Be Now!
Martin Exeter April 15, 1984
Preambles are important. We have had one here this morning in the congregational singing and in the singing of the combined choir. This preamble properly leads into a specific statement. This statement might be summarized in two words, one word of two letters and one word of three letters, all very succinct. The statement is: Be now. This is a statement that is rightly made this morning or at any service, but also to be made by anyone, anywhere, at any time. Be now. This morning we have the opportunity of sharing in letting this statement be brought to focus in our unified spiritual expression. It is not just a statement for me to make but for all of us in oneness to make. I may have the special opportunity of articulating this statement in a particular way, but all who are here present are included in the expression of this statement, in whatever way it emerges. When I speak I do not speak just for myself but include what is moving in the consciousness of all concerned in what is brought to specific focus in words. The clarity of consciousness in all concerned is therefore important if the statement is to be specific, clear and to the point. I suppose it might be possible for me to accept that responsibility just for myself, excluding everybody else. This is something that certainly was done in times past. But gradually the opportunity has been broadened, so that all who were present might share in the particular expression which should take form during a service. Each individual has a responsibility in this regard. And so it is this morning.
Be here. Be now. This is the only time we can be anyway, so we might as well be. There are many people who have considered “now” to be a nonexistent line between past and future. According to this view only the past and future are real; the “now” doesn’t exist except as this invisible line between past and future. Such a view is revealing of the reversed polarity in human consciousness. “Now” cannot be grasped by the human mind. In imagination it is possible to seem to grasp the future and the past, but it is imagination: the past, imagination based in memory of an event which probably was never experienced now. The future is speculation; again, imagination.
Factually there is only one reality and that is now, a reality incapable of being grasped or possessed by the human mind. The human mind itself is a product of being now. The future is speculative, unknown, blurred, because it is out of focus. The only positioning that is in focus is now. There is no way by which one may have clear vision and understanding except as one is present being now. The blur of the future also extends into the past. Memory is inclined to be faulty and what was experienced probably was not seen or understood because the person who was experiencing it was only minimally present now. We are concerned to be now. We have recognized that the present moment, which seems to be nonexistent—it can’t be isolated in human consciousness—is, in fact, a crossover point. What is in the future may be experienced when it reaches the point of the now. It may be known then. As long as it is in the future it is, to some extent, blurred and out of focus. Coming into the now, it may be absolutely crystal clear for anyone for whom the future and the past is in fact irrelevant.
If you stop to consider the matter, how much is your consciousness filled with expectations about the future or memories concerning the past? To the extent that the consciousness is so filled, there is no room to experience the present moment. Those whose consciousness is so filled—and that includes virtually all human beings everywhere, so filled with imagination concerning the future and the past—always seem to have the need to find someone to explain what cannot be clearly seen and understood in that condition. That condition produces a blurred view, because the endeavor is to look at something that is not in focus; and because it is not in focus it seems rather vague and incomprehensible, so someone needs to come along and explain it. Because human function is almost totally based in past and future, insofar as the mind is concerned, everything is rather uncertain. There is a condition that might be comparable to a degree of blindness. If you get far enough into the future or into the past there is complete blindness. Because a person feels at least partially blind it seems as though it is needful that a seeing-eye dog put in an appearance, someone who can lead the individual so that he need not stumble. Well I suppose this may be done for a while if there is someone around who is capable of so leading, but the leading is always to bring the person into the present moment. It is not to leave them speculating about the future and remembering the past, but to assist them to come into the present moment, so that they can forget their speculations and their memories and be now!
This is not to say that when one has the experience of being now there may not be some consideration given to the future and possibly to the past. However, insofar as the past is concerned you can’t change it Whatever it was—and you didn’t really see what it was anyway—whatever it was, you can’t change it. So why bother? There are those who say, “Well we can learn from the past.” I think probably you could almost count the number of people who have learned from the past on one hand. Do we note any repetition in human experience? Of course—because when there is a cloudy, blurred visionThe thing that is to be learned is that one shouldn’t be speculating about the future and remembering the past, as though that was going to tell you what the truth was in the present moment. It never does.
The only way that you can know the truth of the present moment is to be in the present moment, and being in the present moment there is something brought to focus. There is the clarity, because what is in the present moment is not blurred. It is not blurred to anyone who is in the present moment. The invitation that rightly is extended to all people—it was extended to us—is to be willing to come into the present moment, relinquishing speculations and memories. There are those who, particularly when they grow older, feel that their only meaning is based in what they can remember. That is a sad condition because the present moment is still here. Memories of the past, speculations with respect to the future, always blur the vision. And when the vision is blurred a person is inclined to imagine that he must have someone put in an appearance who will explain what the situation is. I receive requests in this regard myself from time to time, by people who should know better.
