Our recent meditations have emphasized the oneness of heaven and earth. This is the same as saying that the seven-dimensional world is one. The three-dimensional world is just a part of one. While we may recognize this truth intellectually, it does not always form the base from which our living proceeds. I do not say this in condemnation of anyone, but as recognizing a more or less self-evident fact. Using commonplace terms, it could be said of most that they don't really believe that heaven and earth are one. There has been such a long-term conditioning into the earthly experience, without regard to heaven, that it seems as though this distorted, disordered state is the way it is. If we do not proceed on the basis of the fact that heaven and earth are one, then we are living in a largely imaginary condition.
If there is oneness, if this is the reality, then another word for this is love, isn't it? It is the fact of oneness that reveals the truth of love. People talk about love, without experiencing oneness, without any consciousness of the truth that heaven and earth are one. Certainty it is not enough to talk about love; it only begins to have meaning when it is actually experienced. When oneness is experienced, love is experienced. The oneness of heaven and earth must be experienced individually for the experience of oneness with others to become a reality in the consciousness of those concerned. Heaven and earth are one. This is the evidence of love; this reveals the truth of love.
If anyone should take the attitude that we have somehow, by much effort and application in various ways, to cause heaven and earth to become one, we are denying the truth of love, as though love didn't exist—there was no love until we had by this struggle made heaven and earth one. But love is the reality. The oneness of heaven and earth is the truth, a truth of which we need to become more keenly aware. We have been blind to it, unconscious of it, believing in something different, believing that there is a need for love to come from somewhere, when the fact of the matter is that it is already present, awaiting experience, so that our blindness might give way to vision—the consciousness of the truth of love as being present now.
If heaven and earth are one we may recognize the fact that we are all one. Now this has not been the experience, has it? Or this has only been very slightly the experience. The experience of oneness between you as individuals is based in this truth, that heaven and earth are one. There is the need to awaken to the consciousness of the fact that you are one, not that you have to become one by some technique or other. And there are many techniques offered in the world to increase the experience of spirituality. Well, what would the experience of spirituality be if it isn't the experience of love? The experience of love is the experience of oneness. Oneness, love, already is. We do not need to make it so; all that is necessary is that we should become conscious of the truth, awaken to the truth.
If there are occasions when we find ourselves, in our relationships with each other, not to be one, not to have any sense of oneness, then that should immediately ring the alarm bell in our consciousness—not the alarm bell which says, “What's wrong with that person?” but the alarm bell that says, “What's wrong with me, that I do not have a consciousness of oneness?” The truth is that we are one now—we always have been. We're only just beginning to approach a point where we might be willing to acknowledge it. Thus far there has been the tendency to hold people at arm's length. How do we do this? By judging, of course; by our concepts with respect to people and with respect to ourselves.
This oneness is based in what we really are. And what should we call that? Are we people, do you think? Could it be said that we are people? We should be angelic people—but people. Our experience of oneness is as people: person to person. Now we can never get person to person if we have a lot of concepts surrounding us and others.
Where there is oneness there is the experience of what is called friendship. Friendship indicates a closeness, an understanding, a mutual respect. The friendship which should be known is between people. There is the reality of oneness already, based in the fact that we are divine people. In the experience of being divine people we have certain responsibilities, but we are not those responsibilities—we are the people who have them. The contact, the association, the closeness, the oneness, is between the people, not between the concepts that different ones develop about the responsibilities.
Now this relates to what might be called position, doesn't it? There tends to be a possessiveness, shall we say, sometimes, with respect to position. While it may be partly a sincere desire of the person to fill that position rightly, there are usually overtones which indicate that the individual's meaning is wrapped up with that position. If it is wrapped up with a position the individual hasn't experienced who he himself is. The position is not the person. We all have responsibilities, we all have positions. But we're all people; and it is being people that is important. When we are what we really are we will, in the unfolding design of things, occupy positions of responsibility. But those positions of responsibility are not what cause us to have meaning; we have the meaning already.
This is why those who have experienced the reality of meaning can move so easily from one position to another. They do not feel hurt or somehow condemned because they left one position and went into another—left a position that according to somebody's concept was a high position and went into a position that according to some other concept was a lower position. To human beings whose meaning is wrapped up in position this is disastrous: “I've been demoted. I don't have any meaning any more. I had meaning before, in that high position, but now I'm in a low position; I have nothing!” If a person feels that way he had no meaning in the first place. He had never experienced his own meaning, because it doesn't matter to a person, once he has meaning—he is a person, in other words—what position he occupies; he's still himself. It isn't the position that gives the person meaning or importance. The person has meaning and importance for himself, and, consequently, if there is that experience, when he moves into some particular position he brings meaning and importance to that position. And it doesn't matter who has a concept as to its highness or lowness, the position is then important.
