Unveiling True Design
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Uranda April 16, 1954 p.m.
We realize that at this particular time a large segment of the people in the world are giving particular thought to what they conceive to be spiritual things, and attention is turned with great emphasis to the life of our Master, particularly to the closing events of His public ministry. We recall that there was a period, commemorated by so-called Palm Sunday, when a large number of people, presumably about five thousand, acknowledged Him in a sense—to a degree. They made a public demonstration, crying “Hosanna to the King!” and waving palms and placing their garments before Him. The crowd was caught up in an ecstasy of assumption by reason of anticipation that their own hopes were about to be realized. They imagined that the Roman yoke was about to be thrown off and a king was to take the throne at Jerusalem. That was their concept of the design of things. But their concept of that design and the Master's concept of the design were two different things. They were so filled with the ideas established in their own consciousness, their own concepts of the design, that there was no room in their minds to truly grasp or realize the significance of the true design.
This particular situation had tragic consequences. It is not always that man's misconception with respect to design has such immediate and tragic consequences, but we can see the operation of the principle here. For this public demonstration, which did not bring joy to the Master's heart, was used as an excuse, a springboard for action against Him, and a charge that He was stirring up the people. Consider for a moment the Master's nature and the problem that confronted Him in relationship to this pattern of confusion with respect to the design factors which were at work at that time. He was the particularized focalization of the Spirit of Love—in other words a being on earth, human and divine, by reason of which the Christ Spirit could be made manifest in its essence, but a being through whom the Spirit of Love was dominant—not an equalized expression of the Spirit of Love and Truth and Life. For with respect to any pattern of manifestation, one of these primary aspects of spirit must be dominant. In the Supreme Focalization we have the manifestation of all aspects of spirit, the presence of the wholeness of spirit in essence, but a dominance of the Spirit of Love. His capacities of being in the outer or external sense as a human being, a man with a physical body, a mind and a feeling nature, were such that this particular pattern of spirit could manifest. His body, mind and heart were so designed that His character as a being on earth might emerge in its particularized sense on the basis of these factors.
He was of course revealing on earth the principle of deity, the principle of creative action, for the purpose of acquainting mankind with deity. The extension of deity from the invisible realm into that which is visible to us—and when we say invisible realm we simply mean invisible to our particular patterns of perception, particularly from the visual sense—the means of projection of deity from that realm invisible to the human vision to the realm visible to human vision, was and is by reason of the Spirit of God. The fulness of that spirit is indicated by the expression “the only begotten Son of God.” Because of that fulness in the essence or centralized pattern of being, the term “the only begotten Son of God” could be applied to the manifestation of Jesus. However, in the expression of the spirit in relationship to Him we have the emphasis on the fact of the Son, not upon the fact of the only begotten Son. In other words, the idea of the “only begotten Son” does not have the same weight of emphasis, from the standpoint of true spiritual expression. For instance, at the conclusion of the ceremony of baptism at the River Jordan the word, as it is reported to us, was: “This is my beloved Son”—not “This is my only begotten Son.” The Son, whether singular or in manifestation in the plural or segregated sense, is that which is born of God—which is to say, issues forth from God—namely, the Spirit of God. And something of that which is born of God manifests through each man and woman who lets it be so. Therefore each man and woman is, to that degree, a part or member of the body of the Son of God, a particularized means by which the Son, or the Spirit of God, is permitted to manifest on earth.
The character, then, which was revealed by our Master among men was simply the manifestation of the essences of His being according to the capacity established not only in the inner sense but in the outer sense of the physical form, the body, the mind and the heart, by reason of the design which was established in relationship to His form. The true character which He revealed was then the revelation of the true design of His own being. That principle holds true with all. To the degree that you reveal in the expression of your lives the true design of your own being, you are revealing on earth to the children of men your true character. To whatever degree you fail to reveal in form, in function, in action, the true design of your own being, you are asking others on earth to accept an expression of character which is not true to yourself, and consequently not true to God. You cannot know your own true character, then, in actual fact, until your own true design is revealed through the process of living.
