The Tabernacle of God is with men. Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts. When the cells of your individual body are holy, when the organs and parts are holy, when your expression of life is holy, when all the levels of your consciousness are holy, the Lord of hosts is present in His Holy Place. If there is no Holy Place He cannot be present insofar as the experience of the individual is concerned. The hosts are what you are in the external sense: cells, organs, systems. The hosts are also present insofar as mankind is concerned: individual human beings, nations, operating systems, a quality and expression of life in the overall sense. Here are the hosts, but where is the Lord? Here is the Tabernacle, but where are the Priesthood?
Mankind composes the hosts which make potentially possible the presence of the Lord. If we see this, then it is evident that just as there is a sense of self in the individual, there is also a sense of self insofar as mankind is concerned—not only a sense of self but the reality of a self rightly identified by the words I am. That self, insofar as mankind is concerned, has been referred to as the LORD of Lords and KING of Kings. A self insofar as the individual is concerned may be referred to as a Lord, over whom He is LORD. This does not exclude the female aspect of the population, but there are certain limitations with respect to words.
When we are aware of the spirit of the words, and we begin to understand the meaning of the words, then the resentful attitudes of human beings, whether male or female, pass away. It is only because human beings do not know, that they become involved in contentious attitudes. If we see such things proliferating we have the clear evidence of ignorance. Human beings think of themselves as being highly educated and, therefore, presumably knowledgeable or wise, but all the evidence points to abysmal ignorance.
Holy, holy, holy. When the body is holy, and the mind is holy, and the expression of life is holy, there is a Holy Place on earth. The Tabernacle of God is then with men, and the Lord of hosts is known to be present.
The LORD of Lords, the true self of mankind, was present on earth in the individual body of Jesus. The statement I have just made is true but it certainly doesn’t mean that I am propagating what has come to be called Christianity. The LORD of Lords was present on earth in physical form and that physical form was called Jesus. This physical form, in the individual sense, was not His true body; it was a substitute body, for His true body includes the whole of mankind.
Within the body of mankind there is rightly another body, which could be referred to as the Body of the High Priest. This body is composed of many individuals. Included in it are groups of individuals, taking form according to the design of that body, and there is the quality of an expression of life natural to the High Priest. Again, we use words which tend to have pre-established patterns of concept in human minds, but what I am talking about is not pre-established in any human mind. If it is translated according to the concepts that may now be held, that will not be the truth.
The truth is a matter of living experience, not of the theoretical ideas of the mind. The mind is incapable of encompassing the truth; the truth encompasses the mind. It would be extreme arrogance on the part of a human mind to claim that it could encompass the truth, for the human mind itself is one small evidence of the truth. How ridiculous to try to bend the truth to the ideas of the mind. Immediately the attempt is made, the mind proceeds to exclude itself from the experience of the truth.
If we do have a sensing that mankind is rightly included in the hosts of the Lord, then we behold a form, a body, which has the capacity to reveal the reality summarized by the word Lord—in this instance we are thinking of the LORD of Lords. When He was on earth in His individual body He referred to One whom He spoke of as His Father. We have a dawning consciousness of that reality relating to what is back of the whole cosmic creation. We have used the symbol of the capital letter X to convey an understanding of how it is that what is back of and above all things, in the spiritual sense, is drawn to a point of focus where the two lines of the X cross. The Father is above but the Father comes to focus in the Son. The Son is at the crossover point between what is above in the spiritual sense and what is below in the material sense.
There is a very specific crossover point for this aspect of the cosmic creation with which we are immediately related, and that crossover point is the point of identity of the body of mankind. That point of identity we can refer to as the LORD of Lords but we don’t know what that means simply by using those words. We only know what it means to the extent that we ourselves, as individuals, find our own identity at the crossover point in the individual sense. Then we discover that we are one with that greater crossover point relating to the whole body of mankind: I Am That I Am.
This seems always rather mysterious to the human mind, because the human mind has gotten itself into a state where the principal sensation is one of isolation. It is because of this that human beings, identified with their minds, always are on the defensive. They sense the smallness of themselves which could so easily be swept away. This is the smallness of the human mind in its state of isolation. The mind of man was not created to be isolated. The final isolation is called death, when there is isolation from everything and consequently there is nothing.
