To Stand At The Center

To  Stand  At  The  Center

Martin Cecil  March 8, 1981 p.m.

This morning I read a passage from the book Hanta Yo. The initial sentence was, “I stand at the center and the light shines all around me.” That is not the complete sentence but enough for now. Only when a person does stand at the center can the light shine all around him. What it means to stand at the center is something that needs to be understood, but clearly if there is a center at which to stand, only in that position is there a complete circle around one. Anywhere else but at that point of center it will only be a partial extension of whatever light there is. That light grows dimmer the farther one is away from the center presumably, if it shines from the center. So there is less light and less area possible of illumination. You can only see all around at the peak of the mountain.

In our services together in the Chapel here I always seek to stand at the center so that the light may shine all around and there may consequently be a balanced view, a true perspective; and the invitation is implied, to all concerned, also to stand at the center. Only from that position is there adequate light and a balanced view. After the service we sometimes have what heretofore have been called comment periods, during which most of those who speak say something from the standpoint of what they had seen of what I had said. If you have half a dozen or a dozen people speaking along those lines, you will have half a dozen or a dozen different views, each one saying in effect, “This is what I saw in what you said.” We do not really share a time together in order for this sort of approach to be taken. It may be, I suppose, the initial approach, the only one that most people could make; but if one remains in that stance as an observer of what is being said or offered and then outlining one’s interpretation of it, the purpose of being together would have been lost. As I say, it may be an initial approach. Now, you know that; you know that we are here to stand at the center together. I stand at the center, you individually stand at the center, and if we do that we are all at the center and the light shines round about. We see what should be seen and we see this in a balanced way, in true perspective.

If you have something to say after a service it wouldn’t be, “Well this is what I saw in what you said.” You would rather say, if you are going to say anything along those lines, “This is what I said from my position at the center.” Only on that basis can there be agreement. I am sure we all realize this. There is no agreement in the human world, simply because no one is standing at the same place. Each individual has his own world, which he sees in his own way, but if the person who is seeing on this basis doesn’t have adequate light because he is not standing at the center, and he does not have a balanced view, then what he sees will obviously be at best distorted. It will be a very shadowy view.

An invitation is constantly extended to stand at the center where one’s own light shines round about. You cannot be at the center and depend on anyone else’s light. When you are at the center there is the light shining round about and you see what is there and understand what is there, because the only position that this is possible is at the center. Most people do not stand at the center, simply because they place other points at the center. Usually there are a multiplicity of such points. As an example in the religious sense, on the part of a Christian we will say, Jesus Christ is probably put at the center. In that individual’s religious world Jesus Christ is at the center. Well if Jesus Christ is at the center, that person is not at the center. However, it does not stop with the religious world, because there is the business world, for instance, where something else is put at the center, or there is the home where something else is put at the center. And usually in all these various worlds there are a number of things that are put at the center. I suppose if you come back to the religious world of the Christian, he has a trinity at the center: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. These are all supposed to be one, but they all cram into the center somehow.

In a general sense human beings frequently put their own security at the center. This means probably that they put money at the center. They revolve around these centers, these centers which are so chosen in the various worlds—religious, business, home, national, international, whatever world. This means that a person is revolving in numerous directions at the same time, trying to revolve around all these centers. No wonder it is a bit confusing. There is only one place where it isn’t confusing, and that is at the true center, not the centers which people set up, idols one might say. It is a civilization of idolatry because people are revolving around all these different centers, and if they are revolving around something they certainly are not in the position of a center, for the center is the still point.

The true position of anyone is at the center. That is the only position from which the world makes sense. If one has other centers around which one is revolving, the world keeps changing in one’s own view, because one is constantly in another position. It looks this way at one moment and someway else at another moment. But at the true center, upon the immovable rock one might say, one is able to view from that still point all moving things. One does not move oneself. And only from that center does the light shine. If one is in that center, the light shines because of oneself. I stand at the center and the light shines all around me. I am the light. So on that basis there is a stable point. Heaven knows that there is need for a stable point on earth.

