The Passing Of Graven Images

The  Passing  of  Graven Images

Martin Exeter   December 21, 1986  p.m.

Let light increase. It always is a matter of letting it be so. No struggle, no human effort. The increase of light permits the increase of vision. There certainly is need for that increase of vision. Without vision, the people perish. But the increase of light is the increase of creative power by which essential changes are wrought, so that all might be included in the creative processes of restoration. Individually we have the ability to let the light shine and increase in its shining because responsibility is taken for one’s world.

It might be useful to consider something in this connection which relates to the dissolution of the veil of human nature, so that the light might increase. This morning we were considering again the matter of judgment. We may be inclined to think of this in terms of our association with other people and circumstances. I trust we do think of it that way and are exercised in the matter of relinquishing judgment, one of another and of our circumstances. This is essential if the light is to shine. When we speak of these things, the elementary ABC (Accusation, Blame, Criticism), it means little until it becomes specific in our living experience. We are all experts, I’m sure, in describing what is necessary. We can all talk at length about it. But here is the road to failure unless we specifically see the fact of our own specific judgments in daily experience.

So there is much to be looked at, which is brought to us moment by moment — we don’t have to go searching for it — because anything that is brought to you will, according to old habits, be judged. But anything that comes, whatever it may be — and it will come in specific ways day by day — is there to determine as to whether one still is in the kindergarten capacity, learning ABC. Presumably when we learn that, we can go on to higher learning. But if we don’t know our ABCs we’re stuck in kindergarten, and I’m sure no one is anxious to spend the rest of their days in kindergarten. No wonder things seem so dull and routine-like, if one has never gotten out of kindergarten. Of course to a young child first going in, that’s very exciting. And, I'm sure, entering into the experience of life on earth seemed, back along the way, to be a very exciting thing. But then somehow or other we got sidetracked, never having learned our ABCs. So the excitement tends to pall, and we have to hype it up somehow. At least this is the usual human view. As I mentioned this morning, there are matters of danger that excite people. They do all sorts of crazy things because it’s dangerous and they get a thrill out of it — that is, if they survive! That’s a very unnatural state of affairs and gives no indication of the true fulfilment that may be known once judgment is left behind.

As human beings we all fell pretty low. Many people talk about the fall. And it’s a fact. We got down into the muck and the mire where we don’t belong. We find ourselves somewhat stuck in the muck and the mire, wondering how to get out of it. This is a common experience to many people. They would like to shake it off somehow but cannot do so because of their own attitudes of judgment; that keeps them at the level where they don’t belong. What was it that brought people to that level? The eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of judgment. This is done in very specific ways; and we have to meet those specific ways and let them clear, so that when something comes to us and the habit of judgment arises we are there consciously to deal with this event. It may be a jerky experience to start with. We have to stop and say, “No, I shouldn’t be judging here. It doesn’t matter how justified I am in the reasons for this judgment, it is the judgment itself that keeps me embedded in this fallen condition.” Why should one try to justify oneself for staying in the fallen condition? That seems rather foolish. Well every time one justifies one’s judgments one is doing that, taking another lease on the fallen condition and staying where one doesn’t belong. There are many implications to this. We necessarily think of it in terms of our daily experience. But there are many background factors that are present with us that also hold us from coming clear so that we may rise above this human condition.

I was thinking a little about our use of the Bible, and particularly of that portion of the Bible which purportedly describes to us the Master’s presence and experience on earth. We have something here which has come alive for us so that it is no longer merely a story in a book. It has come alive to a certain degree.

Christians talk about Jesus Christ. We may speak of our King. When it comes right down to it, what’s the difference? There is a character described here in the Gospels. This is a story. No one really knows where it came from. There has been a certain amount of effort to find what might be referred to as the historical Jesus, rather than the Jesus of the Gospels. I think it is fairly safe to say that no one has been very successful in this. Many ideas have been put forward as to the nature of the Jesus of the Gospels. Where did this character come from? Was it a real character? If you’re trying to make it so by looking at the form of things you will come up with an image. And human beings, obviously, have come up with an image. I’m thinking of this particularly in the Christian world; and I suppose most of us have had some sort of a background of Christianity, certainly from the standpoint of heredity in many ways, of generations and generations of people who read this story in the Bible and assumed that it was true and that it had reference to some certain particular character. However, as I say, when you start looking for that character, historically speaking, you don’t find him.

