When the Genuine Appears the Substitute Passes Away
Martin Exeter June 21, 1987
We are interested in letting all the substitutes be relinquished in favor of the genuine article. It's important that we should have an awareness that there is a genuine article, so that we do not indefinitely depend upon a substitute. These substitute arrangements can, unexpectedly or expectedly, dissolve. Then where would we be? Would we still be together, moving in unison by reason of a shared expression of the one spirit? We have plenty of practice in this regard.
Human beings in general depend upon their substitute patterns for the genuine, without realizing that this is what they are doing. There is the continued further development of substitute patterns of all kinds, which are deemed to be vitally important to the operation of things here on earth. However the fact of the matter is that these substitutes increase slavery. They bring human beings into subjection to these various techniques and methods that are developed, principally these days through technology; and there is a vast increase of slavery in consequence. It seems that most people happily dive into the pool of slavery without realizing that is what they are doing.
I have spoken on occasion about the matter of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is not limited to government bureaucracy in the usual sense, but there are bureaucracies everywhere. Individually speaking, each one is a bureaucracy of one: the endeavor to organize life, to get it to conform to the designs which human beings invent. We do this individually speaking. But there are bureaucracies of government, religion, business, science, labor, what have you. Everything is organized, with the intent that by organization we are going to get things to come together. But actually what happens is that there is the exclusion of spirit.
I had a letter the other day from Hugh Malafry, and I would like to read one paragraph out of it. “Most are deluded to think the world is polarized between conflicting political systems. This merely takes the emphasis away from where the control is. Political systems are mere figureheads for bureaucracies, and bureaucracies are the same the world around. Human beings are governed by bureaucracy. It is human nature's substitute for the creative process.” Then there is one more sentence here: “The more human beings organize, the less space there is for Spirit.” I looked up the word bureaucracy in the dictionary, and one definition of it I thought was quite apt: “Any administration in which the need to follow complex procedures impedes effective action.”
Bureaucracies are government by form, and most people enthusiastically give themselves into the bureaucratic experience. What about our own experience in this regard quite close to home? There is a tendency to go along with this current of movement which has swept and is sweeping human beings everywhere into slavery. Clearly, because of bureaucratic controls in operation in the world, it is necessary to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. But we also have clearly in consciousness that we render unto God the things that are God's. When it comes right down to it all the things of Caesar belong to God.
There are many things occurring in the realm of effects the world around, and what is occurring there carries a great impact insofar as most people are concerned. Sometimes the things that are occurring that carry the most impact are close at hand—this is so to those of small vision. Those who have a little larger scope of awareness are impacted by things farther afield; and, incidentally, because, as it has been put, we now live in a “global cottage,” whether it's farther afield or near at hand it all impacts in one way or another. This is the realm of bureaucratic control: the realm of effects, the realm of form. It is through the manipulation of form that the controls are established and maintained, so that there comes greater and greater rigidity, until eventually presumably nobody can move at all. That's rigor mortis! Our concern is not with bureaucracy. In connection with bureaucracy I see I wrote a note here: “Creative process impeded. Flow of life impeded. Death and disintegration promoted.” That's the result of bureaucracy. We share a different approach which could be defined as control by spirit—the true government is control by spirit.
I would read the opening verse of the last chapter in the Bible: “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Here is the flow of the water of the river of life, indicating the source from which it proceeds. This is a direct reversal of the usual human attitude which imagines that it is going to get life, more life, out of the realm of effects. There are many techniques that have been developed in the fields of, you name it, nutrition, exercise, what have you, by which it is presumed that life will be increased, or at least the slide into oblivion will be slowed. Manipulation of externals—this is bureaucracy, isn't it? This bureaucratic control becomes increasingly pervasive everywhere on the face of the earth. As Hugh pointed out, bureaucracies are the same regardless of the political system, and bureaucracies are the means of governing. This is a substitute for the creative process, the endeavor of man as he now is to defeat God. We come to the point of acknowedging that this certainly is not the way to go. This does not mean that one should get into a battle with bureaucracy. Anything more futile can hardly be imagined! One comes into subjection to that with which one fights. It's interesting to observe all the fighting going on, close at hand and everywhere else on earth, some of it reaching the point of bloody conflict, a lot of it fighting in other ways. But it's all the same thing. Isn't it ridiculous how people take the attitude that somehow peace could be established by fighting? The means always determine the ends. There are those who feel that the ends justify the means, but the means produce the ends.
Life is freely available if there is anyone on hand to accommodate it. One cannot accommodate it if one resists the quality and character of life, the designs and the controls that are inherent in life. If, as human beings, we think we know better and can steal life to use for our own good purposes, we simply fool ourselves. I am sure we would all acknowledge, if we are honest, that we still do it. We want life to serve us. Trying to get life to serve us brings us into abject slavery, and life itself moves us out of the picture. Being honest, we would all have to admit that we still want to arrange things the way we would like them to be. Of course we all know better; the question always arises as to whether we do better. Simply being aware of what is true achieves nothing unless, consequent upon that awareness, one reveals that truth in one's own living. It needs to permeate not only our whole physical form but our whole environment as well.
Let us not fool ourselves. I don't think there is any more time for such foolery. We either surrender our habitual human nature or we die. Peculiar, isn't it, that human beings generation after generation have chosen to die. That hardly emphasizes the idea of human intelligence. Most people never recognize what it is they are doing. We have an advantage—we recognize what it is we have been doing. That also may be a disadvantage, because if we do not accept the responsibility that is thereby given to us we are in worse shape than those who never recognized it. There has been within the range of our experience a persistence of troublous conditions. Why, do you think? “How long halt ye between two opinions?” You can't keep anything hidden these days; it comes out, doesn't it? Everybody can see it. The last person to see it, as a rule, is oneself. Everybody else recognizes what is happening, but one fools oneself most easily.