Sometimes comment is made in a movie by some character or other probably trying to be funny: “I lie a lot.” Something had been said that just wasn’t so, and when faced with the statement and the fact, the excuse comes, “Oh, I lie a lot.” Well this is customary with human beings. They lie a lot. As the Psalmist of old said, “All men are liars.” Having said that, he thought he was being a little hasty; but I don’t really think so. A person is bound to be a liar unless he stands at the center. It is the only safe place to be. It is the only place from which the truth may be spoken. It is a great relief to be in that place and to speak the truth, because then you don’t have to try to remember all the time what you said!

I stand at the center.

My concern on the eve of my departure—probably the last time I will have opportunity to speak to all of you together—is that there should be those who stand at the center, here or wherever they are. The external geographical position is unimportant. One simply needs to stand at the center, in the place where one belongs, in that place where each individual human being belongs and therefore all human beings belong. This is the one stable point on earth; but for the most part it has been unoccupied because so many things have been placed at the center of human lives.

If we return again for a moment to the Christian world and those who place Jesus Christ at the center, there might be a recalling of a certain statement that has come down to us: “that where I am, there ye may be also”—at the center. This seems to have been largely forgotten insofar as those who call themselves Christians are concerned. They insist upon keeping Jesus at the center but won’t go there themselves. If anything is done in this regard it usually relates to an endeavor to have Jesus come to me: “Jesus, come into my heart.” That will really make somebody important! Jesus is presumably at the center insofar as He is concerned, but where are we? At the center too? So as I am departing I am concerned that there should be those who occupy the center regardless. My only purpose has been to offer during this period, the last few months, the opportunity to stand at the center to each individual; not to look at me and say, “You are standing at the center.” That may or may not be; that is my business. But what about you? Do you stand at the center? Does the light shine all around you so that you do not need to try to extract the light from somebody else?

We noted this morning how there is the condition of emptiness within the scope of human experience; a false experience, because the fact of the matter is there is no emptiness. The one substance of love fills all space. This of course has been forgotten. There has been a veil darkening human consciousness in this regard. Because of this it has been imagined that there was a lot of emptiness: Human beings are lonely, they are empty, they try to stuff themselves full of what they imagine will assuage this desolate feeling, the abomination of desolation, when in fact there is no need because there is no emptiness. It is a human dream, an imagination, that results from the fact that a person is not at the center. At the center there is completeness, wholeness, and an awareness of completeness and wholeness. Everything is round about. There is no lack, but that is so in the experience of a person only to the extent that he stands at the center. If he puts something else there he himself cannot be there, and this is the way that the delusion of separateness is maintained. So many idols are established, around which human beings delight apparently to revolve, and because of this the experience of wholeness, of oneness, is impossible. The fact that there is only this one true substance of love present is hidden, remains unknown.

It is interesting that in various ways now the suggestion is being made in the field of healing that a person should use his imagination to envision a perfect condition. People who are sick don’t have any trouble envisioning the imperfect condition. Their ache, their pain, whatever it is, keeps informing them of the seeming fact of the imperfect condition, and this tends to fill a person’s consciousness. It has been recognized in some measure that if you let your consciousness be filled with a perfect envisionment then that is a very potent factor in the experience of healing. Of course it is all in the realm of imagination. A person is earnestly endeavoring to maintain in his consciousness a view of the perfect part, which is sick; the part itself is telling the individual all the time that it isn’t perfect. So there is a bit of a conflict in here. If he doesn’t keep at it then the consciousness of the imperfection will prevail and the person will probably get worse. But if he can sustain this vision of perfectness, then perhaps there is a chance that the situation will change for the better, and because there will then be less yammering on the part of the imperfection to gain attention the individual will find it easier to keep his view of the perfect state clear and, lo and behold, healing comes. Well we can see some sense to this, but it isn’t really a matter of trying to imagine something; it is a matter of becoming aware of what actually is so. There is a difference. The person who is trying to imagine something is doing it against odds. If he doesn't keep right on the ball of imagination he will slip right off it and the imperfection will reassert itself with great force.

