The Fourth Spirit

The  Fourth  Spirit

Martin Cecil  May 30, 1965

How vital is purity of heart! The fourth spirit before the Throne of God has been designated as the Spirit of Purification. We have given special consideration to the Spirit of Love, first; then we have moved on to the Spirit of the Womb, right atmosphere, keeping sacred things sacred. Recently the Spirit of Life has received special emphasis, which is the fifth spirit. And now, today, the Spirit of Purification, at the fourth level.

The fourth plane of being connects the Inner Trinity with the Outer Trinity. Everything must come through the fourth plane if it is to appear in the outer manifestation, and this relates very particularly to the heart. When we consider the three outer planes of being, or the three aspects of our own individual being, we usually speak of body, mind and spiritual expression. Sometimes that is shortened to “spirit.” We really need a different word to designate this particular level in ourselves. We can describe it accurately when we speak of the body as the physical capacity. And then we have the mental capacity. And finally the spiritual capacity—but the spiritual capacity is not the same thing as the Spirit. It is the means by which we may give expression to spirit. Sometimes the word “soul” is used to indicate this level of being, but that word is a little confusing to many, so I don't think it is the right one for us. But we need, in our own consciousness at least, to have the awareness that these three outer levels are simply the means by which something can manifest according to the triune pattern of God. There is the Inner Trinity and the Outer Trinity, and that which is of the Inner Trinity reaches the Outer Trinity through the realm which needs purifying in our own experience: the heart. How much experience have we had of Spirit, spelled with a capital S?

It is important that we should be able to move easily and naturally to higher levels of understanding than have yet been experienced. I have found, in seeking to move to those higher levels, a tendency for a drag to appear; we might question as to why. Presumably because the capacities which are necessary to function at those levels have not been adequately developed, so that we begin to feel uncertain and perhaps out of our depth; there begins to be something of a resistance to the experience. If there is some realm in which you have had no experience there seems to be an inherent tendency in human beings to resist moving into that realm of experience. It is looked upon as being unnecessary. A person is getting along quite well where he is, when the suggestion is offered that there should be movement into another realm. When the suggestion to move is put forward the individual says, “No, I like it here,” and maybe you have noticed this in your own experience.

If we are to move into a realm of understanding which transcends anything that has been known in the fallen human state, we must permit the development of the capacity to experience it. It seems so often that people expect something to occur as by magic. If as children we expected to walk as by magic we would still be crawling. We had to rise up, clinging for support perhaps for the time being; but eventually we were able to venture upon our own two feet. And so it is in the unfoldment at any level of being. I think this is one of the reasons why our Master stressed the importance of becoming as a little child, because a child is ready to venture. But when we become of supposedly adult years there is increasing hesitancy in this regard, and yet if we don't venture we never move very far. So to experience what is needful we need to have the spirit of adventure alive in us, so that we can step forward, rise up. If there is resistance it tends to cause us to sink into a pattern of lethargy, and I have noticed that at times, in service, so that we found it quite difficult to move.

Purity of heart alone permits the experience of the Spirit of God in action—the outpouring of the spirit. Now we can't get the spirit as individuals. So often a person will try to do this, as though he could experience some sort of an outpouring of the spirit without regard to his fellows. And there are those who, imagining that they are making spiritual strides, have tended to isolate themselves from others, as though that was an evidence of spiritual progress. It isn't, because the spirit moves through the whole. We recognize that there is a Divine Design. There is a body, a living organism, already a reality, which needs to take form at the level where we are. The spirit is moving through this living organism already. To the extent that we come into position to experience the movement of that spirit through ourselves individually, we will find ourselves a part of that whole, of the living organism, the body of the Son of God. We cannot experience the genuine movement of the spirit of God on a solitary basis.

Human beings have been functioning in a solitary way. They have found no city to dwell in; they have found no pattern of relationship with their fellows, no dwelling place in association with others. Each individual has been in his isolated little cell, and it is a pretty lonely place, and in that state of loneliness various efforts have been made to disguise it, various escapes have been developed, but the escapes increase the sense of lack. Human beings have this sense of lack, of void, of emptiness, because there has been a lack of awareness of what it was that was present in reality. There has been a veil in between, and there has been a sense of being only partly present. Human beings have this sense of emptiness, this sense of void within themselves. Although many people may not have specifically defined it for themselves, they function in an awareness—subconscious awareness perhaps—influencing what they do on the basis of the fact of this void, this lack. The heart has been impure; the veil has been in place. That which was of the Inner Trinity has been obscured; it hasn't been able to get through into the manifestation of the outer expression. The result is that the outer expression has experienced the lack of it and, we recognize, has attempted by various means to fill the need from external sources, which cannot really be done.

