Lillian Cecil and Martin Cecil July 27, 1979 Assembly
“The invisible, undimensional, unmanifest Word is completely and absolutely unknown from the dimensional standpoint.
The only way it becomes known is as there is substance in which it may emerge into our own experience.”
Lillian Cecil — Just for the record I better say on this tape that we were just listening to a tape of a CBC program which was aired recently, and I'm sure we all enjoyed it, on chanting, on some of the history of it and what is still used in the world today—chanting at least as the world has known it and still uses; some of the Eastern areas is where it is used in Tibet, and then what's in France, and what is now in Quebec. I thought I'd say that on the tape, so we know what we're talking about in this hour.
Martin suggested I also say a little bit in this hour which is usually his of course. I am thoroughly delighted that we could listen to this, that we could open this door. I trust that no one had any religious feelings or attitudes or anything to meet while you listened. Surely we have let those things go so that we're always in position to share whatever needs to be shared and understood and released. In our own ministry we have, or I'll say I have, carefully stayed away from this area, except for a few excursions here and there, partly because it seemed to me there wasn't an open field in which to work. There weren't enough open hearts and trust in the Lord that we wouldn't go all off in a crazy direction of some kind, and perhaps because there wasn't the generation of substance that we needed so that we could get started, so that the spirit could activate us into this field for true radiation. Obviously we have to start generating some substance of even just interest, otherwise we're never going to get anywhere in any kind of field, such as this one. So I’m delighted that this is opening up.
In our choirs, especially in the two Units, we have taken occasions to do a very little bit of this and it has always proven most excellent—beneficial to us, yes, but one just felt the opening up of the sound areas so that it seemed as though pipes that had been full of stuff just were cleared! It's a little difficult to find the right words to describe what has happened. I know that even without using the word “chanting” or trying to do something of this nature, through our choirs we have found that there has been the excitement, the charging, happening in and through ourselves sometimes. We have had people come to choirs and they're very tired physically, and maybe even mentally and emotionally, and within the hour something takes place, some upliftment, some healing—this charging of which this man was speaking, took place. So we have known something in this regard where we could let sound do something.
I think the world of sound is just a wonderful one, particularly in relationship to music, but to all ways—and of course we need to know how to listen. If we don't listen we don't hear, and we don't play a part in this regard. And I was interested in him saying that in the chanting—Gregorian chanting—that if you can't hear your neighbor you're just not participating properly, that you're standing out, and immediately you're doing that the whole value of what is being done is lost. I think we all know something about oneness.
I found it very interesting that they brought to focus the fact that the high frequencies of sound are the ones that have been found to relieve the fatigue and the tiredness, and that the lower sounds have a different use—and in a way this is unfortunate because if a person starts to go deaf, he usually goes deaf in the higher frequencies. I wonder how many of us, in a spiritual way, have gone deaf in the higher frequencies. Maybe that's why man is always trying to get up to heaven, get up somewhere to the top of the mountain, because he realizes he should get out of this low frequency level. That's another point.
The fact that the ear, he said, gives about sixty percent of the tonus of the body. Now that's their opinion; I don't know—I suppose this is all backed up with scientific data; I'm not sure. I think that's true actually, when I think of my own experiences through the years, that when one has turned a deaf ear to something or, in a musical sense, when there is an inability to hear proper sounds, and to then sound them yourself, there tends to be a laziness at least present, but there is—well, I notice in choir people, I have to go back to this as our example, that there often are people who are not there with you, who are—you can just see their minds floating away somewhere else, or they're sitting emotionally disturbed before you in the choir, and obviously they just don't have the zip and the tone, and what's necessary in that moment to give forth. They're just not, we say, “with it”—that's one of the points I feel. We have not learned to listen properly on all levels, but I'm very delighted this morning that this has come up because I do feel that the world of sound is a great avenue for the Lord's radiation and we can all properly do something in this regard. We don't all have to be choir members or particularly participate in some chanting groups, for which I've longed for many years. I'm all ready to go if anybody else is!
I would say one thing—one of the reasons we haven’t used this this type of music before is because of the connotations related to the religious patterns, their masses, you know. I actually have spent hours looking through many, many books. There's much music in this regard available from early on, but whenever I'd have someone translate the Latin it was always so awful—you know, “Lord have mercy on our souls” sort of thing. I think though, that we can probably start to use the English language—I don't see why not—in some fashion in this regard. Perhaps not as it's been used up to now, but surely we have some masters of the English language in our ministry who certainly could provide us with some type of word formations, or words that mean something, even so we could start in a very elementary way.
