Tonight I would like to meditate with you for a little time on the subject of time, of the principles involved in the realization of eternity. We look out into the world and we can see the evidences of chaos, the evidences of inharmonious patterns of self-activity, of destructive tendencies. And then bringing the observation nearer home, perhaps you can remember when there were certain chaotic patterns within yourselves, discords in bodyor mind or heart, divisions and uncertainties which resulted in patterns of discord, friction and misunderstanding in relationship to those round about you.
You have experienced something of the fact that when the human mind or heart yield to the Only Begotten Son of God, the Spirit of Love and Truth and Life, there is peace on earth, in the earth of the human body with all of its capacities. And as there is peace on earth in yourself, there begins to be the expression of God’s goodwill through you to others, there begins to be that which allows for harmony, understanding coordination with your fellows. But we have likewise recognized that the actual outworking of such an experience in life depends upon obedience to the One Law, Glory to God in the Highest, a love response to God which allows God’s Love to abide in you that you may abide under the Shadow of the Almighty. And so as the Christ expression of Being is born in you there is in you that which establishes the reality of Glory to God in the Highest and on earth—in the earth of your own bodies—peace physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and goodwill toward men, the reality of service, of that which blesses and builds according to the Will and Plan of God for the children of men. All of this is of vital importance to a basic understanding of the principles which we must bring to focalization in meditation upon our chosen subject for tonight.
We remember the word that is written, “For one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” No doubt you can all remember, each one according to your individual pattern of experience, a time, or perhaps many times in your own life when time passed swiftly, unnoticed, when by reason of your enjoyment of the circumstance, your centering of interest, your pleasure in the outworking, whatever it might be, that time as such lost its meaning to you. In looking back in memory you will recall that such moments were moments in which you were not aware of friction, discord, rebellious attitudes or disturbed emotions. Perhaps you can also remember a time, perhaps in the night time, when because of sore emotional distress you could not sleep and there were disturbed thoughts and attitudes, a lack of peace in the physical body, perhaps due to some illness, or a lack of peace in mind and heart, and time moved oh so slowly. It seemed that the dawn would never come.
Here we have briefly touched upon the two patterns of function and experience which introduce a sense of relatedness to the question of the timelessness of time. And it is obvious from your own experience, without regard to what I may say about the subject, that the discordant, chaotic pattern clauses one to be conscious of time. It causes one to be aware of time of the elements of time. But those patterns where there was peace, harmony, a pleasant circumstance, allowed what is called time to pass swiftly. Now we recall our text: “A thousand years with the Lord is as one day, and one day is as a thousand years.” Leaving the second part of the statement as being unnecessary to our immediate consideration we note that a thousand years with the Lord is as one day. A thousand years without the Lord would seem to be an eternity of hell. Some of you, having lived much less than a thousand years, have thought you had found a hell that would never end in any case. “Where one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day”—it is the second part of our statement in which we are interested instead of the first “A thousand years with the Lord is as one day.”
The Master said “For the elect's sale the time shall be shortened”—that the sense of the passing of time will be shortened. For the elect's sake those days shall be shortened—but without that shortening of time no flesh should be saved. According to the Master's word the outworking of the Divine Plan and Pattern has for its purpose the saving of the flesh. Except those days be shortened no flesh should be saved, but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. What is the characteristic which distinguishes the elect? Who are they? What are they? They are those who have elected of themselves, chosen of their own wills, their own hearts and minds, to center in God, to be with the Lord on earth, not waiting until they die and leave the earth to be with the Lord.
We recognize that generally speaking human beings imagine that they cannot be with the Lord on earth, which is the same as saying that it is impossible for the Lord to be on earth And yet there are so many evidences of His Presence and the working of His Spirit. The Master's whole teaching, His whole example, was designed to reveal to man the way by which man can be with the Lord on earth. And those who choose to accept His invitation “Follow me” are the elect because they have elected to be with the Lord here on earth while they are in the flesh—for the purpose of salvation is to save the flesh. The outworking of the Divine Plan, the manifestation of Divine Power, has the purpose of saving the flesh of man, and that flesh is here on earth. We share the state of those who are living in the flesh. And so, if we are with the Lord, the timelessness of time begins to be a reality to us.
Whenever we speak of eternity it is something so obscure, something so vague to the human mind. It is something which most people have no consciousness of holding in relationship to themselves. To what degree do you have a consciousness of true relatedness to eternity? You have a consciousness of relatedness to the passage of time as human beings think of it, a consciousness of the years that you have lived, that are passing now. And so often we hear something about how old a person is—the expression that one feels old, or is getting old, or something of the sort, with the passage of a few short years. The consciousness of the passing of time is much with fallen man. But what consciousness of relatedness to eternity do we have? If a thousand years are as one day there is no subjection to the passing of time. Time as we think of it in the first place is simply a means of measuring the movement of certain celestial bodies—the earth in its movement around the sun or the moon in its movement around the earth, the sun in its movement through the cosmos in relationship to the vast universe of which we are a part. The sense of time as such comes with the feeling that time is passing one by.
Perhaps a simple illustration may be helpful. If you stood beside a railroad track and a streamliner came by you would be very conscious of its speed, of the fact that it was passing you by. In its passage along the track it would give you a sense of great speed, not in yourself but in the train. If you were, on the other hand, riding in that train, you might, as you looked out the window, have a sense of speed but you would share a consciousness of movement in the train. The train would not be passing you by. It is the difference between being out of attunement, or out of eternity, in the sense of the things that are eternal, or being in eternity. Actually, of course, we are in eternity whether we know it or not. But the consciousness of being in eternity is important, of movement with eternity, of being in the train, not of having the train of time passing us by. What is essential to this consciousness?
We have noted that chaotic conditions, discordant feelings, a lack of peace in body and mind and heart, prevents the consciousness of being in eternity and establishes a consciousness of being separate from that which is eternal. In such a state one tends to have thoughts of death or of the things that lead to death. But when one has an awareness of the eternal, one’s consciousness is filled with thoughts of life, vibrant life, and the joy of living that life. When the Spirit of God is allowed to come into heart and mind because the human being obeys the Law and becomes centered in God, peace fills the earth of one's own being and there is goodwill toward men. So often human beings feel that it is difficult to have goodwill toward men. They feel that they are justified in having resentments, ill attitudes of various kinds toward others. Such attitudes establish a sense of separateness from others, but the working of God’s Love under the One Law provides a sense of relatedness with others.
All of this points to a central basic truth: when we are with the Lord in the true sense we are, vibrationally at least, with those who have relatedness to us whether they are present in person or not. And there begins to be a sense of wholeness, and with that wholeness there comes a wholesomeness. Unless there is a consciousness of relatedness to that which is eternal within yourself, you cannot have a sense of wholeness. If the consciousness, then, the sensing of one's own being, is centered in lack, in limitation, in those things which detract from wholeness, there is perhaps unconsciously the rejection of the eternal which would be the starting point for wholeness. We cannot deny the Lord, we cannot betray our trust, and refuse to let God's Will have any meaning in us and have this sense of wholeness. Anything that rejects the eternal reality of the Divine in relationship to yourself is denying the Lord.