Initially most people don’t understand anything with respect to all this. So there is a need for leadership. But leadership can be provided only by someone who is in the position to which the person is to be led. You can’t do it standing off to one side somewhere and saying, “Well you need to go there.” There must be the factual reality in oneself of being now. Then that opens the door for anyone to come, because one is now and one may say of oneself, “I am now.” There is a place for someone to come. You have clear vision. Therefore it is possible to guide faltering steps on the part of those who do not have clear vision because they are not here now. They are still wandering in the wilderness of the past and the future.
Oh, this is a very fine point, ungraspable by the human mind. The only place that we can know the truth is here and now. Life itself is now. It is impossible to live in the future or in the past except in imagination. Life is present now. Let it be now, because it is now! The only moment that we can ever experience what life is is now. The only time we have any contact with life is in the present moment. Be now. One of the evidences of being now is that of seeing and understanding with clarity. If anyone finds blurred vision and says, “I’m confused, I don’t understand, I’d like to talk to you—the fact that one’s vision is blurred, that one is confused, that one thinks one doesn’t understand, is simply consequent upon involvement in imagination with the future or the past. You can see that that is the case, because every time you are now, everything comes into focus. It’s clear. There is understanding. Do any of you need someone to make it possible for you to stay out of this point of focus now so that you can continue to dream, in imagination, of future and past? Would anyone be serving you, actually, by explaining to you the basis of your confusion, trying to sort things out for you so that you needn’t be confused? That’s not service. That’s not helpfulness at all, when there is an awareness that the only place where there is a clear focus is now. All right, if there isn’t a clear focus in anyone’s consciousness it is evidence that he isn’t in the now. All right, come into the now then. That’s all. No explanations needed. In the now there is clear-cut vision and understanding; things come into focus. The future is not yet, the past is gone forever, but there is always the present moment.
So there are those events which put in an appearance in the present moment emerging out of the future, and then disappearing into the past. If one stands in the present moment, then this is what is occurring in a horizontal way. The future is coming to us; we don’t know what it is until it puts in an appearance now. Then there it is! What’s to wonder about or argue about or try to understand? There it is! At the same time we have an awareness of a vertical component. There is what is describable as coming down out of heaven into the earth. That happens in the present moment. It doesn’t happen in the future or in the past. The only time that this truth can be known is now. The only person who can experience that truth is a person who is being now, so that what is coming down out of heaven into the earth may pass through the point of the present moment where one is. Ah! Now I know! If you’re not there you can’t know, and no amount of speculation or endeavor of any kind will cause anyone to know. There is only one thing to do; that is come into the present moment. It is peculiar that anyone could have the idea that being now is difficult, because the fact of the matter is that you cannot help but be present now, even though you may endeavor to get yourself out of the present moment by speculation and memory regarding the future and the past, respectively. How much time do people spend getting out of the present moment, and then complaining because the experiences are painful, are difficult, are confused? Well, one decided to have it that way. All these things are self-produced. We are constantly being assailed by interpretations about the past. The media are expert in this field, because what they are reporting obviously is out of the past; it’s already happened. And everybody concentrates their view upon something that has already moved into the past. How about coming into the present? Being present?
We are present here this morning, sharing these moments available to us now. To the extent that we are present now, what is being experienced is clear enough. We don’t have to speculate about it. We are now. “I am now” is the only true statement that anyone can make. Where are you now? Are you at this point which can be defined by the mental processes as having position but no magnitude? Where’s that? It has no dimensions. And the human mind has all its thinking based in the quality of its own state, which is a dimensional state. It can’t understand anything that is not capable of being dimensionally defined. And when you come to the present moment, for instance, which is a point with position but no magnitude, what is that? Well it must be where past and future bump together. But it’s such a momentary thing that you can never grasp it! You can never grasp it but you are always there! Why not accept the fact without trying to grasp it? Just be now.
The experience of being now is the experience of spiritual expression. This relates to something coming down from nowhere, apparently, to find expression in the earth. We’re all here, capable of giving expression to something in the earth. Of course most of us act like mirrors: what comes out of the earth bangs against us and is reflected back into the earth. We have a recognition of the natural state of being a window of heaven, so that you are not constantly reflecting what is present in the environment. That reflection comes because of what one has dragged forward—a lot of it unwittingly—out of the past. One’s heredity came out of the past; and people give a lot of weight to heredity. This is important in the view of so many, yet it is something that comes out of the nonexistent past. It’s gone forever; it cannot be changed. Let it go. Why drag it into the present? It can’t really be done. What it does is take one’s own experience into the past, so that one vacates the present moment; one isn’t present now.
