The Tabernacle of God is with men. Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts. When the cells of your individual body are holy, when the organs and parts are holy, when your expression of life is holy, when all the levels of your consciousness are holy, the Lord of hosts is present in His Holy Place. If there is no Holy Place He cannot be present insofar as the experience of the individual is concerned. The hosts are what you are in the external sense: cells, organs, systems. The hosts are also present insofar as mankind is concerned: individual human beings, nations, operating systems, a quality and expression of life in the overall sense. Here are the hosts, but where is the Lord? Here is the Tabernacle, but where are the Priesthood?
Mankind composes the hosts which make potentially possible the presence of the Lord. If we see this, then it is evident that just as there is a sense of self in the individual, there is also a sense of self insofar as mankind is concerned—not only a sense of self but the reality of a self rightly identified by the words I am. That self, insofar as mankind is concerned, has been referred to as the LORD of Lords and KING of Kings. A self insofar as the individual is concerned may be referred to as a Lord, over whom He is LORD. This does not exclude the female aspect of the population, but there are certain limitations with respect to words.
When we are aware of the spirit of the words, and we begin to understand the meaning of the words, then the resentful attitudes of human beings, whether male or female, pass away. It is only because human beings do not know, that they become involved in contentious attitudes. If we see such things proliferating we have the clear evidence of ignorance. Human beings think of themselves as being highly educated and, therefore, presumably knowledgeable or wise, but all the evidence points to abysmal ignorance.
Holy, holy, holy. When the body is holy, and the mind is holy, and the expression of life is holy, there is a Holy Place on earth. The Tabernacle of God is then with men, and the Lord of hosts is known to be present.
The LORD of Lords, the true self of mankind, was present on earth in the individual body of Jesus. The statement I have just made is true but it certainly doesn’t mean that I am propagating what has come to be called Christianity. The LORD of Lords was present on earth in physical form and that physical form was called Jesus. This physical form, in the individual sense, was not His true body; it was a substitute body, for His true body includes the whole of mankind.
Within the body of mankind there is rightly another body, which could be referred to as the Body of the High Priest. This body is composed of many individuals. Included in it are groups of individuals, taking form according to the design of that body, and there is the quality of an expression of life natural to the High Priest. Again, we use words which tend to have pre-established patterns of concept in human minds, but what I am talking about is not pre-established in any human mind. If it is translated according to the concepts that may now be held, that will not be the truth.
The truth is a matter of living experience, not of the theoretical ideas of the mind. The mind is incapable of encompassing the truth; the truth encompasses the mind. It would be extreme arrogance on the part of a human mind to claim that it could encompass the truth, for the human mind itself is one small evidence of the truth. How ridiculous to try to bend the truth to the ideas of the mind. Immediately the attempt is made, the mind proceeds to exclude itself from the experience of the truth.
If we do have a sensing that mankind is rightly included in the hosts of the Lord, then we behold a form, a body, which has the capacity to reveal the reality summarized by the word Lord—in this instance we are thinking of the LORD of Lords. When He was on earth in His individual body He referred to One whom He spoke of as His Father. We have a dawning consciousness of that reality relating to what is back of the whole cosmic creation. We have used the symbol of the capital letter X to convey an understanding of how it is that what is back of and above all things, in the spiritual sense, is drawn to a point of focus where the two lines of the X cross. The Father is above but the Father comes to focus in the Son. The Son is at the crossover point between what is above in the spiritual sense and what is below in the material sense.
There is a very specific crossover point for this aspect of the cosmic creation with which we are immediately related, and that crossover point is the point of identity of the body of mankind. That point of identity we can refer to as the LORD of Lords but we don’t know what that means simply by using those words. We only know what it means to the extent that we ourselves, as individuals, find our own identity at the crossover point in the individual sense. Then we discover that we are one with that greater crossover point relating to the whole body of mankind: I Am That I Am.
This seems always rather mysterious to the human mind, because the human mind has gotten itself into a state where the principal sensation is one of isolation. It is because of this that human beings, identified with their minds, always are on the defensive. They sense the smallness of themselves which could so easily be swept away. This is the smallness of the human mind in its state of isolation. The mind of man was not created to be isolated. The final isolation is called death, when there is isolation from everything and consequently there is nothing.
The LORD of Lords incarnated on earth in the individual personal body that was called Jesus. Fundamentally, it was the only way that He could incarnate—the body of mankind was not willing that He should, and no particular grouping in the body of mankind was willing that He should. The only possibility was on the basis of an individual body, and so this was the way it was worked out. At that time His individual body was the only point on earth that was willing to let Him incarnate. Even those whom He called to follow Him did not exhibit any particular willingness to allow an expansion, differentiation, of what remained throughout the period of His presence on earth—merely His own individual, personal body. No one on the face of the earth accepted the challenge which He brought. Even those who were closest to Him scarcely recognized what it was. There was nobody to share, and He remained alone. When the picture is really seen, what a sad, sad thing it is—not because of the wicked rulers of the Jews or the Roman government, but because of the self-centered ignorance of human beings everywhere. And has the picture really changed any?
We are beginning to sense a change in our own experience, but we would have to admit that this change which is coming, as we have known it thus far, has not been brought to pass by any endeavor or direction provided by the human mind. It happens to the extent that we are willing to acknowledge ignorance. Many people are willing to acknowledge a certain amount of ignorance in a more or less general sense. There are certain areas where people are more or less willing to say that they don’t know, but there are some areas where they think they know. If the suggestion is made that even in those areas they don’t really know, then the reaction rises up: “You may not know, but I know!” Really? Do our individual lives portray, in no uncertain terms, the depths of our true knowing? I doubt it! The lives of human beings everywhere, even our own, portray mainly ignorance.
