Art Thou A Master Of Israel?
The Process Of Purification
Martin Exeter November 9, 1986 a.m.
This is an exceptional morning—we have no telephone connection with anyone! In this direct sense we are on our own; we carry the whole focus of responsibility. Our responsibility is within the body of which we are a part. The pulsations of spirit move through this body in the creative process of purifying the bloodstream, not only of this conscious body but of the whole body of mankind. We have seen this in terms of breathing: breathing out in repentance and in radiance of spirit—breathing in that quality of spirit which permits repentance and the breathing out of its radiance. This is indeed a very personal matter. Each one breathes for him- or herself. As there is the true spirit of agreement in what the purpose of the breathing is, then this conscious focus, at point here now but extending farther afield, provides a basis for the cleansing of the life stream circulating through the whole body of mankind. If it does not happen in those who have a conscious understanding of these things it does not happen anywhere.
The bloodstream of the body of mankind comes to us in a great variety of ways. It moves through us in the purifying process in our own personal repentance of the moment, to flow forth again through all of this conscious body and into the unconscious body of mankind. The cycle is constantly being completed on the basis of this pulsation of breathing, using that analogy. Here the essences of purification take place in each individually. Here is the filter by which the bloodstream of mankind can be purified. It might be said to be heavenly magic, but on the other hand it isn't magic at all—it's a natural process for which as individuals we take responsibility. It only happens as the individual takes responsibility, so that what presents itself for repentance to us may provide the way by which repentance happens—one's own personal repentance.
And so the whole bloodstream is purified. It isn't merely an earthly process; it isn't as though there was a closed circuit. There is the heavenly aspect of what is happening. The creative cycle flows out of heaven through each one in the outpouring through repentance and through the radiant expression of that spirit. It is the outpouring of life, the life stream, the bloodstream, which circulates through the whole body of mankind and returns. It is received again to be purified, but coming back in the ascending process there is a movement which carries this current of pulsation into the invisible realms, which we may speak of as heaven, where it moves in the heavenly sense to return to be released in the same current as had occurred before in the circulation of the life stream through the whole body of mankind.
The cleansing takes place, the purifying takes place, in the heaven, so that on the returning pulsation the pure expression of spirit may appear. The pure bloodstream—what Christians have with complete uncomprehendingness called the blood of Jesus—is the purified life stream made available to the whole body of mankind, that circulating through that body the purification may take place. What occurs by reason of that purification must be allowed to occur without human interference. If we do provide a proper point of spiritual focus in this process we rightly have no compulsion at all to interfere with what happens in the body of mankind.
Human beings are inclined to become involved in what is happening in the body of mankind one way or another. There is a great deal of emotion engendered in this regard in many areas where it is imagined that people know how things should be. They are going to bring pressure to bear one way or another to make them be the way they think they ought to be. They don't know how they ought to be in the first place. We see this happening in all directions, but from our own standpoint we may see it as happening much closer to ourselves than out there in the world. People are very much inclined to project things away from themselves. This is a very self-righteous stance which assumes that it knows how things should be somewhere else in someone else, in the experiences that are going on in the world.
But the cleansing process, while it will properly take place out there, has its point of initiation right where one is, and it is in dealing with what is brought to one in one's immediate circumstance and experience that may, if it is handled correctly in repentance, release the pure stream of life into what is occurring out there farther afield. But if it is not allowed to be purified where one is, there is nothing pure to be extended into what is out there. The life stream proceeds, through those who are merely concerned with what is going on out there, in a polluted way, because it has never been allowed to be cleansed in relationship to one's own personal experience right where one is. There is where the cleansing takes place, where the purification may be a fact. It can't be a fact anywhere else until it is a fact there. So the futility of all this effort that is put into trying to make the world a better place is clearly seen. This is a way of avoiding personal responsibility.
The personal responsibility is not primarily out there. It is right where one is, right in one's own polluted heart where the repentance can have meaning. No one can repent for what is going on out there, but one has the opportunity of repenting for what is happening in one's own heart and for allowing the pollution to be swept out of one's own heart in the outgoing breath, the outgoing pulsation. Then that breath, that outgoing pulsation, will have its effect in the larger world round about. And so there may be a sharing in the natural creative process by which the bloodstream of mankind is cleansed.
There has never yet been an adequate facility for this to happen. Perhaps I should modify that statement a little, because there was an adequate facility in one man two thousand years ago, so that there was an initiation of this aspect of the creative cycle, the initiation of a process in which we have the opportunity of sharing now. It is no use looking back and saying, "Well why didn't people share in it before?'' The point is: What are we going to do now? It's the only time we have, after all. You can't change the past; whatever happened happened. But it brought everything to this point where we are now and where we may provide this focus for the purification of the bloodstream of the body of mankind. Is that a large task? I would think so. But it is the only way it can happen, as there are those who take the responsibility.
