The Nameless Reality Beyond The Door

The  Nameless  Reality  Beyond  The  Door

Martin Cecil   July 29, 1979

I'm sure that you all enjoyed the congregational singing, and now the singing of the choir. The enjoyment however is not the main purpose of the singing. The main purpose could not be experienced without the enjoyment. I suppose it might be said that the enjoyment indicates that there is a purpose being served. We would probably describe this purpose in terms of the generation of spiritual substance. If spiritual substance is generated this makes possible enjoyment at whatever level that spiritual substance is generated. But the purpose is always the generation of spiritual substance.

Using these words, spiritual substance, many of you would be inclined to assume that you know what they mean. Assumptions of this sort are constantly being made by people with respect to words, but as we well know, the meaning of words only comes to the point of being known by reason of the experience of the truth back of them. It is a human habit to assume that the words are the truth. They never are. They may provide a door by which the truth may be known in experience. Spiritual substance is only known as a reality through one's own actual experience of it. Perhaps you do sense that consequent upon the singing, brought to a high point by reason of the choir, it might be said that this Dome Chapel has been filled with spiritual substance. Maybe there is a sensing of this substantial fact. We may find ourselves immersed in this substance, not as though it had been laid upon us because the singing had generated substance from some far-distant place and brought it here, but because there was a personal experience, individually speaking, of that generation; for what is generated emerges out of those who are here present. It isn't something that is laid upon us by God, for instance, according to some human concept, but something which we ourselves have, in whatever degree, been willing to allow to happen within the range of our own experience.

This spiritual substance can hardly be defined in material terms. The mind may have an idea that there is such a substance, but it cannot lay hold of it, it cannot take it into the laboratory and analyze it. Any such attempt, of course, would immediately dissipate the substance. So those who try to do it would conclude, presumably, that there wasn't any such substance, because there wasn't by the time they got it into the laboratory! This may be looked upon as a convenient way of evading issues, but we're not concerned with evading issues. The human mind is not God Almighty and it is not capable of encompassing all things. It may be a little bit shocked to discover this fact, but we should be well aware of it to the extent that the actual generation of substance in our own living experience has provided us with an awareness of a new state of being on earth.

We might for a moment return to this matter of words. Mentally we can define what can be mentally imagined, with words. We use the word "God," for instance. Other people, in other languages, use different words to describe presumably the same thing. But God isn't a thing. The word, whatever it is, describes something. We might say that God is Spirit, but still we're not very much wiser. Even though the word may describe something that is true, we don't yet know what it is that is being described, and the description in and of itself never acquaints us with the reality. We have no doubt been regaled with descriptions of far places where most of us haven't been. If the one who is describing the state was lucid and imaginative he might convey to us a remarkable picture, but it wouldn't be the reality; it would simply be a picture. To know the reality we would have to be in that place ourselves. So we can describe God as Spirit without actually knowing what it means. We may feel wise because we can describe it that way.

We might describe the Word as being Spirit in active expression. I'm speaking of the Word spelled with a capital W, not human words certainly. So we could say that the Word is spirit in active expression—an interesting thought, but it still doesn't acquaint us with what it is.

We might take the word bread. This has many peculiar definitions in human consciousness, but I'm thinking of it at the moment as substance available for activation, substance available for the activation of spirit. This brings us into a realm where we have some experience, where perhaps we do know something of what the word "bread" might be conveying. After all, we eat day by day; we take substance into our bodies which is activated in some way to provide us with what is needful in the way of replenishment for the physical structure and to provide what we call energy. But the bread before it gets into our physical bodies is one thing; it's something else once it gets in.