The acknowledgment of ignorance may be a first step in repentance, and let us remember that there is a vast difference between confession and repentance. Human beings have been very much engaged, all down through the ages, in confessing their sins but they never repented. They may have received absolution at the hands of another unrepentant human being but never knew what it would be to repent. Confession has been used as a substitute for repentance, and a very poor substitute at that. We may finally come to the place where repentance is possible; and that is exactly where one is oneself, because any person is only capable of repenting for himself. So, accepting the responsibility of repentance for oneself, we may see the requirement in relationship to the hosts of our own individual bodies and minds and expressions of living.
We finally come to the point of acknowledging our own personal responsibility, and only when this is done can any real change possibly occur. If the change begins to occur in one person, it at the same time is beginning to occur in the whole of mankind. Because of the concepts of the human mind, this matter of starting with one person looks as though it could lead nowhere. Why? One person can do what needs to be done, and it is only as one person does it that what needs to be done is done. This does not deny the fact that there is more than one person on earth, but it does initiate a starting point for what needs to be done.
Human beings have been so aware of their own littleness, of their own pettiness, of their own meaninglessness, that it seems impossible to conceive that one might be personally responsible for the world. “Oh, no, not me! I’m a very humble person.” Oh, no, you’re not, if you take that attitude; you’re a very arrogant person, because there is a rejection of the Lord, a rejection of the truth of yourself. There is always only one starting point for every person on the face of the earth—namely him- or herself—where one assumes the total responsibility oneself. In the assumption of that responsibility is the power by which others may be brought to assume their responsibility too; but we never see the assumption of responsibility on the part of others without the assumption of responsibility on our own part first.
When there are those, as there indeed begin to be on earth, who move toward that crossover point where absolute responsibility is taken, the Hosts composing the Body of the High Priest within the body of mankind begin to become the Hosts of the Lord, because, indeed, what needs to be done is done by reason of this collective body. But there is no collective body until the individuals who compose it have themselves come to the crossover point and assumed for themselves the absolute responsibility.
At that point the individual can rightly say, as did the High Priest in His own individual body, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me”—by me because I have taken the responsibility, not in arrogance, not on the basis of the human mind’s idea, but because there has been repentance in that regard and the real quality of the living truth has been accepted, and is then in expression through the hosts of the physical body, through the hosts of all levels of consciousness, through the hosts of that capacity by which the creative expression of the truth pours forth in living.
When there are those who know this, then the Body of the High Priest takes form and the identity of the High Priest is shared by His Hosts. It is not a separate identity. As one of those who compose the Hosts of Heaven, there is the consciousness of meaning, the consciousness of purpose, the consciousness of being, and we do not have to go anywhere to find it. It is present exactly where we are in any given moment, and when we learn what it means to repent we discover the truth of that. The High Priest must be present on earth, incarnate on earth, within the body of mankind, if the body of mankind is to come again to provide the facility for the creative action of the Son of God on earth.
The One who is the true self of mankind said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” the crossover point for mankind, the point of identity for mankind, the point of identity to be shared by all the hosts composing mankind. From the standpoint of the mental idea, that is simply a theory. It only becomes a living reality to the extent that there are those who take individual, personal responsibility to stand at the crossover point in themselves so that there is nothing above other than what comes down from God out of heaven, nothing higher in the individual’s experience than that—and by higher I am referring to what governs or controls, because whatever governs in one’s own experience one has placed at a higher point than one is oneself.
What will be placed at the higher point? What are we willing to allow to be there? Most people allow some pretty coarse, low things to be at the higher point, so that they are pushed around by all kinds of rubbish, and human behavior reflects it. If there is selfishness, greed, fear, all these things, motivating a person, then that person has chosen to put those low, coarse things at the high point in his own existence, and he is rightly called an idolater; he is worshiping false gods. He may not like his gods very much but he worships them just the same. There is no need to. We can repent, and repentance simply means you stop doing it, that’s all—one chooses to stop doing it.
There is what is rightly above us: the true quality of the character of God which makes it possible for us to experience what it means to be a son or a daughter of God. That is our inheritance. Our inheritance rightly stems from our true, heavenly parenthood, and when we are willing to acknowledge it, agree with it, then it happens; but as long as we are looking around to be troubled and disturbed and judgmental of all the things that are going on in the world, we have false gods and we die in our sins. The choice is an individual one, but when the right choice is made individually, then there emerge the Hosts which compose initially the body of the High Priest—for the Body of the High Priest must be present, the High Priest incarnate, if there is to be the essential point of orientation for the whole body of mankind.
Mankind as a whole is not going to become correctly oriented spontaneously. The correct orientation comes with absolute certainty when there are those individuals who take responsibility. Then the High Priest incarnates. Then the point of orientation is present for the body of mankind, and those who compose mankind make their choice. Each one must be allowed to make his or her choice. The choice is meaningless unless one makes it for oneself. Each individual must say, “I take absolute responsibility for my world,” and the only way that that can be done is to accept what is coming to point from above. When one accepts that absolutely, one has absolute responsibility for all that comes to point out of the world in oneself.
So, the Body of the High Priest takes form, and those who compose that body are the Hosts of Heaven. They share the character, the quality, of life that is natural to the High Priest. There is no distinction. It’s all one thing, even though it is differentiated through many people. It is not differentiated to be something else. It’s simply differentiated to be an expansion of what is present in essence at the true point of identity in the LORD of Lords. It’s all there, and what a delight it is to come again to that crossover point and to share that quality of character which is the natural expression of the One who gives us identity.
Let the Word be made flesh! That’s the only way it has meaning. It is because the Word which was spoken by the LORD of Lords on earth has not been made flesh by human beings that it has remained only with potential meaning and the world itself is unchanged. But changes come as the Word is made flesh in human experience. It is made flesh first in one person, always in one person. The question arises as to who that one person is. It is always the person who says “I.”
