Shekinah Magic #8 — Distinctions In The Shekinah Pattern
Uranda June 25, 1953 a.m.
And so we come to our GPC Servers Training Class of June 25, 1953. We have been considering the basic principles of Heavenly Magic, the Magic of Living, and in the pattern of that consideration our recent meditation has been upon the Shekinah Magic, or the reality of Shekinah. And you have gradually been coming to a realization of that reality.
In our meditation yesterday we concluded the hour by reading from the fourteenth chapter of John, which has been the subject matter of these recent considerations: “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever: 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.” Until you begin to actually comprehend the reality of the Shekinah Pattern of Being these words are more or less incomprehensible. You will recall that the word Father is used to signify sometimes the One Who Dwells, and sometimes the aspects of the Presence of the One Who Dwells, and sometimes the One Who Dwells and the evidence of His Presence. We must learn to see the word Father, as the Master used it, as being fluid—in other words, carrying a number of significances, not always the same. Now here in this text, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter,” we clearly have the indication that He used the word Father to signify the One Who Dwells as distinct from the Shekinah Pattern, the evidence of the Presence of the One Who Dwells. I will pray the Father.
Now, if we remember the basic pattern here—first, the One Who Dwells and then the Fire and the Light that Glows and the Cloud of Glory, or approaching from the outer standpoint we have, as we noted yesterday, the unification point at the level of the Sea of Glass, which is the point where the pneumaplasm generated in your own body meets the Cloud of Glory from the higher level Shekinah Pattern. There is, of course, the reality of the Centering in the Lord or Father in relationship to yourself as an individual, and there is the Shekinah Pattern functioning, perhaps on a limited basis but nevertheless present in you or you would not be alive, you could not function. But, the Shekinah Pattern of your own Being can mean comparatively little until it is established in the proper pattern of relationship with the higher levelShekinah Pattern under which you are properly focalized. Here, then, you begin to see yourself as a point of Being in a Creative Triangle within which you are drawn to point at the apex of that Creative Triangle, where we have established the focalization of the One Who Dwells, who establishes the Shekinah Pattern for all who are contained within that Pattern of Focalization or the Creative Triangle.
Now, if that is clearly recognized you will see that your individual Shekinah Pattern can mean very little until it is established in right relationship to the point of focalization which establishes the higher level Shekinah Pattern under which you are to function; and then, with that right pattern of relationship established with your point of higher level focalization, you begin to realize that you are then, and only then, in position to establish the correct patterns of relationship between yourself and others, whether on your own level or those who are of a higher vibratory pattern, or those who are of a lower vibratory pattern, whom you are to particularly serve. And this interrelationship of the vibratory patterns is so established that it provides a perfect setting for every man, woman and child upon the face of the earth. How few there are who find it, how few there are who enjoy it, how few there are who have so responded that they can even begin to experience the fulness of this beautiful Heavenly Design, the reality of the Shekinah Patterns which the Master called “the Kingdom of Heaven which is at hand”—available to us here on earth without regard to the invisible realms that relate to what is sometimes classified as the hereafter. So, here the Master was clearly indicating the distinctions in the Shekinah Pattern.
Now He was not suggesting that there is not a Shekinah Pattern in you, but He was suggesting that you are supposed to be responding to a specific point of higher focalization, and that with respect to that there is an overall, or overshadowing, of the Shekinah Pattern—the Shadow of the Almighty, the Secret Place of the Most High, as it is extended to you within the scope of the Divine Design. And only as you harmonize with the Design can you begin to receive, in relationship to yourself, the control factors so that you begin to balance in relationship to Truth and come to point, so that the power, or the potential power, the energy, the force, of God's Love can begin to move through you causing power to manifest. There is not power until energy or force has been brought into a specific channel of expression, a controlled action of some kind. Energy or force becomes power when it is controlled in a specific direction for a specific purpose. That energy, the energy or force of God's Love is everywhere present for all people at all times, but most people are not attuned to it, they do not know how to receive it, they are not equipped in the actual sense to allow it to manifest as power in their lives. But without that power we can do nothing really worthwhile, and we certainly cannot, without that power, help to bring others into a state of attunement with God so that they may begin to be aware of that which is at hand, the reality of the Shekinah Patterns that God has provided for them.
Now, you, as a point of being, having a Shekinah Pattern, have within you the basic essentials, the capacities, to have meaning on earth; but unless that Shekinah Pattern is allowed to function in relationship to your body and mind and heart, it obviously cannot have adequate manifestation, and under the Law of the positive and the negative it is obvious that that Pattern present in you can have no meaning until you yourself become a part of a creative field. And the First Great Commandment clearly points the way to what that first step is to accept your true point of focalization, to respond to God on a basis which allows you to have a positive point of polarity for yourself. Until you have that positive point of polarity for yourself there is nothing to draw the patterns of the Shekinah Reality out from within you into expression—and then, after the creative cycle has been established between you, the negative point, and your point of focalization, the positive factor of the creative field, you are in position to begin to establish the patterns of relatedness in a more personal sense on the level of your own life in relationship to those whom you are to serve.
YouTube Audio
I might mention that according to the original Divine Design the patterns of relationship or harmonization which culminate in marriage were supposed to be worked out under the reality of the Shekinah Patterns. In the world as it is, there is very little recognition of the Divine Design, very little actual conformity to the control factors; and we see all around us in the world, and you will contact continually in your fields of service, married couples, technically, legally, married according to the laws of man, who are not in any sense married spiritually, who do not have any proper pattern of relationship and who, from the standpoint of God, are not married at all—and it does not make any difference who performed the ceremony or who said what. They may be called married or be legally married in the sense of the laws of man, but in the sense of the vibratory factors of God's design they do not belong together, they are not married, and, well, then in you find the seeds of untold tragedies. And when we begin to see that when the Master spoke of marriage He was not talking about any civil ceremony. He was not talking about the words that might be pronounced in some ceremony by a minister, a rabbi, or a priest. He was talking about the marriage pattern of reality, which God has designed. “Those, therefore, whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” But merely because human beings have decided that they want, for some reason or other, to live together, and anyone from a justice of the peace or a judge or a minister or a rabbi or a priest or anyone else so authorized, merely because some authorized person has said the words does not mean that God has joined them together. And while you will not be in position to come out and say that very often, probably it would not be wise, it would not help you solve the problems that are involved, you must know it and recognize that you are undertaking to help people who are not married, who imagine that they are married and who are trying to function as if they were married when in actual fact they are not. God has never joined them together; from the standpoint of the Divine Design they, well, are living together without the Divine sanction, and no church, as such, on earth can just arbitrarily give that sanction.
