The Kingdom Of Heaven Is Here
Martin Cecil April 27, 1980 p.m.
This is the day that the Lord hath made; we rejoice and are glad in it. It’s the only day we have! Do we rejoice? Are we glad in this day? It always is this day. What is the fact in this regard? The kingdom of heaven is present. Never has it been absent. How often do we say that heaven and earth are one? What do the words mean?—anything at all? Is the fact known to us, or do we exist still much of the time in the darkness of ignorance? If the truth is not known we are ignorant. How long ago was it that the creative words were spoken, “Let there be light”? Were the creative words ever spoken since, “Let there not be light”?
“Let there be light: and there was light”; therefore there is light. This has never ceased to be the fact. It is so now in this day, in this hour, in this moment. The kingdom of heaven, characterized by light, is here present. It scintillates in the atmosphere around us. We breathe it in, we breathe it out. We are immersed in it. It is within us and all around us. Are we still, in fact, ignorant of this truth? The darkness of ignorance comprehends not the light, comprehends not what the truth is. This truth of the kingdom is not only so for us who are present here but for all people on the face of the earth. It is the truth throughout the whole universe. he universe rejoices and is glad, but do human beings?—in particular, do we? Do we know the truth, or is it merely something to be anticipated one bright and glorious day—next week? The truth was true yesterday, it will be true tomorrow, and it is true in this very moment.
It would seem that the human attitude has been one of having been mistreated: “We were kicked out of the garden. We were condemned to darkness, and the only light we might think we know is what may be intellectually generated.” But that is the darkness of ignorance. Which of the great intellects of the world knows the reality of the kingdom now? Will more investigation, more education, make the kingdom known to anyone? The light indeed shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.
All that has been necessary is to awaken once more to the truth, to live in the kingdom. Why not? It’s here! Knowing it is here—or perhaps I should say believing it is here—would it be our preference to deny it? Or would the greater blessing be known if we acknowledged it? Human minds, of course, are very reluctant to acknowledge it. There is every sort of good reason to reject it. I’m sure your mind is quite capable of thinking up those reasons. It hasn’t had to try very hard either. But if the truth is that heaven and earth are one, the kingdom is here, a denial of that in our own attitudes and experience would certainly be the acceptance of a lie; and a lie can never be made true, no matter how convincing the arguments put forward may be. The kingdom of heaven is here; it has never been absent.
Perhaps we have reached a point today when we might almost acknowledge that this is true. The atmosphere is full of the kingdom of heaven. Our flesh bodies are full of the kingdom of heaven. Our minds and our hearts are full of the kingdom of heaven. Even religious people believe that God is omnipresent. What would that mean, if not that He is present everywhere? Is there any place anywhere where God is not? Is there any place anywhere where His kingdom is not? We might perhaps say, “Yes there is such a place—my consciousness!” But even that is a figment of fancy; it isn’t the fact. God is present. If we ourselves do not know it, then we proclaim our ignorance; we acknowledge a lie as being the basis for our own experience: “The kingdom isn’t here; God isn’t here.” That’s a lie, isn’t it? Is it not quite evident then that human beings have been thoroughly subject to the prince of liars, thoroughly convinced that what is proclaimed by the prince of liars is true? “And I can prove it!” That is the human attitude, but what futility. The kingdom of heaven is at hand; the kingdom of heaven is here. God is present, omnipresent. It is impossible to find any place where God is not, because there is no such place.
We have been offered the opportunity to awaken again to the truth, to know the truth; not just to believe something which in all our living we deny. If the kingdom of heaven is here, if God is present, why would we not accept the opportunity of dwelling in the kingdom, which is here, rather than insisting upon existing in the darkness of ignorance, which produces such hell and havoc in our human nightmare? Have you ever had what is called a nightmare? I’m sure you have. Did you ever wake up out of it? I’m sure you did! Where did the nightmare go? Perhaps it may have seemed real at the time. Perhaps because of an emotional attachment to it that sense of its realness may have persisted for a while—with some, maybe even to this very moment!—but it wasn’t real in fact. Why preserve it? The same is true of the nightmare state which human beings know when they are awake. Why preserve it? Why not let it go? Why not acknowledge the truth? “Oh,” a person says, “I couldn’t do that; it wouldn’t be honest.” That is something rather peculiar, isn’t it? It wouldn’t be honest to acknowledge the truth? Is it more honest to maintain a lie? “Oh yes,” the arguments come up, “it wouldn’t be honest because of this and this, which assures me that the kingdom of heaven is not present; God is not present. There wouldn’t be this experience if He was.” Aha! How do you know? If that is your experience then such an experience is evidently possible, even though God is present and the kingdom of heaven is present.