We come to the hour of our evening meditation on this 10th day of June, 1954, in the Chapel on Sunrise Ranch. In beginning this hour of meditation let us share a moment of Devotion.
Our Gracious LORD and Holy KING, we thank Thee for the many evidences of Thy Blessings made manifest on earth. We thank Thee for the beauty and the wonder and the Glory of Life made manifest in this springtime. We thank Thee for the springtime that is opening in the hearts and lives of so many people—earnest, sincere, seeking ones the world around—drawing them with the irresistible cords of Thy Love, into the Way, the Truth, and the Life, that all things may truly work together to perfection, in and through and for, all those who love and serve Thee. I thank Thee, Father, that now, in the Spirit of Thy Presence, in the realization of that which has been accomplished and that which must yet be done, we can, with one accord, come before Thy Throne, yielding body and mind and heart to Thee, that the Spirit of Thy Presence may become the Spirit of our Being, that we may entertain no spirits that are not of Thee, but that we may truly let Thy Spirit fill the Temple and shine round about in the expression of our lives, to the end that we may truly serve Thee by truly serving our brother man, to Thy Glory, and to the Blessing of all who will receive, in a realization that, “Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever.” Aum-en.
In the Biblical portrayal there are many incidents recorded with respect to past events where human beings sought help from God through others, and outstanding among these incidents we have the record of a time not too long after the Master’s presence among men on earth, in person, when the call went out, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” It is called the Macedonian Call. “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” We have such a call from Africa. But the call is not limited to Africa. I can hear that call sounding from many points in the United States and Canada, as well as other parts of the world. If we are aware, consciously and constantly aware, of the call, it seems to me that it makes a difference in our attitudes here.
In time past I have posed the question: “If someone else were here, and you were the one out there, the one who was calling ‘Come over and help us,’ would you want that person on whom you were waiting, to function, day by day, as you do now? Would you like to change places with someone else and be the one sending out the call, ‘Come over and help us’?” Why do we receive that call? Because we, as human beings, are worthy of it? No. Because those who make the call address that call to God, and their hope is that the Blessings will come from God, through us, to them. For by what other means can these Blessings derive from God and be extended to the Waiting Ones? We have privileges here. Perhaps there are times when even the privilege of being here begins to seem to be of comparatively little value. But we must remember that if God hears prayer and answers a prayer, the answer to that prayer must appear through someone, somewhere. It is always so.
The answer to that earnest prayer must appear through someone, somewhere. If God is to answer a prayer, someone must be the instrument, the means, the messenger, by which the prayer is answered. Someone, somewhere, must do it somehow, if it is to be done. Without detracting from what others are doing, or may yet do, there is a place for us, for you. God does not yet have enough men and women through whom to answer prayer. It is one thing to pray to God for something; it is another thing to be the means by which God answers that prayer.
This morning we were dealing with the subject of understanding, among other things, developing an answer to the question, “What doth the Lord require of thee?” Understanding—by which we come to the point of agreement. And we realize that, until there is agreement on earth as touching the things of God, the Father is not permitted to do the works. As the Master said, “Where two or three of you agree on earth as touching these things, it shall be done of my Father which is in Heaven.” But there must be agreement. And there must be understanding before there can be agreement. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2021/03/what-doth-lord-require-of-thee.html]
I am convinced from my observation of people—human beings with all their immaturities and fears and uncertainties—that there are few, if any, living upon the face of the earth, who are willing to move into the pattern of Reality unless, or until, their hearts are deeply touched by a recognition of the needs of others. If we reach a point of understanding and agreement, where the Father does the works, we are letting God answer prayer. How shall the Father do the works? What does it mean? To put it simply, in other words, “to let God answer prayer through you.” What kind of works do you expect the Father to do through you? What kind of works will He perform?
“Letting the Father do the works,” or, “Letting it be done of our Father in Heaven,” simply means that you have yielded your body, your mind, your heart, your whole capacity of being, to the work of letting God answer prayer through you—not just praying to God for something, although prayer is certainly proper in its place, but I am much more interested in letting God answer prayer through me than I am in praying to God according to any ordinary concept of prayer. But we develop a new attitude, a new concept, with respect to prayer. And if prayers are to be answered, it must be through human beings.
Have any of your prayers ever been answered? If so, that answer came through someone. Have I ever been the means by which an answer to your prayer reached you? Have I? Has God ever answered prayer through me to you? Yes. You know that it is so. Why do I have your love and respect and cooperation? Because it is so. Why do I have your trust? Because your experience convinces you that God does answer prayer through me—through others, yes—but through me, regardless of what is answered through someone else.
You have prayed in the past, one way or another, and finally you began to receive something of the answer to that prayer. Sometimes you did not realize it when it first started appearing. Sometimes, perhaps, you rejected what God sent to you in answer to your prayer. But the reason for our presence here—for your presence here is for you to learn to be a man or a woman through whom God may work to answer prayer. The call from Macedonia—“Come over and help us.” It is vital and it is important that we realize that we are not here to please ourselves, to gain this or that for ourselves. We are here to be trained, to make progress along the Way, to study, to learn, and experience, above all, those things which prepare us to serve. And what does it mean “to serve?” To be a means by which God answers prayer. And anything else is not service. Anything else is futile, worthless. All the calls, all the prayers in the world—God always answers. But do we always receive? And are we willing to be messengers by which the answer to a prayer is delivered from God to the one who prays?
In one of my meditations in Vancouver I pointed out that nearly 2000 years ago God started certain blessings on their way to me. He started those blessings on their way to me nearly 2000 years ago. If I had refused to receive those blessings they would have been in vain as far as I was concerned, but it would not have been evidence that God did not send the answer to the prayer, He did not send the Blessing. He did.