There is this sense of void. Now perhaps this is one of the reasons why there has been such a great increase in the attitudes of human beings denying the existence of God. There has been no real admission on the part of the vast majority of people that there was anything lacking. People are inclined to try to cover it up and to pretend that there isn't any void there. They're getting along fine, thank you! But they know inside that they're not, that there is something wrong, that there is something distorted, that there is something of a chaotic state inside, and consequently there is a state of dishonesty present, because people will not acknowledge it. They sense it but won't acknowledge it, and until it is acknowledged nothing can be done about it. If a person refuses to acknowledge that there is anything lacking in himself, then he will take the attitude that there doesn't need to be any God, because he is deluding himself into imagining that he is adequate with respect to his own expression of life. That is a thoroughly dishonest attitude when we come to look at it, because this lack is there. The void is there. There must be the acknowledgment of it if there is to be the beginning experience of that which is required to dissipate the void, and this acknowledgment has been called repentance.

Now because repentance has been used in wrong ways many have rebelled against the idea of repentance. Fundamentally repentance is an indication of the beginning of honesty on the part of a person—true repentance—an acknowledgment of the fact that there is something wrong, that there is something lacking, that there is a void in one's own being; the external capacities are not adequate of themselves. As there is an admission of this fact there begins to be a basis for considering how it can be changed. If a person won't admit it, well nothing can be done. So here we have a necessary step then. But there needs to be a recognition that in the movement of the spirit there begins to be an awareness of relatedness in the whole. It is impossible to experience the genuine movement of the spirit of God through oneself and not at the same time begin to experience relatedness to a greater whole. It is never something that is merely an individual experience, without regard to anyone or anything else.

The spirit which moves through us is the spirit which is moving through the whole. Therefore if we experience that spirit, we begin to experience the reality of the whole. Consequently our attitude, our function, will always be related to the whole. Where there is little experience of that spirit the individual will constantly be trying to pick himself out of the whole. To the extent that we begin to experience it in form in our own group here, he will be taking himself out of that into an individual pattern, all on his own. It seems like a contradiction to many people, but the experience of the reality of individuality is impossible except in the whole. People think they have to break out of the whole in order to be individual. Well this perhaps is true from the standpoint of the distorted pattern of the whole as it relates to man's fallen state. We certainly have to come out of the fallen state; but coming out of the fallen state doesn't mean that we become isolated individuals expressing some special form of individuality all on our own without regard to anyone else. We begin to move into the experience of the real whole, the Divine Organism, which at the present time has very little form on earth; but we begin to experience something from the standpoint of spirit, and consequently our concern is with this which is taking form from the standpoint of the whole. Every move we make is related in our consciousness to its effect upon the greater manifestation of the whole of the Divine Organism. We can never do anything which denies the whole. How often I have noted that things are done which actually do deny the whole, because the individual had lifted himself out of it—by becoming self-centered—and there is a tendency to try to lift others out of it too.

It has seemed always such a very difficult thing for responding ones to accept the necessity of coordination. It is felt, apparently, that one cannot be an individual without acting without regard to anyone else. This is supposed, in the human consciousness, to reveal one's own special individuality. “To hell with everyone else! I'm going to be myself.” Well that isn't a true self, because the true self is a part of the whole. We are not concerned with the attitude which says “To hell with everyone else.” We are concerned with the attitude which says “To heaven with everybody else!”; in other words “Into the whole with everybody else.” “To hell with everybody else” is the scattering pattern, moving out in disintegration. “To heaven with everybody else” is the integrating pattern, where the whole begins to take form in manifestation. But the spirit always comes before the form, doesn't it? So there must first be this awareness from the standpoint of spirit, from the standpoint of the movement of the spirit in our own experience, and that movement is a very real thing when it is known.

There is the story of the day of Pentecost way back, when there was what was called the outpouring of the holy spirit, and it came because they were with one accord in one place. In other words there was a consciousness of the whole, an awareness of the reality of the whole in spirit; not trying to fit people together in the external sense—you get into trouble that way, because people simply don't fit on that basis. The coordination comes in spirit first, and this relates to the consciousness, the awareness, which we may have of the reality of the Divine Organism, the Living Whole.

Perception! "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God," they shall see the reality of the living whole, and they will no longer be fooled into supposing that individually they are separate from the whole. I am sure that many of you have had a sensing on occasion—it probably came as by chance—of the fact that you are a part of the living whole in the external sense. Sometimes this experience comes when you are alone insofar as other human beings are concerned, but maybe in the midst of what is called nature. Possibly looking up into the night sky there comes a feeling, an awareness in that way, of being a part of everything, and that everything is a part of you. Now sometimes there is a touching of this for a moment in human beings, and that is wonderful, but it certainly isn't sufficient. We need to emerge into a consistent awareness of the truth in this regard: that we are a part of the living whole. That awareness is an awareness of God, and it comes by reason of purity of heart. A momentary draining out of impurities may permit a momentary experience of the reality, but we are interested in a permanently pure heart, so that there may be a permanent experience of the reality of the whole.

