Through music and singing we have the opportunity of establishing a setting within which we may participate in the creative expression of love. This is true radiation. For man to exist as he was designed to be on earth, there first had to be the creation of a setting. For man to be restored, so that be may be once more on earth, there must be the re-creation of a setting. We could describe this setting as a heavenly one, without as yet comprehending entirely what that might mean. We are aware of the symbolism of fire as representing love. Symbols, or what is represented by them, are not in reality separate. They have become separated in human consciousness; for the reality has been absent from human experience, leaving only the symbol. The absence of the reality has caused the symbol to be a distorted one in the consciousness of human beings. It is distorted because the reality is not known, and so the symbol must represent something imaginary.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with true imagination. Imagination has become such a very fanciful thing in human experience that it is necessary to recognize the nature of what it has become. There is no particular value in continuing to generate fanciful imagination, but the faculty of imagination is useful when it is under control and permits the emergence of the true design. This cannot happen without imagination; we could call it creative imagination. But this has been very rarely experienced by anyone. Perhaps there have been hints now and again over the ages, but we come again to the point where there is the necessity for the reactivation of creative imagination. First of all, as I say, there has to be a receding or a relinquishing of the fanciful brand with which human beings are familiar. An aspect of this has been described as daydreaming; there is night-dreaming as well. So, fanciful imagination indulged in by unregenerate human consciousness necessarily must pass away. However this is not to say that imagination must pass away. This is the case with respect to so much of human experience. The way all the various factors of human experience have been known by human beings must pass away, but the factors themselves, presently distorted in human experience, should not pass away. There is a basic reality present. The Word is present, and the Word shall not pass away. Heaven and earth may pass away. The forms which have been fancifully imagined into existence must pass away, and the preoccupation with fanciful imagination must pass away; but imagination shall not pass away, because it is part of the expression of the Word. We could no doubt consider a range of such elements which in their distorted nature within human experience must pass away; but the elements themselves do not pass away.
So we are aware of many symbols but have rather a limited experience of the reality which is symbolized by these symbols. When we know the reality, we find that it is one with the symbol, or perhaps, to put it the other way around, the symbol is one with the reality. If we speak of fire we think of it as a symbol of love, but if we know love we find that fire is one with love. Clearly enough, human experience of fire has not revealed the reality of love. Fire very often is a destructive thing in human experience. The fire of passion in human hearts has not been the experience of the reality of love. There is indeed passionate hate, isn’t there? There is the passionate experience of many emotions which all reveal, in varying degrees the absence of love. The passionate experience of love itself has been conspicuous by its absence. The only way by which love could be experienced in the intensity of passion is by reason of the presence of truth. Truth is characterized by design and control. Unless there is spiritual control in one's own living, so that the expression is actually a part of the design, the experience of love, of the fire, will prove to be destructive. It is not a matter of intensifying human passions, is it? They seem to be intensified enough, and they produce a great deal of destructiveness. But the passionate experience of love is needful if the creative radiation is to occur within the range of human experience. This all relates to human beings. Things are all right factually in the universal sense; it is just out of kilter in human experience. This is the only little blemish that is present perhaps in the whole universal state. So the concern is not to set the universe to rights, or make sense out of it or something or other. There have been those who have been so arrogant in their intellects as to suppose that, because of the discoveries that human beings make, they are at last making sense out of the universe. Of course the universe has sense already, but human beings are so dumb and ignorant and blind that they don't know it; and the more the human intellect is developed in this state of separation the less it knows.
We are concerned with fire as it truly is. The reality of fire cannot be known until love is known. In these days, of course, fire tends to be correlated with nuclear fission. This is a fire which seems to be external to man and dangerous to his continued existence. There is, however, rightly what might be referred to as an internal fire which when released, under control in the true design, is creative. We might look at this matter of internal and external fire from the standpoint of the truth of the matter. Most people are aware of the potential of destructiveness, but that is not based in the truth of the matter, it is based in the distortion in human consciousness. We might examine something of the truth of the matter, not in order to develop more concepts but that we may associate ourselves in experience with what is actually happening. We have already been seeking to do this and we have some understanding of what is actually happening, but obviously there is far more that we do not know. We would allow our knowing to increase, recognizing that such knowing is consequent upon doing; it isn’t consequent upon theorizing. Nevertheless we can examine certain things which may seem to be theoretical at the moment in order to open the door for experience.
