Spiritual Sex New Heaven

Spiritual Sex — New Heaven

Physical Sex — New Earth

Martin Cecil   April 23, 1980   Assembly

Perhaps we have begun to see more clearly that the only possible approach that anyone can make towards spiritual things, in the world as it now is, is from the standpoint of human nature. This emphasizes the necessity for the introduction of something into the world that is not from the standpoint of human nature. For this to happen there is a special requirement and a special provision, proceeding from the Lord, in the unfoldment of the creative cycles that are at work. We have recognized this as being a fact by reason of the presence of Uranda, in the first place, in these recent times.

Human nature is childish at best—perhaps I should say childlike at best. Usually it is childish, rebellious and destructive. The best that can be expected from human nature is to be childlike. This is essentially what the Master himself said. The only possible way of approach was as little children. Maturity is a different state altogether. True maturity is not, certainly, some sort of a mature human nature—it is either childish or childlike at best. If there is a childlike attitude then the creative cycle can be initiated. As long as it merely remains rebellious and destructive childishness, there is nothing of any meaning that can occur. To the extent that in times past we ourselves exhibited some sort of a childlike attitude we began to move, so that the new state might emerge. This requires resurrection. Now, obviously, in the state of the child there is the initial requirement to deal with that state of the child. A child requires control externally applied, simply because no mature capacity has been developed yet which would allow it to spring forth from inside. Of course the intent is to provide whatever education is necessary, in the growing process for the child, so that the capacity might be developed, and that reality of control then emerge into expression because there is the facility to let it happen. If we see that the best that can be expected of human nature anywhere is childlike, then our approach is on this basis, in the handling of children. This may seem to require a certain imposition. So one can see the necessity of extending to the children of the world—most of them in adult bodies—some sort of control. It needs to be provided, of course, in the right way, with love and understanding. But firmness is one of the most essential elements for which a child seeks. Of course, if a child stays too long a child then it becomes a more challenging business to offer the essential control. The habit of destructiveness and rebellion has been firmly established by then. Here is the picture as it really is.

I think Alan, this morning, in speaking of the books, this literature, made the point, that no matter how impressed human nature has been with its own abilities in this field of literature, it has in fact all been childishness. We would need to be careful about saying this sort of thing, particularly to those who have poured out a good deal of life blood in this field, because it is sweeping away the rubbish which is still valued highly. So we cannot sweep it away too quickly. But obviously, there could come physical events, for instance, which do sweep it away very quickly. So all this relates to the traditions of the human nature past. It is part of what is rightly passing away. All this culture is going down the drain. A new heaven and a new earth—this is the reality. But thus far I think it has been mostly a fancy. The important things are what is here now, all the great achievements of human nature, and it takes a little while for a person to reach a point where he stops giving weight to the treasures of human nature. And the treasures of human nature are not just what is in the bank account, but all the cultural traditions, which most people consider to be life itself. But we begin to know the truth to the extent that we have continued in the Word.

A rather interesting picture is portrayed, for the edification of those who have eyes to see it, in the story of Job. At the moment I am thinking particularly of what is presented at the very beginning of the book: “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil… There were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east.” This was a subject of complaint a little later on the part of satan. Satan’s word was, to the Lord, “Thou hast increased his substance in the land.”

Substance is increased in the land. This would seem to indicate wealth. Of course the idea is that the emphasis should be placed upon true values—one has just so much capacity to appreciate value. All that capacity needs to be given to the true value. The question arises as to how this is to be done. In what is said here about Job there was no indication that he should not have been the greatest of the men of the east, or that he shouldn’t have had all this substance. In fact it is said of him that he was perfect and upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil. And perhaps the words “eschewed evil” are the key in this respect. He was not subject to any supposed great value of all this substance. He was not controlled by it. He feared God, and he eschewed the creative process which is operative relative to external things.