There are those who have postulated the idea that the Jesus of the Gospels was invented out of the characters of certain historical personages, maybe a couple of them or more. Well, someone was quite bright, evidently, if this was done. Of course it is true that the Jesus of the Gospels largely supports the building of the Christian religion. So presumably the things that are there were there because they did support this human effort. More recently of course there have been what are called the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have described another character. No doubt there has been a suppression back along the way of certain aspects of what it was that appeared on earth, in order to make possible the building of the doctrine of Christianity. This is not exceptional, mind you. You can look into this from the standpoint of other religions too.

But all I am saying here is that, insofar as we are concerned, we have seen Jesus very largely through the eyes of the Gospels. However we have also seen something which went beyond that, because there has been some sort of a living experience, something that we have had in our own experience which transcends the form. We don’t need the form, really, to tell us what the experience is. It’s something that springs forth into expression in our living if we will let it, let the light shine. The idea has been, for the most part, in the Christian world at least, “Look at the light.” The light was Jesus, Jesus of the Gospels. The statement has been made a number of times that all history is fiction. Are we to exclude this?

We have all, I’m sure, established images in consciousness relative to Jesus. There are those who not only established them in consciousness but let them come out in the form of wood or stone or the painting of a picture, whatever. Is there anything much different between having an image only in consciousness and letting that image externalize itself in some artistic expression? You have to have the image in consciousness first; and I think virtually everyone has had the image in consciousness, an image which was largely based in the story of the Gospels. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.” Oh, well we didn’t get around to doing it in stone, or in wood, or painting a picture. Actually some have painted pictures of the image they had in consciousness. But everybody had the image in consciousness, in whatever measure and whatever it seemed to be. I am suggesting that this must be relinquished. It must dissolve.

We find ourselves in a situation somewhat like what was spoken of in this story when Mary Magdalene was in the garden — again according to the Gospel — and couldn’t find the body of Jesus. There was someone there whom she questioned: “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” I would suggest that everybody needs to come to that point. Here is an image which people cling to; it’s very precious to them. We have stories in the Old Testament about people who had very precious images. One lady sat on them in her tent. But one cannot experience the truth if one clings to an image, even the image of Jesus. How then can the truth be known? Well we are aware of the way. But fundamentally it is taking the same position in one’s own world as Jesus was purported to have done in His. That’s the only way you could find out what the truth is. There are those perhaps who have tried in various ways to get back two thousand years to the events of that day, but no one was very successful — this, in order to find out what it was that really happened. We don’t need to go back there because all that is real is here now. The truth can be known now.

An aspect of judgment is this business of setting up an image. Thou shalt not make unto thee any image or a likeness of anything, even in the heaven above, certainly not in the earth beneath, though everybody has done that. Everybody has worshipped their external idols and been largely governed by what is present in the water under the earth, in other words the subconscious elements that come out of the past through heredity and in various ways. But there has been a deliberate setting up of an image of Jesus Christ in the Christian world, and other images in various ways in other religious doctrines. The view is: “There is the light” — the image is the light. One may feel rather self-righteous by reason of the fact that one may not have externalized one’s image, but you still have it. If you are an artist perhaps you could externalize it. And there are people of course who seek to externalize it in their living. This would require a very, very good person, if we are considering the Jesus of the Gospels. A lot of people don’t like that idea too much because they think it might end in crucifixion anyway. It isn’t a matter of trying to imitate Jesus according to one’s image of Him. Immense numbers of people have endeavored to do this, to make a facsimile of Jesus. What blasphemy!

The only way to discover what the truth is is to be it. You can’t be it if you think it’s over there somewhere, even if it’s over there simply in consciousness. So there is something to be relinquished here, simply because one assumes the responsibility of standing in the place where we have an awareness that He stood relative to the world. It is said in the Gospel that He wasn’t sent into the world to condemn the world. Well we weren’t sent into the world to condemn the world. That’s a pretty straightforward statement. Certainly in order to condemn the world we would have to judge it first presumably. Then, having satisfied ourselves with our judgment, we could hand out the sentence: condemn the world, condemn people — involvement with ABC. Let it dissolve, that we may relinquish the image and accept the responsibility.

