for me just the other day, and I thought I would share this with you this evening at the beginning of our service. It may be used perhaps as a small booklet or a leaflet, but it relates very much to what we were considering this morning. It is entitled Whence Are You? and starts with a quotation from the 8th Psalm, somewhat abbreviated.
“What is man…? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels…”
Personally I feel a closer kinship with the angels than I do with an ancestry reaching back into the primeval slime. How about you? Whatever the fact may seem to be with respect to human heredity, a potential which transcends the earthy condition is inherently sensed by anyone of integrity. From whence does this assurance come? It certainly is of much more immediate impact than speculation about an amoebic forebear! Would it be less scientific to listen to the voice of this intuition than to trust the laborious processes of human thought tracing the speculative contradictions of circumstantial evidence?
What is man? The sad consequence of senseless chance? The most complex organism and therefore the highest form of life mysteriously evolved out of more elementary states of living matter? Or could the fact of his presence on earth stem from a higher rather than a lower source? How about looking up for the answer instead of down?
What is up? Well, down in this context is toward ancestral yesterdays. It is toward what appear to be earthly derivations. Such a view purports to see a chain of events leading out of the vast chasm of the past and proceeding into the ever receding unknown of the future. The downward view is sustained by the endless acquisition of knowledge about the time-oriented phenomenal world.
The upward view, on the contrary, calls to remembrance the eternal nature of the present moment and the higher cause of what now is. That there is such a present cause is proclaimed by one's sense of transcendent potential: "I am now a person akin to the angels! I may not yet have realized all my potential but I inherently know that it is here to be realized."
So much attention is paid to the appearance of things, to pleasures and pains, to the experience of the past and the expectations of the future—in other words, to what is lower—that the transcendent angel vanishes from view. There ain't no such animal! is the skeptical view. But a person is finally dead inside himself when he has lost consciousness of his own potential of greatness—his sense of kinship with the angels. Is it any wonder that such an one hastens into the dust from whence his only feeling of affinity arises? What desolation! What betrayal of oneself!
And yet virtually all human experience constrains toward this violation of integrity. Science teaches it. Believe only what you can see and touch and measure. Here is the real world; here are the true values; look down and you will go up. How ridiculous!
But the angel is present, encompassing all that is of real value in human experience. Such true values cannot in fact be inherited from the past or acquired out of the world. They spring only from a higher source. When a person is the expression of the angel of himself he knows his value and gives value to his world. Because he lives out of what is higher than himself, he engenders transformation in what is lower. This is the creative art of living. Here is happiness. Look to the angel!
The apparent origins of my earthly self enslave me. If this is all that I can be, what hopelessness engulfs me. I am no more than the bauble of capricious chance. Look to the angel! Loud and clear I hear that silent invitation—an irresistible compulsion beyond the call of ancestry and worldly circumstance. Look to the angel!
Who is the angel? And where? Nowhere, insists blind prejudice. Now here, the upward view assures. The angel is now where I am. Therefore am I not the angel? rather than mere human flesh dedicated to this short-lived state of drear mortality.
Man is made a little lower than the angels, that the angels may walk on earth in human form. This angel in this human form. I am the angel! Let this living form proclaim the truth, no longer obedient in hopeless subjugation to decaying dust. I am the angel. I am from above. Whence are you?
Are you merely of the earth earthy? Or are you the angel alive on earth in a body of flesh? Shall the heredity of the flesh dictate your apparent worth or lack of it? Or is your real meaning inherent in the angel? Are you from above or are you from below?
If you insist that you are from below your destiny is death. Dust to dust! When you know that you are from above, then you are alive forevermore. Consciousness-endowed flesh bodies, called man, are made a little lower than the angels. Without the angel man is dust. The angel is the life of man. To deny the angel is death. To express the character of the angel is life. What you express you know—death from below; life from above. Whence are you?
When man is a living soul the angel is incarnate on earth in human form. The concern is to allow this transformation from a dying soul to a living soul to occur. The living soul was created by the Lord God; the dying soul is the result of human failure. How is the change to be wrought?