We could use the word flesh to describe activated substance. Bread: substance to be activated. Flesh: substance after it has been activated. Now the word "flesh" need not be seen merely in terms of this pudgy stuff forming the body. There are other levels of activation, obviously, in human experience. We do not alone have physical bodies. There is a mental apparatus of sorts. Something obviously has been activated in this regard. We have some recognition, if not yet very much awareness, of the fact that there are many levels of flesh, in the sense of the whole of what we are, dimensionally speaking. There is what might be described as earthly flesh, but then there is also heavenly flesh. The spiritual substance of which I made mention is the heavenly flesh, in our own experience. If there has been very little generation of spiritual substance we have very little experience of the heavenly flesh. We do have a good deal of experience of the earthly flesh, both from the standpoint of our physical forms and from the standpoint of the consciousness present in those physical forms. This all relates to the earthly levels of flesh. But by the same token there are spiritual levels of flesh, and it is these levels, spiritual substance, which we see as offering a connection with spirit. This spiritual substance is sensitive to spirit. Earthly substance is sensitive to spiritual substance, because the fact of the matter is that the spiritual substance was generated out of the earthly substance.

In speaking of these things I am using words. If you merely hear the words and translate them in your own minds to mean thus and so, you will not have yet had the experience of the reality back of the words, but you may imagine that you really know something now, when the fact of the matter is that you don't. You merely know some words which have been put together in a certain way. That is deemed to be information, but the information hasn't told you anything really of the reality, because the reality has to be experienced to be known. And this relates to the matter of living. Many people have imagined that they could get by with beliefs, beliefs which in the general sense had very little relatedness or association with the actual experience of that person's living. The world is full of beliefs. We might well set up a creed—it's very easy to do—on the basis of the four words that I have just indicated:

"I believe in God. I believe that God is Spirit.

I believe that the Word is Spirit in active expression.

I believe that bread is unactivated substance.

I believe that flesh is activated substance."

There's a nice start for a creed! It could be expanded by all of you, I'm sure, very easily. But a creed is a statement, a mental statement, of a cult's party line. If it seems to people that there is need for a creed—something to believe in, they say—it establishes a cult; that is, when they find the creed that they can glom on to.

On the basis of such statements as I've made concerning God, the Word, the bread, the flesh, we can set up a cult. As I say, the creed can cover much more territory, and I'm sure has done in your consciousness; but at the same time, I'm also sure that you have recognized, again possibly in theory, that we are not rightly concerned with cults and therefore with creeds. When somebody comes around and is interested in what we are about they very likely will ask, "What do you believe?" They may narrow it down a little more specifically: "Do you believe in this, that and the other thing?" There may be some necessity to answer such questions, but if we try to answer such questions in terms of belief, we certainly convey the idea that what we are about is simply another cult. From my standpoint, I think there are plenty of cults in the world without adding to them. If a person is after a cult, well he has a wide choice; but if he is genuinely seeking the truth, that is a different thing. He may imagine, to start with, that the truth will be found through some cult, because it always is possible that a cult will provide the door to the experience of the truth. That's the only way the truth can be known; it can't be conveyed merely in words.

Perhaps we have some awareness of the fact that by reason of this ministry a door is provided. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/names-from-martinexeter-december-13.html] The door, to be useful, must be opened, so that it provides a means of movement from one state of experience to another. Unfortunately, in the cultist world, which is the human world, doors are invariably worshipped. There are many, many doors, many, many cults in the world, some of them enormous, others insignificant. These cults are all doors, but some of them are so tremendously embellished, there is so much to the door, that a person could spend his lifetime examining the beautiful carving of the door in all its details. He could become very knowledgeable concerning the door, know all about it, give endless lectures about the decorations on the door, the nature of the door, what materials it's made out of, the quality of the hinges and the hardware, all these things, without ever realizing that the door maybe had some practical meaning regardless of all its architecture. If it could be opened one might even go through it. Going through it, one has experienced the reason for the door. Then forget the door!

We have some doors in this Dome Chapel, made of rather beautiful wood, put together with skill, hung accurately, and we may be somewhat impressed by the doors: "What lovely doors!" But what if we were to stop at the door, looking at the outside of it? Or, possibly realizing that it provided a means of egress or ingress, we might even go through it and then turn around and look at the other side: "Beautiful! Lovely doors!" Then we could get in our cars and drive home; that's all that was needed. But after all, there is something else here and the doors only had meaning because there is something else here. In and of themselves they are not anything.

