The Rent in the Veil

from

The  Rent  in  the  Veil

Martin Cecil   June 5, 1983  am

The house of prayer has been conspicuous by its absence on earth, which indeed is a den of thieves, because the consciousness of human beings is of that nature. Virtually everything is taken by human beings, as though they possessed it. We are concerned with the house of prayer, the house of communion, communion with the King and, by reason of our own experience of His spirit in living, communion with each other. Here would be the fulfilment of the first and second great commandments. According to the clarity, the openness, of our own state of consciousness it may be available to receive what should be present in it. Clearly there is a great distinction between a den of thieves and a house of prayer. This relates to very practical matters. Is our consciousness, are our hearts and minds, a setting for true communion? All the human nature rubbish would have to be dissolved to make space available for what should be present.

What really should be present has been absent from human experience for a long time. How shall it be welcomed? First of all, we recognize that our own attitude must be clear of all judgment, certainly of all condemnation. Of course, one has to judge in order to condemn. Presumably what is condemned is what is thought of as being evil or bad. There is no difficulty, on the basis of the usual human state of consciousness, to discover all kinds of available material for condemnation. That is the quality, or the nature, of the den of thieves—the ridiculous assumption by human beings that they really know the way things ought to be, and if something doesn’t fit the way they imagine things ought to be, then it naturally should be condemned. So judgment, we have noted very clearly, is what pollutes the atmosphere of consciousness, judgment which spawns condemnation.

It is said that way back when, a garden was planted eastward in Eden and the man was placed in it to dress it and to keep it. This garden has some relatedness to the house of prayer. It indicates a state of heavenly consciousness. We are aware that Eden simply refers to the earth. The garden is planted eastward in Eden—our tomorrows come out of the east. We might see this with other than a horizontal viewpoint. The horizontal viewpoint sees the future ahead; the present now, if that is discernible to anyone; and the past disappeared over the horizon. Here is the horizontal viewpoint. But the true viewpoint recognizes something of a vertical nature. It was described as coming down from God out of heaven, in the moment. Of course if you have something vertical and something horizontal, you have a cross—and there is a point of crossover, and that point of crossover is in the present moment. We have an awareness that there is available, if there is a consciousness to receive it, what is coming down from God out of heaven in this present moment. In one sense this has nothing to do with the future, and in another sense of course it does, because what is coming down from God out of heaven, of the garden planted eastward in Eden, determines what shall occur—whether what occurs will be aligned and in harmony with the creative process, out of heaven into the earth, or whether that will be ignored.

There is what might be called, from the human standpoint, an alternative. It isn’t an alternative from any other standpoint. It is the fact. It is the way things are. This relates to the symbolic portrayal of a garden planted eastward in Eden. This is the place where man evidently belongs. It has presently vanished from human consciousness. Man was thrown out of the garden of Eden. True. And try as he may, he cannot get back in. We might make note of the fact that the garden of Eden is still present, but incomprehensible to human beings, because the human approach to what they think of as life—a very poor sort of existence actually—is to be governed by the reports that the senses bring in.

So, thought and emotion are governed, controlled, by the senses. We call them physical senses. They are perceptive of something beyond the physical as well, but whether it is at that level or the physical level, this is, we well know, what governs human behavior—human behavior which is, again, conditioned by what is present in the individual from the standpoint of heredity and past experience. What occurred in childhood is one of the things that has a considerable influence evidently, and has been accepted as though it was inevitable that one must behave as though one were a five-year-old child. This is usually the case, emotionally speaking, with virtually everyone. According to the intake from the senses, so the reaction comes, and the behavior puts in an appearance. 

We repeatedly examine many things. We approach what we examine from different angles, because every time there is some sort of an examination of this sort, if the mental processes are dominant, some sort of view begins to take form in consciousness, some pattern of concept begins to be established. There is no need for patterns of concept, but we are so accustomed to this process that we inevitably do establish patterns of concept. We are aware of this, for instance, from the standpoint of our association with the Emissary teaching, as it has been called. If you have a teaching, then there tends to be the idea that what is required is to develop some sort of concept in which you may believe. And there are all kinds of them, masses of them on earth, to suit every kind of human nature. But that is all it suits—human nature—because none of it is the truth. 

We may recognize the necessity of approaching what it is that is being considered from different angles, so that we continuously find our concepts being upset and we cannot pin it down. Well that is just wonderful, if you cannot pin it down. The trouble is there are some people who have, in their own consciousness, pinned it down, and this causes them to deceive themselves that they now know when they don’t. It is not the formation of patterns of concept that is required, as we well know in theory, but the experience of something that is brought forth in living, coming down from God out of heaven to be given expression and form on earth, because we are here to do it. But we have to be in place to let it happen. We have to be at what is symbolized by this crossover point of the present moment, the present moment that we see as a nonexistent interval between the future and the past. Well let’s also see it as an existent interval between heaven and earth, where we need to be—not filled up with all these patterns of concept so that nothing can get through us except it conforms with these concepts, but clear, open, for the experience of what occurs in the garden planted eastward in Eden.