We have recognized that man was created in the beginning on a spontaneous basis. Man is a spontaneous creation. Because this is true, man can be recreated spontaneously. If man was not created spontaneously in the beginning it would be impossible for him to be recreated spontaneously now. This is why it is important that the fanciful concept of evolution should be seen for what it is. As long as the mind of man can keep human beings involved with this theory as though it were true it is impossible for the human being to experience spontaneous re-creation. The re-creation takes place by reason of a willingness on the part of man. In this regard it may be said that the original creation was easier than the re-creation is, because in the original there was no one to object; so the process worked out smoothly, as it does in all the creative cycles wherever they may appear in the whole cosmos. But now we have a conscientious objector on hand who does not wish to experience the re-creation. Human attitudes have been characterized by this unwillingness. This unwillingness is not merely consequent upon the more or less superficial patterns of self-centeredness that have been acquired by the individual during his sojourn thus far on earth. These superficial patterns relate to a person's experiences along the way right from the point of conception on. It is recognized that much of human nature springs from what was known in early childhood. However, all this is rather superficial.
Those who have been associated with this ministry for any time come to realize the necessity of not being governed by their feelings, so that they may begin to be governed by the spirit of God, by the irresistible force, by the Lord God who is the Creator, and in this case the Re-Creator. So something has been done in this regard. There has been an awareness of the necessity of not reacting, and so care has been taken. But here is the more or less superficial evident peak of the iceberg. There is far more underneath the surface of the water, and what is in the deeper depths relates to something that in a sense is further distant from the individual. It relates to what we might call race memory; it relates to states of consciousness that have been persisted in for millennia by human beings and have been built into this mass consciousness of which each individual partakes. Now all this has to be cleared if the re-creation to the state of man is to occur.
Now, it would be foolish to expect the human mind to do it. To start with, it doesn't know what is down in those depths, and even if it did know, it wouldn't know what to do about it. So it is not a matter of the intellect. In fact it is the human mind as such that has stood in the way—the conscious mind particularly—of allowing anything to happen. The re-creation must take place on the basis of human willingness. It's not something that can be imposed. This spontaneous re-creation comes because there are those who are willing that it should. However, if a person is all hung up with these deep fears and shame which are present subconsciously, so that these emerge to haunt him in his daily experience of living, then he remains caught in the unregenerate state, the state of self-centeredness, and there is no way by which the spontaneous re-creation may occur. Obviously, then, there is the need to develop an open willingness in attitude which is content to allow all the stuff to pass away, to relinquish all the fears and all the shame.
To engender that willingness there is the necessity to trust in God. Here we have the requirement of a complete letting go, something that in the human state there has been such a deep fear about that there has been an unwillingness that it should be so. Obviously, then, trust has to be engendered. That trust is not likely to be engendered merely in some invisible God somewhere in whom we are supposed to believe. This should be obvious enough, because there has been a very long time in human history when the opportunity was open for human beings to believe in God and consequently to trust Him. But God was always an invisible God, a hidden God, and for the most part association with God seemed necessarily to be through whatever type of priesthood might be available. But the whole human pattern of things was involved in subjugation to the self-centered state, including the priesthood.
No matter how good the intentions may have seemed to be, the behavior, the actions, of those concerned always derived from below rather than from above, because the controlling influence came from that direction. However, if adequate trust in God is to be generated there must be a means by which God can be known within the range of human awareness, so that He is no longer merely an invisible God. Now of course this relates to the fact of a true Priesthood, a Priesthood that is no longer subject to what is below, whose function in life, whose expression in all the ways of living, is not merely a result of what is contained in this mass consciousness of the human race. There must be those who have come clear of that before there could be the provision of the evidence of God on earth which would be capable of engendering trust in a general sense—not that everybody would be likely to trust.
So this necessity has been one of the divine problems, hasn't it?—how to get it established. We can see how much easier the original creation was than this can of worms, because human beings have established a pattern of contrariness insofar as God is concerned. They see the devil contending with God but they do not as a rule realize that they themselves are the devil in their own subjection to this distorted condition, so that their fear and their shame makes them unwilling to allow the spontaneous re-creation to occur. Always there has been the necessity of working out the essential starting point, and this has been done on a number of occasions in the past, but by reason of lack of response to the starting point provided it has heretofore always come to naught. Human unwillingness has prevailed. The most recently outstanding example of man's unwillingness related to the time when our Master was on earth in the form of Jesus, for here was a perfect starting point. What has been carried over in human experience from that starting point has all been based in the same patterns as before, contained in the mass consciousness of humanity. So apparently nothing came of it. However, it still remains the one supreme starting point, and it is out of this that may come what is needful to permit trust in God to be generated on earth in the hearts of men.
