While Any Are Bound None Are Free
Uranda June 1, 1947
We have been, and are, passing through a period of orientation in relationship to the New Cycle that is before us. From time to time we have considered Services that have been held in the past, and we find there the expression of the Word which makes clear the Path along which we are moving. Wherever we turn in the Bible we find that we have considered the passages together that relate to our present time in the outworking of Cosmic events. I am not saying there is nothing new, nothing more for us to find in the Bible, but I am pointing out that that which is sufficient unto us for this day, according to the Word that has been, and now is, has been revealed and considered, and these things are intellectually recognized. When they are uttered they are perceived to a degree in Spirit, realized to some extent as Truth, and gradually the Life Pattern begins to conform with the fundamental Realities, so that we may not simply walk upon a meaningless round in this outer world, considering intellectual preachments as a salve to the spirit that we may be content with our lot under the conditions of the fallen world.
If that which we do is to mean more than that which others have done, we can not walk in that broad way that has been trodden by the millions, nor yet can we be content with the levels of Spirituality that have been attained by those who have served nobly and truly in the Harvest Field of God in time past. In my travels about the land, I have been deeply impressed by the fact that wherever one goes there are good people and fine, there are those who are expressing a high degree of nobility in their daily round of life. And yet, seen from the outer round of expression, these things tend to appear as ineffectual, futile, and sometimes the serpent tries to whisper that, just as there is the vanity of human pride and the vanity of possessions and the vanity of position in the world, according to the ideas of fame or power, just so is there a vanity of the spirit which, having found a certain degree of communion with things that are recognized as being Divine, becomes more or less content therewith, and finally, becoming to some degree smug and self-righteous, brings forth a vanity of nothingness which appears to the dimmed eye of outer-world-seeing as nothing more than that which all the mass of human beings experience.
With what shall we be content? Rising to what level do we find that which satisfies our appetite, our longing, our hungering and thirsting, so that, at that level we become surfeited, satisfied, and undertake to dwell there as if in some such place we might find an Eternal habitation? We climb to the top of a mountain in the experience of life, and attain to such and such a level. The human tendency is to pause there to admire the view and then, being satisfied that it is lovely, to build a house, as it were, to dwell in, thinking therewith to be content. It is lovely, and there is a beautiful view, from such a mountain height, and there is much to commend the progress of the one who so attains, but if we have the boldness to suggest that such attainment is not enough, if we suggest to such an one that pausing too long at that level of consciousness is failing to utilize the blessings of God that have been provided, he is inclined, in self-righteousness and a certain smugness of attainment, to take the attitude that we are seeking to deny the blessings of God by which he has attained to such and such a place. Actually, we seek only to awaken him to a realization that, no matter how good and no matter how wonderful, no matter how commendable the attainment, no matter how beautiful the view, no matter how Truth has been recognized and realized—it is not enough.
If, at any given level, we become content at that level, we accept disintegration, decay, retrogression and finally, obliteration. The human tendency—and it is very human, because human beings have bodies which are so inclined to inertia—is for the individual to forget that he is supposed to be a Temple of the Living God, and to be inclined to settle down at some level. Those who never rise above the dregs of humanity are looked down upon by those who have attained to some scale of life expression above them; but those, in turn, are looked down upon by those above them, and those who have attained to some point higher, actually or in imagination, look down upon them in turn. Yet the same end comes to all, the same turmoils and failures and the same futility, in the final reckoning. It is not enough. When the human being remembers that this human body, which tends so toward inertia, is actually the Temple of the Living God, which was so designed originally that it might express the fullness of Deity on earth and must of needs be rejuvenated, reborn and transformed, until that original potentiality shall have been made manifest in fact in this present time, we find that there is no specific level of attainment recognizable from an outer standpoint to which one may come, and say, “Here I have achieved, here is the goal, now I may build my house and abide. I need go no further.” When there is the true vision, when there is the true realization, there is a recognition that every tendency to settle down and be content at any level of consciousness at any time, is a snare of the serpent which, if one enters into it, leads most certainly to that subjection which holds all human beings who are enslaved to the prince of darkness.
The prodigal son said, “I will arise and go unto my father's house”. We, likewise, having tasted of the husks of the outer world and determined to arise and go to our Father's House, coming near to the Father, find that He recognizes that we are His House. We then need to remember that it is not essential that we should, at any time, build our house, to dwell therein, at some specific level of consciousness, as if we had arrived, but to remember that we are the Father's House, and that our LORD and Master said that He would go and prepare a place for us and assured us that in His House there are many Mansions, and that we must arise and go to our Father—and when we do, we find that we are our Father's House. Then, if we are the Father's House, we are to be in that place which He designs for us according to those Mansions that are Eternal. While there is yet misery and suffering and sorrow and death in this world, while there is yet oppression, and the seeming victory of evil, and the tyranny of power, while there is ignorance and prejudice and subjection to superstitions of all kinds, while our fellow men are subject to these things in all of their manifestations we cannot say, “We have arrived, it is enough”. Always we must remember that there is more for us to do—that it is not enough.
Our LORD and Master came into the world, not just to save one or two or three, here and there, but for the sake of the whole human race, without respect to color or race or creed. He came into the world to reveal the Fatherhood of God and thereby to give meaning to the Brotherhood of Man, that as man, recognizing the Fatherhood of God, should let himself be reborn and transformed, he might come to the realization that they who are the Children of God enter into the Glorious Liberty of God and are not separate from God, the Father, and that, being near unto Him, there can no longer be subjection to the chains that have so long bound human beings in the valleys of despair all over the world. No matter how good, no matter how fine, no matter how wonderful, no matter how true, no matter how high, the attainment, to each and all there comes the Word, “It is not yet enough.”
O LORD of Lords and KING of Kings, we thank Thee for the Holy Privilege of Serving Thee and of having a share in the outworking of Thy Will on earth, that Thy Kingdom may truly come on earth and that all who will may come to know the Way, the Truth and the Life, and enter into the Realm of the Prince of Peace, IN the Christ. Aumen.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