I prayed a prayer a number of years ago. I felt, in the outer sense, lost and uncertain. I had checked into all kinds of religions. I had left one religion because I found it completely unsatisfactory to me, and because of it I was virtually ostracized from my family. I checked into many religions and many ideas and teachings, including the Roman Catholic, and I could not find what I was searching for. And I prayed a prayer to seek, to know, to find, what is meant by this Way that is talked about. What is the Truth? I had heard religious people talk about the Truth in a way that just grated on my very soul. I have heard them meet each other in a sort of smug, self-righteous self-complacence, and say, “Are you in the Truth?” “Oh, yes, I'm in the Truth.” And they simply meant they belonged to some particular brand of religion. They had accepted an idea and they were “in the Truth,” until it irked my very soul. And I knew what kind of lives they were living, and, “I'm in the Truth.” Ugh! No. To me it was sacrilege and blasphemy because Truth ought to be more than that.
And so, finally, after walking through many a valley of dark despair seeking and finding naught, after, not just days, but months and years of utter loneliness and many a prayer, I finally began to realize that the prayer which I was praying had been answered nearly 2000 years ago, and that God sent the answer to that prayer on its way to me long before I ever prayed the prayer. And once that idea, that Truth, began to percolate through my consciousness, a little Spiritual Light began to dispel the darkness.
God sends the Blessings on their way to all who will receive; but who is willing to be the messenger by which they will receive? Are we here just to please ourselves, or just to please each other? Are you here just to please me? What will please me? There is just one thing that will please me, and that is, that you serve God and become a means by which God can answer prayer, the prayers of those now living, who live on earth today. And if you do not become a means by which God answers prayer then I count your life to be in vain.
There are prayers that need little answers, and prayers that need big answers. God answers prayer, but for every prayer that God answers there must be someone, somewhere, to deliver it, to be the messenger. And so, our purpose here, on Sunrise Ranch, is to so live and so serve that through us God may answer the prayers of untold thousands and millions of people upon the face of the whole earth. We have evidence in Africa of the response to this Spirit that is sent forth. We see it everywhere—I see it—but I wish somehow I could burn in letters of fire the Truth upon the tablets of your heart, so that you might never in any moment forget that life becomes in vain, becomes merely meaningless existence, unless we so live in understanding and agreement, that God through us may answer the prayers of those who pray—that if there is a Seeking One, what shall he seek and where shall he hope to find it, if there be no one who can be trusted to deliver that which the Seeking One would find? And would you change places, exchange with someone out there, and wait for that someone as that someone now waits for you?
Let us never forget, never be lost in petty and unworthy things, feelings and attitudes or patterns of function. Let us remember the sacred privilege, the holy responsibility, of being men and women through whom God answers prayer. So shall we live and so shall we make it possible for others to live and to know the God of Heaven and earth, that they may see, and recognize, and accept, the evidence of the Presence of the One Who Dwells.
Our Gracious LORD and Holy KING, we thank Thee for the privilege of Serving, for the privilege of letting the answers to prayer which Thou dost send into the earth find the ones who pray that the prayer may not be in vain, that the answer may not be in vain, but may be delivered to the right person, at the right time and place, in the right way, that the children of men may come to know, with absolute certainty, that God does answer prayer, and that He seeks those through whom He may deliver the answers to prayer that they may be received, and that all who will may be Blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. For “Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever.” Aum-en.
As you love and Serve the LORD, so shall all things work together to perfection in and through and for you, because through you God delivers the answers to prayer to the children of men, and you begin to receive through others the answer to your own prayers, because you are found worthy to receive the answer to prayer when you are found worthy to deliver the answer to prayer into the hearts and minds and lives of others, to the Glory of God and to the Blessing of the children of men. Peace be unto you, now and always, as you love and serve our LORD and KING. Aum-en.
These words are spoken to yielding hearts and quietened minds everywhere. There is a place to which to come, prepared by the Lord through all of you and other faithful ones besides. The words “Come unto me” were truly spoken a long time ago, according to human calculations. They are spoken again now by those who have already heard them and consequently have come. In the quietness of this assembled company and of this evening hour we extend the invitation to the hearts and the minds of all who will receive it. It matters not whether these are close at hand or at the other end of the earth—the Word goes forth and it shall not return void, but shall surely accomplish that whereunto it is sent.
We are well aware that all the knowledge which has been unearthed by human minds would be scarcely noticeable in the extent of knowledge that there is. The acquisition of knowledge has inflated human egos and allowed for great swelling words to convince the ignorant of how much achievement there has really been. But if there is any humility we know that the explorations of the human mind have in fact unearthed practically nothing. It seems a lot for the moment, in comparison to what may have been in the past, but here again human judgment enters into the picture: how far does the past go back? I suspect that there have been human beings on earth, beyond the range of history as it is known, who acquired for themselves considerably more knowledge than has been extracted in these days. It matters little—it passed away anyhow. So, the human ego is proud of what it now thinks it knows.
The invitation that is extended, “Come unto me,” is spoken to humble and yielded minds and hearts anywhere who have within themselves a willingness to emerge out of that human morass of confusion into a place of calm serenity, that there may come again the experience, which is opening to us, of the right use of knowledge as that knowledge naturally becomes available to us. Obviously, having partaken of the forbidden fruit ourselves we have a certain store of knowledge; but I am sure that we have all come to the keen awareness that whatever knowledge we do have, in whatever field, it is not going to save the world. So we no longer delude ourselves that such knowledge as we have is important when it is used in the way that it is customarily put to use.