“One day with the Lord.” One day with the Lord—it could be a moment or it could be a thousand years, because one would lose the sense of the passage of time because one would be in the eternal, in the movement of time itself. Time would not be passing one by—one would be in it. But only as that wholeness begins to be a reality can one begin to experience in any real sense this consciousness of relatedness to eternity. It is right and proper that we should use the division of day and night, of moments, of hours, of weeks, for convenience sake in relationship to the organization of our coordination. We have noted that that which excludes a consciousness of eternity or relatedness to eternity is always in some manner chaotic, discordant. We look to the heavens and we see the movement of the stars in their appointed courses, we do not have a sense of something chaotic but of something utterly magnificent, in order, in timing, in relatedness.
The organization of our relatedness is essential to coordination, essential to that which permits us to have the reality of peace and the development of a sense of wholeness. So often the Master said, “Thy faith hath made thee every whit whole.” Very often the human being did not allow that wholeness to be a continued reality—he reverted from it. But he had to so yield to the Master’s Will, to a centering, to a faith in God, that at least for that moment, sharing something with our Lord and King, the individual was in reality completely whole. Generally speaking the individual lost his polarity, tended to go his own self-active way. And was not whole very long. He was whole in the complete sense for only a few moments. But he had to allow himself be drawn to that point of centering which allowed true wholeness in order to experience the type of healing in body and mind and heart which was made manifest in the Master’s ministry. “Thy faith hath made thee whole.”
When there is wholeness there is the consciousness of relatedness to God, the consciousness of relatedness to God's Power, a welcoming of the working of God's Will—not resisting it but welcoming it. And until that wholeness means more to us individually and collectively than anything else we cannot say that we have accepted Divine centering. It is something upon which we merely meditate occasionally, something which we try to work out in some fashion. It is not real. The starting point for wholeness is centering in the Center of the Whole, the beginning of the coordination with the whole. But as long as human beings try to establish that coordination with respect to the parts of humanity which are not as yet related correctly, which are discordant, he cannot know this process of rebirth or illumination. We look out into the world and see the discordant factors, and if we try to work out some means of establishing a pattern of harmonious relatedness with all of these individuals round about we find that it simply cannot be done. When you try to please one human being, you displease some other human being. Someone is always ready to take exception to anything you do whether it is good, bad or indifferent.
You cannot have a centering on the basis of pleasing people and ever know peace or fulfilment. And if one takes the attitude that the important thing then is to please oneself, matters only go from bad to worse. Until we recognize that these parts which are human beings out here, which have not yet come into the pattern of correct correlation, cannot find that wholeness until they come to Center, one can surely with ease comprehend his own necessity—and that it is only in establishing a correct pattern of relatedness with Center that one can know wholeness. The pattern of human relationships is so mixed up. It disregards so completely the nature of human beings that actually, if by some arbitrary imposition of Divine Power which would simply shift people around into their proper relatedness one to another without regard to human will or desire or purpose, direction of response—if somehow Divine Power were simply imposed suddenly today—almost every human relationship would be dissolved, because almost without exception the pattern of human relatedness completely disregards the Divine Pattern. Of course God is not going to impose His Will in any such fashion. I am not suggesting this you know. I only wish to emphasize the basic fact that until human beings begin to let themselves be governed according to the Divine Plan, the Divine realities of centering, they cannot have wholeness.
In the first steps of the outworking pattern of wholeness there will be limited factors present always. We cannot expect anything else. But gradually the essential adjustments will be worked out—gradually human beings begin to realize that if anyone will stay centered there will, sooner or later, be a correct outworking in the pattern of Divine relatedness. Human beings have imposed their own human wills, determinations and desires without regard to the true pattern of relatedness in the Divine Design. If the individual is not in the Divine Design how can he have a sense of wholeness? How can he know the reality of God’s Will? I wish to emphasize somehow the fact that human beings have disregarded the pattern of wholeness, of correct relatedness. Not being themselves centered, they could not maintain that polarity which would allow the coming together of the parts of the whole which should have relatedness—and out of all of this there is discord, inharmony and friction. Only God's love can begin to correct these ill conditions. Only as we love God in obedience to the One Law can we begin to let God's love correct these conditions within ourselves.
The point is that we have chaos until we come to Center and as long as there is chaos, our consciousness has a sense of relatedness to the passing of time, not to our being in the Divine Design, in the framework of the eternal. We could, looking out into the cosmos consider the stars to be the Body of God in the absolute, ultimate sense, the visible Body of God, the cells in their appointed places in this vast Body. And we have a part, a relationship, to this realm of form. Instead of being cells in that larger sense, we would be minute particles, perhaps a part of an atom—each one—not as much as an atom in the Body of God, but a part of an atom. Nevertheless we have a part and a place in the realm of form, and that Divine Design, the whole, makes possible the reality of eternity.
If we are separating ourselves from that centering, that Body of Being, we cannot hope to have true peace, we cannot enjoy the blessedness of life, we cannot know what it is to have our souls restored to a pattern in the Divine design where we are a part of the movement of time, where our own cycles of movement are as sure and certain as the rising and the setting of the sun, where we have as much reason to understand and know continuity of being as the stars in the heavens—not something that is going to pass sway. We look at the stars and feel how they have been there for untold thousands of years—and they will be. We are supposed to be a part of that, not of something that comes for a moment and then is gone, not having time pass us by—but a part of the very Body in which time operates. But we cannot have that sense of wholeness until we begin to have a true consciousness of centering in the whole, of being a part of the whole. And if anyone would begin to know himself in relationship to the whole, as a part of the whole, he must begin at Center. He cannot possibly find relatedness in this realm of chaotic relationships.
He must come to Center, that which is already a coordinated focalization in the whole. Our LORD and KING Who came to earth to reveal the things of God to man and make it possible for man to know the wholeness of being, that which man has so far rejected. Our LORD and KING provides us with a centering point in relationship to the whole. And until we accept that and find our correct pattern of relationship to Him and keep it, we cannot know our correct relationships with others. Until the pattern of our personal relatedness to our LORD and KING is the most sacred thing on earth to us, until no human being can disturb that, until we reach a point where it is so sacred to us that we would not let what anyone says or does or thinks destroy it, we do not have a consciousness of relatedness to Center.
If some one else, no matter who it may be, has the power to disturb your consciousness of relatedness to our LORD and KING so that you do not hold that sacred above all things else, you are accepting subjection to the chaotic patterns of non-relatedness and you will not be conscious of being a part of the whole, in the whole, and you will feel that time is passing you by. You will not be a part of the Body in which time operates. What is the most sacred thing to you? If it is your relationship to Center so that nobody can disturb that, then you are beginning to have a relatedness to the whole because you have relatedness to Center, and others will begin to have some consciousness of relatedness to you as they begin to have consciousness of relatedness to Center.