The image has always been valuable to people because it helped them to feel right about not accepting the responsibility. If one can have an image to worship, well, provided that image is at the very peak — and in the Christian world that would be Jesus Christ, presumably — then one doesn’t need to assume the responsibility that He, even in the story, suggested that we should. As long as we have an image, there is something separate from us, and we remain in the identity of human nature. Human-nature identity is the identity that is separate from the truth; and if we see an image, obviously we have an identity still which is separate from the truth. So I think it is well due that we should realize that “they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” We don’t need to know, because each individual assumes the responsibility of being the truth.

Nobody can ever assume that responsibility and identity as long as the human-nature identity persists. So, clearly, one must come to that point, somewhere along the line. I think most of us have been sidling up to it a little. But the truth is now. It’s not in the past. It’s not in any image that we could create in consciousness. There are those who have tried desperately to do this. They have read the Bible with such care and application, seeking to find that truth. Well of course it isn’t there. The truth is here. The truth is in the individual himself or herself. Only when it comes out can he know it or she know it. Let the light increase.

Grace Van Duzen — Martin, what is being taken away is the graven image and not the Lord. Surely to see this is the greatest thing that has ever happened, and to see it at this time of year when a lie is celebrated. And we can actually say that and not be struck dead. Maybe the crucifixion and the ascension can be included in all of this which has been perpetrated deliberately, so that the monstrous hoax that has covered the face of the earth has allowed this thing to grow on earth that is called the body of man, and the world. I thank God that the Word is invisible. The Word is here; thank God it has remained and is here. We know that Word. But we are not afraid to call a lie a lie. And the Word can only find flesh and be clothed by each one of us as that lie is allowed to dissolve. I thank God for this.

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Lord Exeter — Each individual may say for him- or herself, “I only can know the truth for myself.” And one knows the truth for oneself when one assumes the stance exactly where the truth is. We come to this particular season of the year which emphasizes the possibility of being the truth. This is not the usual emphasis: the truth was over there somewhere, in the past, a little baby. Oh how delightful, how romantic, how precious! A precious image. And that precious image comes out, takes form, doesn’t it? — usually through children who are inveigled into this. It may be all right for a child, but adults have been trapped in a lie, worshipping a lie, never accepting the responsibility to be the truth and therefore know it. It is presumed that someone else knows the truth, or knew the truth — in this instance, Jesus — therefore “He can tell me the truth; He can acquaint me with the truth.” Never. The human identity can never know the truth because the human identity is a lie in the first place. But we can relinquish that lie and accept the responsibility for our worlds, individually, in exactly the same way that we have discovered, through association with the experience of it, that whoever Jesus was did.

But we are not concerned with that now; we are concerned with this now, and what is done now, what I do now, where my identity is now. If it is still human-nature identity I will judge, I will condemn, I will justify this stand because it supports my human identity. But it is necessary to come to the point where there is no concern in relinquishing the human identity. Somewhere along the way the human identity is forcibly relinquished, at that point with no means of preventing it. But it may be done now because the assumption of the identity of the truth is taken: I was not sent into the world to condemn the world, but that the world, through me, might be saved — not through half a dozen other people, but through me. Of course the human view then would say, “Well that’s arrogance.” No, it requires the utmost humility, the complete relinquishment of one’s human identity.

Have we not been moving toward this point? Is it a point ever to be reached, do you think? Or is it just always a little over the horizon? We see these things because there has been some experience of them. We have been associated in letting the light shine, at least to some extent. And so we begin to know. But finally we cease our reluctance and stand where we belong, as individuals, not looking to someone else to do it. To the extent that we do take a stand we may know that others will do it, and that we find ourselves together as one, in one body with one mind and one heart. It isn’t quite that way yet, is it? What have we been doing? Let the light increase in me because I assume the responsibility of letting it be so.

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