There are many doors in the world which human beings have loved and added their decorations to in various ways. Others then come along and they look at that door and say, "That's too elaborate. We want a plain door." So we have movement out of the Roman Catholic persuasion into the Protestant persuasion, a plainer door. "Well," some others say, "we need a balance here—not overly plain, not overly elaborate. We need something in between." The world is full of doors, but scarcely anyone has been willing to go through the door, which would mean there was the necessity of forgetting the door. If we can't get over the beauty of the door, the wonder of the door, the interesting nature of the door, we stay wedded to the doors. This has been the situation on earth, hasn't it?

Let us look at this in terms of the door of this ministry. The name "Emissaries of Divine Light" has in recent years become more easy to swallow. More people have become familiar with it, so that it is more or less acceptable now. It isn't so peculiar anymore to us and to many others besides. The name "Emissaries of Divine Light" is a name given to a corporation. A corporation in the human world requires a name. I suppose one might call it Blank Corporation, but still that's a name! So in this instance we have the name "Emissaries of Divine Light, Inc." According to the legal requirements here or there this might be seen as a church corporation, a society corporation, a charitable corporation, various kinds. In this sense, then, there is the necessity of rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. There are some requirements in our practical experience in living which necessitate this corporate structure if we are to be in the world. However, the corporate structure should not make us of the world. Unfortunately it has tended to do just that. Without realizing it, many have taken the attitude that the door is the thing. The door is a cult.

There is nothing wrong with cults if we see them as doors, even though many of the doors may be found to be inoperable; in other words they don't open, they just look like doors. So I suppose there is the necessity of finding a door that is operable, that is not merely a portrayal of a door on the wall, a door which would never open and through which you could never pass. Many cults in the world are of this nature. There are those who have done a good deal of shopping around in this regard, knocking on all these doors, and found that they didn't open. After a while, if you do too much of that, you get discouraged, I suppose. But for the most part it has seemed that there has been a door of some kind acceptable to everyone. So human beings have existed on earth ringed by these doors. The world was a small place in consequence. Of course, from the religious standpoint, very often the idea was that God one day, when He got around to it, when He paid attention once more to miserable human sinners, would deign to come through the particular door which one had accepted as being the most harmonious to one's own human nature condition. Very often doors were inherited. But there is the expectation on the part of some that one day God will come through. The concept of the second coming of Christ, I guess, would fall into that category. Others suppose that the door won't open for a while because we have to have a lot more experience, life after life after life—or should I say life after death after death? But the door is here now. The door is available to be opened now.

We were considering this in terms of EDL, Incorporated. Now here is a cult for sure; it's a door. That's all it is. There's nothing wrong with it as a door, an operable door. If that's all a person sees it as being he's trapped by the door: "O honorable door! How beautiful you are!" And of course in cults, even in religious cults, there is organization. In the Emissary cult there are ministers, servers; there is a leader in the person of a Bishop. There are also secular aspects to this, required under law: presidents, directors, boards of various sorts, to govern the affairs of this cult. We need to see these things for what they are. We know that there is no point to Emissaries of Divine Light, Incorporated, no point at all, unless it is recognized that it makes possible the opening of a door for an experience which cannot be defined in cult terms. A creed is totally inadequate. All a creed does is to indicate the architecture of the door. In actual fact the architecture of the door is not all that important. It's the nature of the door that is important: whether it can be opened or not and whether, if it is open, one could go through it.

Those who are wedded in some sense to the door are always very keen to introduce everybody else to the door. This falls into the category of making converts, converts to the door—what's the point?—so that an Emissary trip is laid on people. If we are rational we may recognize that there is need for some sort of secular organization, which is what it is, with perhaps ecclesiastical overtones, in order that we may render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. But we're not on earth to devote our lives to rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. We are here to render unto God the things that are God's. EDL, as presently constituted in the external sense, is a door, a cult. We're not all that anxious for people to fall in love with the door. We may see that it is important that they should approach the door, because unless they do they won't go through it; but there should never be an attitude taken that the door is the thing.