There is this universal substance, the absolute solid: love. It is so, even though human beings may not know it. The rediscovery of this is what is obviously needful. We have called it an awakening, awakening to the truth, the truth of love, the universal substance, the absolute solid out of which all other substance is differentiated, becoming in that differentiation less and less solid until, as we have seen in the flesh body, it is mostly space. Physical substance, so called, is mostly space. It has not seemed so to human beings; they rap their knuckles on the lectern and it is painful. But the fact of the matter is that anything supposedly solid is mostly space, while what was supposedly very ethereal, like love, is actually very solid. It is the one true solid out of which may be, and is, differentiated all the other levels of substance.

If a person is sick it brings a sense of lack, of emptiness; there is something absent. It may seem as though the sickness, whatever it is, is present. It gains attention, and when you pay attention to something it tends to grow. So there is this sense of emptiness in relationship to disease or sickness, and who is going to define disease or sickness? It is not only the aches and pains of the individual physical body, is it? It relates to the mind too and the emotions; it relates to the world itself, to one’s environment. There is, as we have seen, this sense of emptiness, this sense of absence. Something isn't there that really ought to be there somehow. But what ought to be there, in fact is there, the substance of love, but it has become obscured, hidden behind a veil in human consciousness. Only as that veil is drawn aside can there be an increasing awareness of what is there. If one becomes aware of what is actually there one begins to lose one’s association with a state of absence. The state of absence is a state of sickness or disease. When the substance of love, which when differentiated includes the substance of truth and the substance of life, becomes increasingly apparent, it fills what was before thought of as a state of emptiness and there is what should be there. Where did the sickness go then? It was merely an evidence of the fact that the individual was unaware of the truth, of the fact that the substance of love was there, an all-inclusive substance which provides everything for everything.

So it isn’t really a matter of desperately trying to imagine something, because that is only back in the field of mirage again, but of being at the center where the reality is, where there is a constant awareness of that reality. In terms of our morning’s consideration that would be in the oasis. When you are in the oasis you are not likely to be seeing a mirage, are you? The mirage is seen by those who are not in the oasis. Now, considering a mirage, it is usually looked upon as relating to something over the horizon. From the standpoint of our analogy it isn’t over the horizon at all. Geographically speaking it is right where the person is, but he is not at the center of where he really is; he is somewhere else, off from that positioning, and so he sees a mirage of the oasis, which in fact tells him that there is an oasis somewhere. It didn’t just manifest in the atmosphere from nowhere; it is a reflection of something. And of course that reflection will be dependent upon the atmosphere, won’t it? It is usually thought of as relating to heat, heat rising from the sand of the desert maybe. And that rises in wavy fashion; consequently anything reflected in that atmosphere will tend to be distorted. Some things will appear to be larger than life and some things smaller. So it is all out of perspective. This is the world that human beings see. They think that the source of that mirage is over the horizon. People in every generation have thought that, have looked far and wide for the source of the mirage, when the source was exactly where the individual himself was. But because he had put so many other things at center there was no room for him. We have all tended to have that experience: so many other things put at center. This means that a person has to travel here, travel there, to get closer to whatever it was that he put at his center.

When he himself comes back to the true point of center he comes back to the oasis where the reality is; and in that position, looking forth from that position, he doesn’t see any mirages. He sees what is actually there. Of course he discovers that the oasis, which first of all was thought of as being a little place—“Maybe we can find this little place by turning within ourselves, seeking the Father within,” or whatever the view might have been—turns out, when we begin to discover the reality of it, not to be a little place at all. It occupies the world all around us. There is nothing but oasis. That has something to do with the coming of the Kingdom, doesn’t it?

We have a story in the Book of Revelation by John, who used a lot of allegories, but most of what he described was what he saw. For instance, in the 21st chapter of Revelation, he saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” and he saw “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven.” Here was something seen, not necessarily known. Obviously many of these things could only be seen, because they were not knowable at that point. If we consider something like the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, do we realize that that is an analogy? A lot of people have thought that it was a literal description of something that was going to happen in the physical sense. They supported this idea, of course, by the thought that later on in the same book it says you shouldn’t take anything away from what was said nor add anything to it. But you have to see what is there; otherwise you are bound to be taking away and adding. Clearly enough, in this rather obscure outline in the Book of Revelation it is virtually all allegory.