Man, according to the story, pushed himself out of the garden. It was made to look as though the Lord was casting him out, but it was his own doing. There were Cherubims, with the flaming sword, to prevent him from getting back in. We have some information, and we have become increasingly aware of the truth of it, that at one point—quite some time ago now—there was a rent which appeared in the veil of separation. Human beings, by reason of this veil, had been outside of the garden and couldn’t get back in. But here was space beginning to appear, so that it would become possible to re-experience the true state of man. There is something more than belief required—the acknowledgment of the truth in one’s own experience and living. The truth is the truth that one’s living springs out of heaven, springs from another level of experience which heretofore has been blotted out for human beings because of the intervening veil—the veil which they themselves established.

The whole human race has been outside of the garden, trying to establish some sort of a control and a design in their earthly experience. But the true control and the design which springs out of heaven can only be known through a balanced state in mankind. A balanced state is indicative that mankind is one, not fragmented. Obviously, as long as that balanced state is not there, all attempts to establish some sort of a satisfactory design and control on earth must fail, because one person, or one group of people, thinks it should be this, another group thinks it should be that way, and they have all these beliefs which keep people in conflict within themselves and with each other. We have seen this. We have experienced the conflict. We know all about it. And conceivably it may still put in an appearance now and again. We want to have things the way we want them. We are, humanly speaking, absolutely dumb, ignorant, stupid. We couldn’t possibly do anything right, because we are out of the garden. So all this struggle goes on, and everybody is in conflict with everybody else, because initially they are in conflict within themselves.

There is a garden planted eastward in Eden, and while this garden may in a specific sense relate to this earth—the field of the responsibility of man—it might be seen as relating to everything. The garden, in that sense then, would be a far larger place than the little place where human beings exist. Just the reverse is usually considered. Of course now we look out into the universe, but that is out there. It doesn’t have that much influence on human affairs, at least not from the standpoint of human beings who try to produce the state of proper control and design on earth. So there is a very small place, really, where human beings are. The state of their consciousness is very restricted. In that state they believe this and they believe that; there are crosscurrents of every kind: confusion, chaos; unresolvable, no answer. It is just wonderful that there is no answer. Everybody is all concerned because they cannot find the answer. The answer doesn’t exist in the state experienced outside the garden. There is no answer. What futility to try to find it then.

The answer comes when there is a facility to convey it out of heaven into the earth, and that facility is not available except as there is participation in the rent in the veil. The rent was consequent upon what one person did long ago. Because there was just one person, there was just one rent, from top to bottom. But nobody really knew it was there. There is something valuable about this larger rent, simply because it is larger, and it is made larger because there is not just one person but more who are participating in exactly the same thing that was true of the one person. To the extent that there are those who are willing to do this, genuinely—not a pretense, not thumping one’s ego chest and saying, “I am important, I am divine, I came down from heaven.” Did you indeed? Well prove it, reveal the truth in living—as there are those who do that, of course the rent in the veil becomes more apparent and there is something seen.

We have a symbol there. We have what is called an altar. It is indicative of the fact that there is a design, there is control—another word for control is government, isn’t it? There is control available on earth once the rent becomes large enough for what is available in heaven to come through into the earth. Well, one catches sight of it to start with; that is about as far as it goes. The real symbol is living human beings, and they can permit the space to be made available in consciousness for what naturally flows forth out of heaven into the earth. That flowing forth flows forth according to the design and the control that is established in heaven, and when it comes forth, if there is a clear consciousness through which to come, it will be revealed on earth.

The one called Jesus provided a clear consciousness, so that the truth was revealed on earth, coming down from God out of heaven into the earth. “Follow me,” He said. “The works that I do shall ye do also.” The same thing—just to make the expanded space in the veil available. And it is made available because there are more people; not merely because there are more individual human beings, although that is essential—we are all individuals—but because, as there is that space in consciousness, as there is what is the control and the design in heaven coming into the earth, it produces a formation, it produces a living organism, what has been spoken of in religious circles as the body of God. Well that is man, rightly. He certainly hasn’t been the body of God, has he? Rather, the body of what?—the prince of this world or the son of perdition, or whatever. It has been the body of human nature, the wrong side of the veil, trying desperately to establish a control and a design that would work on earth.

