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Communication Through The Christ
Martin Cecil February 25, 1970 Vancouver, B.C.
True communication doesn't always require very many spoken words; in fact, if there is too much talk the true communication tends to be obscured. Words may be necessary, but the communication is above and beyond the words and reaches to depths also, when it is the genuine article. You all had some experience in this regard recently, which may cause you to be more keenly aware of the reality of oneness as it emerges through the body of God on earth.
This which we might call horizontal communication is genuinely there to the extent that with respect to those concerned there has already been established, to some degree, what we might call vertical communication—communication or communion with God. Only to the extent that there is this communion with God can there be true communication between people. If we find a great lack in this regard in the world the way it is, this is the reason, and no amount of endeavor to establish lines of communication really achieves anything very much. The first necessity is to open the lines of communication with God, the vertical lines of communication. Then there may be something to communicate with others. There is a basis for communication with others. At the moment, while there has been much progress in the development of ways of horizontal communication, the question arises as to what these lines of communication are for? What sort of communication is going to occur because of them? We have some experience of that, and for the most part it isn't very constructive. It leads nowhere. So, obviously it hasn't been a matter of trying to develop lines of communication between people. There are lots of these lines presently, far more than there ever were in the world before perhaps, and yet a lack of communication. That lack of communication is based in the fact that virtually nobody has anything that means anything to communicate with anyone else. The only reason there could be anything meaningful to communicate horizontally would be because there was communion established vertically. Then the substance for communication becomes available and may be conveyed horizontally.
Communication with what is higher than mankind in the true design of being is made possible through a facility called Christ. This word relates to the means of communication with what is higher than man is. The means of connection is the Christ, and the Christ relates to the spirit of God—the quality, the character, the nature, of God, of Being. Only through the Christ is there communication with God. God can only be found through the Christ. There is no other way by which this connection can be established. The nature, the quality, the character, of God—only as a person accepts this for himself into his own experience and expression can he come to know God. Jesus has been looked upon as an intercessor—the Christ is. The Christ provides the connection. We have come to see, from the standpoint of immediate experience, what this really means.
We need not be concerned, when considering these things, with a person. We may recognize the quality and the nature and the character which connects man with God. If that quality, nature and character is ignored, and the quality, nature and character of people becomes something else, as it has, then there is no experienced connection with God; and because there is no experienced connection with God, God tends to become lost. So-called scientific progress has seemed to the mind of some to make God unnecessary, and God has seemed to disappear. There has been so little experience of the character of the Christ. Immediately there begins to be this experience, there is a connection and God becomes known through the Christ.
When we have turned our spirit of thanksgiving upward toward God in the expression of devotion or prayer, usually the concluding words are “In the Christ.” These words have meaning. They are not just words—or if they are just words, we might as well not use them. They have meaning because they bring to point something which should be the experience, that of Being in the Christ, Being in the character and the nature and the quality of God, experiencing that for ourselves in our own living. The Christ is present. It is already waiting to be accepted and expressed. The true state is already available, waiting to be accepted. The ability to accept it needs to be expanded, to accept it and to express it—but let us never delude ourselves into imagining that it is difficult, because all that is required is present, waiting to come forth.
We may have become accustomed to another character, not so good, and this character needs to be seen for what it is. If it isn't the character of the Christ, then it is a character which appears by reason of the absence of the Christ. We have to take note of it in our relationships with each other, so that there is an awareness that when words, thoughts, actions, in our dealings with others, reflect what we could well call a subhuman character, we need to pause in the recognition that here is the absence of something which should be appearing. If fear, jealousy, resentment, tend to be found in our attitude and consequent words and actions as we work with other people, we need to recognize it. If we should be a little mean perhaps, a little unfair, we need to recognize it. If we don't recognize the darkness, we will never acknowledge the light. So there is the need for alertness in this regard, that one may be keenly conscious of those occasions when the Christ character is not being expressed, so that one immediately undertakes to permit the expression to be as it should be.
All that is necessary is waiting to be given expression. Love is present. Truth is present. Life is present. The true expression of Being is here. You know! You know through experience because you have allowed it to appear in some measure. It couldn't have appeared if it wasn't there. It is there, and when it is allowed to appear so that the capacity to give it fuller expression may be developed, then the absence of that character dissolves. The character which was void of the Christ is no longer there because the Christ is there. Your concern is to develop the capacity to allow this which is already present to have a fuller, freer expression in your daily living.
This is vertical communication, communion with God—communion, the reality not just the symbol. This means so much to you that you will partake of nothing else in your expression of yourself moment by moment. When there is this vertical communion, then there is something available to be offered horizontally. You have something to communicate with others, not necessarily by the spoken word. The spoken word may be right, but let us not get hung up with the idea that the only kind of communication is on the basis of talking. There are times to talk but there are also times to keep silent. And if all that is happening now is that I am talking, it wouldn't mean very much. There is something more than the words transpiring. There is a communication which is below the level of the conscious mind. This communication relates to the process of horizontal communication. Horizontal communication includes both a consciousness of what is being done and something which is below the level of consciousness—heart-to-heart communication.
