The first Sunday in 1987 has been brought to us. Entering a new year, there is always the expectation of something different occurring, a hope perhaps. But what is expected in this regard is usually some sort of improvement to human behavior, maybe one's own in particular. There are those who indulge themselves in New Year's resolutions. However there is a real validity in the recognition of an opportunity, not so much to experience an improvement of human nature—there seems to be faint hope for that—but the recall and the possibility of experience of another state altogether.
As the sophistication of civilization has unfolded over the centuries the idea of some different state of human experience has tended to be set aside in the hope that somehow or other an evolutionary process would produce something better as we continue in what is euphemistically referred to as “progress.” Where there is less clutter in human consciousness there may be some sort of a memory more easily stirred of a different state in the far-distant past. Obviously in our civilized condition, so called, there is a great deal of clutter in consciousness. Ideas concerning education and their application keep filling up the space of human minds with more clutter. The thought is that this will somehow produce progress, or is producing progress, and that we are, in the civilized sense, a progressive people.
There are others of more simple ways who do not see this as progress. However no one really understands, nor certainly has the experience of, what a truer state of human experience might be. The native people of North America had some consciousness of something which has been largely lost in this progressive civilization; not that what was known by these people was anything more than a vague memory, but nevertheless it could serve as a reminder of the potentiality of another state. Looking at the present state I don't think most would be too assured that it really did indicate progress. There is a great deal of corruption and violence, a great deal of apparent disintegration. There are those of course who are valiantly trying to get it all together again—if it ever was all together in human memory. But the more effort that is put into this, the more the chaos increases.
Recently at an event in the New York Center in Garden City, Tina Kafka read and enacted some Native American writings taken from a book called Touch the Earth. I thought it might be profitable to read one of these, and a sentence from another. This first one says:
“On June 17, 1744, the commissioners from Maryland and Virginia negotiated a treaty with the Indians of the Six Nations at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Indians were invited to send boys to William and Mary College. The next day they declined the offer as follows.”
“We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those Colleges, and that the Maintenance of our young Men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, that you mean to do us Good by your Proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise must know that different Nations have different Conceptions of things and you will therefore not take it amiss, if our Ideas of this kind of Education happen not to be the same as yours. We have had some Experience of it. Several of our young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces: they were instructed in all your Sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods … neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Counsellors, they were totally good for nothing.
We are, however, not the less oblig'd by your kind Offer, tho' we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them.”
And here is the further sentence: “The relation between death and nature is described by Bedagi, or Big Thunder, in early 1900…” The sentence I propose to read has little to do with death.
“The Great Spirit is our father, but the earth is our mother…”
These two basic elements seem to have been largely forgotten by the educated and sophisticated citizens of this advanced civilization. Obviously the earth is the mother of mankind. The flesh bodies of human beings are composed of the dust of the earth; they are indeed taken from the earth. There would be no flesh bodies of human beings without the earth. So mankind has been born out of the earth. There is, however, no birth without conception. The essential conception springs from what is here referred to as the Great Spirit.
The Great Spirit is our father, and the earth is our mother. This has been the view of these native people. It may be a more accurate view than the rather strange and fantastic concepts that have come from delving into the pit of knowledge by supposedly civilized human beings. In fact it was such delving that produced what is called civilization and the complexities of human culture and society. There is so much clutter in the minds of—the white man, shall we say? Of course it includes the minds of other colors now, including the native people of North America, at least some of them. All the clutter has excluded the awareness of basics, one might say, of the fact that human beings do not exist of themselves but are the product of something else—something else perhaps describable in these terms of the Great Spirit and the earth mother, which gives some restoration of memory to something other than the present state of human experience.
The more development of knowledge there has been, the less natural has been the experience. It is often said in these days that we live in a plastic world, as though the earth wasn't necessary. The idea seems to be that what human beings want for themselves can be made: “We have the knowledge to do it, and if there is sufficient money it is possible to do anything.” Maybe, up to a point at least—up to the point where human beings cease to exist. Human beings cannot really exist in what could be describable as a plastic world, because the earth is the mother. The body of mankind soon disintegrates and passes away if the creative process is ignored, and the foundation of that creative process is well described by these two elements: the Great Spirit, the father; and the earth, the mother.
The body of the mother is the physical planet. The physical planet therefore symbolizes the mother. The body of the father is the sun. The sun symbolizes the father. Neither the sun nor the earth are the father and the mother, but they are forms representing them, just as human forms represent something. That something has been almost totally forgotten. Minds and hearts have been so filled with the clutter of civilization that the truth has been absolutely squeezed out. The truth isn't knowledge, and knowledge can never find the truth. The truth may be said to be experience, the experience of the way things really work and the way things really are. And that's the truth.