There's a good deal of rivalry between cults, isn't there? If you are interviewed by somebody or other about the Emissaries they very often wish to compare it with something else: "How does it compare with this cult, or that cult? How do your beliefs differ?" Beliefs may compose some of the elements in the structure of the door but they're totally unnecessary anymore if we will go through the door. And going through the door, we turn our back on it, don't we? We don't keep it constantly in front of us all the time. In this sense there has been a tendency to see other people through this door. I suppose the door in one sense has cracks in it. You can look through and see other people and they tend to take the shape of the cracks. We only begin to see people when the door is open and we are not comparing them with our Emissary concepts: "Well, does this person line up with my Emissary concepts? If he does, good, welcome home. If he doesn't, stay out!"

A letter of response came, yesterday I think it was, from somebody who indicated an attitude that I think is quite common. When he looked at a responding one, he had the attitude of welcome to the angel—of course, here's another word, isn't it?—presumably welcome to the reality, the truth of that person. But then he kept finding himself faced with human nature, big and broad. So evidently there's a split in his consciousness here, with the attitude being taken that he was capable of judging good and evil. Right? That's eating of the forbidden fruit, isn't it? "Aha! Here's someone approaching and I see, back of the façade, a little bit of the structure I have formed as to what an angel would look like." But then, when the person actually comes close, Bang! "Here's what I imagine human nature to be." With such an attitude one does not have a single eye, that's for sure, and one is still indulging in the eating of the forbidden fruit: "The angel is good, human nature is bad, and I know the difference." Do you? Do we? What one may now imagine the reality to be may in fact be a cover-up for human nature, and what we suppose human nature to be may be a cover-up for the reality; so that if we throw out what we imagine human nature to be—"Get thee hence. I don't want anything to do with this big and broad human nature"—then we may find ourselves throwing out the reality.

You may recall the parable about the wheat and the tares. The harvesters wanted to go out into the fields and root out the tares. They thought they knew what were tares and what was wheat. But, as was pointed out, in rooting out the tares they'd probably root out the wheat as well. Let it alone! Don't judge. Let it alone, because the state of consciousness present in people is a mixture and, from the human standpoint, we are not capable of discerning what is which. And this might be said also from the angelic standpoint. There is no reason to try to judge it. If we do judge it, well that will be human nature. If we let it alone that will be the truth in expression, the spirit in active expression, which is not judging but letting things sort themselves out. We need to have a very deep and strong conviction that we don't really know. There is nothing present to provide a yardstick in this regard. The characteristic of the human state, the cultist state, is that of judgment: the arrogant assumption that one is in position to tell what is true and what is not, what is real and what is unreal, what is right and what is wrong. That's arrogance. That is eating of the forbidden fruit, the results of which are fatal.

So we see the mixture. We're well aware that there is a mixture here and we are not called upon to get it sorted out. It's none of our business. All we are called upon to do is to provide spirit in active expression. Then the bread comes to us. The bread is a mixture. People complain about bread these days. There's no nutrition in it, they say. Well, I think there's something there—not much, but something. You swallow it all and it gets sorted out, doesn't it? We need to grow a little more discerning of what we ingest of this bread, at various levels. But regardless of what it is we ingest, even the best or what is supposed to be the best, it has to get itself sorted out. It gets itself sorted out in us on the basis of our own quality of expression. If that quality is spirit in active expression, then what is used, what is incorporated, will relate to spirit in active expression. It will permit the generation of substance capable of accommodating more spirit in active expression. If the spirit of God is not in active expression in our living but some other spirits are there, then what is incorporated into our experience will be rather miserable; it will get sorted out on that basis. As we are well aware, there is a tendency for people to blame everybody else under the sun for their troubles, when the fact of the matter is that we all lay this trip upon ourselves. Let's be honest about it, always.

When the spirit is right, then the generation will be right. When the spirit in expression because we live is the Spirit of God, then our generations will be perfect; that is, the substance will be adequate to accommodate spirit in expression. And that is a transformed experience in living. Not because we had it all figured out, thinking perhaps that if we drink carrot juice every day we're going to be capable of allowing spirit to be in expression. How ridiculous! If we have a foul spirit present in us and we drink carrot juice, it's not going to do us any good in the sense of permitting an expression of right spirit. Because it is the action of spirit that generates the substance out of whatever it is that is ingested at whatever level. It is that increase of substance that allows an increase of the spirit in active expression. The spirit in active expression takes the available bread, the material to be activated, the bread that is brought to us in our momentary living, and activates it. In other words the creative process is set in motion, but not on the basis of the judgment of the human mind as to what is good or what is bad, but simply on the basis of the working of the creative cycle. Let it work. It'll sort everything out. Let the wheat and the tares grow together. Certainly do not take the arrogant view that you know the difference.