The LORD of Lords incarnated on earth in the individual personal body that was called Jesus. Fundamentally, it was the only way that He could incarnate—the body of mankind was not willing that He should, and no particular grouping in the body of mankind was willing that He should. The only possibility was on the basis of an individual body, and so this was the way it was worked out. At that time His individual body was the only point on earth that was willing to let Him incarnate. Even those whom He called to follow Him did not exhibit any particular willingness to allow an expansion, differentiation, of what remained throughout the period of His presence on earth—merely His own individual, personal body. No one on the face of the earth accepted the challenge which He brought. Even those who were closest to Him scarcely recognized what it was. There was nobody to share, and He remained alone. When the picture is really seen, what a sad, sad thing it is—not because of the wicked rulers of the Jews or the Roman government, but because of the self-centered ignorance of human beings everywhere. And has the picture really changed any?
We are beginning to sense a change in our own experience, but we would have to admit that this change which is coming, as we have known it thus far, has not been brought to pass by any endeavor or direction provided by the human mind. It happens to the extent that we are willing to acknowledge ignorance. Many people are willing to acknowledge a certain amount of ignorance in a more or less general sense. There are certain areas where people are more or less willing to say that they don’t know, but there are some areas where they think they know. If the suggestion is made that even in those areas they don’t really know, then the reaction rises up: “You may not know, but I know!” Really? Do our individual lives portray, in no uncertain terms, the depths of our true knowing? I doubt it! The lives of human beings everywhere, even our own, portray mainly ignorance.
The acknowledgment of ignorance may be a first step in repentance, and let us remember that there is a vast difference between confession and repentance. Human beings have been very much engaged, all down through the ages, in confessing their sins but they never repented. They may have received absolution at the hands of another unrepentant human being but never knew what it would be to repent. Confession has been used as a substitute for repentance, and a very poor substitute at that. We may finally come to the place where repentance is possible; and that is exactly where one is oneself, because any person is only capable of repenting for himself. So, accepting the responsibility of repentance for oneself, we may see the requirement in relationship to the hosts of our own individual bodies and minds and expressions of living.
We finally come to the point of acknowledging our own personal responsibility, and only when this is done can any real change possibly occur. If the change begins to occur in one person, it at the same time is beginning to occur in the whole of mankind. Because of the concepts of the human mind, this matter of starting with one person looks as though it could lead nowhere. Why? One person can do what needs to be done, and it is only as one person does it that what needs to be done is done. This does not deny the fact that there is more than one person on earth, but it does initiate a starting point for what needs to be done.
Human beings have been so aware of their own littleness, of their own pettiness, of their own meaninglessness, that it seems impossible to conceive that one might be personally responsible for the world. “Oh, no, not me! I’m a very humble person.” Oh, no, you’re not, if you take that attitude; you’re a very arrogant person, because there is a rejection of the Lord, a rejection of the truth of yourself. There is always only one starting point for every person on the face of the earth—namely him- or herself—where one assumes the total responsibility oneself. In the assumption of that responsibility is the power by which others may be brought to assume their responsibility too; but we never see the assumption of responsibility on the part of others without the assumption of responsibility on our own part first.
When there are those, as there indeed begin to be on earth, who move toward that crossover point where absolute responsibility is taken, the Hosts composing the Body of the High Priest within the body of mankind begin to become the Hosts of the Lord, because, indeed, what needs to be done is done by reason of this collective body. But there is no collective body until the individuals who compose it have themselves come to the crossover point and assumed for themselves the absolute responsibility.
At that point the individual can rightly say, as did the High Priest in His own individual body, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me”—by me because I have taken the responsibility, not in arrogance, not on the basis of the human mind’s idea, but because there has been repentance in that regard and the real quality of the living truth has been accepted, and is then in expression through the hosts of the physical body, through the hosts of all levels of consciousness, through the hosts of that capacity by which the creative expression of the truth pours forth in living.
When there are those who know this, then the Body of the High Priest takes form and the identity of the High Priest is shared by His Hosts. It is not a separate identity. As one of those who compose the Hosts of Heaven, there is the consciousness of meaning, the consciousness of purpose, the consciousness of being, and we do not have to go anywhere to find it. It is present exactly where we are in any given moment, and when we learn what it means to repent we discover the truth of that. The High Priest must be present on earth, incarnate on earth, within the body of mankind, if the body of mankind is to come again to provide the facility for the creative action of the Son of God on earth.