It is well to pause from time to time and examine what is happening in one’s experience now. Is there thought being given to things of the past? Those things of the past which are usually seen as being most vivid are those things which were experienced with an intensity of emotion. Those things you remember, and they tend to be ghosts which keep cropping up. It requires a little deliberation to set them on one side. I don’t suppose there is anyone here who hasn’t had experiences which involved intensity of emotion back along the way. You may have found that some of those things which used to recur in consciousness from time to time, triggered by something else, have dissolved. Where did they go? It would take quite an effort to remember what they were. If that is so—and I trust it is, because something has been working in all of us that was designed to dissolve such things—then that is one way we have been freed from the burdens that we were carrying around with us. But there could be those things which still tend to be ghosts out of the past; very vivid ghosts. We’re haunted by these things. Why? Because when they arise we feed them. We look them over, we pay attention to them, and we re-experience our emotions again. Do you ever do that? That is what keeps these things alive.
Virtually all human beings are haunted. We’ve lived in haunted houses, because of all these memory elements which keep reasserting themselves by reason of the intensity of emotion that was known at the time of the original experience. And because there was an intensity of emotion at that time we certainly didn’t see or understand what it was that was happening, so to try to sort it out and explain it now is a waste of time. When such things arise in consciousness there needs to be a deliberate setting aside; and if you are a little persistent in this, after a while they will just dissolve. So we come finally into the present moment where there is peace, where we are no longer plagued by all these ridiculous ghosts. Sometimes these ghosts look so serious and ghoulish that we have, almost forcefully, to put them on one side. Others of these ghosts can be easily dealt with by laughing at them. There is one thing they can’t stand and that is to be laughed at. Remember that! Concerning any devil that puts in an appearance insofar as you are concerned, laugh at the devil. Laughter, they say, is good medicine anyway. It’s certainly good for the digestion. All we need to do is come into the present moment. And in the present moment, in the actual experience of life itself, that is delightful, sometimes amusing, but always delightful, always characterized by joy.
There is no place that we can live but now; and if we are in the present moment we are here as well, wherever here is. But we may all share being present now; that brings us all together. If we’re wandering around trying to get into the future or into the past we’re all scattered abroad, we’re all following out these devious paths which relate to our past and we continually are projecting these things into the future and skipping over the present moment in the process, or it flashes by so quickly that we never notice it. But we can be now. We are here together this morning now.
I am the way, the truth and the life. That is a very plain statement. A lot of people are looking for the way; and there are those who want to know the truth; and there are certainly vast numbers of people who are anxious to live. This can only happen in the experience of anyone in the present moment, now. It’s good to be alive! We may say, “Well it was good to be alive yesterday,” or more likely to say, “I have a lot to complain about with respect to my experience yesterday; I hope it is going to be better tomorrow.” It won’t be! It won’t be if you skipped over now. Be now! All the confusion, all the misunderstanding, all the things with which human beings struggle, relate to past or future. Let such things go, that we may share, in this moment and in every moment, being now, therefore being one because we are all in the same place at the same time, this cross-over point, the crossover point that can’t be located particularly. It can’t be understood by the human mind, but it is present and may be experienced by anyone who stops listening to the mouthings of the mental processes which have become habitually involved with future and past: "What is it going to be? How shall I be able to handle what it is that is coming up?” You can’t. It’s coming up; it isn’t here yet. The only person who can handle what is coming is the person who is present when it comes up. Then it’s now, then it can be handled; but you can’t get it all set up ahead of time. We don’t need to speculate. We don’t need to try to manipulate. At least the only reason anyone would try to manipulate is to make a profit of some kind, to gain some benefit for oneself. If you try to do that you take yourself out of the now into a never-never land, that you find out sooner or later is a never-never land. No, there is an easy way.
I am the way, I am the truth, now! Not in the future, not in the past, but now! I am the life. I live now. Here is my identity in the moment. I know life because life is now. And when I am where life is I know life. We have shared a moment this morning, just one moment—no others. We know is what is right now. We share this now. Let us share it consistently and continuously, that we may know what it is to be one. For “where I am, there ye may be also.” That was said by somebody who lived many, many centuries ago. It is just as true now. It is always true now. “Where I am, there ye may be also.” Come out of the past, come out of the future, be present where I am.
© emissaries of divine light
Zero Dimension — Now Everywhere
Martin Cecil April 13, 1979 Assembly
The first heaven and the first earth must pass away—and are passing away. “And there was no more sea.” That refers to the forms in which substance is held in human-nature consciousness. No more sea—no more human nature consciousness, because of the New Heaven and the New Earth. This is the true heavenly power, and the consequent true earthly power. Heaven and earth are one. These two powers are not in conflict, as they are insofar as the first heaven and the first earth are concerned—these are constantly in a battle, on the surface at least. They get together sometimes, but that isn’t very comfortable for anyone. The New Heaven and the New Earth are that to which our experience is dedicated—spiritual power, which allows for the emergence of a material power in alignment with it. In thinking of spiritual power, it is often imagined that somehow it is going to work without regard to material things; they just get arbitrarily pushed around by this invisible magic of spiritual power. But heaven and earth are one; the movement of the spiritual power is the movement at the same time of the material power. They work together in unison, in oneness. Heaven and earth are indeed one. And this is known in the coming of the New Heaven and the New Earth, so that the expression in our experience may no longer be governed, consciously or subconsciously, by the powers of the first heaven and the first earth, by religious powers and by temporal powers as human beings have known them in human nature. We cease to be governed by these things, not because we rebel and object and fight against them, but because we find ourselves participating in the reality of the New Heaven and the New Earth. Life is then withdrawn from the old in our own experience. It is not yet withdrawn from the old in the general patterns of the world, but in our own experience it is. And that withdrawing of life force relates to the structures that are present in human consciousness, our own specifically, because regardless of what we may have thought about it consciously we are all the product of what went before subconsciously. We all therefore have a residual state which is describable in terms of religious power and temporal power.
