April 14, 2026

Thank God For Loneliness

Thank  God  For  Loneliness





Martin Cecil  June 9, 1974 a.m.



We might profitably give some further consideration to that graphic story contained in the 4th chapter of the Book of Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel. Cain, representing material man, was the first-born. This is the way it is when a human being is born into the world; there is first the little physical form. Later Abel, representing spiritual man, is born and both Cain and Abel then constitute, rightly, what man is. Man the living soul is a balanced combination of a spiritual aspect and a material aspect.


As we may easily recognize, Cain, the material aspect of man, has slain Abel, the spiritual aspect of man, so that what is called man in the world today is represented by Cain. Many people like to feel that there is at least a little Abel in them, but you will note that as this particular chapter continues there is indication of the offspring of Cain; there is a series of begats. Mankind, as we now know it, sprang from Cain; there is no indication that Abel had any progeny at all. This is the fact of the matter. We have a material world inhabited by material human beings; Abel has been absent. Let me read a few verses once again from the story, starting at the 9th verse, which comes immediately after Cain had slain Abel:


“And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother?” (Maybe He's asking exactly that question of us in this moment.) “And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.”


There has been some interest as to what the mark was that the Lord set upon Cain. Human beings may have looked at each other, seeking some sort of evidence in this regard; but the fact is that the mark was set upon Cain, who represented material man, and it is present with respect to every human being who has ever lived on the face of the earth since that original failure, so no matter at whom we look we may observe the mark of Cain.


The particular purpose for this mark was that Cain should be preserved, and this is the fact: material man still inhabits the earth. Individually speaking, of course, death has come to be looked upon as the natural experience, but man as a whole has remained. So we could say that this mark relates to the instinct of self-preservation, the urge to survive. That certainly emphasizes itself in human experience, and in spite of all the vicissitudes and cataclysmic events through which the human race has passed, it has survived. The mark of Cain is his determination to survive. There was, of course, a reason for this. Without Cain, Abel could not be a reality in human experience; material man is necessary if spiritual man is to be known.


Spiritual man has been slain. Because of this, there has been the endeavor on the part of material man—you and me—to provide substitutes for the brother who is absent. Every human being is aware of that absence. There is consequently a sense of varying degrees of emptiness, of void, because of the absence of Abel. But Abel had been slain, eliminated. All that remained was Cain, and we ourselves are the progeny of Cain. So there is this state of affairs: the experience of Cain with his mark (the endeavor to survive) and the absence of Abel, so that at the very best there is considerably less than half a person present. Material man is far less than half of man, man as he really is, man the living soul; material man is what remains, a dying soul. This has been so customary generation after generation that it is considered to be the normal course of events, that man should spend the days of his years dying. Man is not yet a dead soul, and he is not yet a dead soul because of the mark that was placed upon him, the urge of self-preservation. In relationship to this particular urge there are various other urges, of course: the urge to reproduce, for instance. That is part of the endeavor to survive. There are various classifications of instinct that philosophers and psychologists have devised but they all spring from this original mark of Cain, the instinct of self-preservation.


It is necessary in the outworking of things that Cain should be on hand, because without Cain, Abel could not reappear; and if Abel does not reappear, the reality of man could not again inhabit the earth. We begin to see here a very valid reason for the Lord, the creative expression of Being, to make sure that man has stayed around. Material man has been essential to the restored state to which the creative expression of Being looks. If material man is completely eliminated, then that's that; there is no possibility of the true state reappearing. When this is recognized, of course, it has to be admitted that what is now known is not the true state; it is a substitute condition produced by material man. The substitute necessarily must pass away if the reality is to appear. If we see some evidences of the passing of the substitute in these days it is not cause for sorrow. It is cause, rightly, for rejoicing. It is cause for rejoicing insofar as spiritual man is concerned.


Cain slew Abel, so that in the eyes of Cain, Abel has been dead, absent. This is not the truth of the matter; Abel is present, spiritual man is present; but from the standpoint of material man this is an unknown fact. Cain slew Abel; material man eliminated spiritual man; material man dominates on the face of the earth. In that state of the absence of his brother there has been a sense of loneliness. Now, this is the most outstanding characteristic of material man's experience—a sense of loneliness.