What is it that has permitted my life and my ministry to be a blessing to you and to others? This one thing. You began to sense, one way or another, that I had a consciousness of relatedness to Center, something which to me was absolutely sacred, something which I would not allow anyone to violate, something that no one could destroy. And plenty of people attempted it in all kinds of ways. But that stability of relatedness to Center, no matter how you sensed it, was that which drew you, and held you until you could begin to have a consciousness of relatedness to Center. And the moment you allow an actual outworking of that consciousness of relatednessto Center you begin to be whole. It cannot be any other way. You begin to be actually whole, and all things begin to work together to perfection in and through and for you because you love and serve the Lord.
“With the Lord a thousand years is as one day.” When we are with the Lord, centered, when we are letting His Love and Truth and Life have meaning in us, we are no longer subject to a sense of the passing of time; we are a part of that which is timeless, within which time is operating merely as a means of measuring the movement of the earth around the sun. Time no longer passing us by; we are a part of the Body of God, a part of the whole, and therefore we are made whole, and the movement of the cycles of the bodily functions of God no longer gives us a sense of being passed by, a sense of time—we are in eternity.
There may be time, yes but there will be a timelessness in time. As it is written, “And time shall be no more,” in the sense of time passing us by; in the sense of ability to measure the movement of the earth around the sun there will always be time, day and night, but time shall be no more. Why? Because we come to a point where we have a complete consciousness of relatedness to the whole, a complete centering, and we are whole, and being made whole, we begin to know the wholesomeness of being, the reality of God's love, the reality of the Divine design, of the control factors. And we are a part of that. We share it. We are already in it but do not know it, and we do things contrary to that. The movement in the Body of God is something that we are not going to stop when we are not conscious of our part in the whole, of having relatedness to Center. We are always trying to do something which would destroy God if we were successful. We cannot destroy God, so the self-active human being simply destroys himself. The timelessness of time, the consciousness of sharing in eternity—that is our privilege and opportunity if we will let it be so. When we begin to be in love with the Lord of Love, when we begin to yield to the Spirit of His Presence, when we begin to know that Center is the only thing that counts in reality, we can begin to ignore those things which would distract and destroy, we can begin to let God's Power work through us within the scope of our focalization of responsibility.
We can refuse to be a part of the chaotic world. We can refuse to be a part of that which denies the LORD and crucifies the expression of His Spirit on earth. We can begin to be a part of the Body of God, and keep that Body sacred, recognize its sacred, holy reality in the flesh here on earth. And that begins to allow wholeness and wholesomeness. We begin to live in the Kingdom knowing the Power of God and the Glory of Being a part of God now and forever.
We consider ourselves to be adult human beings. We look at the sky tonight and we see that the stars are obscured by the mist. There have been times when during the day we looked at the sky and could not see the sun because the mist and the clouds intervened in the range of our vision. The moment it is a cloudy day and you cannot see the sun you do not become hysterical and say, “The sun is gone. It will never shine again.” And though it is a bit cloudy and we cannot see the stars so clearly tonight—they are obscured or invisible—you do not become hysterical and start reacting and say, “The stars are gone. We will never see them again.” We know it is a matter of a little mist. They are there. The stars are there as surely as when we could see them clearly. If this be true of the stars or of the sun how much more true it is of God? Suppose there is a little mist within the range of your vision. Suppose there is something that does not allow you to see the stars clearly—the stars of Divine Reality. Do you become hysterical and say, “God is gone. The Divine things are no longer with us.” Why not be mature all the way?
“The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.” All that exists springs from the one substance of love and is inseparable from that substance. The attempt has been made by human beings to wrest the peripheral elements of that one substance away from the one substance which is the reason for its existence. The earth as we know it we have seen to be the most spaceful aspect of substance, and it is this that human beings have attempted to take by force for themselves. But no aspect of the differentiation of this one substance can possibly be separated from the one substance. All that really happens is that the consciousness which makes this attempt ceases to exist, and so death is known—but it's only known by those who live. “The dead know not any thing.”
We have taken note of the vibrational nature of all substance. The substance of love is the one substance, which when differentiated into its spectrum by the prism of truth composes what is called creation. It is the Truth of Love. The one absolute solid of love, when differentiated by reason of the truth, composes creation. Creation only exists because of love; and it is a vibrational matrix. To have meaning this vibrational matrix must be translated in some way by a facility which is aware at least of some of the differentiations of the one substance. This brings us again to a recognition that we factually create our own worlds. We see them in a certain way on the basis of our perception of the various levels of vibrational substance which are within the range of our awareness. There is much that is not within the range of our awareness, and we don't create anything out of that; but what does impinge upon our awareness we create into a world.
The world which is known by human beings in general is a self-created world. There are certain fundamentals in this particular world which are commonly accepted in the awareness of all, but there are also unique aspects of this world created by each individual. In considering something with others, what you see is not just exactly what they see. There is an individual translation being made of what comes within the range of perception out of this vibrational matrix. We commonly accept the earth. We see it in a certain way, but we see it that way collectively pretty well. There are some who still are walking around on a flat earth, but most of us have accepted the idea of an orb—regardless of whether it is the truth of the matter or not, mind you. But we have tended to agree on this point and so we have a common earth, which is composed of what we call physical substance. However this is mostly space. It's just the peripheral edge of vibrational substance, and this peripheral edge human beings try to get hold of in one way or another to use for their own self-devised purposes. And of course people get together with each other to achieve certain common purposes.
But it may be seen that all this occurs by reason of the beautifully designed instrument which the human being is capable of creating. Man was made in the image and likeness of God. God is a creator; therefore man is a creator, supposedly also a co-creator with God—at least this was the intention. But he's gone off on his own and created a world according to his own devising. And he sees this world the way he sees this world: Behold!—and this exists in the consciousness of human beings. Strangely enough it doesn't really exist anywhere else. There is indeed something which has been translated this way. We have called it a vibrational matrix. Human beings individually and collectively have created the world in which they live, or in which they die would be a better way of describing it—they exist for a little while—because their translation is a mistranslation.
We've seen something of these things, but we might remind ourselves of them because the world the way human beings see it seems to be a very real place. From time to time we need to be reminded that it is not so real as it seems. It only exists in the consciousness of human beings, individually and collectively. The universe as it is understood, as it is seen to be, is a translation on the part of human beings of something or other—an extended matrix. And so we may have a greater sensing of the insubstantiality of the world. Because it has been created and human beings believe in it, and play their parts in maintaining this world in their own consciousness, paying attention to what is going on in this translation, they give a lot of weight to it. When you pay attention to something it grows in your consciousness; it becomes increasingly important. The importance of the thing to which attention is being paid may be a pleasing importance or a displeasing importance, but if attention is being paid to it it tends to increase, become more weighty, seemingly more solid we might say; and people create their own prisons in this fashion, complete with iron bars. They fence themselves in. We've all done it. We all still do it, with little realization of the potency of the creative ability which is still present in human beings.