“The holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven.” It doesn’t come down from God out of heaven. “Oh, but I thought it did.” No it doesn’t; it is right here now. It always has been right here now, but in seeking to convey some sort of initial point of contact for human beings to a real understanding it was couched in terms that would seem to be applicable to the human consciousness. There is apparently an absence, an emptiness, so something needs to come into it. But we suddenly realize, as we move along the way, that there really isn’t an emptiness; so how can something come into it if it isn’t there? Whatever was supposed to come into it we discover is already there. Oh we can perhaps use ways of describing these things, which are not really the truth at all. It just conveys something to human consciousness so that it might be possible for the experience of the reality, the oasis, to be known and the mirage forgotten. So we rightly stand at the center, because we haven’t put anything else there. We may acknowledge that there is an infinite reality at the center, so that finding ourselves at the center we do not find ourselves alone.

In speaking of these things we have to use words, allegories of various kinds, to convey at least something. But we are not interested in this mirage state, allegorical state, but in the experience of the thing itself. We can spend all our lives admiring a mirage—“What a remarkable phenomenon”—and we may see beautiful things in that mirage, very impressive; but it is very insubstantial, and that is the world that human beings know, very insubstantial. But the oasis is here and when one puts nothing at the center, but accepts the responsibility of being at the center oneself, the center of one’s own life, then things come into balance and we are in position to take care of all for which we are responsible by reason of our presence at the center. We discover what that is. You cannot discover what that is anywhere else but by being at the center. Human beings are inclined to want to know ahead of time what it would be like to be at the center: are they going to enjoy that fact? No, I don’t think so, because the person who is asking these questions is not going to be at the center. If there is the inclination to try to discover what it would be to be at the center without being at the center, he will be very disappointed. One must come to the center without knowing ahead of time what the experience would be.

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” That is an interesting statement, isn’t it?—before me. Oh! that was the word of the Lord from somewhere. Yes, the word of the Lord all right, stating the absolute truth: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. I stand at the center and the light shines all around me. I am the light. I am the way, the truth, and the life. That statement can be spoken truly by one who stands at the center. Christians claim to believe that it was spoken truly by Jesus. Why was it spoken truly by Him if it was? Because He stood at the center. Is there no opportunity for any other to stand at the center? Is it such a little dot that only one person can be there?

I stand at the center. Nobody comes to the experience of the truth of love but by me. That is looked upon as being an arrogant and blasphemous statement, even in the case of Jesus when He was on earth. Now He has been so exalted in the human consciousness that it is all right; we will let it stand for Him. But He was a person on earth, proclaiming the way, the truth and the life for anyone and everyone. Who has what it takes to accept the challenge? Do we? I stand at the center. Who has the nerve to say that and to prove it out? Most people don’t want to say it because they don’t want to prove it out. But that is what we are here to do, and there is no hope for the flowers, let alone human beings, if there are not those who stand at the center and prove it out. One cannot stand at the center and at the same time put someone else at the center.

You cannot stand at your center and put me at the center.

I stand at the center. Each one must say that, speaking truly for himself or herself. I do it. And as there are those who actually do it, here and anywhere, then the oasis is known, the Kingdom is known. In that sense it could be said the kingdom has come. Actually it didn’t come, because it was here already, but nobody was on hand to know it. Only those who stand at the center can know it. Why hesitate then from assuming that position of natural responsibility? so that no longer is there any looking toward other centers.

This was what was implied by that peculiar word I read this morning, Wakantanka. “I am that which they call great mystery. I am that which each one calls Wakantanka”; that is: the Lord, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Allah, God, as someone or something separate from oneself. That is a lie. Human beings would have no existence at all if there was in fact separation. They discover that; it is called death. When the separation is absolute there is nothing. Wakantanka could apply to any center, or any object, person, imagination, that is placed at a center for oneself so that one revolves around that idol. That is Wakantanka. What that word means I ... well you know now! Whether whoever originally wrote it knew or not is beside the point. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, because I stand at the center and the light shines all around me. I am the light. Let each one prove it out. If there is any failure, your failure is my failure and my failure is your failure, because of the fact of oneness, the truth of oneness. But by the same token your victory is my victory, and my victory is your victory. That seems to be the way to go.

© emissaries of divine light