If you examine history you will see how these things have been so strong in human experience down through the centuries. Has that all just evaporated in this generation, do you think? No. It is right here. It is present in the human nature consciousness of everyone, ourselves included. And without realizing it, everybody is moved by what is there present as strings are pulled by the devil. The human nature state of affairs activates these things in our subconscious human nature state, and we find ourselves reacting this way and that—we do not know exactly why. That is uncomfortable, so we try to explain it. And we have considerable interest in psychology and all this sort of stuff, which is trying to explain something to make it more acceptable—something that is very uncomfortable until, of course, the human mind can get in there and give it a supposedly logical explanation. But it never is logical, because the premise is wrong, and the whole pattern of human nature mental experience is irrational. Those who participate most directly in this mental activity are the ones who usually claim it is very rational, because they base it, in their own imaginations at least, upon logic. “It’s all very logical. We follow this out. We’re not ruled by emotion. We see the thing is here and here and here.” But the logical process is all based in a fanciful premise that has no reality, and so no matter what derives from that, it is going to be as fanciful as its point of origin. It is an excellent exercise at times to look at something that has been firmly established in the human nature consciousness as being irrefutable and see if you cannot find an alternative explanation.
Mention was made this morning about darkness, a new way of looking at it. We are supposed to see, when we look out into the universe on a clear night, light which is reaching us from immense distances, taking a long period of time to come to us, so that we are really supposed to be looking into the past. This seems very logical to the human intellect. Light, after all, takes so much time to arrive at any given point; it travels at a certain speed, and therefore if we see stars a long way off, it must have been coming for all that time. If it came for all that time, maybe the thing we are looking at doesn’t really exist there anymore; it may have flickered out. Well, this is a supposedly scientific way of seeing things, but possibly that is not the way it is at all, because there is something there that was not taken into account—namely darkness. I might just touch on it for a few moments in order to indicate something which would allow a different way of looking at things.
Darkness is presumably the complete absence of light. Light we see dimensionally speaking—a rather peculiar thing, mind you; it shows up as what they call a “constant” in many calculations. But it is supposed to travel at 186,000 miles a second. That’s fast, from the human perspective at least. But not very fast, however, if one sees it relative to the universe—it’s kind of sluggish. It’s taking these millions and billions of years to get to us from far places. However, it gets to us somehow through the intervening darkness. Now the darkness is a factor. Darkness is zero light—at least we could describe it that way I suppose—and therefore it has zero dimension. It has zero speed. I suppose in one way it could be said that it is dimensionally speaking nothing—zero everything. Now this is a factor when we look at far-distant light objects, because it intervenes, it is in between. If you strike a match in a dark place it illuminates a little area around. Sometimes you don’t have a flashlight; you strike a match in order to see something. You have to get pretty close with your match if whatever it is is to be illuminated. So there is illumination available from light. There’s some that illuminates the earth in the daytime, and this illumination evidently extends out quite a way, because the sun is pretty powerful. In other words it’s pushing this light out—if you look at it that way—for quite a distance. The solar system is encompassed in the sun’s illumination. We can see Pluto, which is supposed to be the furthest planet. It isn’t right now as a matter of fact. I think Neptune is the furthest one out, because Pluto has a rather peculiar orbit; it comes inside Neptune at times and it’s inside right now. We see these planets—they reflect the sun’s light, so the sun must get out at least that far.
But going back to this match again. A person who is standing, we’ll say, a couple of hundred yards away can see the light of the match when you strike it, but no matter how carefully he looks at his book he won’t be able to read by the light of that match. So there are two kinds of light in this sense. There is the illuminating light, and there is the light which is seeable at a distance through darkness—in other words, the medium for the transmission of the light is darkness, and the medium by which we see the light is darkness. There is this space of darkness which is zero dimensionally, so it doesn’t take any time at all for that light to reach us. It is not in fact reaching us, any more than we are reaching it. It is there, and there is zero dimension in between. So in fact it could be said that we see the universe now, everywhere, the way it is now, because we see it through the dark—through zero dimension. There is no dimension in between; there is no speed in between. I don’t particularly want to expand that at the moment. It has many implications, incidentally, which we would recognize as relating to the truth. We know that it is now every place in the universe, regardless of what the light is doing. Even if it is taking immense periods of time to come to us, it is still now wherever it came from. But maybe it is not taking those immense periods of time to get to us.