While the fulness of the creative ability that was true of Man, made in the image and likeness of God, has lessened, and of course deviated into destructive ways, nevertheless there is still a potency there. If you pause to think about it you recognize how you have—particularly when you look at what occurred in the past—created states in your own experience which were absolutely your own creation. When you came out of them you realized that; while you are in them you don't realize it. Well, we are concerned with coming out of the world as it has been created by human beings in their supposed state of separation from the True Creator. What has been created is then contained in human consciousness—it is in that sense an imaginary world. But having been given so much weight over so many centuries and millennia it has become pretty solid in the view of most people. We realize: the fact of the matter is that it's the most ethereal world—insubstantial world. We are conscious of very little substance, mostly space which we have dubbed with the idea of solidity.
It can be helpful to take a look at these things from a position which is not any longer so deeply involved with what has been created in human consciousness. We can step back from it and begin to see it as it really is: a world created and maintained by human beings in their present state, a state which excludes the experience of the Truth of Love. Just a very thin, peripheral edge of the total spectrum of substance emphasizes itself in human consciousness; and everybody fights over this, trying to get what they can of it for themselves. This fight is an individual one but it also becomes a collective one, including larger and larger numbers of people. It becomes a national struggle, for instance, and ultimately presumably becomes a human struggle including everybody, because trying to get hold of what is acknowledged as being substance in human consciousness has produced a world where there is less and less substance to get hold of—not that anything has changed at all in the vibrational sense.
The vibrational substance in reality is all still there, but because what human beings struggle to get hold of is not seen as being an aspect of something far greater but is isolated as something all on its own in human consciousness, it seems to be running out—chiefly running out because this is the way human beings translate it. They see it in this way. “Well it seems so reasonable to say that if you keep on pumping oil out of the ground it's going to run out one day. Anybody should see that; it's common sense.” Is it? It's the commonly accepted sense perhaps, although there are quite a few people who don't seem to believe it. But here is a way that human beings have translated the situation. We have a world—human beings have created automobiles in it, that presently run mostly on petroleum. Therefore what has been seen as being petroleum must be gotten somehow, in order to maintain the way of life to which we are accustomed. This massive state of affairs that has been humanly created is nevertheless, one might easily say, a figment of human fancy. Everything is translated in terms of this very peripheral, tenuous substance, which has a number of ramifications—petroleum being one of them—that's the way human beings have translated it anyway, but it's scarcely anything if we consider what is really there. There is this absolute solid of love—that's not depleted at all.
Because the Prism of Truth has been lost in human experience the Truth of Love, which is the differentiation of the whole spectrum of love, is not seen, let alone understood. All that is seen and understood is a very peripheral rim around all this completeness. It is like one edge, the red edge, of the rainbow, and it is assumed that all that is is red; therefore anything that is done has to be done in red—a very restricted state of affairs. This is the human world as understood by human beings, as translated that way in human consciousness. But there is a vast spectrum to this one substance when the Prism of Truth is accepted so that that translation may occur—differentiation—and the spectrum begin to put in an appearance within the range of human consciousness so that, surprisingly, it is found that it's not all red.
So we have a world to recreate. This has been looked upon as a colossal task. We see the complexity of the human world the way it now is. How on earth could it ever be recreated into something more rational? There are many people who are struggling to do this. But if we come again into the position of true perspective we begin to comprehend that it isn't such a massive task as it first seemed, because whatever is present is only present there because of the differentiation of the one substance. If it was possible to withdraw that one substance there wouldn't be anything there at all. And you can't separate the spectrum of the one substance from the one substance. It is merely another state of that one substance—but it exists only because the one substance exists—the substance of love.
So we come again into position to appreciate the Prism of Truth and to accept that—even though it may not be immediately comprehended or understood—rather than the translations that human beings have made, ourselves included, of the world as it is now known. The world that is now known is a human creation; it exists only in human consciousness. It is the way it is in human consciousness because it has been made that way by human beings. It's easy to say, “Well it was somebody else's fault that it turned out this way.” And we have a considerable background of earthly heredity to blame, besides people on earth today. But we're one of those, and we are as responsible as anyone else. It's no use merely looking at that and saying, “Well I'm responsible, you're responsible, everybody else is responsible.” It doesn't change anything, does it? There is the necessity of letting the stancebe moved. We must stand somewhere else, so that we can see things in a rational way and we're no longer all involved in this irrational state of imaginary affairs which has been promoted in human consciousness to what they call reality.
We all have our troubles. We all suffer. We have aches and pains. We die. Yes, in that world that's true. But why exist in that world? And why maintain that world when there is the opportunity to allow a re-creation to take place in human consciousness so that a new world takes form? “Well, I'm only one person.” All right, that's true. Each individual is just one person, with a state of consciousness that needs recreating. Are we going to sit around maintaining the state that we have known heretofore, waiting for everybody else to wake up to the fact that it is possible to let the state of consciousness be changed? Well who is going to wake up then? We do it! In fact we have brought our human consciousness with us this evening to participate in this creative event.
Here is the opportunity then, to open the door to this new state of consciousness as it relates to our human consciousness now. There is a sound [Martin knocked on the lectern], a knock at the door: “If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him”—in other words substance is being brought in again. Not that it actually wasn't there already, but we didn't know it. We're being made aware in human consciousness of the substance that is already there. Also, something was already there; we know about that; so we bring that too. “I will...sup with him, and he with me.” There is then a blending of the substance of consciousness. Here is the initiation of re-creation in human consciousness—one's own.It is necessary from the standpoint of our own human consciousness then, not only to hear the knock and the Voice, and open the door once, but to keep it open. Human beings are inclined a little bit to close the door. They open it a bit, something comes in, “Ah,” now they are going to enjoy what came in and see how it may be applied, and so on. In the meantime they shut the door again; they're paying attention to the old state, attempting to create on the human basis. That's already been done. Why go through the exercise again?
This is a re-creation, something else, something new. It is the emergence into human consciousness of a broadening spectrum of the One Substance of Love—we begin to see more. And this has happened in our experience along the way. We began to see more. Initially we saw something with respect to the Emissary ministry, and we were delighted with that, and we thought we really were awake—we really knew something. Because we were so enthusiastic about it we wanted to tell everybody else. But at that point we didn't know very much; we had only become aware of a little indication of orange appearing next to the red perhaps. There is vastly more, and we kept finding that out. Well when we discover that there is orange as well as red, that doesn't mean we have to deny the red, does it? “Red is no good anymore; we'll have orange now!” No, we need each color as it puts in an appearance within the range of our awareness. So we do not deny what we already know, but we do acknowledge that we don't yet know it all. And there is vastly more of the spectrum to come within the range of our awareness in this process of recreating the world. As this happens we see the world differently from the way most people see it. That's right, isn't it?
We may, in a specific way perhaps, become so involved in our personal experience of the world immediately next to us that we lose our perspective and we are dumped right back into seeing the world the way we saw it before. Some people coming into that state say, “Well, all that I thought I knew was just a dream, just a figment of fancy.” But the dream is what the person dropped back into—usually a nightmare. So we keep moving, rightly, expanding the horizon. We can only do that by constantly changing our position. Our position moves and consequently more comes within the range of our encompassment; we have a larger perspective and we see the world not as most people see it. We have a certain awareness of the creative process, as we call it—we translate it that way in our consciousness—the creative process, which includes integration and disintegration.