Let us not, then, give so much value to position as such. Let us see the value, the meaning, the worth, in the person. We can draw close to people. We can't draw close to a position occupied by somebody else, but we can draw close to the person who occupies that position. Some people complain, “I don't seem to be able to get close to that person.” Do you see that person as a person? or do you have him wrapped up in the swaddling clothes of your concepts about him? Can't we meet each other without all this paraphernalia, all the robes of self-righteousness?
Our Master's instruction long ago was “Love one another.” We can only love one another to the extent that we love the Lord; that is, to the extent that we love the true state of what rightness is—oneness. That's what it is. Do you love that or are you suspicious of it, so that you don't want to get too close to this person or that person? You may have a concept which causes you to say, “Well, I don't like that person.” What don't you like? You don't like your concept about that person, so you're going to stay aloof because you don't like your concept about that person. But it's your concept; it's not the person. It's something that you yourself have established, because the person, in fact, is one with you already. All people, all beings, are one in God—One Being, differentiated, yes, but all One Being. There's no conflict in fact, anywhere, insofar as the truth is concerned. Love is oneness. This is the truth with respect to all people, with respect to all the Beings there are in the cosmos. This ridiculous idea that human beings have that if some being should appear from some other planet or star, or somewhere, immediately there would be a battle!—not from the standpoint of the celestial visitors, at least. Maybe that's why they stay away, if they do.
We are one and haven't known it. Are we interested in knowing it? This is the question, really, isn't it? This is what it means to love the Lord. We're interested in knowing oneness. Oneness with whom? “Well, with the Lord,” we say. Of course that's very convenient, because it relegates it to some incomprehensible realm to most people: but from our standpoint, if we say we're interested in loving the Lord we're interested in loving the state of oneness, we're interested in experiencing the state of oneness. If we are, obviously we have to relinquish all those things that obscure it, and the things that obscure it are our concepts about other people, and about ourselves too. My, the world is full of concepts about other people, and usually about groups of people; concepts about teen-agers, for instance, or concepts about old people—old people, that's anyone over, what? twenty-five?—concepts about all kinds of things, everything in fact.
Because we have these concepts we can have our devils around to blame for all our troubles, and we can ensure that we will never experience oneness, we will never know what love is. Now there are those who are interested in “making love.” You can't make love—it's impossible. Love is a reality. It can't be made. All that can be done is to become aware of its reality, and in that awareness we find a pattern, a design, of relationship. But the relationship is between people on earth, here—it's between people, not between positions, not between classifications according to the human concept. It's between people. And we discover that there are a great variety of such relationships. They're not all the same. The idea is that everybody was created equal—whatever that means—when it's an obvious fact that we're not all equal. We're all different. Different things can't equal each other. We all have our unique part to play in the whole. According to the human concept, some parts seem to be higher and some seem to be lower. Well, I suppose you could say your foot is lower than your head, unless you stand on your head! But we need feet just as we need heads. And all parts are perfect when they find their true relationship.
We are concerned with this state of oneness, which includes a pattern of right relationships; not something we have to make be so, but something that already is so. We need to become conscious of it. But, as we have already noted, we can't become conscious of it as long as we have these concepts about everything, but particularly about each other and about ourselves. We tend to classify people according to our brilliant concepts. Some people get very self-righteous on this basis; they have a deep insight, they think, with respect to the accuracy of their concepts. And as most people live on the basis of concepts of themselves, very often these things seem to be so. But the only way that we can ever find friendship is to let all those concepts go, that we may discover the people who have been hiding behind them, because the relationship is already established there. We don't have to make it so.
You can't be exclusive and experience the truth, because we're all one. There are those people who want to be recluses, who want to go off by themselves. Why, I wonder? Sometimes it is said that they want to find God. I think very often it's because they want to get away from men, from human beings—the evidence of a failure to experience the truth. Nobody can experience the truth alone. It's impossible, because the truth is we're all one. This is not to say there are not those occasions when it's all right to be alone in the external sense. But if we are alone in the external sense and we have found the truth of oneness, we will not be alone in the internal sense. We will find that we are still conscious of being a part of the whole, still conscious of oneness, still conscious of love, still conscious of God. This is God. The experience of oneness is the experience of love, which is the experience of God. People search, lo here! lo there! looking for God or for the kingdom of God. But it's here; nobody can get out of it. We can be unconscious of it, but that doesn't mean that we are out of it. We're only out of it when we're dead.
Being one, let us be willing to awaken to the awareness of it, instead of insisting upon maintaining positions—either position in relationship to ourselves or position in relationship to somebody else, according to our concept. What is your concept? Forget it! It's not true. You don't have to have a concept about your own position when you are yourself. Immediately you're in it, whatever it is. You've been in it all the time but didn't know it. Most people think they have to move from here to there. “I have to be promoted to feel more meaningful.” But our meaning is not in the position; our meaning is in ourselves, what we are. The fact of the matter is that we are one—we are friends but didn’t know it.