How often have you taken the attitude that if things were working the way they really should work you wouldn’t have the experience that you have? I receive many letters in which people explain this to me: “I know I shouldn’t feel this but I do, and I’m darned if I’m going to feel any other way, because I know I feel this way. This is the fact for me. I’m going to hang on to it if it kills me!” And it will. Why do it? How stupid can one get? When we know the truth we know that heaven and earth are one; the kingdom of heaven is here. It is not coming from anyplace, in fact; it may be emerging into our awareness—this truth coming, in that sense. But how could it ever come if we keep denying it? We deny it because we are so accustomed to being pushed around by the earthly state of our darkened experience. “It’s always been this way,” we are inclined to say, “therefore it must always be this way. I can’t help it.” That’s a lie.
It is the Lord’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, not because He has been withholding it heretofore but because you are finally willing to accept it, to accept the truth, to know the truth. Why should that be such a chore? Why should it be so difficult? It isn’t in fact. If we insist that it is difficult, that is our own insistence. We find ourselves as human beings in the human state of darkness; we find ourselves to be ignorant of the truth; but the truth is present, obviously so. How could the truth ever be absent? The truth is the way things are; it certainly is not necessarily the way human beings think they are. The truth is true and all is well, unconquerable life prevails! God is omnipresent. The kingdom of heaven is here. Saying so doesn’t make it any more so than it is, or denying it doesn’t make it any less so. The question is, What are we willing to accept into our own experience of living? How frantically human beings promote the idea that the kingdom of heaven is not present: “And I can tell you why it’s not present! I can give you all the ideas that I have, all the experiences that I have known, which make it abundantly clear that the kingdom of heaven is not present.”
How much of your time do you spend in proclaiming such arguments in the moments of your daily existence? You’re in this situation and “Look at that! That makes very plain that the kingdom of heaven is not at hand.” And people, I was going to say, go out of their way to find things to support that view, but I don’t think they go very far out of their way; it is their way. They have been doing it all their lives. We have been doing it all our lives, and insisting on it, and insisting that we are being honest when we do it. Oh to find an honest person, a truly honest person. We’ve all had the theory, but what’s the fact of our own experience?
The kingdom of heaven is here. Heaven and earth are one. It has never been otherwise. Usually a rider has been added to that: except in the experience of human beings. I don’t think there should be any such rider. If it has been imagined that that has been the experience, one has been convinced of nothing; one has had no experience, except of a blank. Do you ever take the attitude that you are somehow empty, somehow unfulfilled? I’m sure you have taken that attitude. Were you being honest? You’re acknowledging a lie, because the kingdom of heaven is at hand; the kingdom of heaven is here; heaven and earth are one. It is so now. We may say that there is a veil which has hidden this from our experience, but what is that veil? It is our attitude; it is our own acknowledgment of the lie, and insistence on the lie.
Perhaps one may say, “I have this particular ache or pain. I have a cold; I have the flu. Now that proves that the kingdom of heaven isn’t here!” No it doesn’t; it merely proves that you don’t know it. It also indicates that you are centered in the appearance of a lie. That is the most true thing to you: “I’ve got the flu.” Has that ever occurred in your experience? Then someone else may say, “Well I’ve got a broken arm; you can’t deny that!” What is the truth? The truth is that heaven and earth are one and the kingdom of heaven is here. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”; they shall know the truth. Impurity or filthiness of heart is what maintains the lie, and if you feel that you are capable of proving that the truth isn’t true, you have a filthy heart. Therefore we need to acknowledge this, do we not? Otherwise we would be again denying the truth.