This being so, we don't object to disintegration the way we did before; it's part of the creative process. We tend only to object to it when it comes too close, when our own physical body begins to disintegrate and we drop right back into the old state. But if there is something disintegrating there is something integrating too, which would become the dominant experience if we weren't so hooked on the disintegration. We're so enamored with disintegration that we maintain ourselves related to it all the time. We may say that we don't like disintegrating, but we pay most attention to it. This is why the suggestion that in all things we should give thanks is sound advice, because if you're giving thanks, well you can't be complaining at the same time. All attitudes of complaint and criticism wed a person to the cycle of disintegration. That's what he's looking at, that's what he's objecting to, and he's making a big thing out of it. And how there is this tendency to make a big thing out of what is happening of a disintegrative nature!
But if our movement, our changing stance in human consciousness, is associated with what has come through the door which we have opened, so that we are supping in that direction, so to speak, bringing our substance there, our substance of thankfulness, our substance of delight, our substance of increasing understanding and enjoyment of what is happening, then we are in position to receive more of the spectrum of the substance of love. We include more. The world changes in consequence—the world within our own consciousness. Do you think the step which brought us to the point of recognizing a creative cycle, with on one hand integration and on the other disintegration, is as far as we need to go? Well that has been going on anyway—it's not going to change anything just because we happen to become aware of it.
We must associate ourselves with the integrative process, in the recognition that there is the need for the disintegrative process, but that is not the realm with which our personal association properly is. There is a lot that needs to pass away: the world which human beings have created. However, that's looked upon as a horrendous thing. “This magnificent world that human beings have created! How could that be allowed to pass away?” or, “How indeed could it ever pass away?” It's going! No, that's not really what we give the weight to. We have necessarily to deal with people who are associated with that world. That's the only reason we're still associated with it. We're there to participate in this business of knocking upon the door—the door of those who still are involved with the disintegrating world—to extend the invitation to come out of it, which means moving one's position so that the world is seen in a different way.
When we see it in a different way we are in position then to function intelligently with respect to the way we now see the world. We will not behave the same way anymore. We will not be trying to do the things we used to do anymore, because we see things differently. So we handle them differently. Well this is a progressive experience. We don't take a step and say, “That's it. Now I see the world differently. I'm going to handle it forever on the basis of the way I see it now.” But the way you see it now isn't the way it really is. We have to keep on moving to come to the point where we may have the total perspective, where we may see things as they really are. And when we're at that point, insofar as we are concerned our world is recreated.In the recreated world there is still a creative process going on. Integration and disintegration are going on but we're not involved in them anymore. They are going on at those levels where they rightly should—fundamentally those levels where there is no self-consciousness. That's where this process of integration/disintegration is going on. The level of self-consciousness does not belong there. That's why human beings suffer: because they've become involved in this realm where the fire burns, and it's hot and painful. They are self-conscious at that level and they don't belong there. Being in the fire, it seems very important that one should do something about dampening the fire and getting things more comfortable. But there's no answer in that, because the fire will blaze up again, even if one succeeds in putting it down for a little.
The point is that we need to move out of the fire, out of the level where that is what is taking place, where the separation is taking place—it's a creative process. We come to another level, and we experience this coming to another level in terms of changing awareness relative to the world in which we are. Gradually the world in which we dwell is recognized as being what was referred to as the Garden. We find that we are actually there. We are there, but haven't known it because we haven't been in position to appreciate the Truth of Love, the whole spectrum, only just a little piece. Because that was all we were aware of we thought we belonged there. Well that little piece has a relatedness to us all right, but we belong in a different positioning relative to the Truth of Love.
So we are not averse to relinquishing our firmly held convictions about the world in which we have been existing in times past, right up to this point! We still have convictions about it that cause us to believe a lie, and we think that because everybody else believes a lie the lie must therefore be true. Well it is not majority rule, you know. The truth is not subject to majority rule. The truth is true regardless of who acknowledges it, or accepts it, or understands it, or anything else. And four billion human beings can vote against it and say it isn't true, but it doesn't change a thing, except for the human beings who vote against it. They suffer the consequences. So there are many convictions still present in our experience which are shared by others, and we feel supported in these convictions. Usually human beings want other people to support them in their convictions. If you can belong to a big enough group of people, you must be right. If you can belong to a big enough church, that must be the truth. Not so.
We come to the place, as we keep the door open in human consciousness, where we may behold the truth. “Behold, I come quickly”—when the door is open, when it is held open so that we don't keep slamming it shut in favor of some pet conviction that we have relative to the fanciful world in which we live. People are always putting great store by such convictions. “One must have convictions of this nature, and firm opinions this way and that.” What about? Well, nothing. It is about nothing. It's about a world of fantasy, maintained sometimes with enthusiasm in human consciousness, sometimes with considerable objection. But whether one objects or whether one enthuses, the very attitudes themselves maintain the state. If you are fighting against the devil, the devil will always be on hand. But if you love him, of course he'll be on hand too.
So we are in the business of recreating the world to reveal the Truth of Love in differentiated expression; that is, the Truth of Love as it really is now and now and now. That is not to say that one recreates the world and there it is: that's the way it's always going to be. I hope not! You'd get bored with it very shortly, even though it was so heavenly. No, it keeps moving, but on a different basis, springing forth from the Creator, with whom we share the creative responsibility. Then a beautiful world may be created for the habitation of the Creator, a beautiful, colorful, joyous, wonderful world, made out of this vibrational substance, which left to its own devices wouldn't be a beautiful world. It only becomes so because there is someone to make it so. And when we share the creative action with the true Creator, then also we share the resulting creation, and that is a joy forever.
I shall be leaving very shortly to travel somewhere else—it doesn't much matter where. As far as I am concerned it is the same place. Things are brought to me; people are brought to me so that we may sup together. We may continue to share with you here, and others in many other places where we will not be, the factual re-creation of the world—not a fancy, but something that is actually occurring in our own consciousness and in the consciousness of those who choose to sup with us, and we with them. Let this continuing creative change occur. Let us behold the beauty as it is unveiled by the disintegration of that which has been covering it up. When we behold the beauty, we are so delighted with that beauty, we're so thankful for it, that we have no time to fuss about the things that are falling away in disintegration.
Lillian Cecil and Martin Cecil July 27, 1979 Assembly
“The invisible, undimensional, unmanifest Word is completely and absolutely unknown from the dimensional standpoint.
The only way it becomes known is as there is substance in which it may emerge into our own experience.”
Lillian Cecil — Just for the record I better say on this tape that we were just listening to a tape of a CBC program which was aired recently, and I'm sure we all enjoyed it, on chanting, on some of the history of it and what is still used in the world today—chanting at least as the world has known it and still uses; some of the Eastern areas is where it is used in Tibet, and then what's in France, and what is now in Quebec. I thought I'd say that on the tape, so we know what we're talking about in this hour.