There has been a tendency at times for one person to look at another and say, “I could never be friends with that person. We don't get along at all.”Well, for heaven's sake, how little consciousness of the truth you have! If such an attitude is ever taken it is an insistence upon the fact that one has virtually no consciousness of the truth. All you can see is a lie. Love one another. Appreciate one another. You say, “I can't appreciate that person.” What you mean is you can't appreciate your concept about that person. Well, to hell with your concept! That won't be to hell with the person, just your concept, and the person will still be there; and you might be surprised to find a beautiful person, because that's the truth of the matter. It shouldn't be any surprise. You should know that it is so. And we can experience oneness, closeness, friendship, love, respect, appreciation, when we ditch our concepts about people and about positions.
Obviously there are responsibilities to be carried by all of you. And we need to have appreciation of this fact with respect to each other, so that we're not so wrapped up in our own responsibilities that we forget that others have them too. We should be more concerned with being helpful to those others whom we recognize as having responsibilities than we are with trying to get them to be helpful to us. If we're trying to get people to be helpful to us, or to behave in a way that we think they should, we can never be friends, can we? We're trying to do the impossible, because the fact of the matter is that we are people. And in the experience of the truth of this, there is oneness.
Concepts. A little stirring up on occasion is good, in any area of concepts, that we may begin to find the people instead of all this crust. And as we emerge as people, that's wonderful, that's illumination, that's pure delight, because we discover the truth that we are one, and we discover what love is in consequence. And the pure in heart see God. Of course. When the concept is gone the heart is pure, oneness is the reality. Love is known—God is known.
Are you interested, above all things, in the experience of this oneness? That is love for the Lord. It's love for love. I'm talking about the state of divine oneness. When the state of divine oneness is experienced the natural relationships appear as they should be. And they don't have to be made. This is something that our Master said about marriage, isn't it? There's no marrying, or giving in marriage, in heaven. Why? Because the pattern is as it is. We don't have to make it so. Human beings really have to work at it, don't they? In the earthly three-dimensional state they really have to work at it to “make a marriage,” they say, to “make it work.” Boy, it's tough! Well, yes, I suppose it is, because it wasn't really a marriage in the first place. The marriage comes on the basis of a consciousness of oneness, not just with respect to this person or that person, but with respect to all. Then out of that comes the emerging pattern of right relationships. It's already there; it doesn't have to be made by anyone.
But we come to know the truth in this regard when we love the Lord with all, love the state of oneness—this experience above all things. If that is love, could you possibly condemn and criticize and get into conflict and turmoil? Obviously not, because that would preclude the experience of oneness. You wouldn't have anything to do with that. Your love is for the experience of oneness—you see people and you are thoughtful of people. And you are thoughtful of those who are in positions of special responsibility. You are considerate in this regard, courteous, thoughtful. This is the emerging evidence of Divine Being, of the state of oneness.
They say that familiarity breeds contempt. Familiarity with what? With the human concepts. That breeds contempt, because the person actually is feeling contempt for himself. But, as is common with human beings, they always try to put it on somebody else. If you treat someone with contempt you're contemptible. That's the fact of the matter. Where you have close relationships, husbands and wives, for instance, this is a familiar situation, so it is thought to be quite all right to be rude to each other, to forget that courtesy may be a divine quality. Husbands and wives are the most deliberate, usually, in developing concepts about each other and then objecting to their concepts. You see this going on. I see it all the time—people fighting against their concepts about somebody else. How stupid! If we could just let the concepts go we'd find that there were divine people there. There are.
We are one. Heaven and earth are one, now. Let your consciousness be open to the awareness of this. Don't keep it closed off by your insistence upon having concepts about everybody. See if you can't find the people who are here, divine people, really here—the angels of God. This is the truth. Do you know it? If you don't know the truth, what is it you know? A lie, of course. And when you know the truth then oneness is the experience, but not before. Before that, you're in jail.
There are lots of people who have had a sort of martyr attitude toward living. “I'm going to put up with living in this limited condition.” Well, if it's limited, you must be remaining in your own jail cell. Come out. Come out of the limited condition. It has nothing to do with the environment at all, nothing whatsoever to do with the environment—just with you and your concept. You're bound round about by your concepts, hemmed in on every side. As long as you have them you're in your jail cell. Let them go, and there the truth is! The jail cell has vanished and you're free, and you find you live in the company of the angels of heaven. What's so bad about that? Do you have to put up with that, or is it a glorious experience? This experience is here, to be experienced by anyone. It's always been here, but perchance you're emerging to the point where you will admit that it's here, instead of insisting that it isn't. Every time you get blocked down in your little jail cell you're insisting that the kingdom of heaven isn't at hand, that the truth isn't oneness, that heaven and earth aren't one. But they are, and you can know it. I would that you might know it now and in the weeks and months to come, so that the truth might be revealed and the impact of that truth might extend effectively into the world of your responsibility, for this is your responsibility. It is a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light.