We know only what we express, and when we express the Spirit of God, that's what we know, that is our experience. But the extent of that expression will be absolutely dependent upon the extent of the generation of the substance that permits it. And that substance is generated in various ways, but it's all a generation of living. There are various ways in our patterns of living. We have a way now; we're all gathered here in the Chapel. We had a way before; we were all singing, then the choir was singing. The only reason for any of this is to allow the expression of spirit that is possible now to generate some more substance so that there may be greater expression of spirit. It is that expression of spirit that gets things sorted out. It gets things sorted out in our own experience and it gets things sorted out beyond us, so that we willingly accept whatever it is that is brought to us in circumstances and in the people whom we find ourselves associated with. They were brought to us; are we going to look them over and say, "Ugh! I don't like that; that's human nature. Stay away from me"? How do you know? How do you know what will be the actual fact unfolding in someone else's experience on the basis of the true creative cycle which will be in operation simply because you are there giving expression to spirit? Then you trust spirit, you trust the creative cycle, you trust the Law to work, you trust the whole thing to sort itself out.

In that sorting-out process you may be aware that it is fitting to speak this word, to do this other thing, to handle your affairs with effectiveness and dispatch. This gives evidence of the fact that spirit is in expression. Someone who's moping around in a bad mood and all this certainly doesn't give much evidence of the Spirit of God in expression, and such a person will tend to detract from the environment, wherever he happens to be. But if one can detract from that (and you know from your own experience that someone can come into a room and everything goes ugh!) well if someone is capable of doing that, would it not be equally anticipated that one might bring something into that room that doesn't scatter everything abroad but lifts everything up?—why not?—something that allows an introduction to the reality, the nameless reality, behind the door. There is some difficulty with names, isn't there, because immediately we have a name we've put whatever it is, or tended to put it, in a box; and boxes ultimately are buried six feet under.

Here is nameless experience, the experience that isn't EDL, Inc., but the truth in one's own living, moment by moment by moment. You may meet someone and discern, by reason of your own spiritual expression, that here is an individual who is not far from the door. So it may be fitting to assist that individual to come a little closer to the door, but in doing so, you recognize that all you are doing is bringing the individual a little closer to the door and that there will be the necessity of letting the door be opened so that the individual can go through.

"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Yes we can presumably join EDL, Inc. We do that by having our names put on the mailing list. I think that's the definition of membership. So the door in that sense is open. You can come in and register, or you can go out, whichever; get off the mailing list and you're no longer a member of EDL, Inc. But the purpose is not really to join something. That's a cult, isn't it? You can't join the nameless reality. You either experience it or you don't. You can't join it. You can't pay your dues. The dues for EDL, Inc., are supposed to be one letter a month. Of course some pay dues in the way of donations, which are quite acceptable as dues in EDL, Inc., because this corporation needs to continue to operate if the door is to be present and available to be opened for people, and that requires money, presumably. But the actual experience of reality, the nameless reality, doesn't require money or a letter a month or anything of this nature. All that is required is that one come through the door. When one comes through the door, he knows the reality. There's no question thereafter. As long as one is stuck at the door it's very difficult, isn't it, to answer questions. "What do you believe?" What are you going to say? Well, we have to speak in terms that the other person will understand, presumably, but we need to know what the truth is, ourselves, so that we are not cult-bound anymore, we're not holding the door shut. It is well that we should understand these things, that we may be in position to serve the LORD on earth, to serve the Nameless One, in our own experience of namelessness.

Grace Van Duzen — Martin, this is not, this morning, a breath of fresh air; this is the answer of the Lord out of the whirlwind, the mighty rushing of the spirit, surely the bread of heaven, the oneness of heaven and earth a reality, the glorious opening of the door, and we praise God mightily.

Martin Cecil — We have the ability to let the door be opened, or to keep it closed.

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