Shekinah Magic #7 — Three Primary Levels Of Origination
YouTube Audio
Uranda June 24, 1953
We come to our GPC Servers Training Class of June 24, 1953. In our earlier class this morning you began to perceive certain vibrational factors through feeling or inner hearing or inner seeing, or more or less all together, and to the degree that you felt or perceived you have a deeper appreciation of the reality of the vibratory factors which are in use in Heavenly Magic—the reality of Heavenly Magic in action. And gradually, as you have been gaining some little awareness of Shekinah, you have begun to realize that all Heavenly Magic, even though it may manifest in an infinite variety of marvelous designs and patterns and beauties of form, Heavenly Magic always works within a basic pattern, without any exception—and if it is not within that basic pattern it is not Heavenly Magic. And you begin to see how these basic patterns are imposed one upon another from the Highest Focalization of Deity in the Cosmos, extending out through the entire Cosmos, so that this pattern of the Divine Design includes you where you are. There is a pattern in this Divine Design in relationship to every man, woman and child on the face of the earth, but how few there are who let it have meaning.
But this Kingdom of design and control, this Kingdom of power and glory, this Kingdom of the Shekinah Fire, and the Light that Glows, and the Cloud of Glory is at hand, actually at hand, all the time, within reach, available, to every person at all times, without exception—and this is that which the Master was teaching when He gave His Gospel: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Once we begin to realize that it really is, that it actually is at hand, and we begin to have some kind of awareness of it, we find the way much easier.
To the human mind, with senses dulled, asleep or half awake, the words, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” tend to mean almost nothing. It just sounds like words. But you are beginning to find that the Master actually knew what He was talking about and that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, now, that it has been every instant since man was first created and put in the Garden of God on earth; and you are beginning to sense something of the nature of that Kingdom—not too much as yet with respect to its delicate and intricate designs, but at least with respect to its basic principles, its basic factors. As this realization increases we have an increased opportunity to comprehend and appreciate many, many texts in the Bible, many things round about us, in nature and in the sky above, things near and far.
But now, let us for a few moments center our attention upon a continued meditation of the Master's words as recorded in the fourteenth chapter of John. In the thirteenth verse, for instance, we read: “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son,” and it begins to mean something to you. “And whatsoever ye shall ask in Shekinah, that will Shekinah do, that the Father, the One Who Dwells in the Center of the Flame, may be glorified in the Son, in the outer manifestation of Shekinah, made manifest through form on earth.” And it begins to be something beautifully simple; and we begin to realize that the Master's words that the way is easy was true, and it is true today. The Way is indeed easy. And we begin to establish an attitude that does not deny the fact that the Way is easy.
Continually saying that it is easy is of small value, as long as human beings are convinced that it is hard, that they are going to have to struggle, that they are going to have to try, that they are going to have to go through a lot of miseries and difficulties. So, generally speaking, you have to let people struggle for at least a while, and they think they are doing something, so you must not disillusion them too fast. Let them imagine that they are doing something. Little children have to play games, make believe; and so let them struggle a bit, try a bit, have a little misery. Oh they would not be happy if they did not have a little misery. They just have to have some misery or they would not feel natural. So don’t expect them to leave their miseries behind too rapidly. They are at home with their miseries. When they have the joy of the Lord for a few minutes they are inclined to feel, “Well, that was lovely, but now I must get back home to my miseries so that I can begin to enjoy myself.” And you will see it over and over again and it will appear that the blessings you have offered have been tossed aside and treated as if they were meaningless. With some it will be so.
After our previous class I was wondering what the pattern of conversation would be in this class, with this group. It was interesting the things that the members of this group found to talk about after the class just preceding. Of course, I realize all those things were very important, and I cannot expect you to let your minds be centered in the pattern of meditation on that which I was presenting for too long. It would be too much of a strain on you. So I want to be considerate and you are perfectly free to choose your own topics of conversation during intermission. I wouldn’t want you to be under any strain. Get relaxed, and all the topics of conversation you use for relaxation are interesting—to you. It might hurt you to stay in it a little longer, to let it have form in you, in your minds and hearts. The point is you have to reach a point of accepting the idea of being at home in the things of God, accept the idea that you can let your mind meditate upon the lovely and the beautiful things without imagining that your mind is in a strain. And, of course, as long as you think it’s in a strain and it needs to relax, well then, of course, you had better relax. I wouldn’t want you to get too tense. And you’ll get used to that, seeing those whom you serve set it aside, leave it at the door as they go out of the room, while they go and give heed to the really important things of living.
“And whatsoever ye shall ask in Shekinah, that will Shekinah do, that the Father, the One Who Dwells in the Center of Shekinah, may be glorified in the manifestation of the form of Shekinah.And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in Shekinah, Shekinah will do it. If ye love me, keep my commandments.And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.”
The Father is the One Who Dwells. The term the Father may be also used for the One Who Dwells and the manifestation of Shekinah around the One Who Dwells. But, when we are functioning in the outer sense in relationship to the One Who Dwells, we will have a particular place in the Shekinah Pattern from which we orient. That was true of the Master. When He made distinctions between “the Father and I,” although He emphasized over and over again that they were “one”, what did He mean? Was He talking any time about the physical form when He said, “I”? Not really. It was the means of manifestation, yes. But not about His body as such. It was the means of a manifestation of something else. And what was the level of His orientation?
We have recognized that the Shekinah Pattern is established first in the Centering of the One Who Dwells; and around the One Who Dwells the Shekinah Fire; and around the Fire the Shekinah Light that Glows; and around the Light the Shekinah Cloud of Glory. There is that which may have its point of orientation from any of these four levels, and they will still be Shekinah, they will still be the “Father”. But there are distinctions with respect to the levels of Shekinah, which gradually must begin to be clear to our consciousness, and expression from any of these levels may well be counted as expression from the Father.