That creative process as it operates in the substance of the earth does not deplete the earth. The human tenure here on the planet has depleted the earth considerably, but the true creative cycle does not do that. In fact, just the opposite. Here is a creative process—there is increase. And the evidence of this increase was the increase of substance as it related to Job. He was a perfect and an upright man because he feared God and eschewed evil. His values were where they belong, in the heaven and not in the earth. He eschewed evil. He did not have to destroy the forms of physical substance in order to prove that he feared God. Of course, satan took the attitude that he didn’t fear God for naught, because he had all this substance, and therefore, take away that substance and we would soon see whether he was a perfect and upright man anymore. Well, the way it worked out, of course, he did, he lost all the substance. But he did not curse God and die. In other words it didn’t change his values.

So whether there is substance or there is not substance is irrelevant. Now, with human beings who judge on the basis of externals, it has always seemed that the substance or the lack of it was the supreme point. Share the wealth! Of course, the way human beings operate, if you shared the wealth nobody would have anything very much. But if the true creative cycle is in operation there is no depletion, there is a constant increase. There is the generation consistently of the finer substance, which in turn permits the action of spirit to occur and consequently the creative process to continue. And the creative process, working as it should, increases substance at every level. Presently we think of the importance of increasing this fine substance, but there is a balance here, rightly, when everything is working the way it should. There does not have to be such a tremendous concentration upon increasing the fine substance, because it is already there. There is a balance all the way through. There is the essential substance at every level, and therefore the increase that comes as the creative cycle operates increases substance at every level, in balance.

Now how this may actually happen in the earthly sense remains to be experienced, because that is the only way it can be known. It would be quite futile, even if we were capable of seeing ahead, to do so. What would be gained by it? We are under the necessity of letting all our available capacity and energy be brought to focus relative to the way things are, and we have no desire, surely, to let it be scattered out in idle speculation, wondering after the beast. We have sufficient to handle the present moment, and all for which we are responsible in the present moment. Obviously, as long as human nature is hanging around, as long as satan is on the scene, there is a danger of reversion into subjection to the substance which rightly increases at every level, subjection to the substance in the earthly sense. This after all is what caused the fall in the first place. There was nothing wrong with the Garden, nothing wrong with the beautiful state and all the wealth in the earthly sense that was present in that state, until human beings began to be subject to it, and began to govern their function on the basis of this substance because it seemingly added to their pleasure. “Let’s have more of this substance; we’ll have more pleasure.” But the very moment you become subject to the substance for your pleasure, your pleasure starts to go out the window and depletion sets in. Of course depletion is now seemingly reaching some sort of a crescendo in the world today. Everything is going to run out, and there is a wild scramble for what is left. That has scarcely begun, I would suggest.

But the true state is to be restored through the creative cycle of resurrection, and none of the childishness of human nature can achieve resurrection. Human beings have been concerned about this for a long time. There have been endeavors in various fields, more recently the medical field chiefly, to accomplish some sort of—if not resurrection, at least to withhold the final disintegration. So there is nothing that can come out of human nature that can achieve anything. The world is filled with rebellious and destructive children. Here and there, there is someone who is childlike, and there is the immediate starting point, provided that there is an adequate state of spiritual maturity present on earth to offer what is needful to the childlike. If the childlike are left to their own devices they will probably become childish, rebellious and destructive, like everybody else. There does not seem to be any other way, and I suppose you could say there has not been any other way, because there has not been what was necessary on earth of spiritual maturity to offer that other way, the One Way, the way out of human nature, the way out of childlikeness. I think all too many have thought that the permanent condition was to be childlike; therefore to remain a child. But that is only the starting point. Resurrection is resurrection into spiritual maturity, which is an unknown state in human nature childishness.

So here in this story of Job there was initially spiritual maturity evident—a perfect and upright man, one that feared God and eschewed evil. And it is said that “there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.” Here is an indication of the right use of sex—the vital importance of the right use of sex is actually being emphasized in this verse. Now, when the values are given to the earthly substance the physical experience of sex becomes supreme. It is weighted at that end of the scale. And of course this is one factor in human experience that has kept him thoroughly bound under the domination of satan. The supreme value has been given to the experience of physical sex as it has been known by human beings in the human state. This is only a fraction of the reality of sex, and the reality cannot possibly be known as long as this unbalanced approach is foremost. And yet, once given a perfect and an upright man, one who fears God and eschews evil, then the reality of sex becomes very important, because without it the essential creation that is to occur cannot do so.

