Thus It Is
Martin Cecil March 9, 1975 a.m.
What has been referred to as the Christ, of the New Testament, and the Shekinah, of the Old Testament, we have designated as the true Tone of Life. This Tone always sounds. It has always been present with human beings on earth, capable of being discerned and capable of being expressed. In offering a specific focus in form of this true Tone, at a particular point I wrote a prose poem, several years ago, which was entitled, Thus It Is. In writing this I used as few words as possible, and took particular trouble to make it exact. This Christmas the poem was used on a card, but it was misquoted. In mentioning this now I am not pouring coals of fire upon the heads of those who were responsible, because when they became aware of what they had done they were, of course, chagrined and deeply concerned about it. And, as far as I know, all this is now quite clear with them.
But I wish to illustrate how it is that an off-key note tends to persist. One instance of this, of which I became aware, was when this misquoted poem was read at a particular gathering without, apparently, the one who read it realizing that it was off key. How many of those who heard it realized it was off key I have no way of knowing, but I suspect very few. This is the way that the true Tone, even when it has emerged into the awareness of human beings in some measure, is usually changed and caused to be something which it really is not. I have been aware of many “quotes” of what I have supposedly said which were of this nature. Apparently, it is easy to imagine something, because this is the way the person heard it, not necessarily the way it was said.
What has occurred in Christianity is one evidence of the way these things happen, because the true Tone has almost completely been lost, lost under a covering of human imagination—human imagination which is then reproduced generation after generation, generally speaking getting further and further away from the original Tone. Actually, in this matter of the poem which I mentioned the misquote was merely an omission: the last few words were omitted. In order to reestablish the exact expression, I propose to read the poem again this morning, so that, perchance, this may be re-sounded correctly in the days to come—not that this particular wording may be all that important but, as I say, it is an illustration of something that happens. You know how it is when a story is whispered from one to another: by the time it comes out at the end it’s a totally new story.
Most people are not very good at hearing. I don’t mean that everyone is deaf, but they don’t know how to listen. And, in any case, whatever is actually heard by a person, even if he is listening closely, is necessarily translated on the basis of what is present in his own consciousness. So twists and turns put in an appearance. When I mentioned Christianity, it’s not as though this were the only area where such things have occurred. The sounding of Shekinah relative to the children of Israel, of course, became distorted in the consciousness of those concerned, so that the whole development through that particular pattern disintegrated. And we have the same thing in every area. Here is the poem itself:
Thus It Is
From age to age
Love’s word rings forth,
“The truth is true and all is well,
Unconquerable life prevails.”
Oh, man, whose strident dreams
Lead gravewards,
Return to calm and noble
Character of life.
Blaze forth pure virtue;
Depart false ambition’s restless schemes.
Busy thought and troubled feeling
Trespass not in virtue’s wise serenity
Where firm control and awful power
Eternally abide.
Here earth’s pains are healed
And cruel chaos of mind’s spawning
Is called again to order and to beauty.
The words “and to beauty” were omitted from the poem as it was reproduced on the Christmas card. “Here”—in virtue’s wise serenity—“earth’s pains are healed and cruel chaos of mind’s spawning is called again to order and to beauty.” What is “virtue’s wise serenity”? What is virtue? Virtue is the sounding of the Tone, not only that one might hear it, that one might be in position to sense it, but that one might let it find expression in one’s own living.
We might recall some words: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.” The kingdom of God, the sounding of the Tone, the true Tone of Life, the quality and character of that, seek that. It is present with anyone as long as life is present. Inherent in life itself is this true Tone. Human beings usually try to use life to accomplish what their hearts desire, but human hearts’ desire has very little to do with that true Tone. This endeavor produces a sour note, a sour note in human experience, and the sour note itself engenders sour effects. “But seek ye first the kingdom of God,” the true Tone, “and his righteousness,” the expression of that true Tone in one’s own living; “and all these things shall be added unto you,” the effects of that will naturally appear. However, obviously, the effects of the off-key tone also appear and are the experience presently known in the world which human beings have made. Here is the evidence not of virtue’s wise serenity but of the cruel chaos of mind’s spawning.