That is a right experience. It is not something to be gotten rid of by some material means, because it gives indication to material man of the essential nature of spiritual man. Here are two brothers composing what man really is: a spiritual aspect and a material aspect. If all that is present is a material aspect, in the experience of that material aspect there is a sense of loneliness, because the brother, Abel, is absent. This is the fact in human experience; there is loneliness. But material man has sought to assuage that loneliness by substitute methods which, if they were successful, would indicate that there was really no need for Abel; it would indicate that spiritual man was unnecessary. So material man, in various ways, has endeavored to satisfy himself sufficiently so that the loneliness would go away.


There are various methods that we have noted, that come under three primary headings: he has used religious methods to assuage his loneliness, he has used intellectual methods to assuage his loneliness, and he has used physical or material methods to assuage his loneliness. For a little while, on occasion, he may seem to himself, individually speaking, to be more or less successful; he finds a better state than he knew previously, by reason of the substitute which he has put in the place of his brother. We must recognize that the religious methods that have been used are endeavors by material man to have the experience of total man, to have the experience of true man, without his brother.


It was the attitude of Cain in the story, that he was condemned for- ever to be a vagabond and a wanderer in the earth, to experience this state of loneliness and unhappiness, misery and suffering; he had been condemned to this condition by the Lord. This was his view. In other words, there was no acknowledgment of the fact that it occurred consequent upon his own action. Because he had slain Abel, the results appeared, the results which are inevitable for material man divorced from spiritual man.


So he has this sense of loneliness and he has used these various methods to provide a substitute in place of his brother. Basically, the endeavor has come to point in his efforts to establish relationships with his fellows. The individual human being feels lonely; therefore he tries to assuage that loneliness by finding various patterns of relatedness with his fellows. The herd instinct in the experience of man is one aspect of this. They say that man is a gregarious creature; he flocks together because he is lonely. But the more he flocks together the more lonely he feels—one of the loneliest places in the world is a big city! So other methods are used in a more personal way. There is the endeavor to find friends, and in order to have that experience it seems necessary also to be one of the herd, one of the bunch. If one doesn't go along with the herd, one won't have any friends. Of course, if a person does go along with the herd and finds friends and imagines that his loneliness is thereby being assuaged so that there is no need for spiritual man, he is entering into a state of awful self-delusion; he is moving in the direction which ultimately must be fatal—fatal in the individual sense. No matter how much individual human beings have tried to survive, they never yet succeeded, even though the human race remains on earth. There are some who don't seem to be able to be one of the herd—praise the Lord!—however, they often tend to try to find some particular person to relate to, and if they are able to obtain such a particular person for themselves to relate to, here is their substitute, their substitute for the real thing.


The first necessity is never to try to relate to other human beings. This is an endeavor to escape from what is really required, but how human beings insist upon trying to escape, trying to stay away from the experience of letting Abel be resurrected, from coming again into the experience of the spiritual aspect of one's own being. Human beings try to stay away from that and they have these various methods of doing it, providing for themselves certain substitutes. Even within the scope of our own ministry here I have observed many glomming onto these substitutes. They felt lonely and they were self-centered, so their endeavor was to get rid of the sense of loneliness, when the sense of loneliness is human salvation. Rejoice in the sense of loneliness because it is an indication, when correctly interpreted, of an awareness of the absence of one's brother, the spiritual aspect of one's own being. Only the reality will fill that sense of loneliness. Substitutes only lead to self-delusion. With some, of course, they lead finally to the realization that none of them work, that they're worthless, that they're useless, that material man doesn't belong as though he was a complete entity in himself. His sense of loneliness is his awareness that he is not a complete entity in himself simply as material man. And isn't it wonderful that there is that sense of loneliness, then? because it opens the door for the resurrection of Abel.


Now, the resurrection of Abel does not mean that Abel is not al- ready present. It simply means that Abel has not been present in the experience of Cain, in the experience of material man. Therefore Abel needs to be resurrected into the experience of material man. This whole process was so graphically revealed in what occurred in the experience of Jesus nineteen centuries ago. He was spiritual man before the resurrection. He was present all the time but it only became apparent after the resurrection, to those material human beings who were open to comprehend it, those material human beings who had not deluded themselves so completely as to imagine that they were satisfying their loneliness by material means. That simply cannot be done and if a person tries to do it he is deluding himself.