The way things work is distorted by human endeavors to make a world which is pleasing to themselves, while ignoring the fact that the earth is part of the solar system. The earth has a proper relationship with the sun—and with the other planets, as far as that's concerned—just as the solar system has a proper relationship with the galaxy, and the galaxy with the whole universe. There is a design, there is a way things work, there is an ongoing creative process, completely ignored by the arrogance of the human intellect which thinks to make a world for itself, for the benefit of human beings: “To hell with the universe!” Well I think what has happened is that the universe has continued quite well, and to hell with human beings! As ye sow, so also shall ye reap. That is a very true statement. And so there is the reaping. Nobody cares much for the reaping as it puts in an appearance, for the most part at least, but seldom does anyone recognize personal responsibility for the sowing. As we know, it tends always to be somebody else, somewhere else. We are all so innocent, in the human sense.
Anything that has been made on earth becomes more and more obviously human creation, the plastic world, the world in which finally human beings can no longer exist. The end of that existence may come in a variety of ways, but it comes. As we know, it has come individually and in every generation, but it is bound to come collectively somewhere along the way, as long as this arrogant state continues and as long as human beings think that the increase of knowledge will produce a state of affairs exhibiting peace and fulfilment for mankind. Never! It is absolutely impossible. All it produces is what seem to human beings to be insoluble problems; and they are completely insoluble, insofar as the human state is concerned. As we know, there is no answer.
Gradually some of the more intelligent people are beginning to realize that there is no answer. No matter how much effort may be put into it, no matter how much knowledge may be unearthed, it does not produce any answer. All it produces is this plastic world in which human life at least, and many other forms of life too, can finally no longer exist. We see many forms of life in nature bowing out because of this arrogant creature, this arrogant human creature, who insists upon having his own way and ignores the ways of life. However one cannot frustrate life forever. For the individual human being it takes probably a little less than a hundred years to find out that you can't frustrate life. But when you ultimately have found it out, it is of no more value, is it?
Isn't there something rather stupid about all this?—supposedly intelligent people with all the massive education, unable to see the simplest truth and determined to continue in the way of total self-destruction. If that is the attitude then I suppose you could say, in a larger perspective, “Good riddance!” We are aware for ourselves that there is a reason for our existence on earth, and it is not to get our own way, it is not to fulfil our own expectations, it is not to drag out of our environment all the things that we think we want. It is to participate in the natural unfoldment of the creative process as it operates throughout the whole universe, including this solar system, including this planet. What arrogant stupidity to imagine that one could take this planet out of that whole and use it for human purposes. That is courting disaster—and disaster will come, at least disaster insofar as human experience is concerned. That may not be so disastrous insofar as the universe is concerned; as I say, it may be good riddance. But there is a reason for mankind on the face of the earth.
These things have to be seen before anyone is liable to let something be done about it. Unless these facts are acknowledged there cannot be what is called repentance and we are aware that repentance is absolutely essential—repentance for filling ourselves with all this clutter, this human-nature clutter, thereby removing mankind, oneself in particular, from the universal creative process so that man ceases almost entirely to be a participant in it. Acknowledging the fact of human failure is an essential element. Of course where people are all hyped-up about the progress they are making they are not liable to entertain the idea of failure. Oh no, they have not failed! They are really going ahead and getting on and doing something worthwhile. Individually speaking, it all ends in nothing anyway. Isn't that failure?
I suppose one could say that death, as human beings experience it, is the ultimate failure, the ultimate evidence of failure. One could say of oneself, “I have become quite useless on earth so it's time to be eliminated,” and out that particular focus of human nature goes. This has seemed like a terrible fate to many, and all sorts of hopeful ideas have been put forth that, somehow or other, this peculiar character could be saved from destruction. Why save it? What for? It was useless on earth; it's going to be useless anywhere else. Let us find out what our use is on earth, so that there need be no failure, so that there need be no elimination in this fashion. As we have noted before, death has been a wonderful provision. We talk of overpopulation these days, but if there were no death what would it be? I think mankind would have eliminated itself long ago. No death? What a fantasy! I think we live in a fantastic state as it is.