Light illuminates in its immediate system, like the solar system for instance, or there is galactic light. But it does not force itself through billions of miles of nothing to get to the eye that sees it. The nothing in between is zero. So there is the light we see in that way through darkness, and there is the light which illumines the immediate system. When we strike a match it has an immediate system just around it. Get beyond that, you can’t see anything by that light. It is a different kind of light that is then perceived. So here is a very well-entrenched concept in the scientific mind, with regard to the universe and light, which perhaps is totally untrue. And we might suspect that virtually every other concept that the intellect holds is equally untrue. It is not the way it is thought to be. Things are the way they are, not the way the human mind thinks them to be, and that doesn’t make anything so. The thing is so already. The human mind has this infernal habit of trying to make everything fit into its own little thimble of consciousness, which it won’t do. Certainly the universe won’t fit in there, and it is ridiculous to try to make it. It proliferates a fanciful world of imagination, logically explained of course, but simply created by this little thimble of the mind, and has nothing to do with the way things really are.
Now if we can see that as it has application with respect to something vast like the universe, or something very small at the other end of the spectrum, then we may possibly deduce that the same thing is true right where we are in the factors that are present in the immediate daily experience. They are not the way the mind thinks they are. And yet the mind presumes to judge everything in this field as though it knew. It doesn’t. The truth is spiritually discerned. Only the spirit is capable of encompassing what is present—very small, or medium sized, or very large—so that it is comprehensible to spirit. That comprehensibility is revealing of the way things actually are. I have pointed out on various occasions—it is particularly drawn to point in the book As Of A Trumpet—that in human nature human beings live in a dream world, one they have dreamt up themselves. It is not what is actually there. It is simply something that is parading through the little human nature consciousness of the individual while he is sleeping. As long as a person is asleep, that is the only experience he can have, the fact of a dream. The dream may be evidence that there is a reality somewhere, about which the dream is woven in the human consciousness. We are concerned with the reality, not with the dream. In our awakening to the reality of being, the dreams simply vanish and are as though they had never been.
© emissaries of divine light
The Solar Entity
Martin Cecil October 24, 1976
“The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” You are all familiar with the first commandment, the first great commandment. One cannot command love, but the experience of love is a natural one to everyone. Man, to be clothed and in his right mind, must necessarily experience the fulfilment of this first great commandment. Such an experience is the natural state of man. Obviously, it is quite useless to try to love God; we may awaken, however, to our own natural state.
We will not be inclined to awaken to that natural state if we do not allow our love to center in God; in other words, if we disperse it in other directions we certainly would not be in position to fulfil this commandment. As you have noted, it is an all-inclusive commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all." As has before been emphasized, this does not leave any love available for personal application. I am sure that all of you have recognized this commandment and acknowledged the fact that it should apply, but, at the same time, I suspect that you have not allowed its completeness to engulf you. In other words, generally speaking, human beings are inclined to hold something out to one side, which they consider to be the natural thing. By and large, what is held out to one side relates to the male-female relationships.
Now, obviously, there is something right about male-female relationships; there is something right about the relationships between men and the relationships between women; but nothing of that rightness can possibly be known until there is the experience of the meaning and the fulfilment of the first great commandment. There are those who seek to find the meaning and fulfilment of that by reason of their relationships in the human sense, but it doesn't work that way. The second commandment, with which you are also familiar, but which I have not read because I do not wish to emphasize it at the moment, comes second; and, in fact, it is the natural experience when there is the fulfilment of the first. You have heard these words many times, but as long as they remain just words, just an idea, just a nice belief, without any actual fulfilment in your own experience, the meaning cannot be known, and the fulfilment of the second commandment cannot be known.
We recognize the need to move in a transitional experience from one state to another, from the state of the dying soul to the state of the living soul. We have to start from where we are, as all human beings do, and so there is of necessity a step-by-step movement away from the state of involvement with the dying soul. But as has been emphasized, we are considering a new state and not an improved or made-over old state. The old state of the dying soul might be described as a partial experience of life, a fractional experience of life. Fractions can be described in terms of the decimal point. “The Lord our God is one”—1, not a fraction of 1, not even .99. The fractional experience is the experience of the dying soul, and no matter how many 9's you may add, recurring infinitely, the experience will never be 1. It is a new state. The fractional state cannot ever become the true state. “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord.” Human experience tends to see everything in isolation. Everything is observed through the eyes of separateness. We are inclined to consider ourselves as being separate individuals, and everything we look at takes on the same coloration. Oneness—what would that be? As long as we are thinking in fractional terms, we will never know.