The creative process is sex. If you exclude it you have no creative process. Obviously it has not been excluded in human experience, at least at the physical level. And because of this there has been a creative process at work in the affairs of men, but the creative process was not a constructive one. It was not the true, balanced creative process for which man was created. It became destructive, and all the hell that has taken form on earth is not unrelated to this dominance of physical sex in human experience. The unbalanced experience in this regard has produced an unbalanced state. In other words here is an emphasis upon the importance of sex in the sense that whatever happens is produced by it. If sex is an unbalanced experience, as it has been, then this unbalanced state has resulted on earth. If included in that unbalanced experience have been factors of destructiveness in the attitudes and the emotions of those who have been indulging themselves in this field, then all this is reproduced abundantly. Here is the key, then, to destructiveness—but it is also at the same time the key to true creativeness.

We have seen something of this, but generally speaking, when sex considerations arise, those considerations emphasize themselves in the consciousness of those concerned with respect to physical sex. This has been the habit, after all, and as long as that is the first thing that is emphasized we remain trapped. We have had some awareness of the spectrum of the balanced state—as an Assembly we are probably the bow, representing the whole spectrum, not just the lower end of the spectrum. Flesh is obviously present here, but there are other levels also present, to which heretofore inadequate substance has been given. Only as there is substance at any level does that level have any meaning insofar as experience in the dimensional world is concerned. Because all the substance of which human beings have been aware, or which they have generated, has been at the lower end of the spectrum, weighted in the physical sense, there could not be anything else but an unbalanced state. Orientation was downward—weighted at the bottom. The weight needs to be properly distributed—a proper proportion, where weight is evenly distributed. If we are considering this matter of sex then, more attention should be paid to where there has been little or no experience than to where there has been experience. But if one comes to speak about sex as a valuable tool in the creative process, most people think of it simply in physical terms, and they want it explained to them how sex can be used in this physical sense to be of value to the Lord. You cannot use it to be of value to the Lord if that is all you are thinking about. There is a whole spectrum here.

It could be said that when sex is used rightly, in a balanced way at every level, there is the creation of the new earth at the lower end, so to speak. But you know very well that our concern has been with the new heaven, which is at the upper end, and the end where there has been the least experience—the least experience because there has been no substance there for the experience. One cannot have experience in a blank, except on the basis of some fanciful imagination. So there must be the generation of the substance to fill out the various levels where the creative spirit of God may be accommodated. If you simply try to accommodate the creative spirit of God at the level of physical sex it is bound to be a very unbalanced thing. In general terms one could describe the upper spectrum of sex as spiritual sex. Spiritual sex in experience is necessary for the creation of the new heaven, just as physical sex in experience is necessary to the creation of the new earth. But which comes first, do you think? Obviously the heaven comes first.

To describe the nature of spiritual sex, one could say that it is the union of the Word with the consciousness of human beings. Here you may recognize why emphasis has been placed upon the importance of the Word. There have been a lot of people associated with our ministry who have had little awareness of the vital nature of the Word in this sense—that it would be impossible to know the right use of physical sex without having first experienced the right use of spiritual sex, without the Word having entered into one’s own consciousness so that it would abide there, so that there might be union. This is a process of which you are also familiar: radiation, response, attraction, union, unified radiation. The radiation is the Word to which, if there is a state of being childlike, there may be response, uncluttered response, response which does not have any axes to grind, which has no expectations of personal fulfillment or anything else. You know if you are honest, from your own experience, that most of what you have experienced in the way of response in the past has had expectations. “If I respond, then I will experience thus and so.” That is childish, not childlike. The childlike state is the guileless state, where there is no expectation, no requirement at all, no need for a reward. By the way, when there is no need for a reward there is no need for punishment. If you find yourself being punished, as you suppose, it is because you have been a seeker after a reward. The guileless, childlike state seeks nothing for itself—there is a spiritual yielding. Without spiritual yielding there cannot really be physical yielding. What has passed at times as physical yielding has simply been a wilted state. So we are concerned with spiritual sex, not merely for itself, because the fact of the matter is that heaven and earth are one. Physical sex requires union of a sort, spiritual sex requires union of another sort—but the union of spiritual sex and the union of physical sex establish the true union, the union of heaven and earth.