We were speaking of pneumaplasm this morning as providing the connection with spirit by which mind and heart may begin to be filled with the truth. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2021/04/this-is-my-body.html] The two basic elements of truth, design and control, already exist, already are—we do not need to invent them. We do not, certainly, attempt to establish design and control based in our knowledge. If we do that, immediately we are in conflict with the design and control of truth which already exists. Here is an attempt to superimpose the human invention onto the truth. The truth isn’t going to go away; because that is the fact, the human invention must, and does. So the invitation is to emerge out of this human way of existence so that, in the awareness of spirit, the ever-present design and control of truth may be the basis for the right use of such knowledge as may be presently within the scope of our awareness. We have moved in this direction and have let our talents be used to some extent—at least to our highest awareness—for the purposes of the Lord. We claim this at least. It may not always have been so but it was a step in the right direction.
However in making these steps we have become increasingly aware of what has been described as the Tone of Life—the Tone which sounds within our own hearts and minds, with whatever strength—so that we may become aware of what is off-key. If we do not hear that Tone and become familiar with it we are unlikely to notice when our words and our thoughts and our actions are off-key, in which case we go blundering along, sowing the seeds of future trouble.
But we have become aware of this Tone. There is a certain conscious awareness of it, but mentally speaking I doubt if anyone here present would wish to define what it is. I trust not anyway, because it is quite indefinable mentally speaking. After all, the mind itself is one of the effects of the sounding of this Tone. It has no ability to comprehend the Tone itself or from whence it comes, any more than a trumpet comprehends the one who plays it. Yet the trumpet makes a sound—sometimes pleasing, sometimes not—because somebody is present playing it. It is easily seen that if the trumpet had some sort of a will of its own it would make music through the trumpet very difficult to play. I have used the simile in times past of trying to play billiards with a snake as a cue. This illustrates somewhat the problem faced by the incarnate angel present with all human beings. The angel gets things set up and aligned, but then the serpent is still there and inclined to wriggle. And so it has gone.
But mind and heart, yielding, have become somewhat more obedient, so that they do not have their own hidden agendas. Hidden from whom? Most are hopeful that the Lord doesn't notice, which is ridiculous. But very often the agendas are hidden even from the human heart and mind, because there is a compulsion present emanating through human nature, which has schemes in mind of which human hearts and minds are unconscious. We surely are aware of this, observing how people are swept hither and yon to support all sorts of peculiar things, quite illogically. What is the influence that causes this? Here is a hidden agenda, hidden from human hearts and minds, although it is their own tendencies that make them subject to these hidden compulsions. So people are caused to do things which are self-destructive, imagining the while that they are being very helpful and creative.
It is out of this morass, this confused wilderness, that the word is spoken: “Come unto me.” Let it be spoken through the minds and hearts that are obedient to the spirit of the living God and are not at all amenable to the compulsions, widely known to human beings, of what has been referred to as the antispirit. These have been traditionally the strongest compulsions in human experience, and most people of course have fallen down and worshipped at this shrine. Now there are those who heard the invitation, “Come unto me”: rise up and share the responsibility of extending this same invitation to any hearts and minds on earth which will respond. This is our business. Surely we discover that it is our only business. Come unto me, for the one I am is present in my heart and mind. Again, each may speak these words truly. I sound the Tone, and my heart and my mind become aware of it. They are sufficiently yielded that this should be so. The Tone emanates from that focus of spirit which touches the focus of pneumaplasm of which we were speaking this morning. We let that focus come to point, yielding in love, so that there may be a sufficient fineness to the pneumaplasm to reach that focus. Until we do reach that focus we cannot know what the focus of spirit is.
There are those who have found it difficult to do anything other than possibly believe that I provide the focus of spirit on earth. This is a human concept. Such belief presumably is helpful if it brings a person close enough to begin to sense the quality of the Tone, because that quality of Tone is sounding in each individual’s heart and mind but has been obscured by the inadequate generation of pneumaplasm. We well know that sound in the ordinary sense requires air to vibrate if it is to be heard. It requires pneumaplasm for spirit to be heard. A vibration is set up, and this vibration, in the primary sense, is what we speak of as the Tone—One Tone, which must be differentiated. But how can something that isn’t heard be differentiated? It must be heard, and to be heard there must be the fine substance present, brought to point at the focus of spirit.
In order for this to happen there must be sufficient substance present in a person to begin to become aware of what the Tone is. To start with most people are Tone deaf, but gradually the ability to hear may be developed, the ability to discern the quality of the Tone. The quality of the Tone discerned to start with is probably not very high, because there wasn’t adequate pneumaplasm at the refined level to let it be heard at that level; it is heard at a coarser level. Of course there has been the tendency at times for people, thinking they hear the Tone—which they do at that level—to say “Ah, now I know!” And concepts begin to form. One needs to stay humble and realize that what one hears now is not yet what one might call the Pure Tone.
If you try to differentiate an impure Tone in your living you reproduce impurity, don’t you? “Wait upon the Lord” has been an instruction that was given. The disciples were told to wait. They waited a bit in the Upper Room. Something began to happen—“Ah! now we know,” and away they went—just the faint first beginnings of the awareness of the Tone sounding at a rather coarse vibrational level. This is so for all of us—there is no condemnation in this—but let us not ever assume that what we first hear is the Pure Tone. It acquaints us with the fact that there is a Tone, and as we move along and let the substance be generated further the quality of that Tone is refined—refined toward the highest focus of substance that is possible. And that highest point meets and blends with the focus of spirit. The focus of spirit only then begins to become known for what it is, because it has a facility to accommodate not only the focus point but what radiates forth from spirit. We have used a symbol of the capital letter X to indicate the unlimited spirit above, brought to point, brought to focus, at the inverted apex, just as there is the substance brought to focus at the apex opposite.