This inclination—which is more or less inevitable in the human state—to see everything in pieces may be illustrated by the idea with respect to the atom. Originally the atom was considered to be indivisible, a little piece of matter, presumably, which could not be further divided. Of course, when the outlook is based in this view of separateness, you can never reach a point where something could not be divided. This was discovered in relationship to the atom, and further so-called particles were multiplied and are still being multiplied—all theoretically, mind you—more and more fractions. It's interesting, isn't it, that, moving in that direction, we are supposed to be discovering the wholeness of things; but the fractional experience can never be the whole experience. If one looks at things on the basis of separateness, seeking to understand things that way, there will come less and less understanding. Understanding is only possible in what may be described as the integral experience, the experience of the integer, the one.
How can we begin to see wholeness, oneness? The extent to which we can begin to experience that wholeness in our outlook and in our living will be the extent to which we know the truth. We could take the atom, I suppose, but this is, after all, not very real to us. Something that is more real to us is the solar system, and when we look at the solar system we are inclined to see it fractionally: there is the sun at the center and there are planets in their orbits around the sun. This is the way that the solar system is seen. Of course, there is more to it than that, but in simple terms these are the main points. But the solar system might be better described as a solar entity, because it is one thing. When we look at our own bodies we see one thing. We are aware of the fact that there are parts, but we are assured of the integral nature of the body.
Looking at the solar system and describing it, rather, as a solar entity, we may see an immense sphere. This immense sphere has the sun at its center, what we call the sun, a physical body of some kind presumably, very hot and very big, relative to the earth. But that is the core of the solar entity; it isn't anything all by itself. The term "magnetosphere" perhaps describes something which may indicate the extent of the solar entity. Perhaps we could not put any boundaries on it actually, but, for sake of a new vision of what we have called the solar system, we may see the solar entity as extending to and beyond the orbit of the outermost planet—Pluto, isn't it?—the sun's magnetosphere. Now, we don't see that physically. Our capacity to discern does not include, at the moment at least, the discernment of the magnetosphere. There are various ways that it can be discerned through instruments, but as human beings, in our present state, we cannot discern it directly. It is there nevertheless, just as real, just as solid, in a sense, as the sun itself.
Now, this wholeness of the solar entity certainly includes parts, but we need to see the wholeness of it, and the extent of our seeing the wholeness of it will be the extent to which we are beginning to awaken to the truth. If we merely see a system, with a sun in the middle and little planets whirling around on the outside, we don't really see what's there. It is a very restricted view, unaware of the reality of the wholeness. Obviously, the earth only exists as the earth in the solar system; in other words, because it is a part of the solar entity. There is a magnetosphere relative to the earth, which we do not see. Certain aspects of it have been described in terms of the Van Allen belt, which I think should rather be the Immanuel Velikovsky belt, because he was aware of it long before whoever Van Allen was put in an appearance.
The world of which we are aware is based in our ability to discern and interpret what we discern. We speak of physical substance, but apparently this physical substance is not so physical after all. It's composed of atoms, and atoms seem to be composed of vibratory factors, and physical substance vanishes into a vibratory pattern of some kind. The point is that all is of this nature. We have become aware of the vibratory nature of all things. There are various levels of vibration. We translate or interpret certain levels of vibration as though it was physical substance.
We do this because of our facility to discern it; we discern it that way; we interpret it that way. It isn't really that way; we make it that way. In other words, we can see our participation in the process of creation, because physical substance isn't really physical substance the way we imagine physical substance to be. It is of a vibrational quality, but we have certain facilities in our makeup which enable us to discern certain vibratory levels, and we discern a certain vibratory level which, in turn, is interpreted as being physical substance. But we interpret it as being physical substance. We make it that way, and we are capable also of giving it shape and color, and we consequently create what may be seen as a rich environment, based in our own discernment of it and our own interpretation of it. But what we are discerning and interpreting is all one thing, various levels of what we describe by using the word "vibration," and we create our own worlds.
Now, our ability to discern has tended to be emphasized at one end of the spectrum, so to speak, because of the fact of what we have called earthly orientation. The vibration which we interpret as physical substance emphasizes itself very particularly to us because we have been oriented in that direction. We have facilities to discern other things, but our discernment at other levels of vibration has suffered because of our hang-up in relationship to the physical level of things. And because of our hang-up with respect to the physical level of things, the appearance has been of separation. We look around and we see bits and pieces everywhere: the bits and pieces of our fellow human beings, the bits and pieces of all kinds of things around us. Now, there has been some sort of an awakening in recent years to what has been called ecology; in other words, there is some sort of a recognition that there is an associated pattern, but it’s still not seen in its wholeness, a wholeness which is the reality and which can never be shattered in fact. It's always there; it always has been there and always will be there. "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come." There is a wholeness.