Who really seeks the true Tone of Life?—not to try to use life to produce a state which would be satisfactory to human beings, as they suppose, but to yield to the tone which is already sounding. Because human beings have not yielded to it they don’t stay associated with life for very long. Attempting to use life for one’s own purposes makes sure that an off-key tone is sounded, and the effects of that off-key tone are constantly being reproduced. Those who do seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, begin to establish on earth the true cause from which may spring true effects. Manipulations of life, to solve the problems of the world, to bring the answers which human beings have not thus far been able to find, bring effects which are most obviously not particularly happy; the effects of a world of chaos are engendered. Once there begins to be a means by which the true Tone is sounded in the world, there is a true cause for right effects. What those right effects are cannot be determined by the intellects of human beings but nevertheless will appear correctly as the Tone is sounded.
Presumably we have an awareness of these things. The sounding of the Tone produces effects: and this is the answer, even though it seems strange or not too clear in human minds as to what might happen. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you,” all the proper earthly effects shall appear. But if the endeavor is to get those earthly effects, according to the human concept of what they should be, a false tone is sounded and the actual effects which appear will be thoroughly distorted. And this has been proven out by human beings all down through the ages. It is particularly obvious in these days. Obviously, causes engender effects. Manipulating effects without changing causes is not going to produce anything very constructive. There’s only one true cause. That is the Christ, the Shekinah, the true Tone of Life, the real quality that life reveals when it is allowed to do so and human beings stop superimposing their own ideas and concepts and evil imaginations upon it. Actually, that superimposition doesn’t last very long, because “unconquerable life prevails,” life cannot be turned aside. Life cannot be made into something that it is not. If we attempt to do that, we find that we are not. It makes no difference to life at all; life is still life.
But what is life? Who knows? This has been the great mystery, hasn’t it?—human beings trying to solve this mystery, and never, conceivably, succeeding, because life is not really a mystery at all! The mystery is human beings—how they can be so consistently dumb that they have never got around to allowing life to reveal what it really is! Of course, there is fear that it might bring forth something that a person didn’t like, and he thinks he knows what he does like. So, we spend the days of our years trying to produce what we think we like; but when we get it, very often we don’t like it. We certainly don’t like the effects of this endeavor, because it produces something that is quite painful and chaotic. Only life engenders what is perfect, what is right, what is true. The human ego doesn’t think, apparently, that life knows anything: the human being knows it all and he’s going to determine what should be. The result is painful and chaotic, naturally so. This is what it should be on that basis. Then when it becomes painful and chaotic, everybody objects: “We don’t like it!” they say. But how is it going to be anything else but painful and chaotic if the off-key tone is sounded, producing the pain and the chaos? That is the effect? So, let us return to the true experience, so that there may be the right cause. The right cause centers in this true Tone of Life and relates to character and quality; not, in the first instance, to things.
Things will give body or form to the nature of character and quality. If a sour note is being sounded, that is the wrong sort of character and quality evident in the human being who sounds the sour note; and the evidence of that sour note will be reproduced in the experience of the person. If we add the experience of all individuals together, four billion of them, then we have a massive effect, a massive effect which everybody can see is somehow wrong; it needs changing. Oh, undoubtedly! But how? By trying to make it over according to our good political, economic, social, scientific, or whatever, ideas? Of course not! Apparently, nobody ever thinks there is any need in human beings that their character should change: we’re going to get good results by electing the right political party to power in government. What absolute nonsense! Presumably those who participate in the political pattern are human beings the same as everybody else, with the same sort of quality and character, doing the same sort of things, and therefore producing the same sort of effects, results. And it doesn’t matter what the political stripe is; it’s the fact that they are human beings that is the point, all fundamentally of the same character, of the same quality, all fundamentally sounding a sour note. People have become so accustomed to the off-key tone that they sometimes think it’s in tune: their particular note is the one! But every note that human beings sound in this off-key state is sour and the effects are sour, no matter how good the individual may think they are going to be. They never are, because the effect must follow the cause, and if the cause centers in sour human beings, well, there’s going to be a sour effect. There’s nothing wrong with that; that’s the way it should happen as long as there are sour human beings. Therefore there’s no reason to complain about the troubles that we have. But no amount of manipulation on any basis whatsoever is going to change it, as long as human beings remain the same.
Why doesn’t anyone ever look at it? The way the true effect appears is because there are true people. If the people are a mess the world is a mess. Of course, finally we run up against a stone wall in the matter, because nobody really knows how people should be. Well, let’s admit it! Let’s acknowledge that we don’t know and that we don’t need to know, because there is present with us the true Tone; and inherent in that true Tone is the required knowing. But as long as we’re trying to get our own way, as long as we are trying to make things work out according to our own likes and dislikes, there is no true Tone sounding, and therefore no true result can appear.