But where the Master was making what appears as something of a distinction between the Father and Himself, what was that distinction? He, in the outer sense of expression, oriented in the Fire. He was the Lord of Love, so the distinctions which He emphasized in that regard do not suggest any separation, any lack of oneness, but the level of orientation for the expression. That which is to take form in the outer actually originates in the One Who Dwells but does not have the appearance of originating until it reaches the level of orientation. I am sure by your faces you all understand that. Let us explain it a little.
We have noted that the Centering is the One Who Dwells, the One to whom we may allude, properly, by the term “Father”, and if we use the term “Lord” that is the One to whom we do allude. Using the term “Father” it may or may not be. But the Lord in the Center of the Shekinah Pattern—and there is a Shekinah Pattern in relationship to every God Being or Lord, without any exception. That which is to originate in the sense of the outer originates in the sense of the inner in relationship, or in the One Who Dwells, or the Lord, but from the outer standpoint it has no appearance of beginning to originate there. The appearance of beginning to originate must be in one of the three levels of the Shekinah Pattern; that is, that which came through the One whom we speak of as Jesus, or the LORD of Lords, or our Master, whatever term—that which originated and came into manifestation through Him actually originated in the Lord, the One He was and is, but it did not have the appearance of originating there as far as the outer realm is concerned. It only has that appearance as far as the inner realm is concerned. As far as the outer realm is concerned that which manifested through Him always had the appearance of originating in the Fire, the Fire of Love.
Now, to illustrate, to the degree that you begin to see this principle in relationship to me, for instance, that which I present does not have the appearance of originating in the Fire, it does not have the appearance in the outer sense of originating in the Lord, although from the inner standpoint it does. But it must have a point of origination in relationship to outer form, and it is not at the level of the Fire where that which I present appears to originate. Why not? The Fire is back of it and you find there is Fire in it; but it does not originate there. Actually it originates in the Lord or God Being, comes through the Fire; but the point of focus, the point of orientation, the point of origination, as far as form in the outer is concerned, is in relationship to the Light That Glows. There is the Fire back of it. Then there is the pattern extending on out where the point of origin, insofar as manifestation is concerned, appears to be in the Cloud of Glory.
Now you must learn to work in relationship to originating vibrational factors in the Cloud of Glory before you can have very much consciousness of what is back of that. But you will see that insofar as manifestation is concerned, those things that do appear must originate in the Fire, in the Light that Glows, or in the Cloud of Glory, and that is the point where the thing originating will first begin to appear. However, there it will be in embryonic form. It will contain the essences and, for instance, appearing first in relationship to the Cloud of Glory, it will look like it is simply beginning there at the level of what we speak of as Life, or the Life of Shekinah. However, it will have back of it both the Light that Glows and the Fire; and the Fire and the Light that Glows will be present in the embryonic pattern of origin that appears in the Shekinah Cloud of Glory. Once you begin to see that you will not be feeling that if something originates in the Cloud of Glory that it is somehow separate from the Light that Glows, or the Fire, or the One Who Dwells. It is all connected up and it is one. But there are these three primary levels of origination in relationship to the creative processes by which things, in the realm of form, are made manifest.
It will be easier for you to begin to comprehend this if we relate it to the development of the form of the babe in the womb, and here we will begin to connect up with a subject which I suppose some of you have wondered about a little, something I have not talked about very much lately, and that is “pneumaplasm”. How does this all connect up, what happens, how is it? You will see that in order to help you to reach a point where you could begin to comprehend things spiritual, I worked from the physical outward to the point of pneumaplasm, and once I could convince you, or human beings on the face of the earth, that pneumaplasm was a reality, you could begin to see it and function in relationship to it, we had reached, as you will recall, the underside of the sea of glass, hadn't we? We had reached the underside of the sea of glass. But it did not show you what was on the other side, and we could not just go on through. We had to establish a vibratory pattern by reason of which you could begin to become aware of the principles of that which is on the other side of the sea of glass.
Now you will remember that in the description of the sea of glass, it is described as appearing to be flecked with flame, that is, to have spots of fire in it. And yet it was a sea of glass, clear as crystal. Well now, we must not assume that the Shekinah Cloud of Glory is pneumaplasm. It is not pneumaplasm, but this is the point where the two begin to come together, and it is by reason of pneumaplasm that you begin to see the reality of the Shekinah Cloud of Glory. The physical eye as such cannot see the Shekinah Cloud. It is impossible. The physical perception as such cannot ever see the Shekinah Cloud of Glory, except as the Shekinah Cloud of Glory begins to take form through pneumaplasm. Now, we recognize that it is our responsibility to generate the pneumaplasm. From the outer standpoint, we must provide the pneumaplasm. God is not going to arbitrarily make it be for us, and if the physical body of the individual is low on pneumaplasm there would be no way by which the Shekinah Cloud of Glory could even begin to take form.
Now we must be very careful to remember that the self-active patterns of black magic can seemingly duplicate the things of Heavenly Magic up to a point, so the individual may conceivably have visions or see things of various kinds, sometimes evil things and sometimes supposedly good things, without having the whole pattern in the true design. An outstanding illustration of this in relationship to the past is Martin Luther. Now Martin Luther had some pneumaplasm, it’s obvious, but from the standpoint of what he saw, the visions that he saw, what did he tend to see most? The devil. He was always seeing the devil, and fighting with the devil, and contending with the devil. Well, if you are fighting with the devil, you are subject to the devil. We have to recognize that in relationship to Martin Luther, even though it might tend to insult some people. We have to face the truth of it, because if Martin Luther had been functioning from the standpoint of Heavenly Magic in actual fact, he would not have been seeing the devil take form in his pneumaplasmic substance all the time; he would have been seeing Heavenly things; he would have been willing to accept the fact that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And if he had had any real faith in God he would not have been afraid of the devil, and if he had not been afraid of the devil he would not have been fighting the devil. So, he did not have faith in God; he had faith in the devil, and consequently the pattern of vision was of the devil and not of God or the things of God.