As was suggested relative to Babylon in the Book of Revelation, “Come out of her, my people.” Come out of this state, this state which is doomed. Come out of it before the sentence is passed, the death sentence for humanity. The sentence has been stayed for quite some time. It's rather remarkable that, for instance, no one has yet pressed the button for thermonuclear war. I wonder why. Could it be that there is still some hope for mankind to be restored? It seems like an interesting contradiction that it is necessary to let go of the past, on the one hand, but it is also necessary to recall that there is another state, a true state, what to human beings would be a new state, available, which has indeed been known in the past. But you can't recall that state; you can't go back into the past. What that state would be now remains to be seen, if there are those who are willing to accept it.
In the religious field, particularly the one called Christian, there is the idea that there is something at hand, something available: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Okay, wonderful. But let's not ignore what went before that statement: “Repent.” You can't have it both ways. You can't have the human state and the true state at the same time. There must be movement from one to the other somehow or other; and yet it isn't movement, because the true state is everywhere, except right in human experience. If a change is contemplated it is thought to be such a vast thing, but it isn't. The vast thing is the true state, everywhere throughout the universe. The little thing, the little fleck of dust, is the human state.
In the human state of course people look out and they see everything round about, the world and their fellows, as being hostile; everybody is trying to destroy everybody else. Well that may somehow be true in the human experience, amongst themselves, but it certainly is not true anywhere else. What human beings see as disasters looming all around are simply a reflection of what is present in themselves. The human state is a disaster area. The internal state of human beings is a disaster area. And if it's reflected externally, well that's the working of the way things work. What is inside human beings is revealed outside. I have to face up to that fact and take responsibility for what is revealed outside—not take responsibility somehow just collectively speaking: “Well I know I'm one of five billion people who have produced this state on earth.” No, I produced the state on earth. Until someone, somewhere, assumes that responsibility there is no repentance. One is waiting for somebody else to repent, somewhere else, stop doing all the terrible things they are doing. Well the muck and the mire is in oneself. So there is the necessity to face up to this fact. There is a great reluctance to do this.
Human nature resists the emergence of the spirit of truth into expression. It always does this. I don't care whose human nature it is, there is that resistance. I'm sure we all have had experience of it. Something comes up and we object to it. Recently I have been saying some things—where do you think they came from? did I generate them out of my brilliant mind? of course not—but I have been saying some things that, according to the refined view of human nature, I shouldn't have said; somehow it jarred them. Of course! Human nature is going to be jarred. It must be jarred. If it isn't, there is something wrong. If what is said is popular and everybody agrees, “Isn't it wonderful!” you may know for sure that it's wrong, it's false, it's not true. Wherever you see massive movements of people it's not based in anything true. Human nature goes along with human nature. Human nature objects to and resists the truth. Could one be so arrogant as to imagine that all of human nature has now been dissolved and one is completely open and available to the expression of the spirit of truth? I'm sure not. There are things of human nature still around resisting the truth, and you will discover what they are in your own individual experience.
This can only happen as there is a focus of the spirit of truth present to provide the current of that spirit as it is emerging, to be shared by all who will relinquish human nature. They find it works; it brings everything together. In spite of all the resistance that has been present in you, for instance, you are all here together this morning. What an extraordinary thing! How did it happen? Because you felt obliged to be present, it was part of your duty? I trust not, but because you couldn't be anywhere else, in spite of continuing resistances here and there.
Human nature will always resist the spirit of truth, because the spirit of truth will reprove it, dissolve it, dissolve human nature. Most people, thinking of human nature being dissolved, think of themselves being dissolved. “Oh I don't want that. I want to hang on a little longer.” The usurper, which has occupied human minds and hearts and bodies for so long, may pass away without human minds and hearts and bodies passing away. If the usurper does pass away it presently takes human bodies, minds and hearts with it; and out they go. That is the regular human experience in every generation. It has become so customary that everyone imagines it is inevitable. It seems like a fantasy to consider the possibility that the truth is true and that the human view is not.
We share these moments with the opportunity of allowing the past, the old, to pass away, that the new may be experienced. You can't have both. It seems that human nature doesn't like the idea of passing away. And as most people are identified with human nature they think they don't want to pass away either. But what is not human nature doesn't pass away. Only human nature passes away, and always it's good riddance. Isn't it amazing that there is so much weeping and wailing about human bodies dying? Thank God for it. It takes out of the picture what doesn't belong. I trust that the whole human race need not be taken out of the picture because they finally prove that they don't belong. But that could not happen if there are individuals here or there who awaken to the truth and are willing to accept the truth, and they are willing to allow their hearts and minds to be occupied by the Great Spirit, so that what has been born out of the earth might once again have meaning.