Seeing these things in relationship to our Master, and examining His character, we can begin to see the true nature of the problem which confronted Him in this particular instance where the human concept of the design in relationship to the correct pattern of action was so contrary to His recognition of the true design. And it is in this violation of the true design by the human imposition of the human concept of design that we have the picture of the beginnings of the great tragedy. And in actual fact all tragedies that appear on earth spring from this same pattern: the human imposition of human concepts, in relationship to design, which interfere with the Divine Design for human beings.
The process of changing the future, as we use the term, is centered here. If the individual is beginning to let the reality of his own design have manifestation, beginning to reveal his true character, but then by reason of wrong response to some form of stimulus that appears he develops a false pattern of design in his own consciousness and proceeds to impose that design upon the pattern of life manifestation, he begins to move toward tragedy. If having started in this direction of disintegration, decay and tragedy, the individual realizes what has happened, and he is willing to relinquish his humanly conceived design and let it go, if he is willing to trust, and he has a basis of love which provides a centering in God, the patterns of manifestation in relationship to the false design can be cleared away and the true design can once more begin to appear. Now here we have had two steps in the changing of the future. First, the future was bright, moving in the right direction. The course was changed, so that the future held the potentialities of tragedy, and then, by reason of awakening to the danger of the situation, the individual responded, yielded, permitted a new centering, and consequently the future was changed again; the factors of tragedy were being eliminated from the future, and the factors of beauty of being were reestablished for the individual.
That which is of the future, coming out of the east, out of the Garden of God, to the children of men, is of course of the Divine Design. But we have noted how human beings project a little way into the future that which is of their own design, which disturbs the pattern of manifestation. The change in the future which we are interested in is achieved by inspiring the human being to the point where he may see the truth, see the facts as they are, realize what his own position is—not what he thinks it is, but what it really is—and then by inspiring him to relinquish the human concepts of design which he has developed, which he thinks to be valuable and important but which provide the switch, as it were, that turns him from the path of fulfilment into the path of tragedy.
Design. Principle, purpose, design and control. This matter of design connects up with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil provides the basis for the development of design. The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is that which appears by reason of the formation of design. If the design is Divine, then all is well. If it is not, tragedy follows. Here our Master, in this particular instance, realized the trend in human consciousness, realized that human beings had deliberately misinterpreted and falsely translated the things that were said. They rejected the truth that He offered and accepted ideas about what He had said which seemed to give support to their own design, so that they came and hailed Him as being a person of great importance. They, the human beings, were choosing Him to be their king in the earthly sense. They thought they were according Him the greatest honor that it was possible for them to bestow, the idea that He was to be their king. Now the outworking might have been different if this particular public demonstration had not been in the process of formation for a considerable period of time because human beings were mistranslating, were developing their own design with respect to what He said.
Had this not had broad ramifications, if it was something that had merely appeared for the moment so to speak, a spontaneous thing, He might conceivably have—it is not for me to say what He would have done, please understand—but dealing with the matter from the standpoint of principle, He might conceivably have withdrawn from them by some means and just left them at that point so that they would realize that it was not to be as they thought. But suppose He had used some power to disappear from their midst at that moment, what would it have done to their consciousness, on the basis of this pattern as it had developed? It would have done nothing but strengthen them in their conviction that their false concepts were right. It would have seemed to them that here, when they were acknowledging Him as king, He had done something wonderful that demonstrated power. And they would have been more firmly convinced that they were right, that they were going to have a king.
Suppose He had said more than He did say? The Bible does not actually give record of all that He said at that time, because He did seek to convey to His hearers the truth of the matter. But what was He up against? They had particular fixed ideas in their minds. They had been translating things that He said into a pattern of their own design. They were convinced they were right. They had reached the point where they were willing—it did not go deep enough, but they thought, in the moment, that they were willing to devote their lives in serving Him as a king. They thought they were giving themselves to Him. And if He had said anything more than He did about not being king, in the first place they would not have believed Him, and in the second place, insofar as the vibrational factors involved were concerned, it would have put Him in the position of denying His own reality. He could not do more than He did, to deny the human pattern of design, without being in position of appearing to deny the Divine. Human reactions, concepts, mistranslations, desires, entering into this design, had so established the pattern of concepts that He had no honorable means of escaping from it. His love for the people was there, but they mistranslated what they felt was love into the pattern of their own design and took it as support for their own ideas. If He had left them, or turned back, or turned aside, it would not have worked. He realized that, in the consciousness of human beings at that time, the pattern of design had been so firmly established that whatever He said was translated to support the human concept and not to reveal the truth.