When people start talking a great deal about all the things they see, about the visions they have had, and so on, I am inclined to take the attitude that it does not amount to very much, and in fact it does not. But there are those who have seen some things. They are not inclined to talk about it a lot. They might conceivably tell me about it, something like that, orin some cases those who are working closely with them in the vibratory field, and that’s all right, as long as we do not dissipate the vibratory factors involved. But, you can begin to perceive through vision. What is happening in such a case.
If there is a true response to the Center in relationship to the One Who Dwells, around the One Who Dwells is the Shekinah Fire, the Shekinah Light that Glows, and the Shekinah Cloud. By reason of response the pattern of pneumaplasm generated within the individual is lifted up so that it can touch or contact the Shekinah Cloud of Glory. Now, you will never contact the Fire first. You may not know it, you may not be aware of just how it works, but, in actual fact, no matter what the appearance is, the pneumaplasmic substance of your own being never contacts theFire first from the standpoint of Shekinah. Of course, there is the action of a Shekinah Pattern in your body, in actual fact, or you could not develop any pneumaplasm, you could not live, you would not be alive. But, moving from the outer toward the inner, the first contact is between pneumaplasm and the Shekinah Cloud of Glory. Once you begin to let your pneumaplasmic substance be the means by which the Shekinah Cloud of Glory has substance for manifestation, you begin to give the Shekinah Cloud of Glory a body, in other words, by letting it use your pneumaplasm—and it is not separating you from it, remember; it’s still a part of your own reality—then you have made the first initial start in letting Deity have your body for the manifestation of Deity.
Now we recognize that most people do not let Deity use their bodies and minds and hearts for the processes of revealing God or the things of God on earth. They are revealing hell or some of the things of hell, their miseries and their pet difficulties, and all the sorrows, and everything else—the things of hell. Their bodies are used to reveal on earth the forms of hell. But, the body and all of its capacities is supposed to be the means of revealing God and the things of God.
So the first step is made manifest as the Cloud of Glory begins to have body through the pneumaplasm of your own being. And then, after that is an established fact, the vibratory factors that we speak of as mind, conscious and subconscious, come into play in relationship to the Light that Glows, and the Light that Glows begins to have a relatedness to the vibratory factors of your capacity of mind, after your pneumaplasmic substance begins to be, or provide, a body for the Shekinah Cloud of Glory. And then, after the reality of relatedness has been established between your capacities of mind, conscious and subconscious, and the Light that Glows, you find that the next step follows. The heart or the feeling nature, the interpenetrating heart that penetrates body and mind and spirit, begins to be connected up with the Fire, the Shekinah Fire, and then you begin to have a basis by which you, in consciousness, that which speaks of itself as “I”, can have an awareness of relatedness to the One Who Dwells, so that the “I” of the outer and the “I” of the inner, in the sense of the focalization of personality, are brought together and they become one. And that blending of the “I” is important to the state where you leave behind the double “I”, not just the eye of seeing but the “I” of the personal pronoun, the “I” of yourself as a being. The two eyes must get together in relationship to personality and being, and the two eyes must get together from the standpoint of the inner and the outer, the mind and the heart, and so on. Until you being, by this process, to have a single eye, not as if you just had a third eye up here in your forehead, or something of that nature. You begin to realize that the single eye means that the “I” when the Father speaks and the “I” when the outer form speaks must be the same “I”, not two “I’s”.
When the Lord within says, “I am the Lord thy God,” and the outer form says, “Well, I am the sheep, I am the servant,” they are still in the state of separation, there are two “I’s”, and the two “I’s” relate to double mindedness, that is, two minds, the attempt to function on two levels, the attempt to be two things, the attempt on the part of the human being to be something without being what the inner being is. And that’s what caused the fall of man in the first place. And so, we begin to see how simply it actually works out, how easily. But there is no way by which the heart, the emotional realm, can be truly cleared and made pure until the Fire begins to come into it. But the Fire cannot begin to come into it until the Light that Glows has become connected with the mind, and the Light that Glows cannot become connected with the mind until the pneumaplasm of your own body and being, in the outer sense, have been connected up with the Shekinah Cloud of Glory.
Now, what was it? And in Shekinah was Life. Life, the Cloud of Glory, and the Life of Shekinah are the same, that is, in the pattern of form. And the Shekinah Life was the Light of men. As soon as the Shekinah Life begins to have meaning in your pneumaplasmic body, on a control pattern, you begin to have Light, you begin to be Light, you begin to feel light, you are no longer weighted down with all the weights of the world. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,” saith Shekinah, “and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, Shekinah. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light, the Light that Glows.” And so we see the Shekinah Pattern made evident in relationship to the pattern of being in form, and as soon as the Shekinah Light begins to enter into the pneumaplasmic body so that there is a real connection, you begin to have Light, the Light that Glows begins to get through, and you begin to feel light. You begin to be in a position where you begin to start to be a living soul instead of a dying soul. But the process of resurrection is not yet complete. That is the beginning of the resurrection and the life. What did the Master say? “I, Shekinah, am the resurrection and the life.” And so the process of resurrection must begin and be allowed to complete if it is to be real, if it is to have meaning in you. Consequently, you begin to receive Shekinah into the Temple of your body, for your body is a Temple of the Living God. And if you have filled that body with things that do not belong to God, in the sense of the vibratory factors of control, you will not have Life, you cannot get it together into alignment, into agreement, and it is ill.