Human beings have completely misunderstood the Master's teaching in this regard, and have assumed that because someone, a priest, rabbi, minister, justice of the peace, someone has said some words, that people are married. Well, legally, yes, technically. But very often it is simply legalized adultery. It is not the true pattern of the Divine Design. This is not to say that we should undertake to dissolve such legal or technical marriages—not at all; but if it be possible we will, according to response, help the individuals involved to begin to experience the reality of the Shekinah Pattern of attunement according to the Creative Triangle under the One Law, and it may be that they can reach a point where they are married in the sense of union in the Shekinah Pattern, and if they are not and if they do not so respond that they can be so joined by God in the Shekinah Pattern, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. We will provide such help and inspiration as we may, but the basic troubles in the world are very often centered right in this field. You will find that in relationship to those who come to you to be assisted just about ninety percent of the ladies who come to you, married ladies, ninety percent of their problems will rest right in the sphere of unsatisfactory marital relationships, and the problems with respect to men is not very much less than that, really. And right in that field where the couple should be creating, that which is a real core the manifestation of Heaven on earth, they are continually creating discord, creating a little hell of their own; and because they have their little hell, their bodies get disturbed, their emotional patterns are all upset, they do not have the proper attunement with God, and their relationships, instead of being the highest form of worship before God that can be known to men, becomes something, well, sordid, unsatisfactory, something it ought not to be.
So it is not from the standpoint of undertaking to disturb the existing patterns of legal marriage that we approach the problem, but we refuse to accept the dissolution of a legally established marriage, according to the laws of man, as divorce. It may, for convenience, be called divorce; but from the standpoint of the Bible that is not divorce. From the standpoint of what the Master was teaching, divorce would be the separation of those who have been joined in the Shekinah Pattern, which is an altogether different thing, those who have been joined by God. And so we must not confuse the Master's instruction with respect to divorce with the legal machinery man has instituted whereby the so-called legal marriages are either established or dissolved. The dissolution of a legally established partnership under the laws of man is not, in any true sense, divorce, although it is so called, but it is not separating those whom God has joined together.
And so we begin to see that right here we have the basic sphere wherein ill conditions are created by the human beings themselves. These ill conditions are not imposed, generally speaking. Of course, sometimes the so-called love of parents for one or the other of the partners in the marriage relationship, who keep interfering, tend to produce wrong conditions, but if those things are allowed to impose upon the so-called marriage it is still a matter of individuals themselves allowing it to be so and it comes right back to the fact of individual responsibility which we must never overlook, we cannot escape. So, these human beings do not have the ill conditions imposed from without; they create them within, so that what should be a home in the sense of a bit of Heaven on earth becomes a hell. And until the patterns are changed, in actual fact, so that there begins to be harmonization on the basis of the Shekinah Pattern, you cannot actually clear the marital difficulties that may be present. And until the marital difficulties are cleared, the patterns of attitude in relationship between husband and wife, we cannot have the right environment for children; and without the right environment for children you cannot actually clear the difficulties which rest upon children, which they have to contend with in their bodies and minds and hearts, and so it goes on and on out until these conflicts that are engendered and maintained and created in the homes between husbands and wives, flare into war on an international scale.
The seeds of war, the shooting that takes the sons of those same married couples to the battle field to become cannon fodder, were planted and germinated in what was supposed to be homes. If we had even a comparatively small percentage of the married couples in the world who were actually creating the vibratory patterns of Heaven in their relationship, the reality of home, it would soon be easy to release enough of the Power of God on earth, under controlled conditions, so that the war factors could be easily taken care of. And it is not by guns and bombs, as much as we may need them under present circumstances, but it is not by guns and bombs that we are going to solve the problem. The problem can only be solved when we reach a point where we can inspire those who are legally married to begin to move into a pattern where they can be married in the sense of the Divine Design, stop merely living together for some pattern of convenience and reach a point where they let themselves be married in the Shekinah Patterns of reality wherein they can begin to create a bit of Heaven—they stop creating hell, stop creating the discords, the diseases. Why are the mental institutions filled to overflowing? Why are the hospitals crowded? Why are there so many handicapped people in the world? Why are so many children born crippled and deformed? Why do we have epidemics of polio? Why do we have cancer and heart disease and all the rest? Because those houses that were supposed to be the shell for a home have instead been the shell for hell, and human beings have created and are creating these conditions under these particular circumstances. We do what we can to alleviate by inspiring specific individuals who respond in the right direction: but until there are men and women who are willing to let themselves be drawn into the true pattern of the Divine Design we cannot possibly hope to have the machinery of reality which is necessary to the controlled release of the power of God in a manner which can clear these ill conditions.
And so, let us not become confused in our own minds. We must begin to see the conditions in relationship to these basic patterns, always, and until they are so seen your attempts to help individuals will be as confused as the individual's own attempts to help himself, and we will get nowhere. There must be an acceptance within ourselves first of the reality of that Divine Design so that we can begin to be whole and completely wholesome individuals through whom the power of God may so manifest that others may be inspired to stop their business of creating hell and begin to create or share God's work of creating Heaven on earth. And as long as human beings are engaged in creating hell you cannot by any means whatsoever make them be well. If they are going to create hell they are not going to be well. I think, sometimes, we ought to put a plaque up on the wall somewhere: “If you are creating hell, you will never be well.” And so, here we begin to see the means whereby we can be of real service, not just treating symptoms as is necessary for the sum of those engaged in what we call the healing arts. It is fine and dandy. I thank God for all the doctors, whatever their sphere of expression, and the earnestness and desire to serve man. But until we reach a point where we see beyond the symptoms, until we stop assuming that the cause is merely just something in the physical body as such with respect to illness, until we begin to see that human beings are creating their states of illness, they are gradually committing suicide, and it is suicide whether it just takes them thirty seconds or thirty years to get the job done, it is still suicide. Until we see what they are doing we cannot be of any real service in helping them to stop doing it.
Now, the Shekinah Pattern of the higher level of focalization connects up, then, with you at the point of the Sea of Glass, clear as crystal, where the Cloud of Glory and the pneumaplasmic substance of your own Being begin to blend. The pneuma substance has been generated in you by reason of your function under the Law, through the working of the Shekinah Pattern of your own Being. But you have to begin to respond to your higher point of focalization before your body—which is in essence really a factory for the development of pneumaplasm—can be brought into the control patterns of Truth so that you may begin to give body to the higher level Shekinah Patterns. It is not as individuals that we can achieve these things; it is as members, many members, of One Body—the Body of God or the Christ Body. But it must be actually One Body in the reality of control and design, function, achievement. So, you are to be a cell in the physical Body of God, and if you are a cell in the physical Body of God you will not imagine that you can separate yourself as a cell from that physical Body of God and achieve anything. You reach a point where you know that you cannot of and by yourself as a human being accomplish anything, even if you think that you are trusting God, because God's Design and Pattern of Being indicates that you are to be a member of a Body and that the whole body of humanity is supposed to be the Body of God on earth. And until it is we are not going to have Heaven on earth.