I can proclaim this truth this morning in this setting, and do it in words. To some my words may seem quite convincing; to others I suspect that the firmly held arguments which deny this truth are still quite dominant. But it isn’t so much what I say in this hour, it isn’t so much what we may think we see in this hour, that is important. It is what we do, how we actually behave, what our attitudes really are, as we move daily through our particular environments. If the heart is impure we’re ignorant and in darkness, comprehending nothing. Nothing is our experience, so it wouldn’t be surprising if we felt empty, would it?
Coming again into the kingdom we know the truth. We may abide in the kingdom. We may be aware that there are a lot of people who don’t, and who think they are justified in not doing so. But if we ourselves abide in the kingdom we may be somewhat amazed that anyone could have any other attitude. But we are aware that people do. From my own standpoint, I think it has been proven over the years that I’ve really known what the truth is in this regard. I’ve never changed my story, have I? “Well, having all this experience under my belt now, I would have to admit that the kingdom of heaven isn’t at hand, or isn’t here, that heaven and earth aren’t one.” I don’t think you have ever heard me proclaim this. Do you think I haven’t had the chance to do so as much as anyone else? Because of whatever evidence there may be that I do come in the name of the Lord, I’ve invited others to share this with me, you included.
There have been those who have accepted this invitation, some perhaps more than others. There are some who stick around but who never were honest enough to acknowledge the truth. It was always a rather tentative thing, as revealed in the nature and quality of their living: “Well I’ll stay here in the vicinity for a while and see whether everybody else is going to wake up, whether others are going to prove to me this is the truth.” They never will of course. I can’t prove the truth to you or anyone. I can prove the truth to myself, and the same is true of each of you. You can either prove the truth or deny it. That’s the only choice any of us really have, isn’t it?
In our denial we may experience many different things, but the alternative to those many different things in experience is to prove the truth that the kingdom of heaven is here. Then we know that to be so; we live in it, we administer it in our environment. We would not at any time be anywhere else than in the kingdom. There are no doubt distractions that put in an appearance but why accept such distractions as though they were true? There may be the inclination to say, “This person or that person is not revealing the fact that the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Is that so? That’s not the point, is it? The point is that the kingdom of heaven is here. Does one know it for oneself? You can’t make anyone else know it, but anyone can know it for him- or herself and can live on that basis. There is an enfoldment of all that is present in one’s world. There is a keen awareness that springtime is here, because the kingdom of heaven is here. Life is burgeoning; the creative cycles are moving; all things are working together to perfection in fulfilment of what is unfolding by reason of the fact that the kingdom of heaven is here.
We need no longer deny the truth by claiming that it isn’t true, claiming that it isn’t true because our own minds tell us that it isn’t true, because the devil tells us that the truth isn’t true. It isn’t a matter, really, of trying to explain why the truth is true to the devil, is it? Do you anticipate that he would believe it or accept it or acknowledge it? Of course not! It’s a matter of proving the truth in one’s own living, and then the devil isn’t there. He’s nothing anyway. What a tremendous song and dance human beings have made out of nothing, absolutely nothing. Then they complain about the nothingness; “Poor me! I need fulfilment; someone’s holding out on me. I need to look around and see where I can get it. I’ve been shortchanged.” Lies, lies, lies. “Poor me, I have this earthly heredity. I have to put up with such terrible things.” And so terrible things are espoused, we’re married to them, and there is the inclination to keep such things at all costs. We’ve all laid claim to heredity for the variety of traits which we wanted to excuse. But what have we been doing in the meantime? How have we been behaving? What has the quality of our living been?—in fact, not what we know it ought to be, or think we know what it ought to be, so that we say, “Well I know it ought to be this way.” The kingdom of heaven is here; the state of rightness, the state of beauty, the state of God, is here. Now a person says, “Oh no it isn’t, no it isn’t! I have this problem. I have various hereditary factors that produce this and that in my experience—and now and again I catch a cold from somebody else.” What a horrible state to exist in, when the kingdom of heaven is here.