If we begin to sense the reality of this Tone, the real quality of character that is inherent in life itself and which should be finding that quality and character in the expression of our own lives as individuals, and we begin to let this happen, then we begin to find out what the effects are. We don’t know what they are until they’re there. If we’re trying to manipulate effects ahead of time we fail. Trying to figure out what we shall drink or what we shall eat, wherewithal we shall be clothed, etc.—in other words, the earthly results that we desire, trying to figure those out, and trying to make them appear—produces chaos and a great deal of pain. To come to the point where there is a willingness to admit the utter and absolute futility of the human way of things is the beginning of wisdom, because there is a true Tone sounding. As we begin to align ourselves with that, in the expression of that quality of character that is natural, we are permitting the right cause to operate and things will change.
Those who begin to sense this true Tone, who see integrity, for instance, as being essential if the Tone is to be sounded, bring to bear an influence in the world which relates to this absolute control and awful power, to which reference was made in the words which I read. After all, this is the power exemplified by the operation of the universe itself. There’s plenty of it, and the puny efforts of egotistical human beings cannot possibly compete with this almighty power, the almighty power of the Christ, of the Shekinah, of the true Tone of Life, sounding through a person and through people. This is what engenders the changes that are essential in the world. Most people are particularly concerned about their own personal affairs: “Oh, I have these troubles and these difficulties and these problems. Solve them for me, please!” So, everybody looks around to find someone to blame for the troubles—never taking a look in the mirror—and then singles out somebody, or a group somewhere, who are to blame for all this trouble. Oh, to be honest and to admit that if I have problems I am the problem! But we so easily rationalize things, don’t we? “Well, obviously, it’s this fellow over there who’s doing it.” How dishonest human beings are!
When we begin to assume responsibility as individuals we begin to align ourselves with the nature of the true Tone, which has the responsibility. If human beings endeavor to steal that responsibility from the true Tone, they produce what we see in the world today; but if the responsibility is returned to the true Tone, and accepted in one’s own expression of living, then the world changes, and quickly! The sounding of that Tone touches the lives not only of the people who are next to the one through whom the Tone is sounding, but this quality of life is universal. It relates to the living of all human beings; it relates to the state of consciousness of all human beings. If the Tone sounds in one person it sounds in everyone. This, in effect, is what occurred through the life of the one called Jesus on earth, Jesus Christ. The Christ was the Tone of Life revealed through the form of Jesus, and that had tremendous effect, even though human beings, in a general sense, have refused to accept the responsibility which He exemplified. He accepted that responsibility but did we accept the responsibility, the responsibility of letting the true Tone sound through us, the true Tone be our character? If it is our character, then there is the cause, the active cause, by which right effects may appear.
He sounded the Tone almost two thousand years ago. Isn’t it about time there were those who would let it be resounded, who would let the Tone resound in the earth? Apparently, the idea is that because He sounded it, that is all that is necessary; we don’t have any responsibility in the matter except to try to be good and to get our own way as nicely as possible! That has nothing to do with the true Tone of Life, nothing to do with the Christ, which is, rightly, the name given to the true character of man, the true character of man which is naturally revealed by reason of the sounding of the true Tone of Life in the expression of living.
What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewithal shall we be clothed? How shall we satisfy ouselves? How shall we have the good life? “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness,” and what should appear on earth, what should be the experience of human beings, will take form. What does appear may not immediately seem to be very satisfactory to human beings. They have become so accustomed to a sour note that, hearing the true Tone, it sounds off key to them. And, incidentally, if we do begin to allow the true Tone to sound, so that others may begin to sense it, do not attempt to tune people up to the correct key in an instant. It can’t be done anyway; but if a person has been sounding an off-key note and everybody around him is sounding an off-key note too, he imagines that this is the natural state, that this is the key that should be sounded; so that if the true Tone impinges upon the consciousness of this person it will sound off key to him, because he assumes that his own experience of the note is the on-key tone, when it isn’t at all. People become so accustomed to their experience as human beings. “Well, this is the way I am. This is natural to me.” Not really; it’s familiar, but it’s not natural. The true Tone is the only natural thing; the off-key note which human beings are sounding everywhere is not the natural state.
This is obviously so these days, when we look at the pollution of everything, and the ecological mess, etc. Human beings do not function naturally at all; they’re not in harmony with what’s going on in the universe. So, one has to come to the point of being willing to admit that what one has known heretofore is off key, no matter how good it seemed. And most people, if they are a little bit honest, will acknowledge that there is something not quite right. We inherently know that we should be more than we have been, but very few realize how far present experience is from the truly natural state, the natural state which is experienced by reason of the sounding of the true Tone of Life in every thought and word and action. This is the way it is.