Now, you know as servers, or you will know at least, that it is utterly and absolutely impossible to make anyone be well, to heal them, for instance, unless that person is willing to come through this process. He or she does not need to understand all about it, and you do not need to try to teach every servee all of these things; but the individual life must be redirected. People will come to you and say. “Well now”—in effect, of course—“I want to get well so I can go and do exactly the same things that made me sick” All the time they come to you like that. “Now, I don't really want to change my life. I want to go on and live as I have, do as I have, eat as I have, have the same feelings and attitudes as I have; but I want to get well so that I won't have quite so much misery doing the things that cause me misery.” It is a senseless business, but people can’t see it, and you must be careful how you begin to convey it or they will be rebellious. What was it? Someone here in the class said something about changing. and thoroughness of changing. Well, if we are not thorough we will not get very far, will we?
We need to be thorough, we need to do a job, and we have to be persistent, patient, but persistent; always there has to be the pressure, and if the individual will respond to the pressure in the right direction, he or she will keep moving. There may be waverings this way and waverings that way, once in a while in an effort to get out of the pressure, and you might conceivably relax it just a little bit until so and so gets balanced, but you never stop the pressure. You have to be persistent and consistent and keep it on, the pressure—pressure all the time. And, if anyone starts rebelling against the pressure, well then, that somebody starts to get hurt, always. To rebel against that pressure is dangerous, as some of you have found out.
Now, the changes must come. We are not interested merely in relieving human ills, physical difficulties, so human beings can go out and do what they want to, the way they want to, where they want to. We will be doing a certain amount of that incidentally because we do not want to be in position of judging and saying, “Well now, this person will carry through and serve God and this one will not.” We will serve both, but we will do it in a way that will cause that individual to be forced to make a choice sooner or later. We are not going to try to hurry that up. We want to give everyone a chance, to keep that choice put off in the future as far as we can, to begin with, but it is coming; and if the individual says, in effect, “I only want to get well. I don't want to change my life, I don't want to be different than I have been. You leave my heart alone, you leave my mind alone, you leave my beliefs alone, you leave my pattern of life alone. I just want to get well.” Well, there comes a time when you have to say, in effect, however it may be presented, “Well, you know you really don't want to get well, you're just deluding yourself, you're deluding me. You don't want to get well; you want to stay sick, you want to keep your miseries, you're not interested in heaven, you're interested in hell. So, until you are through being so concerned about living in hell you might as well go to hell and come back when you are ready to go to heaven.” Now, we won’t word it just that way, of course, but that is what we’ll mean—that is what we’ll mean. Because there is absolutely no use wasting time on a person who is not willing to respond and settle down.
At first it is like a tiny plant, and you will nourish it and take good care of it. It’s a baby thing. You will do your best to let it grow and become a living plant, a strong and vibrant thing that will bring forth fruit! But if it refuses to grow, withers, and is gone, well that is too bad. We are interested in only one thing actually. We are not interested in getting people well merely to get people well. Do not ever let yourselves get caught in that kind of a trap, to be interested in trying to help people get well just to have them well, physically speaking, or mentally, or emotionally. You never undertake to help any person for that person's sake, to help that person because, “Well after all, he or she is in misery, so naturally you'll help them.” No, not at all! If you attempt to function on that basis you are going to lose. You will never become a real servant of our KING.
For whose sake are you going to serve? For the sake of our KING. To what purpose? To make it possible, that is, to open the door so that any man, woman or child who so responds, to permit it, may enter that Kingdom and become a citizen to serve our LORD and KING, to serve God on earth, to be a noble man or a noble woman, a person through whom the things of God may appear, and the blessings of God be made manifest on earth. There is no other reason. It is not my concern to help people get over their miseries, as such. I will do what I can to help them leave their miseries behind, if they are willing to do it, and become citizens of the Kingdom. But if they are not interested in becoming citizens of the Kingdom I am not interested in helping them get rid of their miseries. Is that hard hearted? It may sound so to start with, but it isn’t. It is simply realistic. Because there is no way under the sun by which you can get people away from their miseries if they are not willing to change, if they are not willing to move into the pattern of the Kingdom.
You may alleviate this ill condition only to have that ill condition appear, and always there will be something wrong, always something to be miserable about, always something to complain about, always something to resent, always something to be afraid of. They are miserable creatures and they want to stay miserable creatures, and if that is their purpose there is nothing you can do about it. So don’t try to do the impossible. And it is not for their sakes, so that they can be well, that we are going to serve them. No. We never begin to give a single attunement to make people well. We begin to give an attunement to help bring people into the Kingdom of God on earth, the Kingdom that is at hand, and if they will respond they’ll begin to get well. But never, under any circumstance, offer to give anyone an attunement merely to make that person be well. If the person responds he or she will get well, and strong, and the problems will be cleared away, but that is incidental.
Remember, all we do is for the sake of our KING and not for the sake of those whom we serve! And the moment you can be tricked or trapped into doing something for the sake of the person you are serving, you will be making a mistake, you will violate the laws and the principles, you will lose the power, you will do the same thing that Peter did at the day of Pentecost when he went impulsively out on his own, refusing to let God's Plan have meaning. He threw it away. He threw away the blessings of the day of Pentecost. It just started to appear. And you will do the same thing if you will allow yourself to be tricked or trapped into doing something for someone for that person's sake. Whatever you do, do it for the sake of our LORD and KING.
Never give an attunement to help someone get well. We give an attunement to help draw that person into the Kingdom of God on earth, the Kingdom that is at hand, and if the person responds and begins to let the pattern clear, he or she will begin to get well. If that person refuses, you can give the form of an attunement, the technique of it, you can put your hands so, or you could say such and such, and spend your life doing it, and the person will never get well. With attunements you do not have a means whereby you can just simply go out and make people be well whether they want to or not. And if all they are interested in is getting well so that they can do as they please, well, they may get better and you will keep on serving, for at time at least, in order to give that person a chance to realize that there is a better goal, a real goal, an opportunity to learn to serve God, and not be afraid of God, to begin to trust God and respond. And then, if that person will let go, and really respond, then he or she can get well. If not? Sooner or later there will be a choice.