The One who is the true self of mankind said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” the crossover point for mankind, the point of identity for mankind, the point of identity to be shared by all the hosts composing mankind. From the standpoint of the mental idea, that is simply a theory. It only becomes a living reality to the extent that there are those who take individual, personal responsibility to stand at the crossover point in themselves so that there is nothing above other than what comes down from God out of heaven, nothing higher in the individual’s experience than that—and by higher I am referring to what governs or controls, because whatever governs in one’s own experience one has placed at a higher point than one is oneself.
What will be placed at the higher point? What are we willing to allow to be there? Most people allow some pretty coarse, low things to be at the higher point, so that they are pushed around by all kinds of rubbish, and human behavior reflects it. If there is selfishness, greed, fear, all these things, motivating a person, then that person has chosen to put those low, coarse things at the high point in his own existence, and he is rightly called an idolater; he is worshiping false gods. He may not like his gods very much but he worships them just the same. There is no need to. We can repent, and repentance simply means you stop doing it, that’s all—one chooses to stop doing it.
There is what is rightly above us: the true quality of the character of God which makes it possible for us to experience what it means to be a son or a daughter of God. That is our inheritance. Our inheritance rightly stems from our true, heavenly parenthood, and when we are willing to acknowledge it, agree with it, then it happens; but as long as we are looking around to be troubled and disturbed and judgmental of all the things that are going on in the world, we have false gods and we die in our sins. The choice is an individual one, but when the right choice is made individually, then there emerge the Hosts which compose initially the body of the High Priest—for the Body of the High Priest must be present, the High Priest incarnate, if there is to be the essential point of orientation for the whole body of mankind.
Mankind as a whole is not going to become correctly oriented spontaneously. The correct orientation comes with absolute certainty when there are those individuals who take responsibility. Then the High Priest incarnates. Then the point of orientation is present for the body of mankind, and those who compose mankind make their choice. Each one must be allowed to make his or her choice. The choice is meaningless unless one makes it for oneself. Each individual must say, “I take absolute responsibility for my world,” and the only way that that can be done is to accept what is coming to point from above. When one accepts that absolutely, one has absolute responsibility for all that comes to point out of the world in oneself.
So, the Body of the High Priest takes form, and those who compose that body are the Hosts of Heaven. They share the character, the quality, of life that is natural to the High Priest. There is no distinction. It’s all one thing, even though it is differentiated through many people. It is not differentiated to be something else. It’s simply differentiated to be an expansion of what is present in essence at the true point of identity in the LORD of Lords. It’s all there, and what a delight it is to come again to that crossover point and to share that quality of character which is the natural expression of the One who gives us identity.
Let the Word be made flesh! That’s the only way it has meaning. It is because the Word which was spoken by the LORD of Lords on earth has not been made flesh by human beings that it has remained only with potential meaning and the world itself is unchanged. But changes come as the Word is made flesh in human experience. It is made flesh first in one person, always in one person. The question arises as to who that one person is. It is always the person who says “I.”
We come to the hour of our evening meditation on this 10th day of June, 1954, in the Chapel on Sunrise Ranch. In beginning this hour of meditation let us share a moment of Devotion.
Our Gracious LORD and Holy KING, we thank Thee for the many evidences of Thy Blessings made manifest on earth. We thank Thee for the beauty and the wonder and the Glory of Life made manifest in this springtime. We thank Thee for the springtime that is opening in the hearts and lives of so many people—earnest, sincere, seeking ones the world around—drawing them with the irresistible cords of Thy Love, into the Way, the Truth, and the Life, that all things may truly work together to perfection, in and through and for, all those who love and serve Thee. I thank Thee, Father, that now, in the Spirit of Thy Presence, in the realization of that which has been accomplished and that which must yet be done, we can, with one accord, come before Thy Throne, yielding body and mind and heart to Thee, that the Spirit of Thy Presence may become the Spirit of our Being, that we may entertain no spirits that are not of Thee, but that we may truly let Thy Spirit fill the Temple and shine round about in the expression of our lives, to the end that we may truly serve Thee by truly serving our brother man, to Thy Glory, and to the Blessing of all who will receive, in a realization that, “Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever.” Aum-en.