Always the first necessity is to let that loneliness turn one's response toward the Lord, toward the creative reality of Being, that spiritual man may be resurrected into one's own experience, so that spiritual man becomes one's own true identity. To try to sustain the material man identity, as though that were worth something without the spiritual man identity, is foolishness. It is impossible, in actual fact. It can be done for a few short years of what are described as a human lifetime, but that's all; then material man is gone, his identity is gone. If there has not been the experience of spiritual man, what is there left? Simply a disintegrating corpse, that's all. But spiritual man is present, even though he has not been present in the consciousness of material man. Let spiritual man be resurrected into the consciousness of material man. That will never occur as long as a person imagines that his loneliness will be taken care of by his association with his fellows.



Boy seeks girl, girl seeks boy, because they delude themselves into imagining that when they find each other the loneliness will be gone. I am sure that there are many married couples present in this room in this moment, some of them of long standing, who know, if they are honest with themselves, that the fact of being married does not really take away the sense of loneliness. It doesn't; that's all foolery; it's all human nonsense. First things come first, and a person who doesn't put first things first may well be described as a fool. And the first thing is what is indicated by the word “God” or “Lord.”


What is so indicated is not found in any of material man's religious concepts. These are all substitutes, an endeavor to assuage the loneliness without letting Abel be resurrected. All this has something to do with the potential of Christianity, incidentally, because the resurrection of Jesus was a portrayal, a factual portrayal, of the resurrection of Abel in the experience of the individual. But who has let it occur? “Oh, it occurred for Jesus; but it's impossible for anybody else.” This is the usual “humble” Christian attitude. It's a cop-out! It's failure! It's an indication that the truth has not been accepted, and if it has not been accepted it has been rejected. Because it has been rejected the world is the way it is and human beings remain the way they are. There's no possibility of having a different world unless you have different human beings, is there? In spite of all the political promises that are being made these days the world is not going to be a different place as long as we have the same human beings inhabiting it. That should be obvious to anyone, but human beings love to delude themselves. “Oh, yes, oh, yes, at last we're going to have a change and things are going to be so much better.” Can any sensible person really believe that hogwash? The way requires the resurrection of Abel, and there isn't any other way!


So, loneliness. Loneliness was described using other words in one of the Beatitudes: hungering and thirsting. Loneliness—what a wonderful thing! Blessed are they who are lonely. And yet so much human effort is given to trying to find substitutes which will eliminate the loneliness. If a person ever succeeds in eliminating the loneliness in his own experience by such methods, he has committed the unpardonable sin; there's no hope for that person. But as long as there is loneliness, that loneliness may turn the individual toward the means by which his brother is restored. And it is spiritual man and material man together in oneness that constitute man—man, male and female, who then belong together; so that those who are of the male gender may find friends of the male gender, and those who are of the female gender may find friends of that gender, and men and women together may find friendship, friendship which is the basis of a unified experience. But first comes the resurrection of Abel; otherwise none of it is possible; it's all tomfoolery! (I don't know who Tom was, but it's all foolery anyway!)


“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness,” after the true experience of man, the reality of being; and this requires the spiritual aspect to be present. Spiritual man is not religious man. Spiritual man is a new state, an unknown state, insofar as material man is concerned. He doesn't know; he can't find out. All he can do is to be willing to hunger and thirst after righteousness, to let his loneliness be turned toward that point which permits the filling of it truly, so that spiritual identity may be restored; and that is what a person really is. True relationships are only possible between true people; false relationships are only possible between false people. The endeavor to try to make false relationships into true relationships is a most futile endeavor. First one must become a true person, and one can only become a true person when Abel is resurrected, when spiritual man is present once again.