Well there isn’t anything that works on earth except what is coming down from God out of heaven. That is the only thing that works. Human inventions don’t work. Oh, they seem so magnificent for a while, until they reveal themselves as being somewhat Satanic. Fussing about them won’t change anything. How about looking in the mirror? “I am responsible. Not all those wicked people over there are responsible; I am responsible!” Until we have people who are men and women enough to take that attitude, there isn’t anything on earth. It is always judgment, blame, condemnation—somebody else’s fault. Ultimately the attitude is, “God is at fault. He shouldn’t have made things this way so that we could get into this mess.” There is only one way out of that, and that is to stop judging, for one thing, and to become most thankful for the way things are—exactly the way they are. One recognizes that all things are working exactly the way they should on the basis of the way human beings behave. Well, we can give thanks for it. The Law works—isn’t it wonderful! If the Law works one way, producing tribulation, it will work the other way to produce the beauty and the order of heaven on earth, when there are those who are willing to let it and do not imagine that their own views, their own judgments, their own condemnations, are far more important than letting the truth prevail.

All these things must dissolve in human consciousness if the truth is to be known. And then the rent in the veil becomes more visible. Something visible begins to put in an appearance on earth, revealing the altar of the Lord—the living, vibrant altar of the Lord—a balanced body composed of individual people, but one body, through which one expression of spirit is differentiated. And that one expression of spirit establishes the order and the design of heaven, what is natural by reason of the garden planted eastward in Eden and coming into the earth because there is space in the consciousness of some for it to come. Simple! Everything that human beings do is so complicated, isn’t it? It is really appalling how complicated everything is becoming. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, really, provided there is someone present in the circumstance who allows the garden to be present in the circumstance. Then things begin to sort themselves out, not because anyone had any bright ideas, or knew what the end result was going to be, but because there was a willingness to convey that quality and character of living into the world which, when so conveyed, allows true vision, allows a person to see the way things really are. It is simple and, above all, very enjoyable; heavenly, one might say.

Because human beings have existed in this little cell of their own making, suffering the sentence that was consequent upon their own behavior, there was a gap left in the true design, obviously. If man was created to be a part of the true design, and he steps out, well there is a hole where he should be. Of course the result is that the field for which man was responsible has been left to its own devices, and because it was left to its own devices it has evolved certain mechanisms that were a substitute control and design for what was before. I am speaking about what has happened in nature. People fuss about the ecology these days and try to fix it up according to someone’s ideas of how it should be. Well that is ridiculous, because nobody knows. In this state outside the garden, nobody knows. It is still the endeavor of human beings to, well, I suppose one could call it, defeat God—the endeavor to establish something that will really work, leaving the truth out of the picture. Well that is rather stupid, I think, that human beings should have persisted in this attitude. And they have invented all kinds of things to support the endeavor. The mind has rationalized, and we have great scientific advances, and all the rest, to support the human view of things that we can somehow establish order and the true design. Ah, evidently it wasn’t done right in the first place, according to this concept! But it was, and human beings have messed it up, and having done so, they are now trying to set it to rights. Well they have been trying to do that for a long time and only made it worse. So we come again to the necessity of what is available out of heaven, that there may be a balance restored.

Now, in nature there has been some sort of a balance, which keeps being upset. Why? Well because of what human beings do. We have a condition where it looks to human beings as though nature is very cruel—for instance, predators. Well predators are necessary; otherwise the other animals would multiply unduly. So, with the predators present there is a certain balance that has been kept. Now this is not the way things would be if man were in place, because man is responsible for maintaining the balance out of heaven. But he stepped out of position and the animals, the birds, the flora and fauna, as it is said, had to fend for themselves because man wasn’t on hand to do anything about it, and we have what is called a wild state. It is gradually disappearing, of course, under the heel of human action. But the wild state—that is not natural either; that is not the way it should be. That is the way man has insisted that it be, by stepping out of place, so that the control and the design for nature wasn’t present because of man. So nature was left bereft, and something has happened in nature which has evolved a state of affairs to maintain such balance as was possible. But the trouble, of course, is all consequent upon human function. There is a widespread recognition that this is true. That is why the ecologists are so active. But you can never restore the balance by studying ecology, because things aren’t the way they should be anyhow.

There is only one thing to happen, and that is to let man get back into place. Then the order and the design and the control of heaven can once again emerge into the earth. We ourselves have a responsibility in this regard, and we find, to the extent that we experience the character and the quality of heavenly being in our living moment by moment, that things begin to happen in the environment which bring a certain sense of beauty and order and control that is right. But it has to come into the earth first through oneself. It can’t get out there into the garden without having first come forth through the person.So here is the first order of business, and we are concerned with this, to let our experience in this regard increase. And to do that we go back and forth—we are not only doing it for ourselves but we are opening doors more widely for others as well—we go back and forth in considering these matters and, I trust, from time to time shattering some firmly held Emissary concepts, that they may dissolve. Then there may be a living experience, something which is constantly on the move. You can’t set it in concrete, as we noticed before, and have it survive.

All living things are indeed changing things, but we are here to see that the changes occur according to the design and the control that is set in heaven. That requires people to let it happen, people who themselves have assumed the responsibility and who discover that they are part of a forming body in which the one spirit finds expression. Then all things are thereby caused to work together to perfection.

© Emissaries of Divine Light