There is no lack of spirit; there is no lack of knowledge. Everything is included. Everything that is needed throughout the whole of eternity is present. That’s quite a package! But all that is needed is that which would emerge in the present moment. Let us be content with that, so that we do not imagine it is necessary to go exploring in the only direction where we can explore, and that is downwards. It is impossible to get through the needle’s eye—the crossover point in the X—to what is present in spirit, the vastness that is there. It isn’t necessary to do that, because whatever is required in the moment, represented by that crossover point, is available. It is available out of that vast spiritual store, whatever that is; and we begin to know what it is in the moment. What is required is provided when there is a sufficiency of refined pneumaplasmic substance to allow for a point of focus to be established and to blend with that point of spirit. Then the door is opened, the veil is rent, the outpouring may occur.
There is, at that apex, a very specific Tone which is itself. It is the One Tone. But, spreading out below, it is differentiated. It is differentiated at every level of pneumaplasm. We might remind ourselves that there are a great variety of physical substances of which we are already aware, a tremendous variety. Pneumaplasm is the source of this vast variety. So it might be recognized rather easily that there is a vast variety in pneumaplasm. I think the usual view has tended to be that it was a sort of fog, like water vapor, all one thing. Oh no! It is the base for variety as it occurs vibrationally further out. So the variety must be present further in. It is present in spirit, and it emerges through and expands through the pneumaplasm.
A vibration is set up at the level of the emergence of spirit: the spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters and God says, “Let there be light.” This illuminates pneumaplasm, one might say. Here is a creation emerging through the pneumaplasm. That light, amongst other things, permits a certain awareness of the Tone that is sounding; and gradually there comes an awareness of the character of the differentiation of that Tone, which is one’s own particular responsibility. All of these responsibilities come out of the same Tone, so it is not something different or something else, but a differentiation of that Tone.
We can see this in a general sense. We might consider music. That is vibration at a certain level. It requires air to make any sense; it requires the medium of its expression, so that the vibratory rate—which comes from somewhere else—may emerge as music. Until there is the experience of the Tone and the differentiation of that Tone, the setting up of the required vibratory rates as that Tone emerges and is differentiated, let it not be imagined that anything can be known about music. What has been developed in music has been based in that little shovel thing, which has extracted knowledge from the bottomless pit.
So it requires musicians to be humble to start with—it requires everyone to be humble to start with, no matter what their field of operations may seem to be, because there is the need to come back of whatever that field of operations is in order to begin to approach the purity of Tone which must be experienced if it is to be differentiated. It is differentiated from level to level, and music certainly would be one level of differentiation. But here we see something coming down from above, or coming out from the Core, however it might be described. It isn’t emerging on the basis of what’s going on round about, because music is part of the process by which vibration is set up in substances which are beyond music. Music generates something beyond itself, but to generate what should be generated beyond itself the music must be from a generation that is back of the music.
There has been very little comprehension of these things, because there couldn’t be until there were individuals who were willing to let go of their expertise in whatever field, their knowledge in other words, in order to move back to the point where they could become purely aware of the sounding of the Tone in their own living experience. That living experience relates to a good many other things before it gets to music, or before it gets to any other field that is presently included in human affairs.
We have the spectacle of the disciples of old jumping the gun, imagining that everything that was needed was now known to them, so that they could go forth and stir up a storm, which they did. That seemed like a very important thing: all these people were being converted. That was one side of the coin; the other side of the coin was that all the resistance was being generated too, and the result of that is well known in what occurred, martyrdoms and all the rest—quite unnecessary, nothing to do with the way things really work—simply because those who should have held steady at the Core didn't do so. Oh they felt so strong and filled with spirit, they must go out! As I recall it—and I am sure all of you have known something of this—patience is the first step to the Temple of Light.
Wait! Well we’ve waited a while—about fifty-four years so far in the direct sense—that something might come to focus because those concerned accepted that focus for themselves. No one has the faintest idea that I am the focus of spirit on earth, or what that would mean even. It is all a concept of the mind. Whatever it is, no one can discover what it is without being that focus themselves. Then you know, because the spirit is then expressed, the Tone is sounded. You don’t really know the Tone until you sound it yourself. You hear it perhaps because someone else sounds it, but that may be merely a differentiation of the Tone, and in any case it may not be an accurate expression of the Tone. One has to have the experience oneself. Then you know. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2016/10/trusted-martinexeter-july-13-1986-no.html]
All this wondering after the beast has gone on quite a bit: “Well I wonder if that’s right; I wonder if I should believe this, or whether I should accept that.” You can wonder for the rest of your existence and end up dead, still wondering! No, one has to accept the responsibility for oneself to know. If I know something—and this is the way it would appear to you—something about the focus of spirit, it isn’t because I thought it all up—I don’t have that much intellectual ability—but because I have the experience of it. I know for myself. Do you think I would have stayed all these years where I have in relationship to all of you and others if I didn’t really know something? In the human sense obviously one would become sick and tired of it! What’s the point? A lot of people have sought to provide a focus of some kind and have gone on for year after year, but eventually it all petered out. But spirit doesn’t peter out.
Physical forms may have their problems, and minds and hearts get to be obstreperous, but there is One present who is always there, always steady, always in a position to know—not to know what needs to be known next week, as to what is going to occur next week, but simply to know what is to find expression now. I am abysmally ignorant about anything else, and I am quite happy that it should be that way. Why fill up your mind with speculation about what may happen in the future? Why not let the mind be used the way it was designed to be used, simply to know what is needed in the present moment? It can’t know that unless it is at that apex point where the focus of spirit is. Then the knowing is there.
That knowing can’t be conveyed to somebody else. It may be shared by somebody else for the moment, somebody who is in your presence. Butwhen they go out of your presence it vanishes—it was never their own. That has happened with many in my own experience. But I knew that everybody would go out unless they had the same experience, and that requires a yielded heart and mind which doesn’t really know what all the knowledge that has been acquired is for. It has had concepts about it, it has tried to apply it this way or that way—very often to make a living, as seems to be necessary—but what is the knowledge really for? One cannot find out until one comes to this point of spiritual focus and assumes responsibility there.