We have also started in the choirs lately, in this regard, of practicing a song with the vowels. The present Assembly is doing that right now, right? How many are here from the recording choir, I wonder? Could you just stand up a minute and just do a little bit of the “How Wondrous and Great”? Do you think you could do that? Let's see, let me get the right note. [Singing ensued]
Martin Cecil — With that singing I'm sure that all of you, the ones who sang and the ones who listened—I hope the singers were listening too—all of you were very much aware of a sense of blessing by reason of the sound. It could be said that what was done was of an elementary nature but it conveys the assurance that there is something of great value relative to this matter of sound. First of all there is the matter of listening. Perhaps we have been aware of this more particularly when we speak of the Word. You have to listen to hear the Word.
One of the primary requirements in our training has been to learn to listen. One of the primary areas of failure has been in the failure to learn to listen. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2018/08/listen-for-word-martin-cecil-april-16.html] If, as is apparent, there is a rather widespread lack of awareness as to the real sound of the Tone, it is simply because those concerned have not learned to listen. One cannot make the sound unless one has first heard it. So listening is the first area of education in any level of schooling. The very young child learns by listening to sounds. This is the way a child learns to speak. He never learns to speak unless he hears somebody else speak. He never learns to speak accurately unless he learns to listen accurately. So training in this matter of listening is primary. There are off-key notes, flat notes, garbled notes, sounded in living which indicate—I'm speaking of the Emissary world particularly—which indicate that those concerned never really heard the Tone. They never listened. We have to listen to the Word if we are to speak the Word. As was indicated in the area of chanting, you have to be able to hear your next door neighbor before you are able to provide what is needed yourself, and if your hearing is lost by reason of an endeavor to make the sound yourself, you've lost participation in the whole exercise.
We see all these things relating not only to the matter of chanting but to the matter of living. Most people in this human world avoid listening at all costs and there is a lot of chatter—making sounds, mostly meaningless sounds. This is sometimes erroneously called conversation. What it usually is, is one person sounding off. All he hears is the sound of his own voice. He is unaware of anything that might be revealing of right sound from the standpoint of listening. He can't listen because he is making so much noise. There are those who have complained of my somewhat slow delivery at times. Why do you think that is so? Because I heed to listen. Anyone needs to listen if he is to make a fitting sound. If you never learn to listen you can't make a fitting sound. We see this principle of reality as relating to all our affairs.
In the consideration of the matter of chanting in this program I thought what the man was saying about God was to the point, from the standpoint of the human approach. He says, “Oh it's not going to make any difference to God whether we sing or not.” So presumably, if that's the case then we sing for ourselves. That obviously would be a self-centered approach. We might chant in order to charge our brains, but why? Why do we need charged brains? As is usual, with the human approach, it is with respect to the dimensional world. The indication was that we should listen to the sounds of the universe. Do you think that's really what we should listen to? After all, that's simply the evidence of something that is happening, if there is a sound to the universe. There is no reason why we shouldn't hear what the universe is sounding but we need to be aware of what it is that is activating that sound. We never become aware of what is activating that sound simply by listening to the external sound.
Our listening is to the Word. He used the word Logos, but then that translated in his consciousness to the evidence in dimensional form, of the Logos. Obviously this has not been sounding within the range of human experience, so there is a cacophony of noise and not the true sounds of the universe insofar as human function is concerned. The idea which occurs to the human view is that one should therefore get oneself attuned with what is occurring in the rest of the universe by listening to the sounds of the universe. We are well aware that that is not the way by which we find what the sound really is, because the sound of the universe is simply the reflection of something else, and it is that something else with which we are concerned. It may be said that beyond man, in the creation here on earth, everything else is rather naturally capable of associating itself with the dimensional sound. It is a part of that sound in fact, but there is a distinction insofar as man is concerned, because man is the means by which the Word is spoken, rightly.
So our listening needs to be of another nature. I noticed he said, “Well keep your eyes on the earth, don't look up.” That seems rather peculiar instruction. We have a responsibility for all that is present in the dimensional world and to handle that responsibility there needs to be attunement between what we are and the dimensional world, that is true. But usually the human approach is to assume that one can establish that attunement by finding out what's going on in that world and then attuning ourselves to it. This is like Dr. Bradley, in the matter of natural childbirth: We have to look at the animals to find out how we should function when it comes to childbirth. Isn't that getting things backward? Actually, by looking at the animals there may be a recognition that the animals are moving naturally with something that we should be moving naturally with, but that movement is only made possible by reason of the fact that there is the spirit of action which produces the results of action—but if we merely look at the results of action, and try to attune ourselves with that we don't know from that what our action should be. We may discover marvelous things about the actions of other things, but we are no further ahead with respect to our own, because obviously the attunement that is required is spiritual.