One of the aspects of this, as I mentioned before, is that we are concerned to permit integration of ourselves and of others in the whole, and we will do whatever is necessary to allow this to be so. The attitude has so often been, with responding ones, that they are going to buck this; they're going to rebel against it; they don't wish to contribute their own individual expression into the whole; they want to hold it to themselves. Now it may be, to start with, there is little real understanding of what the experience of coordination and integration in the whole would ultimately be; but we have to start with such understanding as we may have. It may be a very elementary understanding. In this regard we want to make very sure that what we are doing is rightly coordinated with what others are doing, so we are not reluctant to provide information on this point, in relationship to what we are doing, or what we are going to do, or what we propose to do, or what we think might be the right thing to do, in order to discover whether it fits in the whole. So many people seem to imagine that when this is done, “Well I'm going to be stunted; I'm not going to be able to do anything!” But we have to start where we are. What the ultimate experience will be we don't yet know, but we have to be concerned with what we are capable of doing now to permit it to begin to appear, to be experienced, to appear, and obviously it is going to be a very limited thing to start with, because we are very few in number for one thing.

Now very often there is a certain amount of interest taken in one another's business, in realms where maybe it would be better if we didn't. I am talking about the actual function, daily function, in the spheres of our activity; not prying into things that are none of our business. There's been a good deal of that, too, and that doesn't help. We are concerned to see that what we do fits in with what is moving in relationship to the whole. And how are we going to find out? By going blindly ahead and trying to force what we're doing on everybody else, and only when we find it doesn't work are we convinced that it can't fit? Well if we do that, then we're messing things up and certainly not learning how to move in the current of the spirit. Gradually, as we are interested in making sure that our action is coordinated in the whole, and we are encouraging and inspiring others to do likewise, we will increase in sensitivity, in the perception of what it is that is moving, and we may find that in season—it isn't quite here yet, I don't think—that we will be able to function in a coordinated manner without necessarily talking about everything. Sometimes a couple, for instance, who have lived a long time together, all their lives, they're getting on in years, know pretty well what the other is doing or thinking, what is moving in that particular pattern, so that there is a coordination without talking about it particularly. Well at a certain level that perhaps is an illustration of the way it works, but we have to start on the basis of considering the thing at the level of our conscious understanding, to see how it may fit, and instead of rebelling against this necessity we then have the attitude of cooperating fully to make very sure that everything fits together. We may find occasionally that there is a slip here or there inadvertently, but when our interest is in this, then we begin to become sensitive in that direction, in the direction of the current of the spirit which is moving to provide a coordinated and integrated manifestation of the whole.

This spirit begins to move through us and we begin to know what it is, but only because we take an interest in it. This is part of the process of the purifying of the heart. We don't know right off the bat. We don't have some magic sensitivity right away. We've been functioning a long time in the fallen state. We've been sensitive to all the wrong things for a long time. But once our interest begins to be in the right direction, then the sensitivity can grow in that direction and we can begin to experience this awareness of the importance of the whole. In one sense we could say that we become aware of Self-importance, because we are important in the whole, not outside of it. We have no importance outside of it, and this is something that is sensed by people; that is why they have to keep thrusting the human ego forward to try to make themselves feel important, feel that there isn't this void, this blank inside.

When we come into the whole we don't need the human ego anymore, because we are important there and we know it. We don't have to convince ourselves; we don't have to try to get others to convince us; we don't have to maneuver around to try to get others to tell us what wonderful fellows we are. And if someone does say we're wonderful, well we take it, shall we say, with a grain of salt. We know pretty well the way it really is. Oh, it is nice to have a little boost now and again, but don't let's let it inflate the human ego, because we'll have to be cut down to size later and that sometimes is a painful business. So it is best to stay pretty small until the movement of the spirit through us causes us to expand, not because we try to get bigger. And then, becoming more keenly aware of the importance and the reality of the Divine Organism, the living whole, we see God. That is God: the living whole; not a person. The divine reality!

“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God,” and here we are concerned to do that which is necessary to allow the purification of the heart. As we began to see this morning, the direction of our attention is a vital factor. There is a living whole. Let's pay attention to it. Let us seek it out. Let us be concerned to recognize it. I think it can be said that we all have some awareness of it already. That awareness is not based simply on the extent to which it has taken form. If you try to make your awareness be founded upon this, you will be in a state of turmoil much of the time, because the external manifestation is very inadequate and conflicting at times; but when it is based in the awareness of the spirit, then that is there regardless of the external form. Our concern is that we should play our part in assisting the form to appear. We can't assist the form to appear unless we have a recognition of what it is that is to appear, unless we have an awareness of the spirit, and the awareness of the spirit in this regard is absolutely dependent upon our interest in the manifestation of wholeness, of integrated, coordinated wholeness. Remember that a gauge of the extent to which the spirit of God is actually moving through your capacities will be the extent of your awareness of the reality of the living whole. So you needn't fool yourself anymore with respect to the supposed movement of the spirit, if whatever you have been experiencing hasn't permitted you to have a real awareness of the living whole. It is through the heart, the pure heart, that the divine reality appears.