So, He said, “And I will pray the Father.” Now what is the point of orientation for this expression. We introduced the principles of the focalized point of orientation for the manifestation of that which was proceeding from the Father and appearing in or through the Shekinah Pattern of Being. We have here some of the basic factors essential to the creative process, and the Master gave us a very beautiful outline of these principles here in the words I have read to you. “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter”—another Comforter. That signifies that He recognized that He Himself was a Comforter, that there was more than one Comforter. He Himself made manifest the reality of one Comforter, but there was to be another Comforter. So, we must at once see that there are at least two Comforters. And He says, “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter.” He was one Comforter. The Father, here in this case, is the One Who Dwells. From what level was He speaking when He said, “I will pray the Father”? He was speaking from the level of His Focalization in the Fire.
Now let us review just a moment to be sure that you have this clearly in mind. Approaching the evidence of the Presence of the One Who Dwells, what do you first begin to perceive? If you have the proper attunement, proper pattern in the pneumaplasmic substance with the Cloud of Glory, you begin to perceive, probably by feeling—under some circumstances, perhaps by seeing—but you begin to perceive the Cloud of Glory. And it is not until after you have begun to perceive the Cloud of Glory, whether you realize it or not, that you begin to see the Light that Glows. You must be attuned to the Cloud of Glory before you can see the Light that Glows. Otherwise it is all dark, and words are words, and sentences are jumbles, and there is no perception, no recognition you are in the dark, and the mere fact that the Light is shining in the darkness does not mean anything. “The darkness comprehendeth it not.” So there has to be the reality of what? “The life”—the Shekinah Life—“is the light of men,” the Master said. The Shekinah Life—L-i-f-e—is the Light—L-i-g-h-t—of men. So until there is an attunement with the Shekinah Cloud you cannot begin to have the process of resurrection which will give you enough Life so that you can begin to see.
When the baby is first born it has eyes, the physical eyes, but its seeing is very, very limited. Some there are who say it does not see anything. I think that depends upon the baby. But, there begins to be the practice of function in the light. The babe has been in the darkness of the womb; after birth it begins to function in the light, and it begins to use its instruments of seeing. Finally it begins to see things, not just blurs, not just light and shadow, but gradually there begins to be focus and attention is centered upon some particular object and the outlines become evident, and gradually the baby begins to realize that this outline is momma, who always changes diapers and feeds and things like that, and this outline is, “I don't know quite yet,” and finally it turns out to be dadda, and on we go, gradually beginning to comprehend the things that are at first faintly seen. And the same process exactly works out in relationship to the individual who is beginning to see spiritually, to perceive.
And so we see that the human being who begins to go through the process of resurrection or rebirth comes out of a realm of darkness, the womb of the world's darkness, and even though he is born he still does not see, and because he is accustomed to thinking of himself as an adult he judges himself and says, “Well now, if this is rebirth, why don't I see? I'd like to see that. I'd like to see the other thing, I don't understand this, I have a thousand questions. How can I comprehend this?” Back and forth, and so he spoils it all. Instead of being as sensible as the little babe and just to look and keep on looking and not say too much, not ask too many questions all at once. The babe gives itself a chance. It does not start asking about the man in the moon the first day after it is born; it waits awhile. It has sense enough to keep still unless it gets hungry or uncomfortable and has to let momma know. But it does not ask a lot of questions. How sensible so-called adults would be if they were as wise as babes, who would just let it work out, learn to see and not expect to comprehend it all in a minute. Gradually the seeing process unfolds, gradually the shapes begin to appear and become identified and we begin to know.
Well then, having become attuned to the Shekinah Life of the higher level Pattern, you begin to have Light, you begin to see, and having become attuned to that Shekinah Cloud of Glory you can begin to function in it and through it. You may reach a point where you are not constantly conscious of it. It is there—you are at home in it. And being attuned, you begin to see the Light that Glows, the second step. And having become attuned to the Light that Glows your mind begins to comprehend. The first few years of a child's life it learns more than it does in any later comparable period. It learns very rapidly. You can learn rapidly too if you let it work out the way the babe and the little child do. What was it the Master said? “Except ye become as a little child, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” There it is. And this is what He was talking about. Unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven that is at hand, not some hereafter, not the usual human concept of being saved—that is not what He was talking about at all. He was talking about the processes of living, the practical living of a life on earth. It has always amazed me that human beings imagine that the Master was not exactly practical. Everything He said has to be translated somehow. He was talking about some vague hereafter. We have to maneuver and maneuver to find out how it applies down here. Only man has assumed that He was talking about a hereafter. He was talking about living life on earth! He taught men to pray; “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” Where? “On earth, as it is in heaven.” So gradually there begins to be a pattern of comprehension, of seeing, and there is an attunement with the Light that Glows.
Having established this step of attunement or rebirth or illumination, there begins to be a comprehension, a perception, of the Fire—the Fire of God's Love. And at first the human being tends to be a little afraid of the Fire. The idea of stepping into the Fire, he just could not do it! He gets a little close, maybe, to try to get warmed up a little bit, and then he runs back again and he does not go near it until he is thoroughly chilled—he just has to have another little touch of God's Love. But finally he reaches the point where he is not afraid of the Fire, if he keeps responding. Finally he reaches a point where he begins to realize that he can walk in the Fire, step right into it, and it will not burn him! If there are any bonds—like with the three Hebrew men—the bonds that are binding will be burned away; they can arise and walk in the Fire. And there in the Fire, what will they find? Just what the three, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego found. And what do they symbolize? They were walking together in the flame, and the king, symbolizing the human mind, he thought he was destroying them. He came and he looked in the burning, fiery furnace, and said, “Did we not cast three men bound into the burning, fiery furnace? Behold, I see them, but I see four! Instead of being bound they are up walking around, and the fourth is like unto the Son of God.” Exactly what I have been talking to you about in all these classes. The fourth, for in the Center of the Flame you begin to see, once you have dared to step into it, you begin to see the One Who Dwells, the One who is like unto the Son of Man or like unto the Son of God—they both mean the same thing. And so, in the middle of the Fire is the One who is like unto the Son of God.
There is the outline—the Cloud of Glory, the Light that Glows, and the Fire that Burns. And this is the Trinity of God's Spirit or what we call the Christ Spirit. It is all the same thing. The Christ Spirit, the Spirit of God, made available to human beings, that which is revealed in the Old Testament and the New Testament, absolutely identical, absolutely in harmony, not one single break, it is all there. And once we see that, we begin to recognize that if we are to function in relationship to the creative works of God we must be able to live and move and have our being in this Shekinah Pattern.