In the Biblical portrayal there are many incidents recorded with respect to past events where human beings sought help from God through others, and outstanding among these incidents we have the record of a time not too long after the Master’s presence among men on earth, in person, when the call went out, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” It is called the Macedonian Call. “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” We have such a call from Africa. But the call is not limited to Africa. I can hear that call sounding from many points in the United States and Canada, as well as other parts of the world. If we are aware, consciously and constantly aware, of the call, it seems to me that it makes a difference in our attitudes here.
In time past I have posed the question: “If someone else were here, and you were the one out there, the one who was calling ‘Come over and help us,’ would you want that person on whom you were waiting, to function, day by day, as you do now? Would you like to change places with someone else and be the one sending out the call, ‘Come over and help us’?” Why do we receive that call? Because we, as human beings, are worthy of it? No. Because those who make the call address that call to God, and their hope is that the Blessings will come from God, through us, to them. For by what other means can these Blessings derive from God and be extended to the Waiting Ones? We have privileges here. Perhaps there are times when even the privilege of being here begins to seem to be of comparatively little value. But we must remember that if God hears prayer and answers a prayer, the answer to that prayer must appear through someone, somewhere. It is always so.
The answer to that earnest prayer must appear through someone, somewhere. If God is to answer a prayer, someone must be the instrument, the means, the messenger, by which the prayer is answered. Someone, somewhere, must do it somehow, if it is to be done. Without detracting from what others are doing, or may yet do, there is a place for us, for you. God does not yet have enough men and women through whom to answer prayer. It is one thing to pray to God for something; it is another thing to be the means by which God answers that prayer.
This morning we were dealing with the subject of understanding, among other things, developing an answer to the question, “What doth the Lord require of thee?” Understanding—by which we come to the point of agreement. And we realize that, until there is agreement on earth as touching the things of God, the Father is not permitted to do the works. As the Master said, “Where two or three of you agree on earth as touching these things, it shall be done of my Father which is in Heaven.” But there must be agreement. And there must be understanding before there can be agreement. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2021/03/what-doth-lord-require-of-thee.html]
I am convinced from my observation of people—human beings with all their immaturities and fears and uncertainties—that there are few, if any, living upon the face of the earth, who are willing to move into the pattern of Reality unless, or until, their hearts are deeply touched by a recognition of the needs of others. If we reach a point of understanding and agreement, where the Father does the works, we are letting God answer prayer. How shall the Father do the works? What does it mean? To put it simply, in other words, “to let God answer prayer through you.” What kind of works do you expect the Father to do through you? What kind of works will He perform?
“Letting the Father do the works,” or, “Letting it be done of our Father in Heaven,” simply means that you have yielded your body, your mind, your heart, your whole capacity of being, to the work of letting God answer prayer through you—not just praying to God for something, although prayer is certainly proper in its place, but I am much more interested in letting God answer prayer through me than I am in praying to God according to any ordinary concept of prayer. But we develop a new attitude, a new concept, with respect to prayer. And if prayers are to be answered, it must be through human beings.
Have any of your prayers ever been answered? If so, that answer came through someone. Have I ever been the means by which an answer to your prayer reached you? Have I? Has God ever answered prayer through me to you? Yes. You know that it is so. Why do I have your love and respect and cooperation? Because it is so. Why do I have your trust? Because your experience convinces you that God does answer prayer through me—through others, yes—but through me, regardless of what is answered through someone else.
You have prayed in the past, one way or another, and finally you began to receive something of the answer to that prayer. Sometimes you did not realize it when it first started appearing. Sometimes, perhaps, you rejected what God sent to you in answer to your prayer. But the reason for our presence here—for your presence here is for you to learn to be a man or a woman through whom God may work to answer prayer. The call from Macedonia—“Come over and help us.” It is vital and it is important that we realize that we are not here to please ourselves, to gain this or that for ourselves. We are here to be trained, to make progress along the Way, to study, to learn, and experience, above all, those things which prepare us to serve. And what does it mean “to serve?” To be a means by which God answers prayer. And anything else is not service. Anything else is futile, worthless. All the calls, all the prayers in the world—God always answers. But do we always receive? And are we willing to be messengers by which the answer to a prayer is delivered from God to the one who prays?