“That they all may be one.” This isn't a mystical hope. It is the experience of reality, available now. Oneness. The power of love dissolves barriers, and those who are aligned with the power of love are interested in seeing all barriers dissolved. They're not interested in maintaining them. No more defensiveness with respect to position, with respect to one's own little position or big position. Let it be dissolved in the consciousness of oneness. Let there be a willingness to acknowledge it and admit it; not just in words—this has been done many times—but in what is done, in the attitude, in the expression which appears in living. This is the truth of life, awaiting the fulness of experience.
The three disciples who ascended the high mountain with the Master became aware of something going on that they didn't yet really understand—the vision receded and was replaced by a bright cloud, but the specifics were obscured. However, out of the cloud came a voice saying, "This is my beloved Son … hear ye him." These words are spoken out of the cloud; we have heard them. This body, in which individually we play a part, plays that part because of these words. First, "This is my beloved Son," and then the part which is played extends the invitation to all who will receive it, "Hear ye him." The expression of character, the words spoken by reason of the presence of the Son of God, offer the way home to all mankind. This is not to say that all mankind will necessarily hear the voice and come home but there are those who do and will, but only when the character of the Son of God is in evidence and the Word is spoken. We know that this is a natural experience for all those who compose the body, the mind, the heart, of the Son of God on earth.
The hill of the Lord, the mountain itself, may be seen not so much as something up which we are supposed to scramble but the evidence of the design into which each one finds a natural place to be. This would indicate that there are different levels of understanding and scopes of vision insofar as those who compose this design in form are concerned. We're not all at the same level. This fact is not reason for self- or mutual condemnation. If those who begin to find themselves in this design remain self-centered they look inward. And because the design is comparable to a mountain there are those who are unseen because they are the other side of the mountain, unseen in the sense of the design but visible in the sense of the form. We are acquainted with one another. There are varying degrees of closeness in that acquaintanceship, variouslevels of friendship, but insofar as the design is concerned we do not necessarily see what someone else is responsible for or where that someone else is in the design. They may be invisible in that sense because they are the other side of the design, out of the range of our awareness in that regard.
If we see how this could be so, regardless of our association in form, then the foolishness and the uselessness of judgment becomes very plain: we're judging something that is totally invisible to us. This is likely to be the case with the majority of those of whom we have become aware as participating in the form of the mountain. We are all part of the same body but we are not aware necessarily, insofar as most others are concerned, where exactly they are and what exactly they are doing in the design. This reemphasizes the futility of judgment. How can you judge something you can't see? Judge not by the appearance; judge not by the outer form of manifestation. Just give thanks that there is a design and that all those who are participating in giving form to that design are a part of it. They don't need our opinions, for or against. We need natural space, each one, to fulfil the purpose of our presence in the design, without being harassed by the judgments of others. If we see that with respect to others, who might judge us as individuals, then we can also understand the reverse aspect of this situation, so that we are no longer interested in forming opinions about anyone.
The design is in heaven. We become aware of the nature of that design when we are at the Apex of our individual point of focus of spirit; then we fit into the design. There is no necessity to judge one another, to wonder about each other, to gossip about each other, because it is all fantasy. We do become aware of those who participate in the design of heaven close to us, and where they are close to us there is a basis of understanding—not that we need then to form opinions or make judgments but we become aware of the nature of the association. There are vastly more people present in this design than are the few who are close to us in the design. This does not make them any less a part of the design, and we are always most thankful that each one is present, but we never take an arrogant stance which assumes that it understands or knows what somebody else should be doing or where they should be in the design.
The positioning in the design is not established on the basis of the form of things; it is established in the heaven. Until we rise up sufficiently in identity to the Apex Point of our individual focus of spirit we cannot possibly comprehend the design in heaven. We are well versed in the fact that our attitudes should not be judgmental with respect to form: Judge not by the appearance. If we begin to become aware of the design in heaven, there could be no judgment there because the only way we can become aware of the design in heaven is to be at the point of Apex of the focus of spirit, so that the heaven is visible to us; and it is visible only through the eyes of the one who is at the Apex. Our awareness then of the design is that of the KING. He doesn't judge it; it's His design after all! One begins to share that outlook with the absolute knowing that it all fits together the way it should. It was designed to fit together.
When we assume the position where we belong, at the focus of spirit from the individual standpoint, then we begin to be able to discern what it is that is present in the heaven. The design emerges into the heaven first, and because we are where we belong we are quite content with the design which is emerging because it is our own. It isn't something that somebody is imposing upon us; it is something that is extending, because we are present, into the heaven to establish what is properly present in the heaven, thereafter to be reflected in the earth. "Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?" To know the ordinances of heaven one must be at the point of the focus of spirit in one's own experience. The Master Himself when He was on earth said something about that: "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you"—there's plenty of room—"I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."
This is the focus point of spirit with respect to each one. That focus point is not separate from the Supreme One. It all turns out to be the same focus point. You only discover that when you're in it. The human mind would like to speculate about it, try to figure it out, try to make it reasonable to itself. Get thee hence, satan! so that there may be a willingness to let the experience come of the way things are. It's futile to try to make them some other way. It could never be done, as witness the fact that human beings generation after generation for thousands of years have been trying to do it and never succeeded in changing anything. It still remains the way it is.