And the Master said, “I will pray the Father." From what point was He speaking. What was His point of orientation for the manifestation of the Word or the prayer? Obviously He was referring to the One Who Dwells when He said Father. So, His point of orientation was where? In the Fire of God's Love. We know Him as the Lord of Love. And He said, “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.” Now there was not supposed to be some intervening centuries when He did not abide. According to the Master's own Word: “That he may abide with you for ever.” To abide with you forever. “Even the Spirit of Truth; whom the world cannot receive,” the self active 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.” The Light that Glows in the Shekinah Pattern of Being, under the focalization of your own higher level in the Divine Design, is with you—always with you. But until you begin to function under the Law it is not in you. It is with you, it is with every man, woman and child upon the face of the earth. But what did the Master say? “Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.” The world does not even know of its existence! They do not know, and the world cannot receive because it does not know. It cannot see. You begin to see when you begin to have the experience of rebirth or resurrection, and once that begins to be a reality, you begin to see, and you can begin to receive. “But ye know him.”
How could the Master say that? “Ye know him.” There are a number of reasons, only one of which we will mention at the moment. But ye know him. What was the nature, character, the quality of the Master's expression? He was working on the basis of orientation in the Fire, but His words, His expression of Life and Ministry, established in the orientation point in God's Love, conveyed Truth and Life—so that He could say, “I am the way of Life, the Truth and the Life.” But, if He was speaking from the point of orientation in the Fire, it is obvious that He did not intend that the Pattern of function in the Shekinah Reality of Being, for another Comforter, should be the same as it had been with the Comforter which He had made manifest in the essence of God's Love. God's Love does provide the reality of a comforting factor when it is accepted in relationship to Truth and Life. But He said, “another Comforter … even the Spirit of truth.” So the orientation point in relationship to the other Comforter was to be in relationship to the Light that Glows, not in the Fire as such. It would be backed by the Fire, but the orientation point would be in the Light that Glows, and we begin to see that that is the process that has been working out. “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.” Now when shall He be in you? When you have allowed yourself to be received into the Shekinah Pattern of Being, when you have let your pneumaplasmic substance begin to be the body for the higher level of Shekinah—first the Cloud of Glory, then the Light, and then the Fire, and finally the established relationship with the One Who Dwells. “He shall be in you.”
“I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” Now what was the I? The I was the Centering of the orientation point in the Fire of Love, not a human personality, not a man as we think of the physical body of the one man Jesus. He was not talking from the standpoint of Himself as a man. “The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself.” So, we begin to see that He said, “I will come to you.” What was the point of the I? The orientation in the Fire, the Comforter of Love. I will not leave you comfortless, but I will send you another Comforter, the Comforter of the Spirit of Truth, or that which has its orientation, Centering, in the Light that Glows; and this Comforter shall abide with you for ever, if you will receive Him and let it be so. He shall abide with you for ever—and for ever is a long time, and the Master meant what He said. He said, further, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” What I? The reality of God's Love, the orientation point—the Centering reality of the other Comforter was to be in the Light that Glows; but in that expression “I will come to you,” and you will continue to receive the comforting power of God's Love, even so.
It is a real privilege for me to stand in this place on a morning like this, with the sun shining brightly, with all of you. I would like to share something from the Bible with you. It is from Revelation, the last book in the Bible. The emphasis I wish to share with you is on some of the words in this Book— “things which must shortly come to pass … for the time is at hand.” I will read a few verses from the beginning of the Book:
“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John.” Here we have a continuum. I would mention this wonderful servant, John, who was the one to allow what the Master Jesus brought to continue. It came to focus in the Book of Revelation, which John wrote.
“Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.” Isn’t that what we have always heard? You can read the words, but do you hear them? You can hear them, but do you live them? Are you among those who keep the words?
I am going to use the tenth chapter of Revelation—it is a picture of incarnation. In the whole Bible, and certainly in Revelation, when there is something depicted, as in this chapter, it applies to the individual, but not just to the individual. It can refer to a particular individual, or a whole body of people. I am emphasizing the Whole Body this morning. This is what we are concerned with, surely. But you will find it interesting from the standpoint of your own incarnation!
“And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth, And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.
“And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me. Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not … And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said. Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth.
“And I went unto the angel, and said unto him. Give me the little book. And he said unto me. Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me. Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.”
Again, from the first verse: “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud.” That is the first step in incarnation: a movement, we say, “down.” It isn’t denigrating anything that is lower: it is simply a movement into a denser level. So the movement begins, down from the absolute state—we say “God Being”—the Source—coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. Here is the first form: Cloud-clothing.
“And a rainbow was upon his head.” Here is a sevenfold differentiation—the Cloud, or the levels of vibrational being, comes first. From this Cloud-clothing will come physical form in this process. We have talked about pneumaplasm, or spirit substance, which is the Cloud closest to the physical body. So we have this spiritual body—which is not a separate body; it is the connecting link. There are those who have a certain sensitivity, perception, about these levels, having seen something of them. It has been recognized that any distortion or lack in the physical body is first in this Cloud Body, this vibrational body. Therefore the healing must take place in that spirit substance. None of this is new, but it lets us see something in a different way.
“And his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.” Here, from the pure, white light, which is Divine Being, we now have some golden substance: “his face as the sun.” One is reminded of the Silver Cord and the Golden Bowl in Ecclesiastes. If you see the moon, particularly a full moon, right over the horizon, it looks golden because it is shining through a cloud. Well, here we have the pure, White Light through the Cloud, and we have the Golden Bowl. It is all a description of this process.
“And he had in his hand a little book open.” This is true, and the book has never been closed. “And he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth.” So we have the earth substance now, right here, and something begins to happen. The little book contains the design for this form—everything is in that little book. And it is open; there is nothing hidden. The earth substance is now ready to receive this little book: “He set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth.” The book will be integrated, the incarnation of the being will take place, with everything provided that will manifest through this person.
Now that this substance is in place, he “cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth.” Throughout the Bible, when the sound of a loud voice, or a trumpet, or anything like that, is used, it is talking about an impact, a vibrational impact, the emanation of power. This is certainly happening here, likened to a lion roaring; the lion is the symbol of the highest point of authority, of One Power.
“And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.” We have a differentiation again. We had white light into seven, a rainbow—the colors, from the most ethereal down to the red, physical, in that Vibrational Body— and now we have it in sound. Here is the One Power being differentiated into seven thunders, or vibrations. Here is the establishing of that magnificent system, the endocrine glands. The endocrine system consists of ductless glands. Here is something pouring directly from the Spirit into the River of Life, the bloodstream. So into the physical form now we have the establishing of this sevenfold system which provides the connection with the inner reality.
“And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices”—were in place and operating—“I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me. Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.” Here is something hidden: the endocrine secretions. There is a definite connection between the invisible and the visible. This is a fascinating subject for the human mind; it would like to control this! Of course it is the way all of this is used that determines what happens to the individual. Expressing emotions of anger, hate, and all the rest, impacts the body and brings about distortion. Conversely, this system may also be the instrument for healing.
“And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again. and said. Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth.” The angel is present, so there is a Voice here. And I, whoever I am at this point, do have a responsibility: take the little book!
