Transformation
and then
Transmutation
Martin Cecil July 20, 1980
When the spiritual action is present the design in form appears. This is the principle which we have doubtless known for a long time but by which the restoration is made possible. Behold, I make all things new. As there is the means on earth by which the spiritual action may appear, then the substance in the realm of form leaps to reveal it. All this can occur very quickly when there is spiritual action and to the extent that there are people on the face of the earth who are willing to let it happen, who are no longer insisting that material substance should be held in the structured forms set up by fallen human nature.
We see some of these structured forms in difficulties in these days, and there are people who are seeking to put props under them so that they may continue to exist, because it has seemed unthinkable to human beings that what has been built in this fashion by fallen human nature should be allowed to pass away. Obviously if it did pass away suddenly, by reason of nuclear war for instance, what indeed would be left? This has been a horror of great darkness to human consciousness, and it is not really our concern that everything should pass away by reason of a clap of thunder. If it happens that way there is indeed not much left, at least insofar as mankind is concerned. So, while we recognize that all things must be made new, it is the things that are present that need to be transformed and transmuted.
Many have been inclined to take the attitude that what is present in this human nature world all has to go and we're just marking time waiting for it to go. It is a matter of transformation. Whatever we are doing we are doing that our presence may bring what is required to permit transformation. The experience will change because the transformation will continue, and what now is will not be there eternally. It will doubtless be something else, but that something else usually appears on the basis of increments. Clearly there needs to be some transformation. We have begun to see the spiritual responsibility which rests upon us who have some vision and understanding of these things, so that what needs to happen to allow that transformation to occur may do so. You don't have any preconceived ideas as to what it is going to be. We know what it is, to some extent at least, now, and we recognize that we are there present with whatever it is in our own area of living and therefore what it is that is being offered for transformation.
As there begin to be those who, having this conscious awareness, allow their living to be accordingly—they've heard the Tone, but now it becomes the Tone of their living—then all things begin to be made new according to the true design. No sweat of the brow. It is just simply a matter of what we have referred to as spiritual expression. When there begins to be an increasingly focused and unified spiritual expression because of you and others, then that has effect. The Lord builds the house on this basis; not because He insists upon tearing things down first but because the creative process allows for transformation. As that transformation occurs, changes work out—changes that don't always look all that creative or constructive but are nevertheless a part of the process—until the point is reached where there is adequate focus of the creative expression of spirit appearing for the design to take form in material substance, reflecting the fact that there is an adequate focus of spiritual expression for it to occur.
What needs to appear must appear on the basis of the fact that it is spiritually activated. There must be the spiritual substance present in all concerned so that the spirit can operate in that substance, and that itself is revealed in the quality of the living of those concerned. This will, in its own times and seasons, bring forth what is required in form. When we let whatever it is that should take form do so on the basis of spiritual expression it will be right, but it may take a while for this focus of spiritual expression to become sufficiently clarified, sufficiently unified, sufficiently present, for the creative process really to begin to work so that you can observe it, you can observe the reflection. The real value is not in the physical form, although that is essential, but in what is made possible by reason of the physical form and what that physical form represents. It always requires someone to provide a point of focus but it requires many more to generate the substance which will allow that point of focus to have some meaning. This, after all, is the Third Sacred School, the spiritual expression plane approach, so what takes form will take form symbolically on a basis that is revealing of what is happening.
There has been transformation going on for a considerable period of time—a gradual transformation—letting changes occur in all concerned, with the expectation of coming to the point of transmutation somewhere along the way. One can go on in the unfolding cycles of transformation more or less indefinitely, at least until you are dead, but if that is all that has happened, nothing has happened. There have been these cycles in times past, cycles of transformation. The only purpose for this is that there might be the experience of transmutation, when fallen human nature is finally no longer present in the individuals who are carrying the focus of responsibility. We are aware of this focus of responsibility which has been offered to us. We know what is happening, at least up to a point. We know what is required. Most of us have the theory down pat. All this has occurred because there has been a creative cycle at work, designed to make possible the restoration at this point. This creative cycle at work is not a little thing. It is related to what is happening in much larger areas of spiritual operation which go beyond the form of this earth. Because something has been happening spiritually and there has been a movement in the creative cycles of life itself, the changes have been occurring within the scope of our experience in order that there might be the provision of true leadership for what is to occur in the world as a whole, true leadership at the level where mankind is.