We have had a certain willingness to let the way it is be unveiled in our own experience, and that has happened to the extent that we had relinquished our own designs, our own self-determinations. So there began to be a little room for heaven to come. As this has happened we haven't really seen what the heaven is, but we have been able to see with a new perspective what the earth is, simply because we have come out of the earth to that extent. One can only comprehend something when one is at a level above it. Involved in it, you can't understand it. And in spite of all the cleverness of human minds they have never been able to understand it, as witness the fact that everything is only explainable theoretically. Nobody knows. And, very conveniently, one can have one's own theory if one is sufficiently individualistic. Most people don't have their own theories; they accept somebody else's; but it's all nonsense.
So there is this change of perspective. It comes not because of our brilliance of mind, certainly; not by reason of any technique that we have undertaken; not by reason of any human effort whatsoever, but because we have been taken up by spirit. And we have been taken up just to the extent that we were willing to go up. If we held onto the weights of human nature we didn't go up much; but relinquishing those, the Lord takes us into a high mountain. We find ourselves in the high mountain; we find ourselves in the spiritual design, the heavenly design. But the ascension continues if we are willing to let it be so. We come again to the place that is prepared and to the knowing that where I am, I am also! A natural state of affairs.
As that outlook from the Apex Point is sustained we begin to know the ordinances of heaven and there's no great shakes in setting the dominion thereof in the earth. It is the natural creative process. But it only happens within the range of human experience to the extent that the ordinances of heaven are known. One can't figure out the ordinances of heaven by any mental effort whatsoever, or as long as we're simply involved in the heaven. We rise up together because spirit carries us up. When you're learning the responsibilities of mountaineering you're told never to look down. The same thing is true here: you start looking down again, and down you go. Look at what is happening now where you are; deal with that. The mountain will take care of itself. And while the view may be spectacular it is wise to refrain from looking at it, which is looking down, until you are accustomed to the acceptance of responsibility with respect to what is happening right where you are, right next to you.
A passage from Isaiah says the Lord will be merciful to those who receive Him, and God will abundantly pardon. That is an indication that forgiveness may be received, and forgiveness is defined as the Kingdom of Heaven. To receive this because one is in one's right place and right mind is to receive forgiveness. A consciousness in this regard causes the experience of an awareness of the ordinances of heaven.
We abide together in the design at the Apex Point of our particular focus of spirit. That is a part of the design, and we see how that design emerges into the heaven, coming down from God through the heaven into the earth. But the place where we belong is the place of God: above the heaven, above the earth. We are learning to come to that place and, coming to it, to abide there. To abide there it's important not to look down, not to stop to admire the scenery, but to attend to one's own business exactly where one is and in the character and the authority of the Supreme One.
I delight to be able to speak of these things in this particular setting this evening because of the available substance which is present. Because you attend to business wherever you may be in any moment you maintain the substance; and the creative process which is at work continues to accomplish whatever is needful with respect to each one and by reason of each one. I thank God that there are those whose presence finds focus at the Apex Point of the individual expression of the spirit of the living God continuously.
This morning I read a passage from the book Hanta Yo. The initial sentence was, “I stand at the center and the light shines all around me.” That is not the complete sentence but enough for now. Only when a person does stand at the center can the light shine all around him. What it means to stand at the center is something that needs to be understood, but clearly if there is a center at which to stand, only in that position is there a complete circle around one. Anywhere else but at that point of center it will only be a partial extension of whatever light there is. That light grows dimmer the farther one is away from the center presumably, if it shines from the center. So there is less light and less area possible of illumination. You can only see all around at the peak of the mountain.
In our services together in the Chapel here I always seek to stand at the center so that the light may shine all around and there may consequently be a balanced view, a true perspective; and the invitation is implied, to all concerned, also to stand at the center. Only from that position is there adequate light and a balanced view. After the service we sometimes have what heretofore have been called comment periods, during which most of those who speak say something from the standpoint of what they had seen of what I had said. If you have half a dozen or a dozen people speaking along those lines, you will have half a dozen or a dozen different views, each one saying in effect, “This is what I saw in what you said.” We do not really share a time together in order for this sort of approach to be taken. It may be, I suppose, the initial approach, the only one that most people could make; but if one remains in that stance as an observer of what is being said or offered and then outlining one’s interpretation of it, the purpose of being together would have been lost. As I say, it may be an initial approach. Now, you know that; you know that we are here to stand at the center together. I stand at the center, you individually stand at the center, and if we do that we are all at the center and the light shines round about. We see what should be seen and we see this in a balanced way, in true perspective.