Martin suggested I also say a little bit in this hour which is usually his of course. I am thoroughly delighted that we could listen to this, that we could open this door. I trust that no one had any religious feelings or attitudes or anything to meet while you listened. Surely we have let those things go so that we're always in position to share whatever needs to be shared and understood and released. In our own ministry we have, or I'll say I have, carefully stayed away from this area, except for a few excursions here and there, partly because it seemed to me there wasn't an open field in which to work. There weren't enough open hearts and trust in the Lord that we wouldn't go all off in a crazy direction of some kind, and perhaps because there wasn't the generation of substance that we needed so that we could get started, so that the spirit could activate us into this field for true radiation. Obviously we have to start generating some substance of even just interest, otherwise we're never going to get anywhere in any kind of field, such as this one. So I’m delighted that this is opening up.
In our choirs, especially in the two Units, we have taken occasions to do a very little bit of this and it has always proven most excellent—beneficial to us, yes, but one just felt the opening up of the sound areas so that it seemed as though pipes that had been full of stuff just were cleared! It's a little difficult to find the right words to describe what has happened. I know that even without using the word “chanting” or trying to do something of this nature, through our choirs we have found that there has been the excitement, the charging, happening in and through ourselves sometimes. We have had people come to choirs and they're very tired physically, and maybe even mentally and emotionally, and within the hour something takes place, some upliftment, some healing—this charging of which this man was speaking, took place. So we have known something in this regard where we could let sound do something.
I think the world of sound is just a wonderful one, particularly in relationship to music, but to all ways—and of course we need to know how to listen. If we don't listen we don't hear, and we don't play a part in this regard. And I was interested in him saying that in the chanting—Gregorian chanting—that if you can't hear your neighbor you're just not participating properly, that you're standing out, and immediately you're doing that the whole value of what is being done is lost. I think we all know something about oneness.
I found it very interesting that they brought to focus the fact that the high frequencies of sound are the ones that have been found to relieve the fatigue and the tiredness, and that the lower sounds have a different use—and in a way this is unfortunate because if a person starts to go deaf, he usually goes deaf in the higher frequencies. I wonder how many of us, in a spiritual way, have gone deaf in the higher frequencies. Maybe that's why man is always trying to get up to heaven, get up somewhere to the top of the mountain, because he realizes he should get out of this low frequency level. That's another point.
The fact that the ear, he said, gives about sixty percent of the tonus of the body. Now that's their opinion; I don't know—I suppose this is all backed up with scientific data; I'm not sure. I think that's true actually, when I think of my own experiences through the years, that when one has turned a deaf ear to something or, in a musical sense, when there is an inability to hear proper sounds, and to then sound them yourself, there tends to be a laziness at least present, but there is—well, I notice in choir people, I have to go back to this as our example, that there often are people who are not there with you, who are—you can just see their minds floating away somewhere else, or they're sitting emotionally disturbed before you in the choir, and obviously they just don't have the zip and the tone, and what's necessary in that moment to give forth. They're just not, we say, “with it”—that's one of the points I feel. We have not learned to listen properly on all levels, but I'm very delighted this morning that this has come up because I do feel that the world of sound is a great avenue for the Lord's radiation and we can all properly do something in this regard. We don't all have to be choir members or particularly participate in some chanting groups, for which I've longed for many years. I'm all ready to go if anybody else is!
I would say one thing—one of the reasons we haven’t used this this type of music before is because of the connotations related to the religious patterns, their masses, you know. I actually have spent hours looking through many, many books. There's much music in this regard available from early on, but whenever I'd have someone translate the Latin it was always so awful—you know, “Lord have mercy on our souls” sort of thing. I think though, that we can probably start to use the English language—I don't see why not—in some fashion in this regard. Perhaps not as it's been used up to now, but surely we have some masters of the English language in our ministry who certainly could provide us with some type of word formations, or words that mean something, even so we could start in a very elementary way.
We have also started in the choirs lately, in this regard, of practicing a song with the vowels. The present Assembly is doing that right now, right? How many are here from the recording choir, I wonder? Could you just stand up a minute and just do a little bit of the “How Wondrous and Great”? Do you think you could do that? Let's see, let me get the right note. [Singing ensued]
Martin Cecil — With that singing I'm sure that all of you, the ones who sang and the ones who listened—I hope the singers were listening too—all of you were very much aware of a sense of blessing by reason of the sound. It could be said that what was done was of an elementary nature but it conveys the assurance that there is something of great value relative to this matter of sound. First of all there is the matter of listening. Perhaps we have been aware of this more particularly when we speak of the Word. You have to listen to hear the Word.
One of the primary requirements in our training has been to learn to listen. One of the primary areas of failure has been in the failure to learn to listen. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2018/08/listen-for-word-martin-cecil-april-16.html] If, as is apparent, there is a rather widespread lack of awareness as to the real sound of the Tone, it is simply because those concerned have not learned to listen. One cannot make the sound unless one has first heard it. So listening is the first area of education in any level of schooling. The very young child learns by listening to sounds. This is the way a child learns to speak. He never learns to speak unless he hears somebody else speak. He never learns to speak accurately unless he learns to listen accurately. So training in this matter of listening is primary. There are off-key notes, flat notes, garbled notes, sounded in living which indicate—I'm speaking of the Emissary world particularly—which indicate that those concerned never really heard the Tone. They never listened. We have to listen to the Word if we are to speak the Word. As was indicated in the area of chanting, you have to be able to hear your next door neighbor before you are able to provide what is needed yourself, and if your hearing is lost by reason of an endeavor to make the sound yourself, you've lost participation in the whole exercise.
We see all these things relating not only to the matter of chanting but to the matter of living. Most people in this human world avoid listening at all costs and there is a lot of chatter—making sounds, mostly meaningless sounds. This is sometimes erroneously called conversation. What it usually is, is one person sounding off. All he hears is the sound of his own voice. He is unaware of anything that might be revealing of right sound from the standpoint of listening. He can't listen because he is making so much noise. There are those who have complained of my somewhat slow delivery at times. Why do you think that is so? Because I heed to listen. Anyone needs to listen if he is to make a fitting sound. If you never learn to listen you can't make a fitting sound. We see this principle of reality as relating to all our affairs.
In the consideration of the matter of chanting in this program I thought what the man was saying about God was to the point, from the standpoint of the human approach. He says, “Oh it's not going to make any difference to God whether we sing or not.” So presumably, if that's the case then we sing for ourselves. That obviously would be a self-centered approach. We might chant in order to charge our brains, but why? Why do we need charged brains? As is usual, with the human approach, it is with respect to the dimensional world. The indication was that we should listen to the sounds of the universe. Do you think that's really what we should listen to? After all, that's simply the evidence of something that is happening, if there is a sound to the universe. There is no reason why we shouldn't hear what the universe is sounding but we need to be aware of what it is that is activating that sound. We never become aware of what is activating that sound simply by listening to the external sound.