Returning to a consideration of the solar system, we may begin to discern the wholeness of a solar entity. The earth is just as much a part of that solar entity as the sun is, or as any other of the planets are. They are all swathed in the same vibratory substance, a level of vibratory substance that, at the moment, we do not discern directly. Just because we do not discern it doesn't mean that it isn't there. This solar entity springs forth from what may be described as a centering point. Now, we think of the centering point as the sun, but the sun is merely something that we are capable of observing in various ways and is of the level of physical substance insofar as our direct observations are concerned—hot physical substance; we can feel the heat when the sun shines. But there is a centering point which is not physical substance, not that vibratory level which we interpret as physical substance. On occasion we have considered the matter of dimension and how all dimensions spring out of a point, a point which has position but no magnitude. In other words, a point isn't a dimension; it only becomes dimensional as something emerges, is generated, out of the point. And we have noted that the first thing to be generated out of a point is what is called a line. A line has length but no breadth—what's that? Whatever this solar energy is is generated out of a point; and if we want to give position to the point, we say it must be somewhere in the sun. It has position but no magnitude.
I was noticing the other day that the idea was beginning to percolate that somehow or other there was a black hole in the sun. Do you know what a black hole is? They have discovered black holes here and there in the universe into which what we interpret as substance may flow and vanish. Perhaps there's something coming out of a black hole too, which isn't noticed. But the idea of a black hole at the center of the sun is related to this matter of the initial point of generation. There is something emerging into what we call the dimensional world: various vibratory levels, one thin band of which we interpret by calling it physical substance.
It seems to be a peculiar world we live in, doesn't it? It isn't the way we have always thought it to be. If we begin to recognize this without getting bothered by it, it may be an indication of the fact that we are emerging into a state of greater wakefulness, where we see things as they are rather than as we have imagined them to be. Now, it might be said that if I am describing the solar entity, we are indulging in a little imagination; but, you know, all imagination is based in something that is true. You cannot imagine anything that is not based in something that is true.
You can’t pick something totally new out of the atmosphere, so to speak, and there it is! What would it be? There must be something first. We have noted that, in the creative process, God never makes something out of nothing, and if there is imagination, there is something back of the imagination. The point with human imagination is that whatever was real back of it is translated into distorted patterns insofar as human consciousness is concerned, and we have some pretty far-out things in imagination in consequence. But somewhere back of whatever it is, there is the truth, there is a reality, which is sensed but mistranslated.
If we imagine this solar entity as a vast vibrational sphere, that is an interpretation of something that is true, and perhaps it might be said that the interpretation in this fashion is nearer to the truth of the matter than some of the other separatist interpretations. We see how this separatist business permeates all areas of human experience. People want to maintain their state of separation, as though there is something valuable in it, as though “my” culture is better than “your” culture: “I need to make sure that my culture lasts; it doesn't matter so much if yours passes away.” But all of it is based in this separatist approach, so the true culture is never seen; because, after all, if there is human culture of various types, it must spring from some reality. The human culture which comes out on the surface is not the reality, because it has been misinterpreted by reason of the separateness which has now become so inherent in the state of human consciousness. We are concerned to awaken to the state of oneness.
Now, let's look at something else here, in connection with the solar system. It is said nowadays that sunspots have something to do with weather conditions on the earth. If we are aware of the wholeness of things, we could equally say that weather conditions on the earth have something to do with sunspots. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? The point is that everything emerges out of that original point, and there is something back of the weather on earth and there is something back of the sunspots on the sun, and it's the same thing; there is no separation. Where people are polarized in the earth, they see everything in terms of earthly cause and effect, as it is considered to be; but this is a very superficial view, because everything that is happening is happening by reason of what is back of the surface event, or at the higher level of vibration.
If we see physical things occurring on earth—wars and rumors of wars, all the conflicts, all the things that are working out in various ways in human experience on earth—the concentration usually is upon how one thing that is working out is affecting another thing that is working out. In other words, it is a totally surface consideration. But there is something emerging through everything that is working out, and so one thing is not really a cause of another thing, in the surface sense. The things that are happening in the surface sense are simply reactions of various kinds, on the basis of this separate condition in human consciousness, to what is emerging vibrationally speaking, what is emerging from the original point.
This is particularly emphasized with respect to our solar entity. Obviously, the solar entity is not something separate from the rest of the universe. There is what might be called a galaxy entity, of which our solar entity is an essential element. We see, then, a much greater sphere of some kind, vibrationally speaking, of which we have an awareness because of the level of vibration which we discern as physical substance. We also discern, with our instruments, other levels of vibration which are included in this vast galaxy entity, but then the galaxy entity is a part of something else too. Our concern is to awaken to the awareness of wholeness, so that we don't merely see little bits and pieces of what we call physical substance spinning around here and there. That, indeed, is not nearly the half of it! If we look at it this way it certainly engenders a fractional experience, and in the fractional state we are dying souls.