If you have something to say after a service it wouldn’t be, “Well this is what I saw in what you said.” You would rather say, if you are going to say anything along those lines, “This is what I said from my position at the center.” Only on that basis can there be agreement. I am sure we all realize this. There is no agreement in the human world, simply because no one is standing at the same place. Each individual has his own world, which he sees in his own way, but if the person who is seeing on this basis doesn’t have adequate light because he is not standing at the center, and he does not have a balanced view, then what he sees will obviously be at best distorted. It will be a very shadowy view.
An invitation is constantly extended to stand at the center where one’s own light shines round about. You cannot be at the center and depend on anyone else’s light. When you are at the center there is the light shining round about and you see what is there and understand what is there, because the only position that this is possible is at the center. Most people do not stand at the center, simply because they place other points at the center. Usually there are a multiplicity of such points. As an example in the religious sense, on the part of a Christian we will say, Jesus Christ is probably put at the center. In that individual’s religious world Jesus Christ is at the center. Well if Jesus Christ is at the center, that person is not at the center. However, it does not stop with the religious world, because there is the business world, for instance, where something else is put at the center, or there is the home where something else is put at the center. And usually in all these various worlds there are a number of things that are put at the center. I suppose if you come back to the religious world of the Christian, he has a trinity at the center: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. These are all supposed to be one, but they all cram into the center somehow.
In a general sense human beings frequently put their own security at the center. This means probably that they put money at the center. They revolve around these centers, these centers which are so chosen in the various worlds—religious, business, home, national, international, whatever world. This means that a person is revolving in numerous directions at the same time, trying to revolve around all these centers. No wonder it is a bit confusing. There is only one place where it isn’t confusing, and that is at the true center, not the centers which people set up, idols one might say. It is a civilization of idolatry because people are revolving around all these different centers, and if they are revolving around something they certainly are not in the position of a center, for the center is the still point.
The true position of anyone is at the center. That is the only position from which the world makes sense. If one has other centers around which one is revolving, the world keeps changing in one’s own view, because one is constantly in another position. It looks this way at one moment and someway else at another moment. But at the true center, upon the immovable rock one might say, one is able to view from that still point all moving things. One does not move oneself. And only from that center does the light shine. If one is in that center, the light shines because of oneself. I stand at the center and the light shines all around me. I am the light. So on that basis there is a stable point. Heaven knows that there is need for a stable point on earth.
Sometimes comment is made in a movie by some character or other probably trying to be funny: “I lie a lot.” Something had been said that just wasn’t so, and when faced with the statement and the fact, the excuse comes, “Oh, I lie a lot.” Well this is customary with human beings. They lie a lot. As the Psalmist of old said, “All men are liars.” Having said that, he thought he was being a little hasty; but I don’t really think so. A person is bound to be a liar unless he stands at the center. It is the only safe place to be. It is the only place from which the truth may be spoken. It is a great relief to be in that place and to speak the truth, because then you don’t have to try to remember all the time what you said!
I stand at the center.
My concern on the eve of my departure—probably the last time I will have opportunity to speak to all of you together—is that there should be those who stand at the center, here or wherever they are. The external geographical position is unimportant. One simply needs to stand at the center, in the place where one belongs, in that place where each individual human being belongs and therefore all human beings belong. This is the one stable point on earth; but for the most part it has been unoccupied because so many things have been placed at the center of human lives.
If we return again for a moment to the Christian world and those who place Jesus Christ at the center, there might be a recalling of a certain statement that has come down to us: “that where I am, there ye may be also”—at the center. This seems to have been largely forgotten insofar as those who call themselves Christians are concerned. They insist upon keeping Jesus at the center but won’t go there themselves. If anything is done in this regard it usually relates to an endeavor to have Jesus come to me: “Jesus, come into my heart.” That will really make somebody important! Jesus is presumably at the center insofar as He is concerned, but where are we? At the center too? So as I am departing I am concerned that there should be those who occupy the center regardless. My only purpose has been to offer during this period, the last few months, the opportunity to stand at the center to each individual; not to look at me and say, “You are standing at the center.” That may or may not be; that is my business. But what about you? Do you stand at the center? Does the light shine all around you so that you do not need to try to extract the light from somebody else?
We noted this morning how there is the condition of emptiness within the scope of human experience; a false experience, because the fact of the matter is there is no emptiness. The one substance of love fills all space. This of course has been forgotten. There has been a veil darkening human consciousness in this regard. Because of this it has been imagined that there was a lot of emptiness: Human beings are lonely, they are empty, they try to stuff themselves full of what they imagine will assuage this desolate feeling, the abomination of desolation, when in fact there is no need because there is no emptiness. It is a human dream, an imagination, that results from the fact that a person is not at the center. At the center there is completeness, wholeness, and an awareness of completeness and wholeness. Everything is round about. There is no lack, but that is so in the experience of a person only to the extent that he stands at the center. If he puts something else there he himself cannot be there, and this is the way that the delusion of separateness is maintained. So many idols are established, around which human beings delight apparently to revolve, and because of this the experience of wholeness, of oneness, is impossible. The fact that there is only this one true substance of love present is hidden, remains unknown.