I was interested last evening when Alan mentioned last evening something with respect to the fire that is at the core of the earth. This is a factor that is seldom considered. We creep around on the surface with very little awareness of subterranean fire. Occasionally we become aware of it because a volcano erupts and fire puts in an appearance on the surface; here is an indication of the fact that there is something pretty hot at the core. That fire is a symbol of love—therefore love is present at the core—the core of the earth. The crust of the earth seems to be pretty crusty and, in a general sense, the core has been hidden away. Maybe that is something symbolic too; human beings on the surface of the earth have had very little awareness of the truth of love. However they wouldn’t exist at all if it wasn’t for the truth of love. The fiery core of the earth may be recognized as symbolizing an aspect of love; we could speak of it as the negative aspect of love. This relates to the working of the spirit of God subconsciously; probably we would say through the heart.
Most of us are very much aware of another body of fire in the person of the sun. This seems to be an external fire. The creative process on the surface of the earth is consequent upon the fire in the heavens, the sun, and the fire in the core of the earth. The fire in the sun is the positive aspect; the fire in the earth is the negative aspect. As these two meet in the vicinity of the surface of the earth, creation consequently occurs. There is a radiant aspect proceeding from the core of the earth which correlates with the radiant aspect being received from the sun. Here is the design established, under control, by which life appears. Human beings with their great intellects have been trying to figure out how life appeared on earth. They came up with a number of rather fanciful theories. The most recent one is that it came drifting in out of space of life—little packages of life!—and started to evolve on earth. There is no need for anything to drift in from space. All the requirement is present for the creative process to proceed, and it obviously has done. And while there may be more to it than what I am now bringing out, the basic elements are positive and negative aspects of love represented by the sun of our solar system and the fire at the core of the earth. It is the interaction between these two that has allowed for the birth of life in form on the surface of the earth.
Human beings refer to earth as mother earth sometimes but I think they usually look upon the mother aspect as simply relating to nature on the surface of the earth. But nature on the surface of the earth is part of that which was produced as a setting for man. Nature is not the mother of things but the progeny of things. The mother could be said to be the love aspect, symbolized by the fiery core of the earth; and out of the earth, centered in the fiery core, in conjunction with the sun of the solar system, life was conceived, and life was born into form, initially to provide a setting for man. Here we are anyway.
Now we know that the condition in which we find ourselves has been a state of darkness where none of these things have been known. Because they have not been known, and still are not adequately known even by us, there has seemed to be the necessity for speculation about the origins of life. The idea is that if you proceed far enough into space you are going to discover all of the factors that will provide knowledge about the origins of life. But all of the factors that are needful are present in our own backyard; they are present exactly where we are. We may see that in this symbol of the sun and the earth. There is more to it than that because there is a solar system, we call it, with other planets and comets, electromagnetic fields, etc—considerably more radiation from the sun than is used in the design established for the earth. Insofar as the earth is concerned the fire is at the core of the earth—internal in other words, but it seems as though the sun is an external fire. But if we take the whole body of the solar system we find that the sun is also an internal fire; it is in the midst of the solar system. However from the standpoint of the sun there is another seeming external fire. I suppose we would probably identify this at the core of the galaxy, but that fire at the core of the galaxy is internal to the galaxy; and one can proceed in this fashion in the observation of internal fire and what seems to be external fire which turns into internal fire.
Having observed this symbol we may also see it with respect to ourselves. Individually speaking, we have a certain awareness of the core fire that is present. The evidence of the fact that it is present is life itself. We have spoken of this core fire, utilizing various terms: the Angel, the Word, the Tone. This is something internal, present, we have been trying to describe. It isn't internal in the sense of being smaller than our physical forms. There are those who have, in considering the internal nature of the source, been inclined to feel that it shrank. It is merely internal in the sense of being of a different vibratory nature, but that says nothing as to its size; and eventually the point is reached beyond the field of what human beings think of as dimension. So we are not considering size particularly but recognizing that there is an internal source, individually speaking, which—not in the sense of dimension but in the sense of quality and creative capacity—is much larger than what appears externally.But the fire is there internally in the individual sense. We are individually assuming greater responsibility because of this. But we also recognize that there is a larger body than our individual bodies and there is an internal fire to this larger body which is seen from the individual standpoint as being external. But as individual vision begins to encompass the true picture, there is an awareness that the core fire in that body is internal to that body. The core fire of that body is first seen, by those who are beyond that body, as being external. Awakening to the fact of their own core fire, there comes a realization that what seemed to be external before is really internal to the larger body still.