Our listening is to the Word. He used the word Logos, but then that translated in his consciousness to the evidence in dimensional form, of the Logos. Obviously this has not been sounding within the range of human experience, so there is a cacophony of noise and not the true sounds of the universe insofar as human function is concerned. The idea which occurs to the human view is that one should therefore get oneself attuned with what is occurring in the rest of the universe by listening to the sounds of the universe. We are well aware that that is not the way by which we find what the sound really is, because the sound of the universe is simply the reflection of something else, and it is that something else with which we are concerned. It may be said that beyond man, in the creation here on earth, everything else is rather naturally capable of associating itself with the dimensional sound. It is a part of that sound in fact, but there is a distinction insofar as man is concerned, because man is the means by which the Word is spoken, rightly.
So our listening needs to be of another nature. I noticed he said, “Well keep your eyes on the earth, don't look up.” That seems rather peculiar instruction. We have a responsibility for all that is present in the dimensional world and to handle that responsibility there needs to be attunement between what we are and the dimensional world, that is true. But usually the human approach is to assume that one can establish that attunement by finding out what's going on in that world and then attuning ourselves to it. This is like Dr. Bradley, in the matter of natural childbirth: We have to look at the animals to find out how we should function when it comes to childbirth. Isn't that getting things backward? Actually, by looking at the animals there may be a recognition that the animals are moving naturally with something that we should be moving naturally with, but that movement is only made possible by reason of the fact that there is the spirit of action which produces the results of action—but if we merely look at the results of action, and try to attune ourselves with that we don't know from that what our action should be. We may discover marvelous things about the actions of other things, but we are no further ahead with respect to our own, because obviously the attunement that is required is spiritual.
For this to become known in experience requires what we have referred to as the generation of substance. We need to see the nature of the generation of substance that is required in order that there may be the ability to discern the Word. The invisible, undimensional, unmanifest Word is completely and absolutely unknown from the dimensional standpoint. The only way it becomes known is as there is substance in which it may emerge into our own experience. We know from our school days and experience in various ways that sound requires a medium if we are to hear it. You don't hear any sound if there is a vacuum—the bell ringing; you don’t hear its the bell ringing in the glass jar out of which you pump the air and gradually the sound fades away. The bell is still ringing away there. It requires substance to discern, and the substance of discernment is at various levels and of various consistencies. You can hear sound through solid, through bone for instance, or through the earth. You can hear explosions through the earth. You can hear it through the air, you can hear it through water. It is said that sound travels at different speeds through the different mediums. These are more or less elementary mediums relative to what we, in the human sense, call sound.
But there is something much more than what is humanly recognized as sound. This is clearly so from the standpoint of chanting. It brings into action something that isn't sound in the ordinary sense. It relates to sound but it isn't sound. We realize that there are various levels, various dimensions, various planes, however they might be described, of substance. This is the way we describe it—we have to recognize that in using a word like substance we're describing something that is not the word. We tend to think that if I use that word, I know what it means. We may know what it means to us at certain levels of our understanding, but we also I'm sure are very aware that our levels of understanding are quite restricted. So with respect to any word we may use there are levels of understanding which will not be experienced as long as we hold on to the idea that we already know what the word means. This is what has happened so much in the Emissary ministry, because there has been so much that it has been assumed that we understood, when all we understood was a very elementary aspect of something that is really vast in its wholeness, and we grab ahold of the elementary thing that we are able to grasp and tend to say, “Now I have it.” Well that's nonsense. That is just a little fraction which is inevitably distorted, because it is only understood when it's seen in its wholeness. If we extract anything out, and on examination decide that we understand that, we are just fooling ourselves because it isn't something all by itself. It's only something when everything that belongs in the whole is present. The usual human approach to understanding anything, which is getting it apart, is seen as reducing understanding rather than increasing it. It may seem to increase knowledge and some people are fooled that knowledge means wisdom. It is only when we begin to relinquish knowledge that we become wise. We begin to let far more come into the range of our awareness and experience than was there when we had restricted it to what we call knowledge.
Knowledge is always a restrictive thing. We notice how departmentalized it becomes in the educational system for instance, and how many disciplines, so called, there are which never really mesh with any other. Occasionally someone shows up, like Velikovsky, who starts to put the thing together and this is a horror to everybody else because it begins to show up how little anybody knows, in spite of all the knowledge. And there is an inclination to take one's own discipline as though it was one's own: “This is my discipline. You go ahead with yours over there but this is mine.” What utter ignorance, because no one can possess it anyway, and if you take it out of the whole it loses any meaning. So most of the things that human beings study are rendered utterly meaningless by this method. Our concern is with the generation of substance so that the wholeness which is spirit may have a facility in which to reveal itself. We certainly can't go to spirit and have a revelation simply by reason of spirit. If that could have been done it would have been done long ago by so-called human ingenuity. No, the fitting substance of the required quality and at the required level, all needs to be present if the wholeness of spirit is to become comprehensible in expression in the dimensional world. So the concern is with the generation of substance for the expression of spirit, not for some human nature purpose of its own well-being. Human nature is not going to be very well anyway!
So if there is a recognition that through chanting a certain level and quality of substance can be generated, thereby making possible the greater revelation of spirit in experience and in expression, that’s fine. But I really don’t know, from what was said at least on this tape, what the point of chanting was insofar as all those concerned in the matter. They knew something. They discovered something. They'd seen something, and it related, partly at least, to the charging of the brain, as it was put, but as we've already considered, well why? Why do we need a charged brain more than a discharged brain? From the human nature standpoint, no reason at all. It merely fools people into imagining that they're getting somewhere, they're making progress somehow. But no progress occurs whatsoever except on the basis of the action of spirit, and spiritual action within the range of human experience is impossible without the substance through which it acts. So we are constantly concerned with the generation of that substance in various ways, but primary in the totality of our living—the various departments in our living, but it is all part of our total living. And we generate substance on the basis of the fact that there is already substance. We have noted this from the standpoint of recreation or restoration—we don't have to start as though nothing had been heretofore. There was a point back along the way somewhere where nothing had been done, but now it has been done. There is the substance here. There is all that is necessary right here—we don't have to start from scratch in that regard. If we had to start from scratch we wouldn't be here, would we? There would be no basis for any human consciousness capable of experiencing the angelic consciousness, which is part of the means by which the creation takes place. So we have all this. The substance is here.
The generation of substance may be seen in various ways. We all have immediate environmental circumstances. Why do you think they're there the way they are there, for each of us individually? Simply because, in one way or another, we generated them. These are of our generations. This is why it is so ridiculous to start judging them and blaming others for the fact that they are the way they are. If we begin to accept our true state then we are responsible for all our generations. When we assume that responsibility in the expression of the reality of spirit then all our generations are perfect—it doesn't matter how they look. Judge not by the appearance. They're all perfect. There may be a good deal of evol present, which looks like evil to many people, but it is all then part of the perfect creative process that is now in operation because we're there. Now obviously, in the past we've generated a lot of stuff that we don't like but it's there because we generated it. We don't stand alone in this—we have a world full of generators generating the wrong kind of substance, and of such a nature that it is only capable of accommodating the wrong kind of spirit. Obviously there is a need for the transformation of the forms in which the substance is now manifesting, and the transmutation of the substance itself [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2017/02/heavenly-from-transformation-martin.html] so that we fill out what might be called the potential design, where the substance should be—and when it is there, the design is in it because spirit was there already. And we find then the union of substance and spirit in the forms which it should take.