Partly because of blindness, ignorance, heretofore there was no adequate responsibility taken for this process to operate effectively. But the time has come. It either operates effectively now or there is no way by which it can operate anymore. And if we have some awareness of this ourselves, then we are immediately acquainted with our own responsibility in the matter. If the vast majority of people on earth have no such awareness they have no such responsibility, at least not in the direct sense.
There must be a point of focus connecting the invisible heavenly aspect of the creative cycle with the earthly aspect of it, and I think we should have reached the point where we are quite capable of saying individually, “I am it.” We do not suffer from the disease of false humility in this regard, which is in fact a way by which those who know better find excuse for not doing better. It requires humility to accept responsibility. If there is an attempt to accept the responsibility in a spirit of arrogance the responsibility will not be accepted. It requires humility, a willingness to relinquish one's own self-determinations in favor of providing a point through which the creative process may work to purify one's own heart. As that is made pure, or to the extent it is made pure, the onflow of the current of life carries it into the whole body of mankind. So in this process of cleansing, which we have correlated with the matter of breathing, purification of human hearts may take place. This is what is going on.
I am reminded of a story that is told in the Bible, in the New Testament, of an occasion when Jesus met with a certain gentleman, under cover of darkness. Evidently he didn't wish to be identified as having met with Jesus. His name was Nicodemus, you will recall, and he was described by Jesus as a master in Israel. In other words he was a focus point in the state of affairs as it was then in the Jewish world. He was evidently a religious man, involved somewhat in politics, a leader no doubt in the social scheme of things and an educated man in the human sense. He had sensed that there was something here which was brought to focus in Jesus, and he was sufficiently moved by it to have the interest to try to find out what it was. So they met.
It's very interesting how these stories come down, translated into the English language, of what supposedly happened and of what was said. One might question as to how accurate the record would be in this regard, seeing that it must have emerged out of the memory of somebody. They didn't have tape recorders, for instance, in those days. Yet it is amazing, miraculous one might say, how, even having been translated from the original Hebrew into the English language, the truth is conveyed. It's really remarkable. And it has come down over all these centuries for anyone to read now. Of course merely reading it doesn't accomplish very much, as witness the number of people who have read it and the state of the world, even the Christian world. To understand what it is that is being said, one has to have had some sort of experience oneself in the current of that same spirit. Without that there is no understanding.
So here was an occasion when this gentleman—I think he is very representative of a number of people that you can think of in the world today, even possibly oneself back along the way somewhere—came and there was a conversation between himself and Jesus. I am sure more was said than was recorded here, but anyway the point is made by what is recorded here. Jesus evidently spoke of simple things concerning the movement of spirit. To do so He used a particular analogy, in this case the wind. Nicodemus was apparently completely flummoxed; he didn't understand a word of it.
This is a common experience with many people who are so filled with the human state in their own consciousness that they find themselves incapable of comprehending anything that goes beyond that. If you can keep it within the range of the human state they may be pretty bright, but let it get a little beyond that and they are completely lost. So it was with Nicodemus. All that Jesus was saying was of a very elementary nature, couched in earthly terms, and yet the man couldn't comprehend. How many millions of people on earth are in that condition now because their consciousness is filled with whatever it may be; and there is usually a fairly wide spectrum in this regard. There is good education they say in these days, so people's minds get filled up with all sorts of stuff. The religious aspect is emphasized with some, the social aspect, the political aspect, the scientific aspect, whatever, all these things. People are so well educated these days that they have an immense amount of stuff which firmly blocks a comprehension of the way things really are. All this has developed, and established a world of fantasy in which human beings exist, thinking of it as real.
The Master at that time spoke to Nicodemus, and fundamentally He didn't get anywhere. If this focus point of spirit was not able to penetrate the thick skull of this one man, who was representative of thousands, these days certainly millions, how would anyone be so arrogant as to imagine that they were capable of penetrating such a state in their efforts to do so now? Stupid, isn't it? You may note that the Master didn't persist very long. He just tested the waters, so to speak, to find out what was there, and when He found complete uncomprehendingness He pretty well dropped it. But there is a record of various things that He did say subsequently, which I think were not particularly said to Nicodemus—what would be the point?—but to anyone who might understand later. So we have the record, and maybe we might understand.