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” That is one of the ten commandments, as I recall. It doesn't refer so much to earthly parents as to the Great Spirit, father; and the earth, mother. The earth has certainly not been honored by human beings, has it? There has been an awful rape of the earth, incest. Thou shalt not commit adultery. But human beings do it all the time—a great deal of finger-pointing at people who don't behave the way other people think they should. But the whole human race has indulged in the rape of the earth, either directly or indirectly. It's obviously so.
Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” And what is that land? It is the surface of the earth, the whole surface of the earth. That is what we are upon, isn't it? Our feet are on the earth—not these days; the soles of our shoes upon the plastic floor!—and our heads are in the air. We need oxygen to survive; there is less of it around these days and will be much less, shortly. Our contact with the earth and our contact with the air are very fine symbols of the positioning of man: between heaven and earth, between the Great Spirit and the mother, providing the point of blending, unification, between spirit and form. This is the reason that man appeared in the first place, to provide that blending point so that the control and the design out of heaven might be conveyed directly, with understanding, into the earth. Man is not supposed to be subject to the earth, which he now is of course. He is subject to his own world, the world that he has created in the earth. He reacts to that and behaves accordingly, and destroys himself.
But standing upon the land, as stewards between heaven and earth, we may be Man again. And that is a new experience, the experience that might be referred to as rebirth. Human beings have got hold of that idea and made it meaningless. There are a lot of people these days who imagine they are reborn but they are still subject to human nature, still subject to their environments; they are still reacting to everything all over the place. They try to be good of course, but what is “good”? Who knows? “Good” is to be a part of the creative process; I suppose one could put it that way. “Bad” is not to be a part of it. So all human beings are bad. Wickedness is great in the earth, and all the thoughts and the imaginations of human beings are only evil continually in that human-nature state. That's the way it is, and nobody can make it any other way, in the human-nature state. You can't make the human-nature state over to be something else. It has been generally recognized that you can't change human nature. Of course not. Who wants to? Let it pass away. Let it pass away while the Great Spirit is still present in experience; and the fact that the Great Spirit is still present in experience is known by reason of the fact of life.
We share the responsibility as individuals of letting our bodies and minds and hearts be made available to the Great Spirit, the spirit of truth, by which all things are made new. Then there is a new creation. The old creation, the way it is now, came by man in his state of separation from the truth of himself. The new state, the true state, also comes by man, standing in the point of blending between the Great Spirit and the earth. There is no answer other than that. No amount of effort, no amount of learning, no amount of education, no amount of knowledge dug out of the bottomless pit will set things to rights, so to speak—only when the Great Spirit controls, has dominion, because of man.
That dominion could never occur if it is being resisted all the time: “I know better, I have all this knowledge. Do you mean to tell me that all this education which I have had is useless?” One could come right out and say, “Yes.” Or one could say, “Well it is not to be expected that a person will immediately relinquish all that, because he has no experience of anything else but that.” If you relinquish all that, you're dead; but that it must go is a foregone conclusion. It's going to go anyway. Obviously, individually speaking it's going to go. All the things we have achieved on earth, all the great things we have done, all our knowledge vanishes.
In one of these writings by the native people the thought was expressed that if you put all the books in all the libraries of the world, all the knowledge that there is in that way, put it out in the open, let the rain fall on it, let the sun fall on it, let the insects get at it, it would all be gone very shortly. But the earth would at least remain. Life would still be present. There is the wisdom, the wisdom which comes when the Great Spirit and the earth are unified because of man. Then there is the true dominion and things work the way they work and the earth is restored to be a part, a functioning creative part, of the universal whole. So let it be. That is our only purpose as members of the body of mankind.
Dorothy Hughes — Martin, the Great Spirit has invited us all constantly to return to the place where we belong, to fill the position between heaven and earth. And in opening our hearts to the great spirit of truth we find that we cannot resist any longer to allow in this moment the repentance that is needed and to return to the place that we have been invited to be, standing here on mother earth, respecting what she has provided. Everything has been provided. The Great Spirit and the Great Mother have provided a place for the Son to accomplish what is needed in the earth, as it is in heaven.
Martin Exeter — Let us honor the Father and the Mother. You must honor the Father first before you can honor the Mother. The attempts, the futile attempts, that have been made in human nature to honor the Mother reveal themselves as being just that—futile—because the first order of business is to honor the Father, to accept the control and the dominion of the Great Spirit into one's own thinking, feeling, acting. That cannot happen as long as one insists upon behaving according to the precepts of human nature. It's one or the other. One means life; the other means death.