I am the one who is responsible for my world. I will allow what finds expression through me to be the sounding of the Tone for which I am responsible, and I will let that be sufficient. There will be those who hear it and come close. Others won't hear it; they pay no attention. That’s fine. Let us not imagine that our meaning is based in the numbers of people who pay attention to us. Never seek attention, just sound the Tone, just let the light shine—that’s the same thing—and those minds and hearts that are open will receive the light and be drawn by love, and some will come home. Who? I don't know. I have looked over the congregations or audiences to whom I have spoken over the years and seen a sea of faces. I haven’t speculated as to who will come home, if anyone.
I am most thankful that there seems to be some evidence that there are those hearts and minds that are yielding, so that they begin to hear the Tone and begin to accommodate the expression of the angel who is present. The angel is home already; I don’t need to speculate about that. It is just this hunk of flesh out here that is the question. And as there is a coming home I find myself in the delightful position of talking to angels and of listening to angels. All too often I am served up helpings of self-important minds and hearts, and I am asked to consider things with these aspects of human creation.
Oh what joy to speak with angels who set aside all those elements in heart and mind which have interfered. They tend still to interfere, where a person will say, oh they have to bring out this, they have to bring out that, they have to discuss this, let’s see how this is going to be taken care of. It will never be taken care of on that basis. It begins to be taken care of when there is an angel on hand and in expression. And when I find angels on hand and in expression we have a good time. But when hearts and minds begin to regurgitate all their impurities it becomes a messy experience for everybody.
So there is a willingness to let the Tone be sounded, the light shine, so that the angel is known and so that there may be a natural blending of angels. That's where the blending is. It isn’t the blending of minds and hearts. Let the angels blend within the human minds and hearts and bodies, and those soon come into line.I rejoice that it is possible to begin to share what angels rightly share in the creative expression of the Tone of Life on earth.
Lloyd Meeker — Martin, I stand with a great deal of caution in mind and heart. If it would be acceptable to you, I would offer that I, and any others who might wish to join, offer an acknowledgment of the one point of spiritual focus in one note of sound, that there may be an audible symbol of the union known in heaven through the minds and hearts that are present here.
Lord Exeter — That is indeed acceptable, and when the note is sounded and continues to sound I will depart from this position here, leaving the responsibility of the sounding of that Tone to all of you, for whatever length of time you yourselves consider is fitting. I would like to say “know” is fitting, but I am not sure that everybody would know, so perhaps a little consideration may be in order. (A sustained chant then followed.)
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.” “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”
Coming in the name of the Lord I speak the word of the Lord: I am present on earth through My flesh body. I am present in fact, not merely in symbol. This is My body. This is My blood of the new creation, pulsing through My flesh body as the sound of many waters. Through My word I make all things new. Through My word I make all things. Without My word is nothing made that is made. All that is present in My body, all that is present in the whole universe, is made by My word. Should My word ever cease to be spoken—which would never happen—there would be nothing. By My word all things are made, all things are sustained. Let My word always be spoken through My flesh body on earth. Then, behold, I make all things new. In this hour My word is spoken through My flesh body on earth. All the structures of form throughout the whole universe exist because of My word. Present with all the structures of form is My spiritual substance which permeates the forms and which accommodates My spirit and My word. The structures in the coarsest levels of form throughout the whole universe are living structures because of the spiritual substance which permeates them, thereby maintaining the sound of My voice in the speaking of My word.
One of the structures designed to contain this essential spiritual substance in its finest manifestation is the consciousness of Man. This spiritual substance we have referred to by using the word pneumaplasm. Let us not imagine that mentally there is understanding of what this word really means. Insofar as the mind is concerned it has a concept, probably a variety of concepts according to the number of people who hold them. The concept is never the truth; it is a human invention. But it certainly is easily sensed that there is this connecting substance between spirit and form, the many structures of form.
The most obvious structures of form are the structures composed of what we would refer to as physical substance, but there are structures other than that. In human experience there are what might be referred to as organizational structures, structures which can be identified mentally within the range of human affairs. These are all structures of form. In view of the fact that these structures do not permit the Word to be spoken with clarity and authority, there are indeed many aberrant effects in the world which is humanly known and which has been humanly created. The forms of this world, the structures that are present there, utilize physical substance. Cities are built, for instance; concrete is laid across the land. But in addition there are the structures of organization—local structures, national structures, international structures of all kinds.
Human flesh bodies with their consciousness have been fed into these structures generation after generation, so that the structures have grown and multiplied; but these are not living structures. They are, in every case, dying structures. As has been noted in times past, anything that human beings produce, even of their own kind, dies, disintegrates. “Behold, I make all things new”—new structures, but living structures rather than dying structures. Mentally speaking we have an awareness that everything that human beings do disintegrates. There may be a recognition that disintegration is included in the creative process, very fortunately so insofar as mankind is concerned, because it makes it possible for the rubbish to be swept out. But the primary purpose of speaking My word is to establish the dominionofintegration, the dominion of life, which was and is and is to come. Life has always been present throughout the past; it is present now, and will still be present in the days and years to come. “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.” Mine is the creative process which shall always prevail. “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.” My creative cycles prevail in spite of all the arrogant antics of human minds.