There is no necessity to be confused by all of this. It is clear enough, if one stops the fiddling of the human mind and acknowledges the truth of one’s own experience. Perhaps, in times past you have seen me as the external fire, the core focus of what we deem to be our body. But then, as the body begins to be an experience in reality, that external fire no longer is seen as being external but is experienced as being internal—internal to the body. Now all this pattern, design of relatedness, reveals the reality of oneness—because it is not restricted merely to human experience; all these things can be extended as far as you wish into the cosmic whole. But here is the design, isn't it?—the basic fundamental design. And it is the fact of the incarnation of spirit in that design that maintains the control; for spirit incarnates in the whole design, in the design of what we think of now as the cosmos. But where does the cosmos end? The little human mind is inclined to try to get an edge to it, but factually we do not need to exercise ourselves in this way because we have plenty to do right where we are. Wandering around in what are supposed to be vast spaces is suddenly of very little value when we need to tie our shoelaces! So we operate where we are. Where we are is a larger place than perhaps we originally thought it was in the state of self-centeredness.
We are aware of a body. This body has tended to be seen simply in terms of flesh: Well there are some Emissaries around on the mailing list and somehow or other an association has developed between them, and so there appears to be a body of flesh composed of the individual flesh bodies of those who compose it. But that is a very limited, restricted view of things. It is a peripheral view of things, because there could be no body of flesh if it were not for the fact of a body of spirit So the real body is a spiritual body, not a flesh body. Here is the reality. When that reality is experienced, then the flesh body is included, but to try to get the flesh body into that experience is impossible. One must experience the spiritual reality. To extent that we have done this we have become aware of the reality of a flesh body. But let us not, in our own consciousness, emphasize the fact of the flesh body into a position of dominance. It only exists, this collective body, and our own individual bodies for that matter, because of the fiery core, because of spirit. And so we experience the reality of this body in spirit. If we do not experience it in spirit we can never experience it in the flesh. We may have a conceptual view of something in the flesh, which has been largely the case with many. They have thought of themselves as belonging to EDL, being members of it or something of the sort, which is not a true picture at all. Our unified experience is in spirit. We have known this conceptually, intheory, and somewhat in fact, but the extent of that experience needs obviously to expand. If it is to expand there must be a greater experience of the fire. That is the core of reality; that is what is experienced in spirit. That experience includes passion, at all levels, in a fitting way. It is made to be a fitting way because of the truth, the design and the control of truth.
As was pointed out by Alan yesterday evening, there is a distinction in the expression of love. With some it has tended to be rather undifferentiated thing heretofore. One should naturally have a passionate love, and that may be true, but you don't display it all over the place. You don't rush up to people in the street and start hugging them. And in own more internal relationships in spirit there is a fitting behavior. It has at times been a little bit brash in Emissary experience, too much display perhaps in settings where it shouldn't have been. Just because we do not proclaim our love from the housetops on all occasions does not mean that we have stopped loving. It means that we have accepted the control and the design of truth. And having done that, then passion can intensify and there can be a more intense expression of love at all the various levels, but it will be fitting to those various levels. It will be something that we have perhaps not experienced heretofore, and certainly others have not experience heretofore, but it needs to come into the picture in a controlled manner, so that the passion of love may be proclaimed. It is proclaimed in living. It is not proclaimed because we stand on a soapbox and talk about it; it is proclaimed because it is made manifest in our living. But it is only made manifest in our living as we are a part of the spiritual body which is the core of the flesh body. So our experience is dominantly of that core state. As it increasingly becomes the dominant experience, here is the experience of fire, under control, operating according to the design, which creates all things new.
Now this fire is a blend. It is not just positive and it is not just negative. It is a balance of the positive and the negative. The positive fire is required, but the negative fire is also required, rising up through the heart, through the subconscious levels. The positive fire, in a way, we can't get at, any more than we can get at the sun. The negative fire we can get at—not that we need to bore into the core of the earth, but because that core of the earth is radiating in a way that is closest to us. It is closer to us, obviously, than the sun which in distance is supposedly, what?—a long way anyhow! whereas the core of the earth is not so far.
So we have the enfoldment, one might say, the potential of setting, for our experience on the surface of the earth. In this sense I suppose we are still in the arms of our mother. However on the surface of the earth we find ourselves at the point of union between what is rising up from the core of the earth and what is coming down from the sun. Here is the crossover point we might say. Here is the point of life. Here is the point where man may be Here is the point where man was created to be. The setting is there, yes, but it was to provide the external essentials by which he might live and move and have his being on the surface of the earth. Here is the progeny of the union of the earth and the sun, mother and father: man, the son, the progeny, the child. The same core that is symbolized by the fiery core of the earth and by the fiery sun, core of the solar system, is present also in man. Here is the heavenly heredity, we might say—and it correlates in man with the larger picture, or what we think of at least as the larger picture: the earth and the sun—because there is what rises up of the fire through the subconscious mind and heart to purify the heart. As we begin to associate ourselves with things the way they are, then this process can occur. We have found it to be occurring because, in some small measure at least, we have been associating ourselves with the way things are. Part of the way things are is that this core fire properly rises up in radiation, through the subconscious mind and heart to the surface of our being, where it meets the radiation that comes from above.