And I went unto the angel, and said unto him. Give me the little book. And he said unto me. Take it.” I had to do it every step of the way! I like this text, because it shows I took responsibility before I ever came on earth—and so did you. It seems that there have been complaints by some: “I didn’t ask to come—all this is imposed upon me.” But we did, for sure! We took responsibility from the very beginning: “Give it to me!” And he said, “Take it”—absolute responsibility. Contained in that little book (and it is still open, always) is the Commission, the purpose, the very specific reasons we are on earth. It is all there, and open to be used. One aspect of the physical provision in the little book is the wonderful spiral of DNA.
What about this business that it is bitter in the belly? “It was in my mouth sweet as honey.” The Word contained in the book is sweet in the mouth, isn’t it? It is in the living where a little something else might creep in, in the belly, in the area of digestion, the subconscious realm. Remember that this little book is eaten, absorbed into the world just exactly the way it is, individually and collectively, with all the factors of heredity, environment—prenatal, postnatal—all the rest of it. This little book, this Presence, is now in the midst of all this, the way the world is. And when there are bitter experiences it is purely because of subjection to these earthly factors. The Master spoke about being in the world but not of it.
In the sense of the whole body of mankind there has been a twenty-thousand-year-old bellyache! When we think of all the function that goes on in what is indelicately here called “the belly,” we have digestion, assimilation, elimination. The acceptance of the Sweet Commission in the mouth is wonderful—we can’t wait to get to it—but then there is the living of it! It all has to be applied in everything we do, and the digestion, assimilation into every speck: the physical substance, mind, heart. This is what is necessary if there isn’t to be indigestion and the bellyache. And that is all that needs to be assimilated—the little book. This is the one thing that will let the Word be made flesh. We are beginning to see it, feel it, and really know it. The time is at hand, and these things must come to pass.
I often recall Martin’s words, particularly more recently, that the pollution in the heaven must be dissolved—must! This is the time. This bitterness has been in the subconscious of the whole body of humanity for a number of years, but it isn’t very long from the Divine standpoint. How could John say, in Revelation, written two thousand years ago, that these things “must shortly come to pass”? Our minds may say, “Next week, next month, next year—surely in a lifetime!” Two thousand years? We have what is called a “timeline” in our Story of Man class, where it shows graphically this period of time since the fall of man, compared with other cycles. It is a short span of time, a twenty-thousand-year period, as compared with what went before. So from the Divine View I would say definitely that the time for change is at hand. And it is being brought to consciousness in many, many people that this is such a time. From a view that sees the destructive side of life, it could be said, “There isn’t any more time. This is terrible!” But what a wonderful thing that this is the time for the end of all that.
There is a word that pictures this state, and that is karma. Karma never seems to get resolved. I don’t think it is expected to be resolved! It is there: “So I’ll come back and finish what I couldn’t do now.” Why not do it now? No one has ever had more opportunity, more training, care, inspiration. Let’s keep moving. We let the conviction dissolve, the conviction that nothing will change: “It can’t. It has gone on this long, this stuff in me. It can’t change!” We know it not only can but it does and it has. It is absoluteness I am talking about. The word is, “The mystery of God is finished,” as recorded in this Book, Revelation, which is dealing with this present time. It isn’t God’s mystery; it is man’s mystery, even though it is seen as God’s mystery. So there is the finishing of this closed-in state that man’s mind has created. What could be more wonderful? The fact that we are here is cause for the greatest thanksgiving, but it requires all of the old state to be gone, every last bit.
I am going to read some words from the twentieth chapter of Exodus, which contains the Ten Commandments. These words are from the first of those:
“I am the Lord thy God … visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” Let the little book that is open be incorporated into everything we do. That makes the difference.
There is another verse, in Matthew, where the Master said, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” I would say that this implies that karma doesn’t go on forever; after all, it is only in the consciousness of mankind. The idea has been that God inflicts this unto the third and fourth generation, but we are talking about hereditary factors. It applies only to those who reject the little book in the hand of the angel. It is all dissolved for those who love the LORD and keep His commandments, and let the book be revealed, which is the Word made flesh.
“Till heaven and earth pass”—the old heaven and the old earth. That is the theme in the Book of Revelation: the passing of the old heaven and the old earth. And I would not say, “the coming of the new,” because there it is—if the old has passed, the smudge is off, the sludge is gone, there it is! It has always been here. But until every jot or tittle (today we would say “tad” or “titch,” whatever), until every speck of it is gone, there is the state of being under the Law. It shall not “pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Here is the state of absoluteness. It isn’t a matter of trying to dig out every little bit of the old so that every bit has gone. Love simply cleans the slate. Love is radiation, and nothing escapes that radiation.
From this passage in Revelation I will read the last verse again. This is written to the Body of the Son of God: “Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.” That prophecy isn’t foretelling what is going to happen next week, or whatever. It is simply the uttering of the Word in the moment, and it inevitably touches many peoples and nations and tongues—all tongues; it doesn’t matter what the language is—and kings, and heads of state, and presidents! This is the impact into the body of humanity.
I would like to look into another book in the Bible. It is written, as is Revelation, purely in symbol: the Book of Ezekiel. In his day Ezekiel prophesied very much as John did later. His writings apply to exactly the same time as John’s do—this time of fulfilment. There is a chapter I would like to share with you. The reason my attention was called to this Book was because of the service by Martin that came in the last mailing. The title of it is “The Sign of the Times”—a singular sign. We see lots of signs out there. Martin said:
“There is one central and primary sign of the times which has not been recognized, let alone acknowledged, by the population of mankind in general. We know something about it because of our own personal experience. It might be described as the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. The Son of Man is the sign, and that sign is in heaven. Human beings are aware of many things in the earth but virtually nothing in the true heaven. Consequently there is no awareness, really at all, in the consciousness of mankind of the Son of Man in heaven. That awareness shall come.
“The Son of Man is the Body of the Son of God, the Body of which we have some immediate experience. The experience of the Son of Man is only known in heaven. The fact that it is present on earth is easily recognized, but the reality of it is in heaven. We only know the Son of Man to the extent that we ourselves abide in heaven.”
Reading the Book of Ezekiel with Martin’s words in mind—that the Son of Man is the Body of God on earth—I find a chapter here that is very interesting. Chapter thirty-seven:
“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones.” We are talking about the earth and we are also talking about the time in which we live today. There weren’t that many bones in the day he lived! This is the day of the population explosion. “And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley”—of this planet—“and, lo, they were very dry.” That describes the state of the world—very many, and very dry, and it looks impossible that anything could be done about this situation. “And he said unto me. Son of Man”—the words are to the Body of God already established “can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.” You’re asking me?
“Again he said unto me. Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.”
The prophecy is: “Hear the Word of the Lord.” The absoluteness of that prophecy is to know that I am the Lord: “Ye shall know that I am the Lord,” he says. First there is the recognition that there is a Body of God on earth, that there is a Voice that can say, “I am the Lord,” and this is what the Body represents: it must, if it is to happen. Then eventually there comes the realization that I am the Lord.