Certain of the disciples had had a hand in it, perhaps not deliberately; they did not know that they were failing to serve their Lord properly. But attitudes they had shown, words they had spoken, all tended to accumulate on the basis of supporting a false idea, building a false picture with respect to the Master. And this pattern of surface acceptance had been so deeply engraved in the consciousness of the people that whatever He did to show them that they were not right was bound to disillusion them, make them feel that they had followed a false leader, make them feel that their hopes had been in vain, make them feel that they were left to suffer under the yoke of the Roman rulers. The Master had no choice but to disillusion them. Or perhaps I should put that another way, because even that could be misunderstood. The Master knew that it was impossible for things to work out so that they could be kept from being disillusioned. It was not that He particularly took action to disillusion them, but He knew that because of the elements of false design in the situation they would be disillusioned.
He took the course—the only course He could under the circumstances—of moving straight ahead, of facing the issue, because He knew that if any were to awaken to disillusionment and carry through to the point of seeing the truth, that was the only way He could be on hand, as it were, to lead them. It was up to Him, in the face of this tragic situation, to prove the supremacy of deity, of the Spirit of God, over even this evil situation. If His followers had been able to get out of their heads the bug, the idea, that He was going to be a temporal ruler on the throne of Jerusalem, if they had been able to relinquish their nationalistic aspirations and forget about their grievances under the Roman yoke, if they had been able to see Him for what He was and receive His design, He could have moved forward quietly and successfully, without developing the appearance of a direct or open conflict with the Roman rulers.
Some of the factors that entered into the trial, etc., we will consider this afternoon, but I am particularly interested in helping you to see the factors of design as they entered into this whole outworking. If human beings had been able to relinquish their humanly conceived design, if they had been able to comprehend and receive the design that He was offering, this conflict would not have been developed on the basis on which it did develop. There would have ultimately been some sort of a conflict, inasmuch as the pattern of Roman rule was to such a high degree evil, but not in the sense of throwing off the Roman yoke or changing the government, not in the sense of rejecting the government, but in the sense of rejecting evil in government, whatever pattern of government might have prevailed. He was not interested in rejecting the Roman government, or any government on earth. The only conflict would have been in relationship to the evil in government. And that is true today.
When we speak of the kingdom of God on earth we are not in any sense rejecting the government of our land, or Canada, or any other. The evil in government does and will come into the contest. But back there at that time, Judas particularly had high aspirations of being a great government figure. He thought he had a king that he could sell to the people, and he would be His advisor, His right-hand man, in developing the political pattern of the king. He would have fame and position and wealth; he would share in the king's glory. And he was not the only one. He was the most deliberate one, but the others, most of them, including Peter, tended to develop this false design. That false design crumbled, and in the pattern of tragedy the Master Himself was crucified, His body was put on the cross.
The false design will always crumble sooner or later. It may conceivably extend beyond the life span of a given individual; the human being may be able to convey his design to someone else to carry on, so that it is maintained for a time. But the false design must crumble. From the standpoint of ancient history, we have what is called the rise and fall of empires, the evidence of this very thing. The empire that grew and developed on the basis of a false design crumbled. We see these ups and downs. Human beings think they design some pattern which can endure, and so all those involved go to work to make it big and great and important, and sooner or later it becomes so top-heavy that they cannot hold it up anymore and it crumbles. Some designs inevitably crumble at the end of the life span of an individual who maintains them. When his body dies, the manifestation of that which he is projecting, the design for which he stands, passes away. Human beings are crucified on the cross of their own making by reason of false designs; they defeat themselves. God is not defeating them. God is doing exactly what the Master did. He let the pattern prove itself out.