The only way by which we can awaken to the truth is because we acknowledge in our living experience what is portrayed here as the first great commandment, so that we are centered at the point from which what is emerging may come forth in our own experience. Then we are not trying to adjust ourselves at the periphery to what is going on, but are simply allowing what is emerging—which is the cause of what is going on, anyway—to come forth through ourselves in our own particular field of function in the whole. It's coming forth through everybody else too. It is coming forth and is made evident through everything else! But if we misinterpret what it is that is coming forth, we get everything jumbled up in our consciousness, and everything, consequently, jumbled up in our world. How can the experience be a clear one unless we ourselves are clear with the point by reason of which the coming-forth is occurring? Then our movement will be in harmony with that coming forth; and while the movement of many other people may not be in harmony with that, nevertheless it is not outside of what we call the working of the Law. Now, here is another human interpretation of something. In one sense it could be said there isn't any such thing as the Law; everything is just the way it is, that's all. It works the way it works. It doesn't work any other way.
We tend to feel ourselves bombarded by what is going on around us and we have different kinds of feelings with respect to what's happening around us. Some of the feelings we have may be pleasant feelings, some not so good. But if we get all tied up in those feelings of what is going on around us, to that extent we are in no position to discern what it is that is happening at the focus point. Human beings are always trying to set up their little patterns out here on the periphery and, generally speaking, totally ignoring anything that may be emerging from the focus point. Until one pays first attention to the focus point, one cannot possibly know what it is that is rightly emerging on the periphery. But human beings get these things set up on the periphery, and then, because what is emerging from the center point can't actually be stopped—it's going to emerge anyway— they find that what they'd got all nicely set up on the periphery begins to split apart. What is emerging from the center point is forcing it apart, and that's a painful business. People suffer and complain in consequence. But it was their own determination that did it.
There is the endeavor to create a surface skin, so to speak, of relatedness between human beings, and between groups of human beings, between nations, what have you. We have the United Nations trying to do this thing. Obviously, not very successfully. There is a pressure underneath, all the time, splitting it apart because it doesn't belong together the way that human beings try to put it together. Hence, the first great commandment, the one important thing in all human experience. How carried away people are by what they feel with respect to each other! At one end of the spectrum, they think they hate this person; at the other end of the spectrum, they think they love this person; and there are all shades in between. But how utterly meaningless that is. That could relate to the second great commandment, but it never does because there is a failure, utterly, with respect to the first great commandment. There must be a Centering at the Core.
Now, the first awareness of that core is like unto our awareness of the sun. In other words, we see something. We don't need to try to analyze what it is, but that's a first awareness. The centering point is not the sun, as we think of it; it is a point, if we wish to give it position, at the center of the sun, a point which has position but no magnitude. That's the point of orientation. The sun is a very good illustration of the flaming sword, isn't it? You can't get to that center point in the sun without passing the periphery of the sun, which is pretty hot.
Only as we begin to awaken to the necessity of total centering, total love, for that point, toward that point, toward the quality and nature of that point which is revealed most distinctly the closer one is to that point, only as there is this total centering, can there then begin to emerge what should emerge on the surface. To the extent that we get hung up in the surface patterns, to that extent there will be a tendency to ignore the center point. This becomes most clear from the standpoint of a man and a woman who fall in love, as they put it—all wrapped up in each other. A little meaningless cyst! Because, whoever the individuals are, each one has a center point, the same center point, and the relationship there is the only thing that matters. “Oh, but I have this deep feeling!” “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all”—deep feeling, everything. Then see what happens! But, of course, most people, well, they think they're going to lose out. We are here to prove it out.
How much we have considered the Tone, the Tone which emanates from that point and with which we rightly associate ourselves, become familiar, discover what the quality of it is in relationship to this aspect of our expression and to that aspect of our expression. All this is primary, because we don't know, until we find out what that centering point is in relationship to ourselves, what our expression should be; so we don’t know what our relationship with others should be.
“The Lord our God is one.” That is the supreme truth. Let us experience that truth! Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. Thou only art holy. Thou only art worthy of our love. Only in love with Thee do we become aware of the truth of love. Aware of the truth of love, filled with the truth of love, radiant with the truth of love, then we know the wholeness that is the true state of man, and in that wholeness the specific patterns of relationship take form at the level of vibration which we call the earth. O Lord, how very thankful we are to have the opportunity to be awakened to the truth, in the Christ. Aum-en.
Using the solar entity as an illustration, we may be very much aware that the nature of this entity emerges by reason of the sun at the center. In this sense, this planet can be seen as a part of the sun, a specific means by which the truth which is present at the center may be revealed in all its glory. This is the challenge that is presented to us and to all the angels of the Lord on earth.
© emissaries of divine light