We find ourselves associated with something that relates to all this—the development of a mechanism which is not governed by the mass consciousness of man but is governed, rather, by the irresistible force of the spirit of God; for we recognize that if spontaneous re-creation is to occur it occurs because of God and not because of man. As long as human beings imagine that they somehow can transform themselves, can educate themselves sufficiently, can train themselves in some remarkable fashion to be what they ought to be, it is absolutely impossible for the spontaneous re-creation to occur. The human mind stands rigidly in the way. The absoluteness of the letting go that is required may begin to be appreciated. We have spoken about it before but I do not believe that most have realized what it was that permitted the re-creation to occur. It wasn't because the human mind was able to figure something out; it wasn't because the human mind could begin to see, as it thought, what the truth was; it was because the human mind came to the point of beginning to see how things work and therefore was willing to let go and stop trying to make it work.
Man was originally created spontaneously by God. Man, if he is to be recreated, must experience this spontaneously under the hand of God again. This is the only way it can be done. But how to persuade human beings to let go and let it happen—this has always been the problem, because the human mind has always thought that it knew which way to go and what to do next, and how to handle things and what technique to establish, all these things. And the world is full of such stuff, full of it from the conscious standpoint and far fuller of it from the subconscious standpoint. Obviously the human mind produced all this. How on earth could it be expected to get rid of it all? It actually has not in the least been interested in getting rid of it. The main interest has been in adding to the store, increasing knowledge, so that the human mind might be better able to grapple with the problems—which is exactly what is not required; it is just the reverse of what is required. The human mind grappling with problems has produced this state; the only way it can be changed is for the human mind to stop grappling with the problems and allow the creative power of God to bring forth man once again.
So we begin to see how it may happen: spontaneous re-creation, because there is a yielded body of human beings who are willing that it should happen. One obviously must be willing for oneself, that this may occur. This is very frightening to the human mind because immediately it begins to question, “Well how is it going to happen?” Why do you think it questions that way? So that it can find out whether it's going to agree or not; not only that but so that it can find out sufficiently so that it might dispense with the Lord God and get the job done itself. But of course this could never happen. It's a complete mystery to the human mind and no matter what it does it can never find out. In the original creation there was nobody on hand to interfere; there was nobody on hand trying to pry into the processes that were bringing this creation forth. When the creation was brought forth and finally came to the point of a consciousness of itself, it couldn't look back and comprehend what had happened. You as a person now can't look back to know what the experience was when you were one single cell in the external sense, nor can you tell what the experience was in your mother's womb, or even for a while after you were born. So all that was carried on without any help from your bright intellect. What a marvel was accomplished before your intellect was on the scene of things, before your conscious mind was present.
Obviously, then, the conscious mind as such is not necessary to the process of spontaneous re-creation—it is not necessary at all. The only reason it has to be taken into account is to provide the opportunity for it to cease interfering; and to bring the human mind to that point is a task indeed, because at every conceivable opportunity it wants to interfere. It thinks it knows. While it may be willing to admit that it doesn't know about something over there, it knows perfectly well what needs to be done here, it thinks!—but it doesn't. How to maneuver the human mind out of the way in such a manner that life may continue in the human form and the spontaneous re-creation may occur? Is your human mind capable of grappling with that problem, do you think? Of course not. It doesn't need to. This has always been the Lord's business and He has evidently been very ingenious in the matter, providing opportunities of various sorts, leading forward hopefully, until finally the subjection of man to the mass consciousness established such a rigid unwillingness that something else had to be undertaken. There were many of these opportunities that had to be relinquished. They couldn't work anymore. The rigidity of unwillingness was so thorough.
Now willingness is a matter of the heart, not a matter of figuring something out. Yielding is a matter of the heart, a willing heart. If the heart responds in willingness to the dawning realization that the Lord God is now here and that individually the angel is now here, the beginning of trust can emerge. Most of what human beings think of as trust in God is not. When people think they are trusting in God they are usually tempting God. “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” What happens? A person decides to move along a certain course which he presumably feels would be a good thing to do. Using his mind he tries to determine the pitfalls and to avoid them. But what he has envisioned looks good, and so he persists. And probably somewhere along the way he finds opposition arising to such an extent that he feels that it is necessary to seek help, and maybe the help he seeks is from God. Possibly, if he is inclined to prayer, he may explain to God what he has been doing and how it was good and how he now needs help. So he tries to get God to support him in his self-devised course. That is tempting the Lord; that is a human being trying to get God to agree with human self-centeredness.