“So I prophesied as I was commanded”—and there’s the secret, isn’t it, to prophesy “as I was commanded,” this which is in the little book—“and as I prophesied, there was a noise”—again, the noise, one of the first things ever to appear in a creative cycle, the impact of spirit, of power. “And behold a shaking”—that came along simultaneously; we have all experienced that! The shaking is what loosens the hold on everything. Every external influence is shaken: relationships, people, things, situations—all of it. This is the process when the Word is truly spoken.
“And the bones came together, bone to his bone.” That is a picture of what is happening in the world, even though they are just bones at this point. They come together. “Bone to his bone”: here is a picture of one person coming to another. We could say a group draws people, but it is always, isn’t it, the influence of one person, one word, one smile, the light in the eyes of one. So the experience of “bone to his bone” is happening—we do see it.
“And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them.” Ah, it is beginning to have a body—the skeleton is going to have a form, because it does start out as a skeleton, as bones that have come together. Then there comes flesh up upon them, but first sinews, muscles, ligaments, etc. And these are brought into this forming Body, which was just a honey structure at one time. The body of humankind is now beginning to have these vital elements, and we see it; we see it coming. It could look like a beautiful body one of these days. We see what is going on in the Soviet Union, Korea, Japan, South America, many places. Things are moving, and the parts that make the Body operational are coming into place.
So, continuing with this analogy: “And the skin covered them above”—that is good; the body needs skin. Creation is all one thing, but in this analogy we have the individual parts coming into place. Well, they are all wonderful, and they have their functions, and they work together; but until the skin is on, the body isn’t wholly beautiful. Until the skin covers it, it seems to be composed of separate parts, even though they are working together. Covered with skin, you have one thing, and you don’t see the parts. They are all moving and working, but blessed skin makes it one unit. It looks like it is all ready: the parts are all covered with skin, “but there was no breath in them.
“Then said he unto me. Prophesy unto the wind.” We have a fresh wind blowing! as this larger Body is forming, coming so beautifully into place and into a place of conscious awareness. There is a wind needed. This is the final step, and we hear the U.S. president talk about a fresh wind blowing, and all over the place there is a wind blowing.
“Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, Son of Man, and say to the wind. Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”
This is the purpose of the wind. But there must be a Core Body, the Son of Man, to prophesy. In other words, the Word is spoken through the wind. This Core Body has this vital place with regard to the wind. “O breath,” the breath of God, “breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”
One can feel the longing, in the hearts of this larger body that is forming, to live. There has been a conviction throughout the vast population of the world that the human state is in a terminal condition; it is all going to end in destruction. Well, we don’t know how it is all going to work out, but the question was asked of the Core Body: “Can these bones live?” And the Core Body might say, “I decide this? I know this? Surely it is the LORD who knows.” True! “Surely it is already decided that the LORD’s Will shall be done, that it cannot be defeated.” True! But we are responsible for what happens in this part of the cosmos right now, in this time that is at hand. In this chapter we see our responsibility toward all the people on the face of the earth—a great responsibility. That is accomplished only as the absoluteness of our Mission is achieved. It means that not one little bit of that old heaven is allowed to remain. The little complaints and judgments that are experienced, maybe as recently as yesterday, don’t have to be here today.
This prophecy was to the breath: “Come from the four winds.” We know about those Four Winds, and their representation: the Four Forces, which are differentiations of the One Spirit which makes creation possible on this earth. In the very beginning in Genesis, concerning creation, a river is spoken of, One River, that went out of Eden. It represents the one source of power in all the cosmos, and it is differentiated, or takes characteristics applicable to the place needed, into Four Forces on this planet—the One River became Four Rivers. We have One Wind becoming Four Winds. It is all one thing. Here is the working of the Spirit of God. We need to let it be so vibrant and so consistent in us that we truly remember taking that little book. We may say, “I took it, and in my mouth the Commission was sweet as honey. I love to talk about it!” But it is in living that the Commission is fulfilled, and that is not bitter.
“Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” And what begins to come into the consciousness of all mankind is a conviction of life.
“So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great body.” This is the time that has been looked forward to, as Uranda put it, “by all the prophets of all the ages.” Do we give thanks for just being here, that the mystery of God can be finished, and all the mystery on the face of the earth be dissolved? There are those who would have loved to be here in this time that is at hand. Our responsibility is very great; we are here. And we are His body, and there is an absoluteness in consciousness.
I am reminded of the words of Jesus: “That where I am, there ye may be also”—that your state of being may be what mine is. This has nothing to do with place or geographical position, just that this state of being may be so absolute, because of love, that the mystery of God might be finished. It is the only thing that does it: love, a passion that transcends love for self. We knew that with Uranda, with Martin—for many years with Martin; of course most of you only knew Martin, and that is enough! The love is so great that it fills everything, and there is nothing else. I am most thankful for the opportunity we have of letting the LORD live on earth through us, very aware that this is the time, and that it must be done.
In the outworking of God's love on earth there are many adjustments that are essential to the sharing of God's love. We have recognized that it is through Divine love that centering becomes possible. No matter how much the human mind may think to try to remain centered, without love it is impossible, and the first and the greatest of the commandments admonishes us to love God with all that we are. We have shared meditations on that point many times, but I would tonight that we might come to know more deeply, more fully, the reality of our KING's provision, in His Kingdom on earth, in this matter.
We have recognized that without centering in love the control factors in truth cannot become effective and the design factors in truth cannot manifest. They become spoiled, distorted, and that which does appear is far different from that which God designed. The reality of the Kingdom requires that control and design shall manifest through the working of God's power. Fundamentally we have acknowledged that all power does come from God and that the power that destroys is from God but not under God's control; it is being used by the human agency, wilfully or ignorantly, to spoil God's design. When God's power is used by human beings to spoil God's design we have a horrible incongruity, something which by its very nature is abhorrent. But man has lived for so long with the distortion patterns of being, with that which is decaying and dying, that he has become used to the abhorrent factors in existence and accepts them as being natural. They are in fact unnatural, but in the self-active expression of the human being misusing God's power to spoil God's design we have the natural result in the condition which we find in the world.
I always feel at a loss for words when I approach the subject of God's love, the love of the Lord of Love. Our KING so loved the world, the earth and the people in it, His whole creation, that He came into the world to restore that pattern of relatedness, that whosoever believeth in Him, the Lord of Love, might not perish but have everlasting life. What does it mean to believe in the Lord of Love? What is there in your consciousness tonight which will allow you to have a deeper awareness of what it means to believe in the Lord of Love?
What if every question, if every problem, all the things which might be deemed a necessity in any way, shape or form, could be dismissed from consciousness so that the whole attention, the whole of the heart or feeling nature, the whole of the mind and the whole of the body, might be brought to point in this one thing?