Mankind is supposed to provide the point of manifest connection between God and the rest of creation, and communication with that which is below man is through what has been called the Holy Ghost. The primary pattern of communication with respect to the animal kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the mineral kingdom, is at the subconscious levels. So we have this vertical communication going all the way through: coming down from God to man and continuing through man down into the levels of creation for which man under God is responsible. Where man is, there is horizontal communication, so we have the form of the true Cross, the Cross of Oneness, the Cross of Love, the perfect Cross—certainly not the cross of crucifixion. This cross is a true symbol as we begin to understand what is being symbolized by it; but our interest and concern is with that, not so much with the symbol. The extent of our participation in the pattern symbolized by this cross is our concern.
Man, having no vertical attunement with God to speak of, has assumed that he is himself the highest of the high, and proceeded to try to establish his dominion over what he looks upon as being below him—and this should be below him—by his own subhuman methods. He has been fairly successful, in the subhuman sense, insofar as the mineral kingdom is concerned. He has been able to build out of the minerals of the earth many things, including this great city, and the automobiles and airplanes, and the various means of communication, and all the material objects which he thinks are so necessary to his pleasure. So he has imposed a control upon the mineral kingdom and made it work for him—and it has on this basis. But in doing so it has produced a lot of repercussions that were not expected—were not taken into account, certainly. We can recognize that pollution is one of these repercussions of trying to compel the mineral kingdom to behave the way man wants it to behave for his supposed benefit. He tries the same methods on the kingdom of vegetation. He has not been quite so successful in this field, although he has achieved something—but again, at what cost? At a cost of further repercussions relating to pollution and other things.
In a sense it could all be said to be pollution. Man pollutes his own body with the things he eats. He poisons himself. Of course, he has worked with the animal kingdom too, and he can point with pride to all the things that he has been able to achieve in the area of animal husbandry, for instance. But what has he been communicating? Certainly not the Holy Ghost, because he had no or very little experience of the Christ himself. Unless there is the experience of the Christ, the connection with God, there is no Holy Ghost available to offer through the areas over which man properly should have dominion. So, he has been a barrier to the provision of the Holy Ghost for the creation below him, and that creation is starved for it. There has been a substitute pattern of an unholy ghost—his own subconscious state has been unholy, and because of this there has been an unholy imposition upon the creation in his environment. The results of that unholy imposition we can easily observe everywhere.
How is it going to change? If we see the picture as it really is, the only way it can change in a constructive and creative sense is to re-establish the connection with God in the experience of man. Of course, the connection has been there, or man wouldn't exist at all; but man has been unconscious of that connection, he has been unconscious of his true character, he has been unconscious of the reality of the Christ. The Christ never went away. The Christ has been here consistently all the time. It is a coming again into the awareness of man that the Christ is present. It is not as though something were coming from some far distant star to set things to rights on earth, because what sets things to rights on earth is already present and already working, but unappreciated, unrecognized, by man. Why? Well, because in the subhuman state he is so busy trying to impose something on the creation below him.
Incidentally, he didn't stop with the animals; the imposition relates to man himself too. We see what is happening everywhere with respect to people. Pretty soon everybody will be so bound up with rules and regulations and laws, so the good citizens who keep the law and fall down and worship this god find themselves wrapped around with bonds so that they can't move at all. It's coming very quickly! A lot of it is already here. This is all the subhuman state anyway, but the foolishness of human beings is most obvious in their activities in trying to produce greater justice. It's interesting, in order to produce justice there seems to be the necessity of raising up the lower levels of society. But in a subhuman state, where there is nothing coming from above to do any lifting, if you lift, there is an equal and opposite reaction and something else goes down. We have nowadays the evidence of a society that is all going to be on a flat plane. Everybody is going to be mediocre. No high, no low, no nothing—no incentive for anything in the subhuman sense. It is all leading to a complete paralysis.
In every area this paralysis is appearing. That's fine from our standpoint. It just simply shows up the ridiculous nature of what is deemed to be good human function. This, after all, is all being done for the benefit of everybody, isn't it? But it kills just the same. There is no way by which disaster—fast approaching disaster—can be prevented, from the subhuman standpoint. No matter what is done, it adds fuel to the fire. This is the inevitable result of the subhuman state. As long as we stay in it we die—the world dies. So there is just one thing: that is the restoration to vertical communion with God. To this frantic human mind this seems an impractical suggestion, but just take a look at the so-called practical endeavors of the human mind, our own included!
So we lift up our eyes, our response, in the consciousness that there is something higher than we are. Whether that something is described by the word “God,” or any other way, makes little difference; we are concerned with whatever it is. We can only discover what it is through the Christ. The Christ is the character of God. There is more to the character of God than might first meet the eye—but it is the character of God. In the acceptance of that character there is the working of the creative power of God on earth; something comes down from God out of heaven into the earth to raise up. Not to raise up the systems of the subhuman world, but to raise up people who are willing to be raised up. Those who insist upon trying to bring the subhuman world along with them are not going to be raised up.
This creative power is at work now. I wonder how much consciousness you have of it with respect to you, with respect to your area of responsibility? It is working there to the extent that the character of God is your own. To the extent that you have vertical communion with God through the Christ, the power is working—not with a flash of lightning and a roll of thunder, as is often anticipated in this silly consciousness of the human mind. That isn't the way it works. We see it working beautifully in the springtime, in a very limited way because the body of God hasn't been around to focalize it properly. But it doesn't make a lot of noise, does it? Yet, there is a power there that is stupendous, if you pause to consider it. Think of all the things that are going to happen in this immediate environment here in the next month!—the working of the power of God through nature, so called. How about it working through man? What would happen then?