We do generate our own circumstances. We need to begin to look at this absolutely from the standpoint of spirit. We dispassionately observe the circumstances as they are and recognize our responsibility in their generation. Now the circumstances that we see, the material circumstances, are only a part of the picture. There's another generation going on too, but not very much, relative to the finer levels of substance that are required to allow the clear design of spirit to be made evident. Human beings become expert in generating coarse substance—just look at the circumstances of the world—coarse substance which has to a very high degree been divorced from the working of spirit through fine substance because there wasn't any fine substance. We have the reponsibility of generating the fine substance and we discover that there are various ways that this might be done expeditiously when the approach is made from spirit and not from the human nature standpoint which is trying to use anything it can lay its hands on to benefit itself. Human nature feels that it would be benefitted by charging the brain some more, so it uses chanting for this purpose: to benefit human nature—and while there may be a certain amount of the idea that one is doing it to the glory of God, what does it mean? It's just a human nature idea, isn't it?—an idea of the mind. What does it mean: glorify God? It's just been said that its going to make no difference to God whether we sing or not, so how is that going to glorify Him? Of course this is all based in the human nature attitude which said, “God is here and man is here.” We begin to see the union. That union becomes obvious because there is the generation of substance which makes it possible of our experience. Just because we don't experience something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It merely means that we don't experience it, that's all. If you are totally deaf you don't hear any sound. That doesn't mean that sound doesn't exist. So chanting, in the true sense—and this is not something that stands alone, that all we do is chant six or eight hours a day as though there was nothing else. Chanting can be used, as many things can be used, once spirit is on hand to use these things.
So we do share the responsibility of the generation of substance, as we well know. To let this happen we need to be at the point of the union of spirit and substance. We have spoken of this on occasion as a crossover point. There is something being generated from below and there is something present from above. There has always been what was present from above, but what has been generated from below has been inadequate. Something has been generated obviously—we have a material world. Our place, our position if you like, is at that crossover point. And a point has position but no magnitude—so this amongst other things would naturally deflate the human ego—it is nothing; it is a point of stillness. We have noted this before. “Be still and know. In quietness and confidence are my strength.”
There is the Word—a reality. There is the generation of substance by reason of our living. They come together at this point which is our proper positioning and we know the truth consequently, so that the activation of the Word may flow forth into the available substance, thereby generating in the returning cycle what is necessary to rise up in union to ascend. “In quietness and in confidence is my strength.” Here is strength, energy, power, emerging into experience because of the substance that is present. We don't generate energy; we generate the substance which unifies us with the energy that is already present. Then we are not separate from the energy. We do not anticipate that we are going to get the energy by raising our blood sugar level. That may conceivably be a part of the substance that is generated by which the energy is made known. But let us never imagine that any of these things are the energy. Energy does not need to be created. It does not need to be produced. It already is, as with every other aspect of spirit. All that needs to happen is for it to be made known, and it is made known by reason of the substance with which it naturally blends. Then the energy, which initially was undimensional, is found to be present dimensionally speaking. The energy and the substance are one. Heaven and earth are One.
We need to see the vast variety of substance that is required to encompass the extent of this power. I just mentioned the material circumstances and that's the very lowest level of generation. But we are constantly generating substance, and also dissipating substance. We have noted one of the ways of dissipation relative to noise. You will note that they have discovered that some sounds are discharge sounds and some sounds are charge sounds. The chanting is all within the range of the charge sounds, but obviously with the indiscriminate production of sound—noise—in the human nature world the vast majority of it would be discharge sounds, dissipating energy because it's dissipating substance; dissipating the substance in which the energy would be made apparent. And if the energy isn't made apparent it seems as though we have lost energy. But there is no less energy—merely less substance, or less of the right kind of substance. And it is human behavior, its various aspects, that either generates the right substance of the right nature, of the right quality, capable of rising to all the levels that it needs to occupy—or we can dissipate substance, discharge substance, or merely generate it at certain levels which certainly will not allow an adequate experience of the creative power which is available.
Now human generation, such as it is, any that has lasted any length of time, has tended to be of quite a low vibrational nature, and it permits the experience of power of a very limited sort. It's only when we have the whole of this substance at all levels that we discover the reality of power in balance. Here comes the matter of balance again—balance which evidently and obviously relates very much to the hearing mechanism. How clear is it? Here is a physical form of manifestation which may transmit a sense of balance to the physical form, but there is balance at every level, not merely the physical level. We wouldn't be very effective certainly if we were stumbling around physically unbalanced, as people sometimes do for various reasons, but we need more balance than that. We need more substance than physical substance in physical forms. We need the substance in all of its levels, and in the forms that it takes at those levels when those forms are the design of spirit.
The physical form of man is originally designed in spirit. It's gone out of whack considerably since then, but basically the design is present and capable of being regenerated—the last thing to be regenerated, incidentally, insofar as human experience is concerned because the power, the energy, comes down from God out of heaven. In other words, it emerges through the higher vibrational levels initially and subsequently permeates all the other levels on the way out. The last one to be permeated is the flesh body. But the substance of the flesh was generated and incorporated into this particular form by reason of this energy. Obviously nothing could happen if the fetus was dead for instance—no further development.
So, the energy is present—call it different things at different levels, but the energy was present humanly speaking—it still is, but the substance has been inadequate and so there could not be real balance. We begin to find this balance as there is the generation of the higher levels of spiritual substance so that the spirit at those levels may be incorporated into experience and expression on earth. Then the basics for balance begin to emerge. We don't really know what that balance is yet. We have some awareness that there is balance. We have some experience of our own individual balance to some degree, but you also have been aware as of the human tendency for the yo-yo experience, it can be described. But I'm sure you're all sure that there is a state of balance. Well you can't get to it. All you can do is to function in balance at this level to this extent so that when you feel yourself getting out of balance you quickly reorient and come back into balance, so that there may be the continual generation of the substance which will allow the experience of true balance, total balance, that your generations may all be perfect. That's what we are here to do; to generate all that is necessary to accommodate the Holy Spirit—the whole spirit. The whole spirit is not going to arbitrarily come swishing out with a great blast of wind when there is no facility, no capability of encompassing that. The substance simply isn't there. Well the substance has to be there for spirit to emerge, and to the extent that the substance is there the spirit does emerge and there is the experience of design, of control and of power.
These three things are the most obvious aspects of the outpouring of the spirit: design, control and power. Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. We don't give glory to God in fact. We could not give God any more glory than He has. All that can happen is that the glory that He has is revealed, that's all—and it takes substance to do it, and it takes our generation of that substance to allow the substance to be present, to the glory of God. We delight to listen, and because as we listen we hear, and because we hear we're capable of sounding the Tone of the Word which we have heard. Actually of course the hearing and the sounding are together as one. There is no separation. If we imagine that we hear the Word now and we'll be able to sound it tomorrow, we fool ourselves. If we hear it now, we sound it now. We have to hear it tomorrow to sound it tomorrow.