And listen to this, Blessed Ones, listen to it well, and remember it always, that you be not trapped! If there is anything that can turn any person aside, it will appear, and if anything does appear that turns someone aside, spend no time in vain regret, no time in sorrow, no matter who it is or how close that person may be. If any person can be turned aside he or she will be, he or she will find an excuse sooner or later. And so, while we will do everything we can to make it easy, and to keep the way open, if that person, any person, can be turned aside he or she will be; and when that point comes let them go and waste no time in vain regret, spend no time in self recrimination, judging yourself and saying, “Perhaps if I had done this, perhaps if I had said that, perhaps if something else had been just so, then he or she would not have turned away.” Perhaps nothing. If that person has what it takes to carry through, those things are not going to stop that person. Remember that.
Those who are carrying through won’t be turned aside, and those who don’t have it in them, they will find an excuse to turn aside no matter what you do. This is the separation of the sheep from the goats; and when someone turns out to be a goat, let him go, and shed no tears; waste no time in sympathy. Serve well and do not try to decide who is going to respond and who isn’t. Sometimes those who seem to have the least likelihood of carrying through will be the ones who come through with flying colors. Other times those whom you think, “Well, that person will surely carry through. Everything is set”, and sooner or later that person will find a way to turn aside; and if they do, let them go and waste no time in vain regrets. This is something that every server must learn or you will have the heart torn out of you, and your own life will be wasted—because you will have to learn to stand and see those whom you love go down, and if you try to go down with them to save them you will just be lost. It won’t work.
It is one of the hardest lessons there is to learn; because you are here to serve anyone, everyone, without respect to race or color or creed. We are here to serve—but, Blessed Ones, those who do not have the inner integrity, the inner honesty, will find an excuse for turning aside; and those who have it, it doesn’t make any difference what the incidents out here—of course, you must be doing your part correctly so that it does not fall back on you—but, if they turn aside, if they fall away, waste no time in vain regret! Do not try to serve those who will not respond. We are too busy serving responding ones to be concerned about those who are either dead and refuse to respond, or asleep and have not yet awakened to the opportunity of response. There is no other way. There is no other way. And waste no time in self recrimination saying, “But if I had only done this, if I had only done that.” How do you know? If a person finds an excuse for quitting, you can be sure of one thing: he or she would have found another excuse if that one had not worked, for the quitter will always find an excuse, one way or another, sooner or later. Let them find it and let them go. We have no room for quitters. And you have to live in that realization.
Blessed Ones, to the degree that you have entered into a realization of these things you will see the meaning of the Word here: “And I, the Shekinah Fire, will pray the Father, the One Who Dwells, and He shall give you another Comforter, in the Shekinah Light that Glows, that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,
and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things under his feet.
Psalm 8 Verses 3-6
This is speaking of man, not of cultic man but of true man. Indication is offered in these verses that man has some significance, certainly more than has been known by human beings in their cultic state. And this significance is related to what is beyond the earth itself—the heavens, high heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars. We have some awareness of relatedness in this regard, that we're part of a whole cosmic circumstance. So the questions that are asked here are comprehensible to us because we begin to know from our own experience what man is. The scope of his operations is vast. The encompassment of his vision is immense, rightly. It is so when man is on hand.
This of course does not mean that individually speaking we have a complete rundown on everything. If that was the case there would be no need for anybody else, would there? It needs all of us to encompass what needs to be encompassed. We begin to find our areas of responsibility, so that we cease trespassing upon the areas of others. Mind you, some of these overlap, but we each have unique responsibility in our own part. We have a certain comprehension of the parts of others as those are close to our own, but we also may be aware that there are many who have other fields of responsibility of which, directly at least, we know little. We know they are there; we know they are a part of the whole of which our field is a part. And there may be times when we are introduced to such fields—on a conducted tour, shall we say?—but we don't trespass: “Forgive us our trespasses.” And I'm sure you all recognize that in the cultic state we have the inclination to trespass, to try to mind other people's business.
If we occupy positions of focus, as we do, we are aware of what is contained in our area of focus and we are aware of those who are present there, but we refrain from trespassing in that sense also. We give everybody space to handle their own spiritual affairs. Those spiritual affairs may be a part of our encompassment but we don't try to do everything ourselves. And as been noted several times, we may find that other people handle these things a lot better than we could personally. They are there to look after the details; we are not there for that purpose.
We may have in the past functioned on the basis of substitute patterns of function, but as soon as someone comes along who can handle those we are happy to give them to such a person, even if that person is going to have to learn to handle them effectively. Perhaps to start with he doesn't handle them as effectively as we were, because we had experience in the matter and this is something fresh for someone else. But pretty soon we find out that they become capable of doing it a lot better than we could. And we are quite happy to admit that; we don't try to uphold our so-called positions by putting other people down. We find ourselves actually exalted when we appreciate what others are doing.
And so in these verses of this Psalm the statement is made, “For thou hast made him”—man, that is—“a little lower than the angels.” Well, we understand this. There is man, the material aspect of the whole, and there is the angel, the spiritual aspect of the whole. And when these two are unified, are one in experience, then it may be said that there is a living soul present. A soul—that is a facility for the action of life, for the achievement of whatever it may be. As we see, we all have our individual parts to play in a whole body. “For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels”—the heaven is higher than the earth, but heaven and earth are one. Heaven is is a higher vibrational state than the earth vibrational state. To put it another way, the earth state is a coarser vibrational state and the heaven is a finer vibrational state. And the heaven interpenetrates the earth. So the heaven is present with the earth, and the greatest consequent experience, the greatest range of experience then, is available. In the human state now, the cultic state, the endeavor has been to function just from the standpoint of the earth, where there was rather limited range, and whatever range there is available with the earth when it is one with heaven is not known. In other words it's restricted to the very coarsest levels, if the experience is that of the earth with scarcely any heaven at all. And this is the cultic state.