The point was to determine whether or not the Divine Design and the human design brought to a given point would be equally helpless. The human design crumbled and was gone. But out of that pattern of tragedy came forth the evidence that the Divine Design did not crumble. The pattern through which it was made manifest changed somewhat, but the Divine Design endured and continued on, regardless of what man did and regardless of the fact that the human design crumbled and turned into nothing.
By the time the Master was passing through Gethsemane and was facing the events that are commemorated today, those thousands who had followed Him and acclaimed Him were gone. They were hiding; they did not come around. The outer evidence of the idea or design of an earthly kingdom had crumbled and was gone. But out of this rubble, out of this ash, out of this debris, there emerged the evidence that the Divine Design endures and is not lost, is not destroyed merely because human designs crumble into nothingness.
And this is the great lesson which is offered to human beings in relationship to that which is commemorated in the Easter season, because it provides us with acceptable evidence that we can be associated with that which endures, we can let our pattern of life expression shift from the false design to the true. The effectiveness of living, the development of true character, the fulfilment of the individual, all depends upon this one thing: the manifestation of the true design. That true design is so covered up, so obscure as far as the human vision is concerned, that the human being of and by himself, in his own wisdom, cannot seek it and find it successfully. But he can seek for it and he can find it. As the Master put it, “He that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” We must seek for it if we are to find it. But here is the difference between the individual who is moving forward on the spiritual path and the individual who is moving toward tragedy—something that you can remember in relationship to yourself in the days to come and something that will help you to function effectively in service to others—the distinguishing point:
One individual seeks to find that which he thinks will substantiate and maintain his belief in the patterns of his own design; everything that he hears, everything that he sees, he translates it, he twists it, he turns it somehow, into supporting evidence by which he may maintain conviction in his own rightness with respect to his own design. The other person is not interested in finding evidence to support his own design or anyone else's; he is interested in seeking and finding and unveiling the true design.
Now this basic differentiation in attitude will determine your success or failure in the days to come. If you are attempting to build a pattern of support with respect to an attitude, an idea, a concept, a belief, a desire that you have in relationship to a design which you think is pleasing to yourself, if you are quick to defend, if you are concerned about support for your design, you will inevitably fail. If you are careless of human designs, particularly your own, if you are seeking to find the design that endures, the design that is Divine, and you are concerned about learning to participate in that design—not to support it but to let it have form in and through yourself—if you are seeking for that, regardless of what pet designs of your own making you may have to relinquish, if you are interested in yielding up your body and your mind and your heart, your capacities of being, to that true design, regardless of anything else, you will begin to reveal your true character. But no one can have or know or reveal his true character until he does that. It cannot be done.
Even at the time of the Master, when human beings had Him there in person and could hear the sound of His voice and accept His leadership if they would, they proved that point. Even the Master Himself could not sway, change or undo, in the direct sense, that which self-active, self-determined human beings established. It had to crumble and pass away of its own nature. So they did not reveal their true character. The true character with respect to Peter and Paul, for instance, is not revealed in the Bible. It was not revealed to the children of men.
The true character of the individual is hidden and buried, invisible, until these changes take place and the human being relinquishes his determination to use everything he sees and hears to substantiate his own concepts of design. Here is the point where human function divides one pattern into success and the other to failure, and it hinges on that which we have been studying: design.
It is not for us as human beings to try to learn how to be designers. It is for us to learn how to be discoverers of design, the design that God established, to see all of the different factors that enter into the design that is coming forth from God's hands. Not to try to impose this or that or the other thing into that design, not to try to get God to accept any design which the human mind may think to be pleasing, not to be designers, but to be discoverers of design, so that our capacities of being in body and mind and heart may be used for the true expression of the spirit in giving form to Divine Design, that the pattern of the future for us, and for all who will receive, may be changed, changed from the pattern of tragedy, failure, defeat, the ruins of the darkness of the tomb, changed to the pattern of success and fulfilment and victory, changed into the fulfilment of the heavenly womb out of which there is the birth in form of the right design. And as we so function we reveal our true character.
Uranda
February 25, 1907 - August 4, 1954