Authority is described here in this verse which I read: Pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeds “out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Here is the source of life. A throne portrays authority, doesn't it? That is where the authority is. The throne of God—the authority of Source, the authority of Cause, insofar as the whole universe is concerned. The throne of God—and of the Lamb?—as it comes to point with respect to this particular body of mankind. There is a focus point there. We are well aware of it. We have used various terms to identify it: the Lord, the King. This flowing river of the water of life moves throughout the whole cosmos, but it is brought to very specific point here with respect to mankind. We can see that it relates to something beyond mankind; but mankind has thus far, as long as anyone can remember, established a block to that flow. That was established because human beings wanted to do their own thing. They wanted to have their own way, as individuals. Of course they ganged up together in order to promote their self-centered determinations, and brought tribulation, destruction into their world, all based in the fact that each individual wants to have his or her own way. Everybody does it. And if one doesn't seem to be getting one's own way, then apparently the neatest thing to do is to accuse everybody else of being responsible for preventing it, certain ones in particular of course. And so accusation puts in an appearance.
It's very simple really. We like to make it complicated to make it seem difficult, so that we have an excuse for not letting it happen, for not letting the truth control. One makes one's own difficulties, and most people are very expert in this. They have wide personal experience, and hereditary experience to draw on too. Finally we reach a point where a little honesty begins to put in an appearance and we can't any longer insist upon deluding ourselves that somehow or other our troubles are someone else's fault. They are not someone else's fault. We all have our own personal brand of troubles—self-produced. But very few are honest enough to admit it. Admitting it, then we have no ammunition left for accusation. So it's interesting to observe how accusation persists: there must be ammunition for it.
The authority of God, and the authority of the Lamb in particular, establishes the character and quality, the very design, of life. And human beings cannot change it, except for themselves in their own experience. It's the only place it can be changed. That river flows uninterrupted everywhere throughout the whole cosmos, except in the minds and the hearts of human beings who try to grab it for themselves and use it to what they imagine will be their own advantage. And they kill themselves in the process. That is bound to happen, because no one can defeat the creative process, the flow of the water of the river of life. All that human beings have succeeded in doing is defeating themselves, eliminating themselves—individually for a long time, and now perhaps collectively. Is there any time to waste in trying to do our own thing?
I think there is a general idea that everybody is supposed to be equal. What would it mean? That we would all be the same? God forbid! It is that sameness of human nature that is causing the trouble, isn't it? Each one is unique. All that has been done has been to deny the authority of God and of the Lamb—to defy it, in fact. We have become aware of this authority, so we have a particular responsibility in the matter. We are here to accept it and to let it be whatever it is, without human imposition, without trying to divert it to our own satisfaction. If there is bureaucracy all around, imposing things upon us, we all had a part in putting it there. So there is no cause for complaint. We did it. Now the question is: How are we going to handle the situation, seeing that that's there? We are not going to complain about it, we are not going to object to it, we are not going to accuse anyone, and we are certainly not going to fight against it. We have sufficient intelligence to know that if we fight against it we increase it.
The whole human attitude of battle produces the very things which it is hoped would be eliminated. We give power to everything that we fight against. “None of these things move me” is the attitude to take. Do you get hot under the collar about it, one way or the other, whichever side you happen to be on? Or can you stand there in the middle of it, unmoved?—unmoved by that but moved by the flow of the water of the river of life, clear as crystal; no disturbed emotions, no condemnation in thought, but in a particular sense trusting the authority of the Lamb, the focus of spirit in the body of mankind. There is the authority. Accommodating this spirit in the expression of living, in the midst of this vast bureaucracy, makes all things new. There is no other way to do it. Struggling with the bureaucracy increases it. The form of the devil is a bureaucracy, wherever it is. The devil takes something away, gives you a little bit back, and everybody is supposed to be delighted they are getting a little bit back. But that's only the prelude to taking something more away; and so it goes until there is absolute slavery. That's what is in the offing from the human nature standpoint, from the standpoint of human beings the way they are in the world. They have painted themselves into a corner. And there is that compulsion present which controls most people, driving them into slavery, thinking that they are obtaining more freedom. It's amazing, unbelievable, for anyone who may look at it from a transcendent perspective.
Sitting down in the middle of it, it's all a hopeless business. But rising up, standing in place, the water of the river of life, clear as crystal, may flow. Here is the power. This is a lineal movement, a flow. There is a flow. Sometimes it comes to a special focus such as in this moment, but there is a flow. At the same time there is the radiance of love, and whatever is present to resonate with that radiance—the substance of our own minds and hearts which is free enough to resonate with the radiation of love—will do that. We are here because it has done that, to this extent. That substance is there because it has been generated in our moment-by-moment living. If it hasn't been generated there, there won't be any substance and nothing to resonate. Each one has specific responsibility in this regard. Nobody else can do it for anybody else. And it can't be done as long as one is still intent upon getting one's own way and doing one's own thing. That ties up the substance in the bureaucracy. Interesting, isn't it, that people think of that in terms of freedom—“to do my own thing, to get my own way. I'll be free.” But it leads to absolute slavery.
Let the creative process work. Love the King, trust the King, that all things may work together to perfection because we relinquish our criminal intentions as thieves of life. Then maybe we can expect parole, come out of prison for a while, see how we behave. If you don't behave right, back you go—something to complain about again: “I tried it, but look what happened.” No, we stand as men and women where we belong, in love for the King, accommodating the creative process, letting the water of the river of life flow freely, and letting the substance of our minds and hearts resonate freely with the power of love. And then, Behold, I make all things new.
© emissaries of divine light