So the earth opens up considerably once there is the experience of a living soul. We do not restrict ourselves anymore to the very coarsest levels of material existence. You know this to be so in your own experience. Something opens up, and you may observe in other people that it just simply isn't there for them. They're fiddling around in some coarse level, without any consciousness whatsoever that there might be something more. And I would suggest that in our consciousness there is something more, that is restricted as yet too—there is far greater experience to come.
So the human experience is a little lower than the angel's, but it becomes the angelic experience when there is unification. And in the state of the living soul, Thou “hast crowned him with glory and honour.” Well here is the glory of life of course. Glory is a word, as we know, that provides understanding of the characteristics of life—“…and honour”—I wanted to look at this matter of honor a little. We may say that, functioning from the spiritual standpoint, we are always honorable. This may mean different things to different people, but we have a sensing, I'm sure, of the nature of what it means to be honorable.
We have noted these two aspects: spiritual and material. Now, with the material separate from the spiritual—which is cultic human experience—there are many things which seem to be dishonorable. We are accustomed—as Adam and Eve initiated the cycle—of eating of the forbidden fruit, of judging some things to be bad and some things to be good. If we recognize that man was made by God in His own image and likeness, then he is totally perfect from that viewpoint. It hasn't seemed so to him because he lives in an unreal state of mistranslation. He has mistranslated his own experience, so that it seems that his own experience is often dishonorable, or at least he has honorable phases of it, but some aspects are not so good. Now we may think of this just from the standpoint of the operation of the physical form itself. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/the-uranda-may-15-1952-class-there-is.html] As you are aware, Paul was inclined to get things rather mixed up, or at least those who interpreted Paul have got them mixed up—mistranslation upon mistranslation. But he said something about this in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, and he put it this way—now of course what he is saying here relates to one's own individual body, but it also may be seen in the light of the body of which we are all parts, that larger composite body—but for the moment I'm thinking of it more from the standpoint of the individual body, that we may have a base for right translation here:
But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body,
as it hath pleased him.
And if they were all one member, where were the body?
But now are they many members, yet but one body.
And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee:
nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.
Nay, much more those members of the body,
which seem to be more feeble, are necessary:
And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable,
upon these we bestow more abundant honour;
and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness.
Corinthians 12: 18-23
Well this is the way Paul put it, or at least the way his words were translated. But we are interested in right translation, right translation of spirit as it has taken form in our own individual bodies and as it is in the process of being revealed in the collective body of which we are a part. We, individually, in the flesh sense, are composed of many parts. Now we need to be able to see that because the body is a whole and is designed to make possible the right translation of spirit, every part of it is essential. We can't say, “Well I'm going to make right translation of spirit, therefore all I need is my brain, perhaps my spinal cord too.” We wouldn't be much if that was all there was to us. We need the whole business, don't we? Every part. Now of course it may be that some of us have lost parts at times along the way. I don't think that's going to prevent us from achieving what we need to achieve now, as long as we are capable of operating in conjunction with spirit. The ingenuity of the Lord is great, we have noted. And sometimes He achieves marvelous things by reason of the presence of physical forms that are extremely handicapped. Oh this is the way they describe it these days. Well we are not all that handicapped. We have sufficient to get on with the job or we wouldn't all be sitting here.
So we have our physical forms, which are a translation of spirit; they wouldn't exist if this was not so. From the standpoint of our own experience there has been considerable mistranslation. In other words we have had experiences, physically speaking, which could not be classified as true translations of spirit. We might take the matter of pain, for instance. Obviously if there is pain in the world—and there certainly is—suffered by human beings, ourselves included at times, this must be a false translation, a mistranslation somehow of spirit, because spirit is not the author of pain. It becomes that way when there is a mistranslation of spirit, so any sickness, disease, physical trouble that may put in an appearance, gives evidence of some sort of a mistranslation.
Now we see this, I'm sure, clearly enough individually speaking but we also recognize that we are not merely individuals. We are not isolated individuals, even though most human beings, ourselves included, particularly in times past, have made that mistranslation, saying, “Oh I'm just me. I have a right to live my own life”—one of the attitudes that springs out of this—“because I'm an isolated person; what I do is nobody else's business.” Well it is other people's business in the sense that what we do will have effect on other people. It may be that other people may interfere in our business, which they have no business doing, but we at the same time must recognize that we can't lift a finger without affecting other people. And I just lifted my finger—did you see me? I affected you! So being very conscious of this we are aware that our function must be right, and the only way it can be right is by making a true translation of spirit. We can't figure it all out with our minds and be right. We must be on hand to make a true translation of spirit.
Now man is made in the image and likeness of God, and in his true state therefore is a true translation of spirit. That's what that means, isn't it? To be made in the image and likeness of God is to be made in the image and likeness of spirit. And the only way that could happen is as there is a true translation made of it. Well of course there have been people on earth, cultic people on earth, for millennia, who have been making mistranslations, and we have all this backlog of human nature heredity, as we call it, present with us, but that not only includes such physical idiosyncrasies as we may have—the cast of our features for instance, the color of our hair, etc, the color of our eyes and all this, and sometimes tendencies toward difficulties of various sorts—all this coming out of the past of mistranslation upon mistranslation. Well we are not trying to retranslate that. Of course many people are: “I was a ninety-pound weakling; now look at me!” Well that is a retranslation of a mistranslation, but whether the retranslation is better than the mistranslation is another question. In any case it's a mistranslation also.