Human beings have had some awareness of the reality of the radiation coming from above, which has been given form symbolically in their consciousness by the utilization of terms such as God. We see the sun of our solar system and there has been some investigation as to what is supposed to be there, scientifically speaking: but no one really knows what the sun is, what is going on there, any more than anyone knows God in the present state of a human being. It is just a theory, just a concept, something to believe in perhaps, or not to believe in, as the case may be. I suppose if one lived one's life in a mine, below the surface of the earth, you might deny the fact that the sun exists. So there are those who don't believe in the sun and there are those who do believe in the sun; it depends on your positioning I suppose. If you get out on the surface, then you may believe in the sun: if you live subterraneanly, as most people do in the subconscious then you tend to deny the sun. So the process is well portrayed: the truth is well portrayed: it has always been there, understandable, up to a point at least.
There has been a certain willingness to let spirit penetrate our own minds and hearts, to the extent that we can let some doors and windows be opened to see these things and to see how they correlate with our own experience. And there are certain aspects of this that we know because we have the experience. But obviously, whatever passion we now know, whatever love we now know, appearing in what we think of as friendship, perhaps, one aspect of it at least, is our experience. We know that. We still at times try to deny it but when we are honest we know it. We need to be honest, by the way, so that we function on the basis of our knowing and not on the basis of the peculiar compulsions that still rise up out of the self-conscious mind and the heart which is not yet pure. But as shame dissolves, as fear dissolves, because this rising up of the fire in our own hearts has it’s effect, then the heart becomes pure. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” It is impossible to be aware of the reality of God, to know God, without a pure heart. Only then what is rising up through the heart of the fire, meets at the surface, where the conscious mind is, what is coming down from above. That, as I say, appears to be external. It is external to oneself as an individual, but it is not external to oneself as a part of the spiritual body which is becoming known.
There is much upon which we may meditate in order to permit a greater experience in our knowing; but what I have portrayed here, symbolically speaking, is factually one with the truth, one with spirit. There is no distinction between the symbol and what is the reality that is thereby symbolized. We may share in that in our own experience, in our own living, allowing the core fire to rise up through our hearts, and we also have some awareness of the shining of the sun already, of the brightness external to ourselves. In this particular setting perhaps I provide a symbol of that external brightness; but if the fire is rising up in you, then it meets that external brightness and we all discover what that means at the surface. And at the surface is what we know consciously; we share a conscious understanding. Here is the blending point. Perhaps it is better seen and known as a blending point now than a crossover point. It is the blending point of what is coming down from God out of heaven and what is rising up in ourselves of His fire of love in our hearts.
So we rejoice to have had the opportunity of participating in this conscious clarification at the surface, to the extent that we have been participating in the actual process. The radiation from above has always been there, but if there is a rising up of the radiation through the heart, the intensified fire there, then, behold there is light—light consciously speaking. And we may say. “Oh. I see.” We may also add to that “I don't see it all. But I see something. I see something emerging. The light is shining; I see something emerging that I didn't comprehend before.” Only in experience, moving together, do we reach the point of comprehension, of knowing of knowing what it is. But let us acknowledge the truth of what occurs so that we are associated with it and we are not standing on one side sucking our teeth!—of doubtful mind. We place ourselves in the fire quite willingly, knowing of course that the fire burns what doesn’t belong. If we have been unwisely loving some of the things that are going to be burned then we are going to get burned. But if we begin to feel a little hot and bothered—there is something a bit fiery around—well we are keenly aware of the necessity to let go of what it is that needs to go. Let it burn. Even if you don’t know what it is, let it burn. The fire will take care of it.
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We move with absolute assurance into the blended union of conscious experience at the surface, rejoicing to play our parts by which the fulfilment may come to mankind as a whole, all to the glory of God, whom we may begin to see and know because our hearts become pure. The fire of love, rising up through the heart, is love for the truth. Let us let that fire burn freely. Love for the truth consequently allows, as the heart is purified, for a conscious knowing of the truth.