So, if the human race has survived to this point, it was that there might be found those who would allow their loneliness to be a creative experience. There are some who, feeling lonely, imagine that they can assuage that loneliness by communing with nature. "Let's get back to nature and we won't feel lonely anymore. Let's get ourselves as a part of nature and then we will be fulfilled." Certainly not—never! Become true man and then the loneliness of nature may be assuaged. Nature is lonely, lonely for true man, but false man trying to commune with nature produces nothing but confusion; it doesn't work that way. Man communes with God, rightly, and when man experiences the reality of God, then nature can experience oneness with God because of man. But as long as man is absent, as he has been ever since Abel was absent, nature has no means of communing with God, and anyone who has any sensitivity at all is keenly aware of the loneliness of nature, the longing of nature for what would be fulfilling to nature, namely man.


This same loneliness is in material man. Let it be turned toward the Lord so that one doesn't try to be one of the herd and one doesn't try to find the fulfilment for one's loneliness in someone else. You won't! It can't be done! The fulfilment comes because there is the experience of wholeness in oneself; then one may experience a larger wholeness in relationship to someone else who is whole. That's the only way it can be done, and as long as human beings refuse to let themselves be made whole—which is healing, incidentally—as long as they refuse to let themselves be made whole, there cannot be any true, right relationships between human beings on earth. We have the vagabond state, the wanderer state, the state of Cain. This is the way it is. Human beings in that state try to make the best of it, try to get along as best they may, but at best it's rather a miserable condition, certainly a far cry from the true state of man. If there is this loneliness, this longing of the heart, it relates to the true state of man in one's own personal experience. Don't delude yourself or fool yourself that you can experience something that is worthwhile by being one of the herd, or communing with nature, or getting a wife or getting a husband or getting a friend; it does not work that way. That simply maintains the state of Cain, and Cain has just about as much as he can bear!


How easy the change may come, but it requires some honesty. It requires real willingness to let one's hungering and thirsting not be after friendship with someone else, not be after marriage, not be after a little isolated cell of companionship with somebody. Let all that nonsense go and allow the reality to begin to emerge, be resurrected into your consciousness, into your awareness, into your experience, so that there may be man on earth, male and female. And when there is man on earth, made in the image and likeness of God, a living soul, behold, all things are made new; there's a new world. But if man isn't present, there can't be a new world, just the same old disintegrating stuff, and if you let it go too far it's disintegrated. While we are still at least somewhat integrated, let us let the change come, so that there may be the experience of man on earth, real men and real women, who are capable of permitting the creative expression of God to bring forth what is true of His world. And, remember, it's His world, not material man's world. If what material man has established must pass away, let it pass away. Let it pass away.


When there are those who are willing in this regard, who rejoice to let the world of God appear without any human manipulations, without trying to make it satisfactory to one's own self-centered self, then the real thing can come, but not otherwise. As we have already noted, there is only one thing really wrong with human beings, and that is that they're self-centered.


Let Abel be resurrected, spiritual man be resurrected; and that brings fulfilment, that assuages the loneliness, that permits—because loneliness is no longer a factor in human experience—right experience. Everything works together to perfection, because human beings are not being driven by the mark of Cain. The mark of Cain is valuable only insofar as it brings man back to God. Then there's no longer that mark; it's gone—no more need to try to survive, no more need for loneliness.


But while loneliness is still present, give thanks for it; it's your only chance; it's the only chance that any human beings have. If you fool yourself finally into imagining that you are no longer lonely, you're done, you're finished; but if you rejoice in the loneliness, and hunger and thirst after righteousness, you will be filled in the right way and you will be man in experience, male or female. And being man, behold, by reason of your presence on earth all things are made new; the creative expression of being is there and all things are made new—not in the instant; there is a creative cycle, after all, to work out, but it will all work out on that basis, and on that basis alone.



O Lord, we are most deeply thankful that the way is wide open, that the veil is rent, that the union of spiritual and material man is immediately possible. And because we begin to recognize this honestly we recognize our responsibility. We accept the challenge and we let our loneliness be hungering and thirsting after righteousness, after the experience of man, true manhood, true womanhood, all to Thy glory on earth, that the right pattern of association and oneness may emerge in the fulfilment of divine purpose, to Thy glory, in the Christ. Aum-en.


© emissaries of divine light














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