So we have the equipment we have and we understand why we have the equipment we have, and this is not going to be a barrier to our function based in right translation of spirit in this moment. The translation which has appeared physically speaking is likely to be much the same as it was when we begin to allow a right translation to be made in the initial stages, because our translation relates to consciousness, relates to attitudes, to feelings—the way we look at things, the way we feel. Of course this will have an effect; it will have an effect on what we call our health, or perhaps our ill health. We find when we begin to allowing a true translation to be made in our living, regardless of whatever mistranslations may have been present in our bodies, our health is affected and we become more healthy, I suppose you could say, properly speaking, by reason of the translations we are now making.
We need to see our bodies, as individuals, and our body collectively, as being essential to the creative work that we are here to do. Clearly enough we understand this in a general way, because we wouldn't be here at all to do it if we didn't have a physical body. But we need to see that it relates to every part of the body, every cell in the body, if there is to be a right translation, which allows the resurrection of the body. The resurrection we think ofas the collective body, but includes the individual body. When there is a resurrection occurring for the collective body it's also occurring for the individual body. But you can't pick yourself out and say, “Now I'm going to experience resurrection. That'll be a wonderful example for everybody else.” You would thereby be separating yourself from everybody else. But the way it is, we are all in the same boat—and we can allow some changes of attitude, some changes of outlook, some changes of understanding, with respect to everything. But now we are thinking of it with respect to the individual body, our own individual bodies, because there certainly has been a judgmental attitude with respect to the body.
Shame is an evil spirit, we say, because it's actually the central evil spirit which put in an appearance when the spirit of God no longer was being rightly translated. The first mistranslation of the spirit of God, we might say, produced shame—the sense of shame. And the sense of shame has been present in people in numberless ways, but very particularly, obviously, with respect to the physical flesh body. There are those who have a sort of a sensing of this and they think they are going to dissipate it somehow by establishing nudist colonies. Well conceivably action at this level, at this physical level, this earthly level, may loose something on earth which looses something in heaven.
The point is to loose something in heaven, and one necessarily does something on earth to let that happen: “Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven.” If you don't loose it on earth it won't be loosed in heaven. When it is loosed in heaven then there is something available for expression on earth, but we have to loose it on earth first. This is why I am bringing into your consciousness now the physical flesh body. It certainly is bound on earth, it's bound by earthly heredity. But it is bound also—and this is the important aspect of it—by our view of the flesh body, by our sense of shame, by our judgment, that this aspect of the body's function, for instance, is good and this aspect is bad. Well we know, theoretically at least, that every aspect of the body when it is in health is necessary—all aspects of it are necessary.
Now I'm thinking particularly at the moment of the excretive aspects of the flesh body, which we would all no doubt admit are absolutely essential to good health. And yet there is a very peculiar attitude toward these, which, I suppose, if we were using Paul's language, we would say that these processes are uncomely. But the fact of the matter is that they are part of the creative process, not just that we might have good health. It's not a self-centered thing, rightly. Because it is taken as a self-centered thing, constipation is one of the major problems in the world, of human experience, and all kinds of other troubles.
Now of course we need to recognize that there are various facilities available for excretion, some of which we don't think so badly of. We don't mind perhaps going out on the tennis court, or jogging on the road, and perspiring heavily. It's a healthy practice, and we don't swathe ourselves in a blanket in order to hide the fact that we are perspiring—we really would be then, wouldn't we? I'm not saying that all these necessary functions of what may be thought of as dispelling waste are for public display. No, there is what is fitting. But I'm not speaking of that so much as one's own personal view of the situation. And for most it's a very restricted view, a very distorted view, based in a firm mistranslation. We need to see this process as relating to creation.
Some of you may have read The Triune Ray of long ago, Uranda's work, in which something was said about the creation which was initiated at the highest and finest levels, and what was incapable of right function at that highest level automatically got pushed down into the next level. Now that's excretion, part of the creative process. And what couldn't operate at that level was pushed down to the next lower level, and so on down the line until finally there was the earth, which was the ash of everything that was left. Then provision was made by which this ash could be transformed and transmuted in the resurrecting cycle. There are two aspects of the cycle—we're aware of that. There is what is coming down from God out of heaven, that could be correlated with the excretory cycle.
Now most of us in the human state would be horrified at the thought that this was so. Why? Because we have a horrible attitude toward our own experience and we have not had any consciousness at all, virtually, of the creative nature of this part of the creative cycle that is operating in our own individual flesh bodies. It's just as important in the creative way as any other aspect of it.
Now of course there is the air we breathe out. There is a good deal of concern about bad breath, and various substances you are supposed to be able to rinse your mouth out with—it's probably worse than the bad breath by the time you've done it. But here is something being offered out from the body because it no longer belongs in the body. We breathe out a blessing. Now that’s easy, isn’t it? We can see that, quite obvious. After the Master’s resurrection, when He was with His disciples, He breathed upon them, and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” It was a blessing, obviously, a blessing offered from another level. The blessings are offered from the higher level.
Now in all the excretory functions of the human body, whether through breathing out, whether through the pores at the surface of the body, or through the eliminative tract where there is the solid waste or liquid waste—it is all part of the same thing. It is all part of allowing what is not properly capable of operating at the level where we are living to move in blessing to another level. All this has been blotted out of the consciousness of human beings, as evidenced by their problems in the world now of what is called pollution. There is no clear awareness of the possibilities, the creative possibilities, of waste. Well there is a little on the farm, for instance, where there is, as we have here, a compost heap. But think of all those eyesores where the carcasses of automobiles are stacked. Now of course they're beginning to squeeze them together and use the metal over again. But there is far more being excreted from human civilization than can be taken care of because much of the excretion in this sense is so unnatural. All kinds of substances have now been made which are not included in nature; they're not biodegradable, as they say. But no thought apparently was given, in making these substances, as to what would happen when they needed to disintegrate; no provision was made for it.