It is interesting that in various ways now the suggestion is being made in the field of healing that a person should use his imagination to envision a perfect condition. People who are sick don’t have any trouble envisioning the imperfect condition. Their ache, their pain, whatever it is, keeps informing them of the seeming fact of the imperfect condition, and this tends to fill a person’s consciousness. It has been recognized in some measure that if you let your consciousness be filled with a perfect envisionment then that is a very potent factor in the experience of healing. Of course it is all in the realm of imagination. A person is earnestly endeavoring to maintain in his consciousness a view of the perfect part, which is sick; the part itself is telling the individual all the time that it isn’t perfect. So there is a bit of a conflict in here. If he doesn’t keep at it then the consciousness of the imperfection will prevail and the person will probably get worse. But if he can sustain this vision of perfectness, then perhaps there is a chance that the situation will change for the better, and because there will then be less yammering on the part of the imperfection to gain attention the individual will find it easier to keep his view of the perfect state clear and, lo and behold, healing comes. Well we can see some sense to this, but it isn’t really a matter of trying to imagine something; it is a matter of becoming aware of what actually is so. There is a difference. The person who is trying to imagine something is doing it against odds. If he doesn't keep right on the ball of imagination he will slip right off it and the imperfection will reassert itself with great force.
There is this universal substance, the absolute solid: love. It is so, even though human beings may not know it. The rediscovery of this is what is obviously needful. We have called it an awakening, awakening to the truth, the truth of love, the universal substance, the absolute solid out of which all other substance is differentiated, becoming in that differentiation less and less solid until, as we have seen in the flesh body, it is mostly space. Physical substance, so called, is mostly space. It has not seemed so to human beings; they rap their knuckles on the lectern and it is painful. But the fact of the matter is that anything supposedly solid is mostly space, while what was supposedly very ethereal, like love, is actually very solid. It is the one true solid out of which may be, and is, differentiated all the other levels of substance.
If a person is sick it brings a sense of lack, of emptiness; there is something absent. It may seem as though the sickness, whatever it is, is present. It gains attention, and when you pay attention to something it tends to grow. So there is this sense of emptiness in relationship to disease or sickness, and who is going to define disease or sickness? It is not only the aches and pains of the individual physical body, is it? It relates to the mind too and the emotions; it relates to the world itself, to one’s environment. There is, as we have seen, this sense of emptiness, this sense of absence. Something isn't there that really ought to be there somehow. But what ought to be there, in fact is there, the substance of love, but it has become obscured, hidden behind a veil in human consciousness. Only as that veil is drawn aside can there be an increasing awareness of what is there. If one becomes aware of what is actually there one begins to lose one’s association with a state of absence. The state of absence is a state of sickness or disease. When the substance of love, which when differentiated includes the substance of truth and the substance of life, becomes increasingly apparent, it fills what was before thought of as a state of emptiness and there is what should be there. Where did the sickness go then? It was merely an evidence of the fact that the individual was unaware of the truth, of the fact that the substance of love was there, an all-inclusive substance which provides everything for everything.
So it isn’t really a matter of desperately trying to imagine something, because that is only back in the field of mirage again, but of being at the center where the reality is, where there is a constant awareness of that reality. In terms of our morning’s consideration that would be in the oasis. When you are in the oasis you are not likely to be seeing a mirage, are you? The mirage is seen by those who are not in the oasis. Now, considering a mirage, it is usually looked upon as relating to something over the horizon. From the standpoint of our analogy it isn’t over the horizon at all. Geographically speaking it is right where the person is, but he is not at the center of where he really is; he is somewhere else, off from that positioning, and so he sees a mirage of the oasis, which in fact tells him that there is an oasis somewhere. It didn’t just manifest in the atmosphere from nowhere; it is a reflection of something. And of course that reflection will be dependent upon the atmosphere, won’t it? It is usually thought of as relating to heat, heat rising from the sand of the desert maybe. And that rises in wavy fashion; consequently anything reflected in that atmosphere will tend to be distorted. Some things will appear to be larger than life and some things smaller. So it is all out of perspective. This is the world that human beings see. They think that the source of that mirage is over the horizon. People in every generation have thought that, have looked far and wide for the source of the mirage, when the source was exactly where the individual himself was. But because he had put so many other things at center there was no room for him. We have all tended to have that experience: so many other things put at center. This means that a person has to travel here, travel there, to get closer to whatever it was that he put at his center.
When he himself comes back to the true point of center he comes back to the oasis where the reality is; and in that position, looking forth from that position, he doesn’t see any mirages. He sees what is actually there. Of course he discovers that the oasis, which first of all was thought of as being a little place—“Maybe we can find this little place by turning within ourselves, seeking the Father within,” or whatever the view might have been—turns out, when we begin to discover the reality of it, not to be a little place at all. It occupies the world all around us. There is nothing but oasis. That has something to do with the coming of the Kingdom, doesn’t it?