When there is love on earth, for instance, between a man and a woman, and it is real and it has a spiritual quality, it has a depth, the mutuality of that love establishes a timelessness. When there is a centering in relationship to that love, other things, though they be essential, are seen as secondary to love, no matter how important they might be, no matter how necessary it may be to do the essential work or consider other matters. It is not that they are set aside as meaningless, but the quality of that which is known and felt, the timelessness, and the recognition that that love is primary, gives meaning to everything else. Without that love what meaning would there be? Without love somewhere, somehow—not necessarily limited to marital love—but without love somehow, no human being can live a normal life. Without love there is only emptiness, coldness, meaninglessness. Whatever else there may be, only love can give it meaning. Whatever the need may be, only love can provide the starting point for filling that need. No matter what problem, without love there is no way of really solving the problem, no matter how much the human being may try. The basic pattern of love open to each and every one, without regard to anything else, is the most precious of all, the most priceless of all aspects of love: the love of God, the love of the Lord of Love.
When that love begins to work in and through the human being, and it is held sacred, the human consciousness and heart remain true to it, changes begin to take place. All changes are fundamentally adjustments either to the pattern of life or to the pattern of decay. Sometimes the human being resists the necessity of adjustment, but without adjustment the true expression of love is impossible, because the means of manifestation must become fitting to the expression of love. The endlessness of love is that which makes eternity desirable. Without love one could rightly abhor the thought of eternity. But love is of sufficient importance so that from God's standpoint the centering of all things, including God Himself, is established in love. Our KING, Supreme in heaven and earth, is the Lord of Love, the Apex of All. Love, then, is of sufficient importance so that from the standpoint of God's design, of expression in His own Being, disregarding the human being for the moment, in the Body of God made up of many God Beings the One who provides the apex is the Lord of Love. Not the Lord of Truth, not the Lord of Life, not the Lord of something else in the various aspects of God's Being, but the Lord of Love. He is the Center, the Supreme One, the Apex.
From the standpoint of God, then, in relationship to God Himself, Love is Supreme. To that end we have the second shortest verse in the Bible. The shortest one was caused because someone failed to recognize the truth of the second shortest. The shortest verse in the Bible has two words; the second, three: the simple statement, “God is love.” The shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” Why did He weep? Not for the cause that human beings suppose. Not because Lazarus was in the tomb, not because all the others were weeping. He told them plainly, even before He wept, “Lazarus is not dead, but sleepeth.” But when Mary of Bethany forgot to remember that God is love and that the power of God is supreme, when she betrayed the trust He had placed in her to hold the pattern, when Mary doubted God's love, when Mary, who to the Master symbolized the centering of all the fulfilments for which He hoped on earth, yielded to the pattern of appearances and broke and became subject to the things to which the world is subject, then He wept; for in that moment He knew that what could have been would not be. He wept because there was not one, not even Mary of Bethany, who remembered “God is love,” who remembered the importance of staying centered regardless of appearances—not one, of those who should have provided the pattern in that hour. I feel the question rise in your mind with respect to the Disciple John. The pattern of which I am speaking had no direct relationship to him. I am not suggesting that John failed to maintain the pattern. I am talking about something else.
“Jesus wept.” Do you think the Master's life was without love? No. Mary of Bethany was His sweetheart. Mary of Bethany provided the centering, from the standpoint of the negative aspect of Being, for that outworking for which He was on earth, for which He labored. That provision of God's love we can say should have held—but Jesus wept. Why? Because the one whom He had trusted to hold the centering of the pattern in what we would speak of as the negative response of the world, to provide the key, forgot her responsibility. She forgot God's love, and “Jesus wept.” Mary yielded to the wrong precedent. Since the fall there was no other precedent but that of failure; but there was a precedent going back beyond the fall of man, and God's love had to have meaning on earth. There was a keynote of response in the outworking of things, a point where love reigned supreme, where nothing else mattered, and when something else was allowed to matter, Jesus wept.
So from the standpoint of God, from the standpoint of our LORD on earth, love was first. He said the first commandment had to do with love, God's love: to love the Lord thy God with all that you are. When there is this yielding to God's love, letting go in it, what happens? In the world there are crystallizations of every sort, distorted patterns wherever one may turn, nothing exactly the way God intended it to be. In the whole realm of humanity there is that which is moving toward that pattern of fulfilment, the Divine manifestation of the Divine Design, in the flesh of human beings, in their minds and hearts, but so often something other than God's love matters first. “God is love.” The centering of God is love; the expression of God is love; the nature of God is love. If, then, the reality of love is allowed to begin to work through the human heart there is the beginning of the relatedness with God. But the working of that love must do something. It must melt the crystallizations. It must bring about a yielding which allows adjustment to the Divine pattern, so that the delicate factors of the Divine Design may begin to have meaning.
One of the strangest things to me—and, I might mention, to all the angels of heaven—is this: That human beings so often seem to imagine that the essential adjustments are difficult, something to be resisted, something to be avoided as much as possible, that there is somehow suffering in those adjustments. Such an attitude reveals a tremendous ignorance with respect to love and truth and life. One of the greatest joys which any man or woman may know is the joy of going through the patterns of attunement or adjustment necessary to the ever-increasing reality of love, God's love, in life. Instead of resisting the necessities of change the human being should accept them willingly, gladly.
How can the body be healed if there be no change in the body according to the Divine Design? It can't. Only as changes come by reason of the control according to the Divine Design can healing come to the body. Only so can healing come to the mind or heart. These changes are not painful unless the human being makes them so. And if they are painful they are not the true changes; they are partial changes wherein factors other than God's are allowed to play a part, where human factors are imposed. Getting used to God's love is a delightful experience. Remaining true to God's love gives a sense of wholeness and wholesomeness, a consciousness of something holy and sacred. There is such a sweet spirit which pervades, and all fear is cast out, and there is no cause for suffering in any real sense. There is relaxation. There is letting go. There is yielding. There is a response which permits God's power to make changes. How deep does God's love go? To the intellectual level, so that one may say, “I love God”? If so, the moment the attention is centered on the necessities of our daily lives God's love is forgotten. But if it goes deep, deep into the heart, the feeling nature, and penetrates the body, it is there no matter what may demand attention, no matter what one may be under the necessity of doing. It is there all the time.
There is no adequate way to convey in words that which love is. It can be called a fire, and that would be true, but some would be afraid of it. It can be called a consuming fire; not because it destroys, but because it enfolds and contains, because it takes unto itself that which yields—to change, not to destroy it; not to bring it to an end, but to give it meaning. There are so many delicate factors in love, so very delicate, and only as there is an appreciation of delicate design, in truth, can the full beauties of love be known. The human being cannot be taught by lecture, by book, by blackboard design, just what adjustments must take place within himself with respect to this fulfilment. A general idea can be given, principles can be portrayed, but there is that something in each and every one which can appear only in the working of the spirit of love itself in the individual—not something that can be known in advance, not something that can be intellectually predetermined. It is something which can be experienced only in the working of love within oneself. And it cannot be described. That which is true of one may not be true of another, with respect to these delicate factors—in other words, each one has a peculiar design.