For this to become known in experience requires what we have referred to as the generation of substance. We need to see the nature of the generation of substance that is required in order that there may be the ability to discern the Word. The invisible, undimensional, unmanifest Word is completely and absolutely unknown from the dimensional standpoint. The only way it becomes known is as there is substance in which it may emerge into our own experience. We know from our school days and experience in various ways that sound requires a medium if we are to hear it. You don't hear any sound if there is a vacuum—the bell ringing; you don’t hear its the bell ringing in the glass jar out of which you pump the air and gradually the sound fades away. The bell is still ringing away there. It requires substance to discern, and the substance of discernment is at various levels and of various consistencies. You can hear sound through solid, through bone for instance, or through the earth. You can hear explosions through the earth. You can hear it through the air, you can hear it through water. It is said that sound travels at different speeds through the different mediums. These are more or less elementary mediums relative to what we, in the human sense, call sound.
But there is something much more than what is humanly recognized as sound. This is clearly so from the standpoint of chanting. It brings into action something that isn't sound in the ordinary sense. It relates to sound but it isn't sound. We realize that there are various levels, various dimensions, various planes, however they might be described, of substance. This is the way we describe it—we have to recognize that in using a word like substance we're describing something that is not the word. We tend to think that if I use that word, I know what it means. We may know what it means to us at certain levels of our understanding, but we also I'm sure are very aware that our levels of understanding are quite restricted. So with respect to any word we may use there are levels of understanding which will not be experienced as long as we hold on to the idea that we already know what the word means. This is what has happened so much in the Emissary ministry, because there has been so much that it has been assumed that we understood, when all we understood was a very elementary aspect of something that is really vast in its wholeness, and we grab ahold of the elementary thing that we are able to grasp and tend to say, “Now I have it.” Well that's nonsense. That is just a little fraction which is inevitably distorted, because it is only understood when it's seen in its wholeness. If we extract anything out, and on examination decide that we understand that, we are just fooling ourselves because it isn't something all by itself. It's only something when everything that belongs in the whole is present. The usual human approach to understanding anything, which is getting it apart, is seen as reducing understanding rather than increasing it. It may seem to increase knowledge and some people are fooled that knowledge means wisdom. It is only when we begin to relinquish knowledge that we become wise. We begin to let far more come into the range of our awareness and experience than was there when we had restricted it to what we call knowledge.
Knowledge is always a restrictive thing. We notice how departmentalized it becomes in the educational system for instance, and how many disciplines, so called, there are which never really mesh with any other. Occasionally someone shows up, like Velikovsky, who starts to put the thing together and this is a horror to everybody else because it begins to show up how little anybody knows, in spite of all the knowledge. And there is an inclination to take one's own discipline as though it was one's own: “This is my discipline. You go ahead with yours over there but this is mine.” What utter ignorance, because no one can possess it anyway, and if you take it out of the whole it loses any meaning. So most of the things that human beings study are rendered utterly meaningless by this method. Our concern is with the generation of substance so that the wholeness which is spirit may have a facility in which to reveal itself. We certainly can't go to spirit and have a revelation simply by reason of spirit. If that could have been done it would have been done long ago by so-called human ingenuity. No, the fitting substance of the required quality and at the required level, all needs to be present if the wholeness of spirit is to become comprehensible in expression in the dimensional world. So the concern is with the generation of substance for the expression of spirit, not for some human nature purpose of its own well-being. Human nature is not going to be very well anyway!