The working of sex when seen from the spiritual standpoint is not at all structured. There is a design, but in the sense of what in the movement of the creative cycle is fitting. Human beings want as a rule to get things pinned down, don’t they? Well, in any field, as far as that is concerned—“Is this all right or not?” Who can tell? We are not dealing with the form initially, but with the spirit, and there are multitudes of creative requirements, both from the standpoint of the individual and also from the standpoint of the collective purposes of God. And each moment is rightly unique. We cannot rightly crystallize any moment and say, “Now this is the perfect moment.” Obviously, if it is perfect, we need to have it around, so let’s keep it. But it is impossible to do. Isn’t it an amazing thing that there is such a vastness of experience available that each moment is unique? It never happened before, it will never happen again. So if we see this in terms of sex, then clearly you are not going to be able to establish any structured rules and regulations. There is no marrying and giving in marriage in heaven. This is all an earthly production that, incidentally, as it is known in the human nature state, is one of the things that is passing away. Of course it has been important to human beings because it has given some sort of a feeling of security, to have a structure set up that is going to endure—as though human beings could determine what the way of God is. No, there is no structure in that sense. One of the things that characterized the world, according to the Master’s word, was that, as in the days of Noah, they were marrying and giving in marriage, eating and drinking—all the usual human activities—sex and food.

Now, because the state is unstructured does not mean that it is somehow uncontrolled and promiscuous in some fashion. It merely means that what occurs occurs accurately and rightly in the natural creative cycles as they are moving, and this requires whatever may be essential to allow these creative purposes to be fulfilled. Well, the human attitude toward that would probably be, “I’m not sure that I like that. I’m not going to have any say in the matter.” Well, who are you to have a say, if you’re just this human nature creature that is going to pass away anyway? So you wouldn’t have any say. But there is “say” from the standpoint of the spirit of God, and if one is associated with that expression as one’s own, then one has “say” in the matter. And the “say” one has is based in the wonders of true creation. The experience of this has been lost to human beings, so that they cannot recall it at all. They try to hang on to such supposed pleasure as they think they now have, fearful of what this austere God might do if He had His way—as though that would take all the joys out of living, when in fact the true way is the way by which there is increase, multiplication. Man was instructed to multiply in the beginning—not merely to procreate, but to let everything be multiplied, let the increase come.

What is the full potential in this planet do you think? Human beings have no idea at all. And is this planet somehow isolated from the rest of the solar system? What is the full potential of the solar system? There is a realm of complete blank insofar as human consciousness is concerned. Well, all this is within the range of the true creative process, in which we have a part to play. And so I emphasize this morning something of that part as it relates to the field of sex, because this is the creative process. But do not get trapped into the view that the creative process is merely physical sex. If we have the usual view of the seven colors of the rainbow, then it would only be one-seventh, wouldn’t it? There’s another six-sevenths missing. So we concern ourselves primarily with this matter of spiritual sex, spiritual union, which is the union of the Word with our own consciousness. And there are ramifications to this that may not immediately present themselves to our awareness. But if there are possibilities of delight relative to physical sex, possibilities of great variety in fact—most people tend to get into some sort of a routine here—then how much more is that true spiritually speaking? It is the spiritual experience that brings the delight into the physical experience, and there is no longer the attitude taken that the physical experience is what brings the delight into some sort of higher level of spiritual experience. No, it is the other way around.

So we have opened the door a crack this morning, and we will see whether it will open wider as we proceed. Yes, there tends to be a hesitancy and an uncertainty which surfaces whenever the subject is approached. And yet I am sure that virtually all of you would say, “Well, we long to know this, this creative experience, which obviously is necessary for resurrection.” But human nature is a contradictory creature, and I am sure you are all aware of a certain hesitancy in this regard. I am, certainly.

© emissaries of divine light