I think leadership has usually been looked upon as something which is going to be somehow imposed upon the world: spiritual power will be present, and now everybody has got to toe the mark. I don't think that is illustrative of your own experience, although you may at times have put yourself in the position of bucking the movement of that creative expression of life and felt that you were being imposed upon. But that was your own action. It wasn't in fact an imposition by somebody else or by circumstances or by God. We bring our own troubles on our own heads, and I trust that we are all honest enough now to admit it, although sometimes it seems that it is forgotten under the stress of circumstances. Something has been happening over these years. The Lord has been patient and we have, I'm sure at times, tried His patience. But He has always been patient, that those who were experiencing the greater vision might come to the point where they are willing to allow the transmutation to occur. But when that point is reached in the outworking cycles it is something that must occur, because if it doesn't, that's the end.
Now we are approaching the time of absoluteness from the spiritual standpoint. This is something which relates to spirit; and there must be present those who know the absoluteness of spiritual expression. We either are with it or that's it! Obviously that point must be reached somewhere if anything is ever to happen. We have sufficient vision to see this and to understand it; but there has been sufficient of something else present also to put off the day and to anticipate that the patience of the Lord will continue. The squeeze is on now to a greater extent than it was before. Let us see this with respect to our own experience spiritually speaking. If you transfer what you think you know in the experience of transformation into the experience of transmutation—should it be possible to do that, which incidentally it isn't—you would wreck what was happening in that new state. It is not the same. Never take the attitude that what you think you know at that level is going to be applicable when there is a moving into the experience of transmutation. It is a totally new aircraft. It should be a somewhat humbling experience to all of us, really, having gained a certain amount of expertise, what we would think of as spiritual expertise, to find it is spiritual expertise in fallen human nature. And fallen human nature cannot reach the level which is required if the restoration is to be a fact. It isn't just a matter of refining our abilities to function at the levels of transformation. That is the fallen human nature state which passes away.
These cycles do not occur in an isolated way; everybody is involved. Here is a creative cycle of life, and we are either with it or we aren't. I'm not saying that if there are those who prove that they are with it in sufficient numbers—and there is a factor of numbers here involved—that those who are not with it are out of luck. But what must happen must happen first with those who are consciously aware of what it is that needs to happen, and then the world afterwards. That is the leadership. Let it happen with us first, and in that transmuted experience there is an absoluteness, an exactness. If you are inclined to be sloppy in the transformation experience, you would be absolutely useless in the transmuted experience. And I have observed an immense amount of sloppiness. We've spoken of discipline. I'm not thinking of discipline in the transmuted sense as something imposed externally. No. It is something that one absolutely requires of oneself. Only on this basis, as there are those who know the truth in this way, can there be the restoration.
The restoration occurs with a few first; and because it has occurred with a few it can occur with the many later. We are not playing children's games, but I would have to admit that a great deal of what has occurred has simply been children's games. Now we know. Now we are aware of what the spirit of God can do when we are willing to let it happen within the range of our own experience. It is not something that we can do, obviously, from the standpoint of fallen human nature. Of course not. Fallen human nature is being maneuvered out of the picture in one way or another. It is something that is done by the spirit of God. So, we share the responsibility of letting that spirit be absolute in our own experience. Surely we know the quality of the Tone by now sufficiently to give us the honesty to change course immediately when there is a perception of the fact that our behavior, in whatever way, doesn't really reveal the true quality of that Tone. So in oneness of that spirit we may easily move, letting all things consequently be made new.
© emissaries of divine light