Sometimes people find that their prayers seem to be answered. Why? Presumably because there is some potential remaining in that person to experience spontaneous re-creation, so that if God said “No”, that would be a write-off, wouldn't it? It's rather fortunate that God is not inclined to make arbitrary decisions—I doubt if we would be sitting here tonight if He were so inclined—because human beings everywhere, whether they have realized it or not, have endeavored to get God to support them in their self-centeredness. Anyone who tries to use his life for his own purposes is doing this, because life is of God; it is the life of God. Most people usually say my life. Stealing, that is. So there are those who have found that God has delivered at times, answered their prayers, and they think of this as trust in God. If a person brings himself to a very low pass of some kind and he says, “Well now, what is necessary is to trust in God,” he is really saying, “Now I am going to tempt God to sustain me, to restore me into my former self-centeredness.” And that is done, if there is any potential in the individual, done repeatedly over the years so that we are still alive. If God said “No” and washed His hands of us at any point, well where would we be? Because of the need for those who will permit spontaneous generation to occur the way is held open for human beings as long as possible; but for this reason alone, not to assist anyone in some self-centered course. Of course if one persists in that way, then finally dust to dust! in any case. But to trust God without trying to make Him follow out the human desire or intention, to let it be His way.
When we say that the human mind doesn't know, doesn't it always seem to a person, to start with, “Well this is impossible”? Why? Because the human mind is being trusted and not God, and we demand that God should trust our human minds so that we are supported in what we do. Well if we do receive a little support in what we do self-centeredly it is simply to keep the door open for us so that we may change our ways, not so that we should persist in self-centeredness.
Look to the angel. Trust God.
We have some consciousness of the presence of the angel of ourselves, and therefore the source of spontaneous re-creation. This is present so far in spite of us, and it is by reason of the fact of the presence of the angel individually and the presence of the Lord God collectively that spontaneous re-creation may occur. It is because of this only that it may occur, not because of anything that the human mind may do of itself, except insofar as it may see the necessity of letting go. That's all that's required of it, so that what is needful may spontaneously occur. And who needs to know how that is going to happen? If the human mind did know how it was going to happen it would interfere for sure. Isn't it a wonderful thing that it doesn't know? It can't really interfere if there is a true letting go. It's not trying to figure out what it is that is happening; it's willing to let happen whatever happens and to participate in this recreative process just as easily, just as naturally, as the dust forming the flesh of the babe participated in that creative process. It didn't need to find out what was happening; it just cooperated. That's all that is required of those who share in permitting spontaneous re-creation to occur on earth. This must first occur in relationship to human beings, that they may become Man. There is a good deal of spontaneous re-creation to occur in everything that's around us, but if it is to occur there it occurs because it first occurs in human beings.
As there is a willingness to let it occur in us we may experience what the spontaneous re-creation is. And just as the babe at a certain point becomes conscious of itself, so does the recreated form of man at a certain point begin to become conscious of itself. That is a totally new experience insofar as this self-centered state of human beings is concerned. But it occurs with absolute inevitability when it is allowed to happen, because it is the irresistible force at work. When we are with it it happens in our own experience. To a certain extent it has been happening in your experience already. What has happened in your experience already has happened entirely without the assistance of your human mind. It didn't happen because you were so bright; it happened merely because there was some measure of willingness to yield. And it is on that basis and that alone that anything whatsoever occurs. We can see the utter futility of all this cerebration that's going on in the world of mankind. It leads absolutely nowhere. But we begin to find that we are moving somewhere; we have this sensing of the experience.
But the human mind can't look around and say, “Where am I going?” any more than the babe, beginning to become self-conscious, begins to look around and say, “What am I going to be when I am a man (or a woman)?” It doesn't care at that point, at all. “What am I now?” is its attitude, and that is what is required of us. What am I now, in this moment? What is my experience now of the moving of this spontaneous recreative cycle in my own experience? Let us let it happen and let us not judge what is happening in ourselves or what is happening in anyone else, but just be willing to let it happen.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