I have suggested that those who wish might make a personal contact with me in a more direct sense, usually through their letters. And my heavens I have letters!—but very little contact; very little contact because the person, instead of letting the letter open a door of contact, imagines that the letter is the contact and therefore he has to write all this rigmarole of stuff, expecting me to read it and quite often to answer it, as though I’d never said anything before, as though nothing had been provided. “Well I’m a special case; I had this experience. Now nobody ever had that experience before; therefore you need to deal with this personally.” Can you imagine such self-centeredness?
There are many things happening on earth now that certainly will produce many experiences, but virtually all of those experiences have been known by human beings before. I don’t think anyone, in recent years at least, has told me anything that I haven’t heard before. The individual is hung up on the experience, on the event, on the external factors. These are experiences which come—we have all kinds of them. It seems that it makes one a special person if one can interpret it in a particularly spiritual way, or supposedly spiritual way. But we are concerned not with such things of human experience that have been going on for centuries and millennia: people frantically trying to interpret them and make them into something or other, which they never are. Let it alone! A person may say, “Well I felt that I should yield myself to what was happening.” Why? Would that not be becoming subject to external events, something that was happening? Are we not supposed to be centered in the spirit of God? Stay centered in the spirit of God. Then, no matter what it is that happens, it will be creative. But if you become centered in the thing that is happening it will destroy you. That’s all that anyone needs to know. “Oh but I had a special experience. Explain this one to me.” I’ve explained it! It’s done, finished!
Now heretofore when people have written me letters of various kinds I have occasionally answered them; but I think I’ve written my last such letter. It’s all there—no more explanations. None are needed; they haven’t been for a long, long time. As long as these things are provided for people they will go on bloodsucking. Take responsibility for your own living. Stay centered in the spirit of God. Trust God. Acknowledge the fact that the kingdom is here, the new heaven is a reality, now. When that is done, where did all these problems go? They were nonexistent in the first place. These things have all been built up in human consciousness, in that nightmare state of nothingness, of ignorance, of darkness, which comprehends nothing, never can comprehend anything. Acknowledge the fact of light, and live where the light is, and the truth is then known. Live in darkness, live in ignorance, trying to find the truth somewhere, and you will die in ignorance and in darkness. That’s the fact of the matter. Human beings have been proving it to be the fact for as long as history goes back.
Now the opportunity for change is here. Let it come. It’s the only opportunity we have and it is in fact the only opportunity anyone will ever have—no more opportunities. Perhaps if I say, “No more answering of letters,” that’s the same thing. Everything is already here; the kingdom of heaven is here; the provision has been made. Actually it has been made for a long time. Human beings prefer to accept lies and say, “Oh no, it hasn’t been made, it hasn’t been made for me. My particular circumstance is most peculiar. Explain this.” No. It’s all available for anyone, anywhere, at any time. Now there are a lot of human beings in the world who don’t know this. It’s true for them also incidentally, but it certainly is true for those who have been associated with this ministry, even for a month; let’s give that much time! Yet there is this nonsensical fiddling around, denying the truth. And people still imagine that they have their own lives to live. Nobody has his or her own life to live. That’s a lie. If you believe that lie and try to make it work, you won’t have any life; and that has been proven century after century after century. Is it any different now? But the truth is true and all is well; unconquerable life prevails. Let that be the experience because one deliberately chooses to let it be so.
O Lord God, it is Your good pleasure to give us the kingdom. It has always been so; it has never been withheld. It is present now, no less and no more than it has always been present. Who has the backbone, the fortitude, the common sense even, to accept the truth and acknowledge that truth in daily living? Thus is the truth known; thus is freedom experienced. O Lord, in this day, in this hour, in this moment, we would be with Thee, to stand in the kingdom on earth, thinking, speaking, feeling, acting, accordingly. No other thoughts, no other words, no other feelings, no other deeds, but those of the quality of the kingdom could ever be acceptable to us, henceforth and forever. In the Christ it is established. Aum-en.
© emissaries of divine light