Well from the standpoint of the true translation of things, provision is made all the way. It is made during the creation—which continues, by the way—where there is that which is descending from level to level, that which is being excreted from level to level, and that which is being lifted up again. The cycle works from the standpoint of God, but obviously human beings have thrown a monkey wrench into the works.
We need to begin to allow a true awareness to be experienced in a very personal sense. It is not just a matter of having a large view and being able to expound on the principles of the thing, but of knowing the reality of it in one's own experience. And in various ways we excrete every day. “Well let’s not talk about that; let’s not even think about it,” is the inclination of the human attitude. That's saying let’s exclude a primary aspect of the creative process from our consideration. This is an honorable function. It is somewhat seen now, that what is thought of as sexual function is honorable. This is a field that, in the consciousness of vast numbers of people, particularly in the past, has been very dishonorable, something that might be described as animalistic, or beastly—in the view of many, many people.
Now, from our standpoint at least—we need to consider what our experience is—we have an awareness that it is certainly an essential part of the creative process, with which we are concerned—you can't exclude it and live. So this begins to be seen. We are more delighted about this perhaps, first of all because it seems to open up some possibilities to human nature. But it is not for opening up possibilities to human nature. It is for right use in the creative process. Well it is interesting to note that, insofar as the flesh body is concerned, that the primary creative organs are closely associated with particular aspects of the excretory experience. We may recognize at this level—we sometimes refer to this general area by using the words the first seal—that the first seal is the crossover point where the change occurs. It is the point through which what is descending moves on out and the point through which what is ascending returns. There is a very close association here. We know that physically speaking. We can’t do anything about that—there it is. Well, it is designed that way. There is nothing wrong with this, once we have a conscious awareness of the real nature of the creative process which we ourselves as living souls focalize—it comes to point in what we are as living souls. There is life and there is the soul. They are one. And the soul includes all the equipment necessary to permit participation in the real creative process.
Now we don't have physical bodies made the way they are by mistake. I don't think anyone who has any appreciation of beauty would take the attitude that the physical form of male and female is not beautiful. It seems that some, of course, have taken that attitude, but if one has an appreciation of beauty it is beautiful. We have many examples, of course, from the standpoint of art. The human body has been used as a form of beauty in art, very much so, because there is a consciousness of the fact that while this is not the whole picture, nevertheless the flesh body of human beings is rightly made in the image and likeness of God when the correct translation is there. Well the correct translation from our standpoint now is not to try to do something to the physical body—we wouldn’t know what to do—but to allow our attitude to be clear in relationship to its operation, so that we have a consciousness of blessing from the standpoint of what it is that is being offered from us in this creative cycle into our world. It is nourishment.
The carbon dioxide that we breathe out is nourishment to the plants—we know that. And in actual fact, except for the blindness of human beings in their ridiculous ways of handling things, all the other excretions that emerge from the human body have a right use. We might say, “Well you can't follow that out very far because it goes down the sewer into the aerating pond down below there and is broken down.” I think we can follow it out a little further here than you can in the city, for instance; they have treatment plants there. You can't see perhaps the end result of the blessing the way things are set up, but that does not in any way change what rightly should be our attitude in the matter, because the spirit of blessing needs to be present if there is to be a blessing—spirit and form are one. That is a living soul insofar as man is concerned. And if one has no awareness of what one is really doing in these various fields, there is no participation in any real sense with the creative cycle. And that is exactly what we're here on earth to do.
We may see this most obviously as we are gathered here in this Assembly: something needs to happen in the creative sense, a right translation, for all that is beyond us. We at the moment provide an apex point of focus, and something needs to be released because of us. Now you may not have thought of that release as excretion, but it is, once we experience an awareness, spiritually speaking, of what it is that is happening. And we can correlate our function in all its various aspects with what is actually happening, so that we don't have our bodies over here—“Well it is going to take care of things there, but I'm a spiritual being here and I'm going to radiate something out into the world.” How is it going to get there? It requires the flesh body to get there, and the actual function—not the imaginary function—of the flesh body is the way it goes.
There has been so much imagination, a living in a fanciful world, that somehow we are going to let some marvelous emanation go forth; it's going to uplift everybody—but factually what is happening? Maybe we are struggling with our digestive system, or we are not breathing properly, or we never undertake exercise to let us sweat a bit. What are we doing to see that the kidneys work as they should? They are a marvelous mechanism, if you stop to think about it. Well there are so many peculiar attitudes toward such things, that stand in the way here. And in a general sense, most people find great difficulty groping their way through these things in order to find the beautiful reality that is the other side. It has always been there. There has just been this thick veil of human ignorance in between.
Every aspect of the function of the human body is beautiful—beautiful—even the most seemingly uncomely ones. And we need to be so clear within ourselves that we know this to be so in our own experience. It must be in our own experience, not just thinking about it but sharing the actual operation of the creative cycle, so that we are keenly aware of the opportunity to allow a blessing to be released because something is in fact occurring. To put it in a very specific nut shell for at least one area with which you are all familiar, it is not a matter of going to the bathroom and saying, “After I've been to the bathroom then I will be in position to release a blessing.” No, right there! Is there any area so uncomely to you that it would be impossible to release a blessing through? Here we begin to see a whole free area. I'm not suggesting that there isn't something that is properly comely with respect to all these operations—there is what is fitting. I'm talking about the way we see the thing, our own attitude, and our own actual experience here. And if you have had some troubles with your eliminative processes, maybe you may recognize a key to clearing the situation—not that you are taking this attitude in order to clear the situation, but it automatically follows through. Human beings have been thoroughly self-centered in these things and inherited all kinds of ridiculous attitudes which didn't exist at all in the true state, when the true translation was being made—everything was beautiful. There is nothing that is uncomely. All is a part of the means for the expression of righteousness, after which we hunger and thirst. So I appreciate the opportunity of speaking of these things in an open manner to the extent that you have allowed me to do so.