Thus it is!
So, in offering something to those who begin to sense that another Tone might be right, it should be done gently, shall we say. If the string of existence, in the individual, is loose, so that the note that may be sounded by twanging it is sour, then let’s tighten it up by degrees, not to the true Tone all at once. If we see this, then we may recognize that what is offered to those who begin to respond in the right direction must fit at the level of consciousness where the person is. Consequently what is offered may not seem to be consistent. I’ve been accused, on occasion, of contradiction: what I said here contradicted what I said there. But the point is, to whom was it said? At what level of consciousness was the need? What understanding did the person have? What could, therefore, rightly be given to that individual? What could be given would not, presumably, be the ultimate truth; that would go completely over that person’s head anyway. It must be related to the level at which the individual is functioning, and then, having tightened the string a little, a new note sounds—ah, a new note! So, the possibility of other new notes begins to percolate into consciousness and one can proceed with the tuning process. It may work out, on this basis, quite naturally. It will always be a little uncomfortable, mind you. People get into their comfortable ruts, even into their comfortable pews, and if anything is suggested that might indicate that the position one has taken is fatal—oh, it’s uncomfortable! One doesn’t like to think of it as being fatal, the present position seems to be so nice for the moment! People don’t want to move. Fear is one of the factors which prevents people from moving, fear of the unknown. Maybe we should be more fearful of the known, because that’s what’s killing us. We might find that the unknown was life itself. This is the truth of the matter.
Life as it really is, the true Tone of Life, has been unknown. All that human beings have known is what might well be described as the processes of dying. They don’t know what it means to live. Living is an expanding process, a renewing process, a creative process. In the so-called miracle of the wedding feast the good wine came at the end of the feast. That isn’t the way it is in human experience, is it? Wine, the symbol of life. The wine gets closer and closer to cider as we move along; it sours, in other words. But that’s not the experience of life; that’s the experience of dying. Life improves, rightly, like vintage wine, improves with age, because there is a greater capacity to experience it. The movement of the true Tone of Life increases, and develops the capacity for its own expression. So, obviously, the longer it has opportunity to increase this capacity the greater the experience of life. This is the way it really is. Thus it is! But, what human beings know is a very sour outworking.
Why not return to life? The return to life is resurrection, isn’t it?—resurrection which comes by reason of the sounding of the true Tone in one’s own daily experience. Seek ye first the true Tone, to sense it, to become aware of it. Yes, that’s part of it. But if you just sense it as being over there somewhere … even many Christians have sensed it as being over there in Jesus, but being over there in Jesus didn’t do them any good, because it’s right here. Life is present. All that that means is present with each one and may find release in the sounding of the true Tone; and in that sounding the results appear. Judge not. Let the results appear. Don’t object to them. Don’t be carried away by them if they seem good. Just let them appear. Trust the true Tone, trust God, trust life, trust the Christ, trust Shekinah, and let the effects appear.
As you let them appear in your own experience you recognize what is moving in others, and you may provide what is fitting to those who respond at their level of sensing of the true Tone. And what is fitting for one won’t be fitting for another, so you may be accused of inconsistency or of contradiction. But if it actually is the expression of the true Tone in what is fitting, it will always be right, regardless of human judgments. We judge righteous judgment by reason of the sounding of the Tone. Then we are aware of what is fitting in the particular instance, and we begin to develop a greater capacity to provide what is right and proper for this one or that one at whatever level of consciousness they may be. Then what we say will correlate with what they already know, or think they know; but it will lead toward what they don’t know. And here the string is being tightened, so that finally, somewhere along the line, the true Tone may be sounding. Let us rejoice in the privilege of sharing responsibility in this regard, the responsibility which is ours because we are alive. When we handle this responsibility correctly, then such earthly responsibilities as we may seem to have for the moment can be handled quite easily, no problem.
We’re not looking for the adding: what shall we eat, what shall we drink, wherewithal shall we be clothed. This is the outlook of most people these days, isn’t it? And the whole thing leads into proliferating chaos. When we stop worrying about all that stuff and begin to do what we’re here to do, to sound the true Tone, then the right effects can appear, and we’ll find that everything is taken care of. Let us hear the Tone and sound it in our momentary living, to the glory of God. Thus it is!
© Emissaries of Divine Light