What He did say in conclusion with Nicodemus was this: “Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?” If He said something along these lines He may have said it from a very innocent stance, or He may have been conveying a little sarcasm: “You are supposed to be a leader in the Jewish world,” which was in turn contained in the Roman world; and I am sure Nicodemus was aware of all the things that were going on in those worlds. He saw the futility of it perhaps to a certain extent. That is why he wanted to talk to Jesus.
“Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?” The same could be said with respect to leadership in the world everywhere today, whether it is religious leadership or political leadership or leadership in any field whatsoever where there is an uncomprehendingness of the way things really are. Virtually all the population of the earth lives in a world which totally ignores the way things really are, and a humanly created substitute is there—we have called it a jerry-built world—in which everybody is embedded; and to the extent that they are embedded in that they can't see over the wall, so to speak. They are in a deep trench—dark down there—and everybody is stumbling over everybody else, getting into battles; some people get trampled, some people clamber up on the backs of others. But they all stay in the trench, and of course eventually the trench is filled in for everybody—one by one perhaps, but it could be filled in for everybody all very suddenly.
So this is the way the Master evidently concluded the conversation with Nicodemus: “Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.” In this instance I think, and in most instances, it is not because the individual doesn't want to see but that he is quite incapable of seeing; he is so stuffed. There should be some sort of spiritual zypan, maybe! “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?”
I would like to suggest that the word “believe” here doesn't convey what it was that the Master was actually saying, because He never really suggested that people should continue to exist in a world that has been produced by belief. The idea may be, from the human standpoint, that people have been believing in the wrong things, they need to believe in the right things. Well here we go again into the matter of good and bad, good and evil. A better word in this particular context here would be “understand” or “understanding.”
“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen”—here is one speaking from the standpoint of experience—“and ye receive not our witness. "If I have told you earthly things, and ye understand not, how shall ye understand, if I tell you of heavenly things?” I have not tried it out, but I think if you consider the various passages where the word “believe” or “belief” is used and you substitute the word “understand” or “understanding,” it would convey the meaning much better than the word "belief'' does. It is in very many instances not only understanding but acceptance of that understanding into one's own experience. This is what is being conveyed by the word "belief'' or "believe''—not a sort of extraneous mental effort: “I've got to have faith.” That doesn't do any good at all. The point is that one needs to understand; it's sensible, after all. It's the reasonable, accurate expression of life here that is in question, not some sort of a religion, not some sort of a social system; there is nothing political about it. It is in fact scientific, but not the way human beings understand such things.
There is something that works, has been working all along, and yet human beings imagine that they have to make something work. This very attitude is an indication that there is no awareness, no understanding, of the way things are working already. So there has been this superimposition of human designs upon the way things actually work. The way things actually work may be described by the words, as we noted before: “the way, the truth, and the life.” That is the way things actually work. That is what is actually happening. But human beings apparently prefer to live in their world of fantasy, which completely ignores the way things actually work and tries to establish the way human beings imagine things should work. And look at the confusion, because there are as many ways in this regard as there are people on earth. It could hardly be surprising that there is confusion, chaos, conflict. Of course, naturally, that's what should be. That is the result of this jerry-built house. But there is what may be described as the house of the Lord, the real house, the way things are now really working. Why hide one's face from that? But people have a thick veil over their faces.
We only come to the real world through the purification of our own hearts, not because something is going to happen in somebody else. It is entirely a matter in relationship to oneself. We know this. One can't repent for somebody else. All one can do—and human beings have been very active in this regard—is to shake their fingers at other people and say, "You should repent.'' How do you know? It may be right, but it is none of your business. What am I going to do? That is the question. If I don't do it nobody does it, because I have no responsibility for anybody else—just what happens in me. And what happens in me then has an effect upon everybody else. If nothing happens in me then that has an effect on everybody else; and probably everybody else goes along the same course, letting nothing happen in them. The starting point is always with one person, oneself. There is the door of heaven if this truth is accepted for oneself: the way, the truth and the life, the way things really work.
I am the way, the truth and the life. I am the door by which heaven comes into the earth or, by the same token, I am the shut door preventing heaven from coming into the earth. Pretty well everybody could say that is what their experience has been. Then, because heaven doesn't come into the earth, they blame somebody else: Why aren't you behaving this way or that way? Why don't you conform to my standards? Then heaven would come into the earth. I would suggest that the reply to that would be: Prove it. Prove it by letting heaven come into the earth through yourself. Then there it is for you, and it opens the door for anybody else. But each individual must let it happen for himself. This is exactly what the Master did on earth. He opened the door for everybody. Now all that has happened, as we recognize, is that human beings have worshipped the door, and the door has remained closed because of that.