So if there is a recognition that through chanting a certain level and quality of substance can be generated, thereby making possible the greater revelation of spirit in experience and in expression, that’s fine. But I really don’t know, from what was said at least on this tape, what the point of chanting was insofar as all those concerned in the matter. They knew something. They discovered something. They'd seen something, and it related, partly at least, to the charging of the brain, as it was put, but as we've already considered, well why? Why do we need a charged brain more than a discharged brain? From the human nature standpoint, no reason at all. It merely fools people into imagining that they're getting somewhere, they're making progress somehow. But no progress occurs whatsoever except on the basis of the action of spirit, and spiritual action within the range of human experience is impossible without the substance through which it acts. So we are constantly concerned with the generation of that substance in various ways, but primary in the totality of our living—the various departments in our living, but it is all part of our total living. And we generate substance on the basis of the fact that there is already substance. We have noted this from the standpoint of recreation or restoration—we don't have to start as though nothing had been heretofore. There was a point back along the way somewhere where nothing had been done, but now it has been done. There is the substance here. There is all that is necessary right here—we don't have to start from scratch in that regard. If we had to start from scratch we wouldn't be here, would we? There would be no basis for any human consciousness capable of experiencing the angelic consciousness, which is part of the means by which the creation takes place. So we have all this. The substance is here.
The generation of substance may be seen in various ways. We all have immediate environmental circumstances. Why do you think they're there the way they are there, for each of us individually? Simply because, in one way or another, we generated them. These are of our generations. This is why it is so ridiculous to start judging them and blaming others for the fact that they are the way they are. If we begin to accept our true state then we are responsible for all our generations. When we assume that responsibility in the expression of the reality of spirit then all our generations are perfect—it doesn't matter how they look. Judge not by the appearance. They're all perfect. There may be a good deal of evol present, which looks like evil to many people, but it is all then part of the perfect creative process that is now in operation because we're there. Now obviously, in the past we've generated a lot of stuff that we don't like but it's there because we generated it. We don't stand alone in this—we have a world full of generators generating the wrong kind of substance, and of such a nature that it is only capable of accommodating the wrong kind of spirit. Obviously there is a need for the transformation of the forms in which the substance is now manifesting, and the transmutation of the substance itself [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2017/02/heavenly-from-transformation-martin.html] so that we fill out what might be called the potential design, where the substance should be—and when it is there, the design is in it because spirit was there already. And we find then the union of substance and spirit in the forms which it should take.
We do generate our own circumstances. We need to begin to look at this absolutely from the standpoint of spirit. We dispassionately observe the circumstances as they are and recognize our responsibility in their generation. Now the circumstances that we see, the material circumstances, are only a part of the picture. There's another generation going on too, but not very much, relative to the finer levels of substance that are required to allow the clear design of spirit to be made evident. Human beings become expert in generating coarse substance—just look at the circumstances of the world—coarse substance which has to a very high degree been divorced from the working of spirit through fine substance because there wasn't any fine substance. We have the reponsibility of generating the fine substance and we discover that there are various ways that this might be done expeditiously when the approach is made from spirit and not from the human nature standpoint which is trying to use anything it can lay its hands on to benefit itself. Human nature feels that it would be benefitted by charging the brain some more, so it uses chanting for this purpose: to benefit human nature—and while there may be a certain amount of the idea that one is doing it to the glory of God, what does it mean? It's just a human nature idea, isn't it?—an idea of the mind. What does it mean: glorify God? It's just been said that its going to make no difference to God whether we sing or not, so how is that going to glorify Him? Of course this is all based in the human nature attitude which said, “God is here and man is here.” We begin to see the union. That union becomes obvious because there is the generation of substance which makes it possible of our experience. Just because we don't experience something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It merely means that we don't experience it, that's all. If you are totally deaf you don't hear any sound. That doesn't mean that sound doesn't exist. So chanting, in the true sense—and this is not something that stands alone, that all we do is chant six or eight hours a day as though there was nothing else. Chanting can be used, as many things can be used, once spirit is on hand to use these things.
So we do share the responsibility of the generation of substance, as we well know. To let this happen we need to be at the point of the union of spirit and substance. We have spoken of this on occasion as a crossover point. There is something being generated from below and there is something present from above. There has always been what was present from above, but what has been generated from below has been inadequate. Something has been generated obviously—we have a material world. Our place, our position if you like, is at that crossover point. And a point has position but no magnitude—so this amongst other things would naturally deflate the human ego—it is nothing; it is a point of stillness. We have noted this before. “Be still and know. In quietness and confidence are my strength.”