We have a story in the Book of Revelation by John, who used a lot of allegories, but most of what he described was what he saw. For instance, in the 21st chapter of Revelation, he saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” and he saw “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven.” Here was something seen, not necessarily known. Obviously many of these things could only be seen, because they were not knowable at that point. If we consider something like the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, do we realize that that is an analogy? A lot of people have thought that it was a literal description of something that was going to happen in the physical sense. They supported this idea, of course, by the thought that later on in the same book it says you shouldn’t take anything away from what was said nor add anything to it. But you have to see what is there; otherwise you are bound to be taking away and adding. Clearly enough, in this rather obscure outline in the Book of Revelation it is virtually all allegory.
“The holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven.” It doesn’t come down from God out of heaven. “Oh, but I thought it did.” No it doesn’t; it is right here now. It always has been right here now, but in seeking to convey some sort of initial point of contact for human beings to a real understanding it was couched in terms that would seem to be applicable to the human consciousness. There is apparently an absence, an emptiness, so something needs to come into it. But we suddenly realize, as we move along the way, that there really isn’t an emptiness; so how can something come into it if it isn’t there? Whatever was supposed to come into it we discover is already there. Oh we can perhaps use ways of describing these things, which are not really the truth at all. It just conveys something to human consciousness so that it might be possible for the experience of the reality, the oasis, to be known and the mirage forgotten. So we rightly stand at the center, because we haven’t put anything else there. We may acknowledge that there is an infinite reality at the center, so that finding ourselves at the center we do not find ourselves alone.
In speaking of these things we have to use words, allegories of various kinds, to convey at least something. But we are not interested in this mirage state, allegorical state, but in the experience of the thing itself. We can spend all our lives admiring a mirage—“What a remarkable phenomenon”—and we may see beautiful things in that mirage, very impressive; but it is very insubstantial, and that is the world that human beings know, very insubstantial. But the oasis is here and when one puts nothing at the center, but accepts the responsibility of being at the center oneself, the center of one’s own life, then things come into balance and we are in position to take care of all for which we are responsible by reason of our presence at the center. We discover what that is. You cannot discover what that is anywhere else but by being at the center. Human beings are inclined to want to know ahead of time what it would be like to be at the center: are they going to enjoy that fact? No, I don’t think so, because the person who is asking these questions is not going to be at the center. If there is the inclination to try to discover what it would be to be at the center without being at the center, he will be very disappointed. One must come to the center without knowing ahead of time what the experience would be.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” That is an interesting statement, isn’t it?—before me. Oh! that was the word of the Lord from somewhere. Yes, the word of the Lord all right, stating the absolute truth: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. I stand at the center and the light shines all around me. I am the light. I am the way, the truth, and the life. That statement can be spoken truly by one who stands at the center. Christians claim to believe that it was spoken truly by Jesus. Why was it spoken truly by Him if it was? Because He stood at the center. Is there no opportunity for any other to stand at the center? Is it such a little dot that only one person can be there?
I stand at the center. Nobody comes to the experience of the truth of love but by me. That is looked upon as being an arrogant and blasphemous statement, even in the case of Jesus when He was on earth. Now He has been so exalted in the human consciousness that it is all right; we will let it stand for Him. But He was a person on earth, proclaiming the way, the truth and the life for anyone and everyone. Who has what it takes to accept the challenge? Do we? I stand at the center. Who has the nerve to say that and to prove it out? Most people don’t want to say it because they don’t want to prove it out. But that is what we are here to do, and there is no hope for the flowers, let alone human beings, if there are not those who stand at the center and prove it out. One cannot stand at the center and at the same time put someone else at the center.
You cannot stand at your center and put me at the center.
I stand at the center. Each one must say that, speaking truly for himself or herself. I do it. And as there are those who actually do it, here and anywhere, then the oasis is known, the Kingdom is known. In that sense it could be said the kingdom has come. Actually it didn’t come, because it was here already, but nobody was on hand to know it. Only those who stand at the center can know it. Why hesitate then from assuming that position of natural responsibility? so that no longer is there any looking toward other centers.
This was what was implied by that peculiar word I read this morning, Wakantanka. “I am that which they call great mystery. I am that which each one calls Wakantanka”; that is: the Lord, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Allah, God, as someone or something separate from oneself. That is a lie. Human beings would have no existence at all if there was in fact separation. They discover that; it is called death. When the separation is absolute there is nothing. Wakantanka could apply to any center, or any object, person, imagination, that is placed at a center for oneself so that one revolves around that idol. That is Wakantanka. What that word means I ... well you know now! Whether whoever originally wrote it knew or not is beside the point. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, because I stand at the center and the light shines all around me. I am the light. Let each one prove it out. If there is any failure, your failure is my failure and my failure is your failure, because of the fact of oneness, the truth of oneness. But by the same token your victory is my victory, and my victory is your victory. That seems to be the way to go.