So here we are to let this door be opened individually, and if each one takes responsibility for letting it happen in him- or herself, then it is done collectively. And we find that this is a pretty good door. It has been a narrow way, a strait gate heretofore. You couldn't find the door! As long as one is looking for the door someplace else, even in Jesus, he will never find it, because the door is always right here in oneself. Instead of imagining that the Master says, “Do you believe all this?” He was saying, in fact, “Do you understand all this and accept it into your own experience?” That is all He was saying. He was not saying, “Do you believe it?” in the ordinary sense of believing, so that you can build some sort of religion in form on earth according to the human view of what the doctrine is. He never said that.
So we awaken to the fact that I am the door, as He said. He said it for Himself, “I am the door. I am the way, the truth and the life. I accept that responsibility. What about you?” Human beings since have said, “Oh, not me, not me. I am going to stay in my world of fantasy. I am going to bolster the world of fantasy. I am going to make a career in the world of fantasy. I am going to achieve great things in the world of fantasy, and I am going to be rewarded for it by other fantastic people.” What nonsense.
“If I have told you earthly things and you don't understand, what would be the point of telling you heavenly things?” This was the Master's comment to Nicodemus. And while Nicodemus apparently hovered in the background throughout the Master's ministry, and was not particularly pleased with the way things worked out, we have no record of him ever coming to a point of understanding. And those who are stuffed in like manner are, generally speaking, the last to come to a point of understanding. The humble and the contrite heart may open up and understand and repent. When this is factually done, then the process of purification of the life experience of the whole body of mankind is set in motion. It was set in motion by the One called Jesus. But who has shared in that? I trust we are sufficiently humble to accept the responsibility ourselves now and to continue in movement with that creative process, which is the way things really work.
There are heavenly things to be understood and accepted into experience, but first of all there must be an understanding of earthly things in the sense of seeing them in the context of the creative process. We have begun to see this, that there is a creative process at work. There is something of spirit moving through human beings everywhere and it is producing certain effects. We begin to see that. We don't see the world in the terms that the world sees the world. People are fussing about all these political questions, questions about war and armaments and all these things, about the way people behave, particularly in South Africa in these days, or supposedly behave. It has nothing to do with the fact of the matter, but it is in people's consciousness anyway. All things are seen in political terms: What's Reagan going to do? What's Gorbachev going to do? What's going to happen over in India? What's going to happen in China? All this is completely beside the point but seems so very important to human beings, because they are going to manipulate the thing and get it in order. But if one reaches a point finally of seeing the impossibility of that, then attention may be paid to the way things really work, and the awareness of the creative process comes and we see what is happening. All these conflicting things and chaotic patterns in the world merely reflect the movement of the creative process, that's all. While human beings think all this is very important, doing this and manipulating that, it really isn't what is happening at all. They are like puppets on this make-believe stage. Everybody imagines how important they are if there is going to be peace: Reagan and Gorbachev have got to get together. Do you think that would produce peace? It would produce another particular kind of hell on earth.
No, those things are not what is happening. They are merely the result of what is really happening. Human beings find themselves being pushed this way and that; and then, being arrogant, they assume that their great intelligence has produced whatever happens. Oh no, it had nothing to do with intelligence in the human sense, because there isn't any! It has to do with intelligence in the divine sense, because the creative process is working, whether anyone likes it or not, and it is bringing everything to issue. Finally. It has taken quite a time to do it. But I think it has taken quite a time so as to give human beings an opportunity to repent if they will, but they never have so far. Perhaps there are a few who are willing to understand what it means to repent and actually do it. Amazing, miraculous!
And when that happens the creative process begins to come out into the open, come out of heaven into the earth, revealing the fulfilment of the purposes of God as they relate to this little collection of human flesh here on earth. When the human flesh on earth is restored to its proper state then everything else is taken care of, because man is important. He doesn't look very important right now—well he isn't man, that's why—but he is important when he is man to provide the connection between heaven and earth. Then he may be in position to dress and to keep the garden, as it was originally described—that is, to give form to what is present in the heaven and to keep it in manifestation, to let it all unfold according to the creative process and not according to the mental designs of men's minds and hearts.
Behold, I make all things new. That is what happens. The old is passing. Everybody seems to be afraid of death. Well let death pass away. Why block its passing? Is that a mystery, or is there understanding? Let us share the understanding, so that we can participate not only in earthly things but in heavenly things, and in heavenly things first in actual fact so that the earthly things may reflect the heavenly things.
© emissaries of divine light