In one of my meditations in Vancouver I pointed out that nearly 2000 years ago God started certain blessings on their way to me. He started those blessings on their way to me nearly 2000 years ago. If I had refused to receive those blessings they would have been in vain as far as I was concerned, but it would not have been evidence that God did not send the answer to the prayer, He did not send the Blessing. He did.
I prayed a prayer a number of years ago. I felt, in the outer sense, lost and uncertain. I had checked into all kinds of religions. I had left one religion because I found it completely unsatisfactory to me, and because of it I was virtually ostracized from my family. I checked into many religions and many ideas and teachings, including the Roman Catholic, and I could not find what I was searching for. And I prayed a prayer to seek, to know, to find, what is meant by this Way that is talked about. What is the Truth? I had heard religious people talk about the Truth in a way that just grated on my very soul. I have heard them meet each other in a sort of smug, self-righteous self-complacence, and say, “Are you in the Truth?” “Oh, yes, I'm in the Truth.” And they simply meant they belonged to some particular brand of religion. They had accepted an idea and they were “in the Truth,” until it irked my very soul. And I knew what kind of lives they were living, and, “I'm in the Truth.” Ugh! No. To me it was sacrilege and blasphemy because Truth ought to be more than that.
And so, finally, after walking through many a valley of dark despair seeking and finding naught, after, not just days, but months and years of utter loneliness and many a prayer, I finally began to realize that the prayer which I was praying had been answered nearly 2000 years ago, and that God sent the answer to that prayer on its way to me long before I ever prayed the prayer. And once that idea, that Truth, began to percolate through my consciousness, a little Spiritual Light began to dispel the darkness.
God sends the Blessings on their way to all who will receive; but who is willing to be the messenger by which they will receive? Are we here just to please ourselves, or just to please each other? Are you here just to please me? What will please me? There is just one thing that will please me, and that is, that you serve God and become a means by which God can answer prayer, the prayers of those now living, who live on earth today. And if you do not become a means by which God answers prayer then I count your life to be in vain.
There are prayers that need little answers, and prayers that need big answers. God answers prayer, but for every prayer that God answers there must be someone, somewhere, to deliver it, to be the messenger. And so, our purpose here, on Sunrise Ranch, is to so live and so serve that through us God may answer the prayers of untold thousands and millions of people upon the face of the whole earth. We have evidence in Africa of the response to this Spirit that is sent forth. We see it everywhere—I see it—but I wish somehow I could burn in letters of fire the Truth upon the tablets of your heart, so that you might never in any moment forget that life becomes in vain, becomes merely meaningless existence, unless we so live in understanding and agreement, that God through us may answer the prayers of those who pray—that if there is a Seeking One, what shall he seek and where shall he hope to find it, if there be no one who can be trusted to deliver that which the Seeking One would find? And would you change places, exchange with someone out there, and wait for that someone as that someone now waits for you?
Let us never forget, never be lost in petty and unworthy things, feelings and attitudes or patterns of function. Let us remember the sacred privilege, the holy responsibility, of being men and women through whom God answers prayer. So shall we live and so shall we make it possible for others to live and to know the God of Heaven and earth, that they may see, and recognize, and accept, the evidence of the Presence of the One Who Dwells.
Our Gracious LORD and Holy KING, we thank Thee for the privilege of Serving, for the privilege of letting the answers to prayer which Thou dost send into the earth find the ones who pray that the prayer may not be in vain, that the answer may not be in vain, but may be delivered to the right person, at the right time and place, in the right way, that the children of men may come to know, with absolute certainty, that God does answer prayer, and that He seeks those through whom He may deliver the answers to prayer that they may be received, and that all who will may be Blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. For “Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever.” Aum-en.
As you love and Serve the LORD, so shall all things work together to perfection in and through and for you, because through you God delivers the answers to prayer to the children of men, and you begin to receive through others the answer to your own prayers, because you are found worthy to receive the answer to prayer when you are found worthy to deliver the answer to prayer into the hearts and minds and lives of others, to the Glory of God and to the Blessing of the children of men. Peace be unto you, now and always, as you love and serve our LORD and KING. Aum-en.