In the basic factors we are all alike, in the fundamental. And those things can be recognized and appreciated and known. They can be more or less described. They become common knowledge. But the human being who limits himself to that never knows what it is to live. There must be an unfolding of something beyond the range of that which is intellectually predetermined. There must be the outworking of something which is absolutely unique to the individual himself. It is in the delicacy of the design that the variations in characteristics become known. We may classify any person on earth as a human being. That is a very general classification—all human beings. Then we can make the division between male and female, and everyone is in one classification or the other. But that which is a basic fact does not make the distinction of Being evident. The delicacy of the Divine Design which relates to you is important to the fulfilment of your life, the reality of your ministry of service, the reality of your Being, what God intended you to be. But without love those delicate factors of design, spirit, nature, can never take outer form. They never find expression. They never have any meaning to you or to anyone else. So, while you may be a human being, you are not what you ought to be. You may be a man or a woman, but you are not what you ought to be.
How shall this come forth? By great intellectual attainments? By inventive genius? By mental gymnastics? By human emotionalism? By giving way to feelings of various sorts? Oh no. Of course wherever love is at work there are feelings, but it is a matter of letting that love, that fire, that feeling, work through in the sense of a centering, in the sense of an unfolding. It is such a revealing thing to the eyes of love, but if there are no eyes of love it reveals nothing. And that delicacy of design reaches back into the very essence or heart of God. It is this that characterizes our LORD and KING. If we think of Him simply as a KING in some far-off place, a Lord, perhaps, more or less unapproachable—for those who do not know love it may be true, and it is—then you do not know Him: these delicate factors of Being, so intricate in design, so moving, so all-inclusive, so always new, so ever-changing and yet always the same. That sounds like a paradox to human ears, “ever-changing and yet always the same”—always the same in love but never the same in Being. Always there is that quality of newness, that quality of aliveness, which is beyond human words to describe. These essences, these delicate things which cannot be described, must be allowed an opportunity of movement within oneself. If one is so crystallized in fundamentals that the delicate things are always crushed or given second place, or some such thing, there can never be the unfolding of Being, there can never be the joy of true living, of true loving.
The Lord of Love. Why is eternity a reality? Fundamentally because of love. When one begins to know love as it centers in our KING, the Lord of Love, one begins to realize that even eternity can never exhaust the newness, the wonder, the joy of love. Love, true love, is something that never grows old. It is not subject to time. It is not subject to space or distance. It simply is, and it is eternally new. If there is anything which is not showing forth the quality of eternal newness it is because of a lack of love, a lack of centering in the God of Love, the Lord of Love.
What is it that makes newness, in the sense of restoring physical health, the restoration of the body to the Divine Design? There must come a newness, and the oldness must pass away—not oldness necessarily in the sense of years but from the standpoint of something that is out of design, something which is crystallized, something that is not allowing the delicate factors of Being to appear, so it grows old. It can grow old in five minutes, shall we say. I have met people where things grew old in five minutes, and one was glad to get away. But where God's love is working there is an eternal newness, something different, something alive, something refreshing, something delightful, something thrilling, something so deep and satisfying. In this ever-newness we have the secret of eternal aliveness, which is called Eternal Life. Without that ever-newness of love, God's love, extended life is impossible, because the crystallizations take over and that which is not of the Divine Design becomes evident in control. This ever-newness is the living quality of Being, and without it sometimes human beings reach a point where they so yield to the adversary that they even say such a horrible thing as, “What is the use?” What a depth of something too horrible to name!—“What's the use?”—the meaninglessness that brings such an expression. And where does that come from? From a lack of God's love. God's love is sufficient for all.
There is an interesting thing about our LORD and KING. His love is great enough to include every human being. His capacity to love has never been exhausted. There are not enough beings in heaven or earth, or both together, to exhaust His capacity to love. He has enough for you, and He can share all the love of your being and not exclude anyone else—a place for you in the heart of the Lord of Love. And it will not limit you. It will not make you something less than you are. It will make you something more than you are. It will not circumscribe you in the sense of anything distorting or limiting, but it will give you meaning to yourself and to others.
Blessed ones, love isn't something that you can get all in a lump, as if you might have some trucker deliver a ton of it. Love is something that flows and unfolds and moves. Some people seem to imagine that if they have love, then suddenly, as if they got the ton of it, everything would be thus and thus and thus and so, instantly, in a moment. But love is there for every human being on the face of the earth. It doesn't come by the ton; it comes by the measure of living. It is something that has to express through; and its intricate designs, its changing patterns, provide that something which increases the capacity to know God's love. God in His wisdom arranged that eternity would be available for the expression of love, not that it should be delivered in a lump and when that is gone it is done. It is not something that can be put in a box or jar or can or something, and stored. It is something which in its movement reveals itself. The quality of that movement is determined by the reality of the love that is involved in its unfolding expression.
When one begins to know love one begins to realize that it actually is primary, not secondary, and that God was not arbitrary when He pointed to that fact in the two great commandments. It is primary—it is the first thing, not the second. Once that primary thing is moving there begins to be a relatedness to other things: first to God, and then, according to the Divine Design in the outworking, one to another and to all created things. But you never see love twice the same. If you miss it in any moment, what you miss will never, in all of eternity, be available to you again, because it is never in any two moments exactly the same. All the eternity of the future will be taken up with the natural unfoldings of love in the future, and there is no time in all of eternity to return to something that was missed in the past. If you miss it in any moment it is gone forever. And God's love is too precious to miss, too important to throw away. We have seen that with God it is primary. The Lord of Love centers the Body of God, the Apex of it All—first, supreme. Human beings think to make it secondary? Oh no. If they do they destroy themselves, and day by day throw away, literally throw away, God's richest blessings. Once they are missed they can never be known, because they are gone.
That which is today will appear today, if we let love have its way. One should not waste time in vain regrets with respect to what is past. That will do no good. But one should learn the lesson well enough so that one doesn't today throw away that which should be known today; for God's love is available today, available to you. If you do not let it unfold today the opportunity is gone. Each new moment brings a new opportunity—and a whole eternity before us, endless—for the unfolding of the ever-changing wonders of God's love. Until you begin to appreciate the delicacy of design, the things which can be known only as they unfold—not by the word that is spoken, not to be put in black and white somehow—until one begins to let that delicacy of design have real meaning in oneself, one cannot begin to know the LORD of Love. But you cannot know the delicacy of design unless you are honest, faithful and true, unless you let the truth make you free by reason of your centering. There is no other way of centering than this, by reason of God's love. If you would know the ever-newness of God's love it must be through His love, according to the delicacy of design which God ordains. It is to this end, this fulfilment, that the Lord of Love Himself came into the world, so that instead of excluding love from your life and decaying, you might accept love in your life and share the ever-newness of God Himself.