The spirit of purification comes to focus within the scope of our consciousness, as to its nature. The spirit of purification at the present time relates to the necessities of the purifying of the heart. The heart being impure, it needs to be purified, and we have been considering some of the ways and means by which this can transpire more than it has. But even in the divine state obviously there is still the spirit of purification, and this doesn't relate to the necessities of purifying the hearts of divine men and women—they are pure—but of so functioning that everything for which one is responsible is kept sacred. You may remember how Job sanctified his sons and his daughters every day lest they had “cursed God in their hearts”; in other words man is responsible for keeping all the creation out here on earth under its proper dominion, in its proper place, functioning as it should function, in the manifestation of the divine design—something that is beautiful and sacred. And in the processes of this function there is constantly that which is ascending, something that is moving up.

The descending, outpouring radiation of the spirit of God keeps everything holy, keeps everything under control, allows for the right coordination, the right function, in the field of the creation, so that that which is being brought forth by reason of this right function may ascend, may move upward. There is the movement out of the outer realms into the inner realms, just as there is the movement out of the inner realms into the outer realms. There is a complete cycle: that which is coming down and that which is moving up—the angels ascending and descending on the ladder. And that which is ascending, moving upward, is purified in the sense that it is transformed as it moves from level to level: this is the process of ascension. That which is capable of function at one level must experience some sort of a transformation before it is capable of function at the next higher level, and this transformation is the purification that takes place in the divine state. Of course something of that is going on even now, but dominantly the need for purification relates to the impure hearts of human beings, which in the divine state would not be impure.

So we are here to let this purification transpire in us that we may be in position to share with God the responsibilities of His creative work by which ascension takes place, by which the transformation of all things is caused to appear. The first necessity relates to our own hearts however. What interest do we have in this matter? Are we still in some respects trying to escape from the frustration consequent upon the fact of the impure heart? Human beings become so desperate because of this that they do all sorts of terrible things. Refusing to admit the lack within themselves they are goaded into desperate action of one sort or another, and we see how this desperate action is appearing in so many ways in the world today. Human beings have lost so much of any awareness that they may have had before of the reality of God. Because of unwise, unbalanced intellectual development they deny God, they deny the existence of God, and they consequently deny their own lacks, their own emptiness, and this brings a sense of desperation. There is wonderful relief in admitting the fact, in repenting; and then the heart may begin to be purified, because we take an interest in those things which are of the spirit of God, the qualities and characteristics of God. And one of these relates to the awareness of the whole, the living whole. In this awareness the spirit of God moves increasingly; there is an increased depth to the movement of that spirit within ourselves—something that is known as being real and wonderful, something which begins to transcend, in our sense of values, all of the things that seemed so important before from the standpoint of the external pattern. We begin to know the truth, the reality, and we're made free by it: the movement of the spirit of the living God within our hearts.

So tonight in our meditations we have touched into this field; but to what extent have we the capacities developed to really experience what is available? Isn't it important that our capacities should increase in this regard? Are they going to increase all on their own? No, we have to do something. While there is a natural growth and unfoldment, a natural rhythm to it—we can't hurry that—nevertheless we must align ourselves with that rhythm to experience it, and once more we begin to see that interest is a vital key. We need to be interested in letting the heart be purified, so that we are not using the escape mechanisms to prevent it; because every time we use an escape mechanism we go more into the darkness, away from the experience which God offers. Let us concern ourselves with the development of our awareness and our experience of the living whole because we become a part of it. This is our primary concern. We don't keep ducking out into our own little foxholes, escape patterns, but move easily and naturally into the experience of the whole, where the blessing is, where the fulfilment is, where the spirit of the living God is.

Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leads to life. Wide is the gate and broad is the way which leads to destruction. We recall these words, O Lord, and we have sufficient experience to know the truth of them. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” We have sufficient experience in this regard to know the truth of it. We would not hold back. We would not let ourselves be distracted from the glorious fulfilment of purpose that is offered to us, but learning to appreciate the whole, to become aware of its reality increasingly, we would offer ourselves into it that we may know the reality, the movement, the outpouring, of the spirit and experience life. O Lord, I thank Thee for each one who is dedicated and yielded to this fulfilment, in the Christ. Aum-en.

© emissaries of Divine Light