“Rise up, my love.” Rise up because love raises the mind out of the pit of knowledge. Human minds swell with their own importance when they are stuffed full of knowledge. Knowledge does not give importance; it reveals the fact of rebelliousness toward the Lord God Almighty. These are words, but they refer to something real, something that is present but remains, insofar as the mind is concerned, the unknown God. The heaven of the Almighty cannot be known as long as human beings are trapped in the bottomless pit. “Rise up, my love.” There is love to make it possible for the rising up. No one can scramble up out of the pit by human effort. The only way to emerge out of that condition is to rise up because of the drawing power of love. No one comes to the true experience except the Father, Love, draw him. It cannot be done by any effort that the human mind may put forth or by any of the desires of the human heart. Oh to be emptied of all such stuff, that there may be space for love. Love is an unknown quantity. It is necessary to be drawn up out of the pit to know what love is.
Love does the drawing, and does not require any definition by the human mind. We have discovered this to some extent because, becoming a little humble, we may say, “What has happened in my own experience to allow the increase of understanding didn’t come because I tried to get it.” It always comes—if it comes—in spite of the person, not because of the person. If it comes at all it comes in spite of human nature, because there is a crack somewhere through which love may emerge into subconscious experience, raising a person up. There is this resurrecting process by which the consciousness of man sheds its addiction to the bottomless pit and begins to breathe at last the satisfying air of the spirit. We share this process now if we will. We may be filled to overflowing with this spirit, so that the Word is spoken, is brought to focus by reason of the generation of the finest levels of pneumaplasm. This substance of spirit is generated on the basis of one’s own life emerging into expression clear and without distortion. We begin to be honest about these things, and we recognize that all that human beings do in this human nature condition is based on absolute self-centeredness. So we reach a point where we are sick and tired and done with all this fetid stuff of human nature which promotes itself at the expense of other selves.
Rise up, my love, come out of this morass. The word is spoken to mind and heart by one who obviously is not trapped in the bottomless pit. That one is present with each person. Over many, many years I’ve been associated with many, many people, you included, who have been filled with questions: Why? What? How? “There’s this thing in my life; you had better take a good look at this and tell me how it should be straightened out.” Nobody can tell you how it should be straightened out, because it doesn’t need to be straightened out. You need to be straightened out! You produced the trouble; accept that fact. Finally you may emerge, break surface into the state where there are no troubles of this nature. That’s where human minds and hearts belong. They don’t belong in this pit. No, we know the foolishness of all this. But we don’t always behave as though we knew the foolishness of it. That’s right too, isn’t it?
Rise up, my love, and come again to the Garden. It doesn’t say that the Garden was taken away; it merely says that human beings were put out of it, but it’s still here, still available. This search for knowledge is the Veil, is that fellow who stands at the Gate of the Garden with the flaming sword. You can’t get by as long as you imagine that your knowledge is going to save you. It isn’t. It doesn’t ever! It ensures the passing of the human flesh.
This is My body through which I speak My word. My word has been spoken this morning by reason of this flesh body. This is My body, this is My blood; this is the way by which I may speak My word on earth, that My Garden may become known again to those who relinquish this useless search for more knowledge. There is the tree of knowledge. It was always there, but it was not fruit to be stolen and used for the supposed benefit of human beings. This is all that knowledge is considered to be useful for, isn’t it? to benefit me, to benefit the human race, to benefit everybody; everybody is going to be blessed. But all that has happened is that everybody has been cursed, based in this one thing: that life should become subject to the concepts and the ideas gleaned from the bottomless pit of knowledge by the human mind. Everybody has been tarred with the same brush.
So we rise up because love calls, and there is sufficient yieldedness of heart to rise up in response and to let go of that hard, harsh arrogance of the human mind which thinks it knows so much, when all its knowledge condemns mankind to oblivion. This is the fact. Rise up, my love, and come away. Let there be a generation of fine spiritual substance, that it may be drawn to focus to receive the focus of spirit, that that spirit moving through that focus point may flood the spiritual substance which has been drawn together. Behold, I make all things new by this, because all things, all structures, when filled with the fine substance of spirit, and therefore by spirit, reveal their true nature.
Firstly it happens in consciousness. That has been pretty rigid in most human beings but it is the area where there is the most potential of flexibility. Let it stir that first, so that human consciousness may come into alignment with the design of spirit which begins to flood the spiritual substance when it is present. Then it moves on out. All substance, whether of a physical nature or whether one might say of an organizational nature, is the way it is because of the nature of the pneumaplasm that is present in human beings, at least insofar as the area of human responsibility is concerned. Because that substance has not been available to spirit, then the forms are dead—they have a little temporary life, some of them.
So we share these moments, aware of the truth of the Word of the One whose body this is: I am present. This is My body, not the body of anyone here. There have been those who have attempted to make this emerging body move in this direction or in that direction, do this or do that; it should be so-and-so, it shouldn't be something else. All this judgment has been spawned, which has simply interfered with the process—not stopped it, but interfered with it. Woe unto those who attempt to distract it or make it work according to some human view. Let it be exactly what it is in design, that it may be brought forth with beauty and wonder and power, that all structures everywhere may be changed in whatever way is necessary. There is no problem to that, no problem at all; only in the human mind which is struggling with these things, trying to make peace, trying to get rid of nuclear arms, trying to do this, trying to do that. All that is so useless. Let the body come forth according to the true design; and in the intensity of the outpouring of this spirit, the speaking of the Word, all things are made new. Everything stands up according to the nature of what is present in the pneumaplasm.
Let that change and there’s no problem with respect to physical substance or organizational substance. It all must yield then, but not until the change is the fact in those who provide the flesh for this body. I rejoice that there are those who are willing that this should be so, to whatever extent that may be true at the moment. It might be said: This is my body; it’s all I’ve got! Speaking for this body, I rejoice that there is a quality of resiliency that is becoming more evident than it has been in times past. If there isn’t much resilience everything becomes such hard work, but when the resilience is there it’s easy and fun, enjoyable, fulfilling, just wonderful! So let us share in this wonder in heaven.