There is the Word—a reality. There is the generation of substance by reason of our living. They come together at this point which is our proper positioning and we know the truth consequently, so that the activation of the Word may flow forth into the available substance, thereby generating in the returning cycle what is necessary to rise up in union to ascend. “In quietness and in confidence is my strength.” Here is strength, energy, power, emerging into experience because of the substance that is present. We don't generate energy; we generate the substance which unifies us with the energy that is already present. Then we are not separate from the energy. We do not anticipate that we are going to get the energy by raising our blood sugar level. That may conceivably be a part of the substance that is generated by which the energy is made known. But let us never imagine that any of these things are the energy. Energy does not need to be created. It does not need to be produced. It already is, as with every other aspect of spirit. All that needs to happen is for it to be made known, and it is made known by reason of the substance with which it naturally blends. Then the energy, which initially was undimensional, is found to be present dimensionally speaking. The energy and the substance are one. Heaven and earth are One.
We need to see the vast variety of substance that is required to encompass the extent of this power. I just mentioned the material circumstances and that's the very lowest level of generation. But we are constantly generating substance, and also dissipating substance. We have noted one of the ways of dissipation relative to noise. You will note that they have discovered that some sounds are discharge sounds and some sounds are charge sounds. The chanting is all within the range of the charge sounds, but obviously with the indiscriminate production of sound—noise—in the human nature world the vast majority of it would be discharge sounds, dissipating energy because it's dissipating substance; dissipating the substance in which the energy would be made apparent. And if the energy isn't made apparent it seems as though we have lost energy. But there is no less energy—merely less substance, or less of the right kind of substance. And it is human behavior, its various aspects, that either generates the right substance of the right nature, of the right quality, capable of rising to all the levels that it needs to occupy—or we can dissipate substance, discharge substance, or merely generate it at certain levels which certainly will not allow an adequate experience of the creative power which is available.
Now human generation, such as it is, any that has lasted any length of time, has tended to be of quite a low vibrational nature, and it permits the experience of power of a very limited sort. It's only when we have the whole of this substance at all levels that we discover the reality of power in balance. Here comes the matter of balance again—balance which evidently and obviously relates very much to the hearing mechanism. How clear is it? Here is a physical form of manifestation which may transmit a sense of balance to the physical form, but there is balance at every level, not merely the physical level. We wouldn't be very effective certainly if we were stumbling around physically unbalanced, as people sometimes do for various reasons, but we need more balance than that. We need more substance than physical substance in physical forms. We need the substance in all of its levels, and in the forms that it takes at those levels when those forms are the design of spirit.
The physical form of man is originally designed in spirit. It's gone out of whack considerably since then, but basically the design is present and capable of being regenerated—the last thing to be regenerated, incidentally, insofar as human experience is concerned because the power, the energy, comes down from God out of heaven. In other words, it emerges through the higher vibrational levels initially and subsequently permeates all the other levels on the way out. The last one to be permeated is the flesh body. But the substance of the flesh was generated and incorporated into this particular form by reason of this energy. Obviously nothing could happen if the fetus was dead for instance—no further development.
So, the energy is present—call it different things at different levels, but the energy was present humanly speaking—it still is, but the substance has been inadequate and so there could not be real balance. We begin to find this balance as there is the generation of the higher levels of spiritual substance so that the spirit at those levels may be incorporated into experience and expression on earth. Then the basics for balance begin to emerge. We don't really know what that balance is yet. We have some awareness that there is balance. We have some experience of our own individual balance to some degree, but you also have been aware as of the human tendency for the yo-yo experience, it can be described. But I'm sure you're all sure that there is a state of balance. Well you can't get to it. All you can do is to function in balance at this level to this extent so that when you feel yourself getting out of balance you quickly reorient and come back into balance, so that there may be the continual generation of the substance which will allow the experience of true balance, total balance, that your generations may all be perfect. That's what we are here to do; to generate all that is necessary to accommodate the Holy Spirit—the whole spirit. The whole spirit is not going to arbitrarily come swishing out with a great blast of wind when there is no facility, no capability of encompassing that. The substance simply isn't there. Well the substance has to be there for spirit to emerge, and to the extent that the substance is there the spirit does emerge and there is the experience of design, of control and of power.
These three things are the most obvious aspects of the outpouring of the spirit: design, control and power. Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. We don't give glory to God in fact. We could not give God any more glory than He has. All that can happen is that the glory that He has is revealed, that's all—and it takes substance to do it, and it takes our generation of that substance to allow the substance to be present, to the glory of God. We delight to listen, and because as we listen we hear, and because we hear we're capable of sounding the Tone of the Word which we have heard. Actually of course the hearing and the sounding are together as one. There is no separation. If we imagine that we hear the Word now and we'll be able to sound it tomorrow, we fool ourselves. If we hear it now, we sound it now. We have to hear it tomorrow to sound it tomorrow.
