Emissary Servers Council Sunrise Ranch Loveland, Colorado
Greetings and welcome, everybody. Good to be here together this morning, in the room and online, good to see friends old and new.
We've had a remarkable week here in the Servers Council, following up on Trustee Sessions the week before. It was glorious in the room here, what we got up to and with people online, and I'm happy to report that people online had a very engaged experience. And Sece was our head of online engagement. Thank you, Sece, for helping to make that happen. Thanks to everyone who participated, contributed to what occurred, which is culminating in this hour, and then in the service expansion period at 1:15 here.
I’d like to continue with a theme that we were on in the Council that I was speaking to yesterday afternoon. I'd like to see where we can take it together. To me, it is provocative. As I first began to think of this in this way somewhere in the last week, it struck me as highly provocative for myself. I don't know how it will strike you, but we'll give it a go here, and see where it goes.
So, I want to start with this. The indigenous peoples of the world look at postmodern humanity and they see a sickness of the heart. And you can look it up, you can research it. It's prolific, meaning throughout many indigenous peoples around the globe, this is how they see it. And of course, it concerns them. There are the Kogi people in Colombia, some of whom came here several years ago. They live high up in the peaks of the mountains, peaks that go to 18,000 feet. And they've been isolated from the rest of the world until recently. And then recently they came down out of the mountains to express their concern and bring their teaching to the world. And on their world tour they came here. They see themselves as the elder brothers, and postmodern humanity as the younger brother, and they came down the mountain to address the sickness in the heart of the younger brother. So that story has proliferated around the world.
Oftentimes, the sickness of the heart is associated with humanity's relationship with the Great Mother, however expressed. The Great Mother and the Earth that is the embodiment at one level of the Great Mother. So, there's a concern expressed about something out of integrity, something off in the relationship with the Great Mother. And that relates to something off in the heart.
There's the story of what goes wrong for us as human beings that's at the very beginning of our Bible. When you think about it, would you say that that story was written by indigenous peoples, a First Nations people? We don't look at it quite that way now. Now it's some kind of icon of Christianity or Judaism. There was no Christianity when it was written. There was no Judaism when it was written. No, this is a First Nations people, whatever that might mean. As I think about this story, actually, I thought about it this way for some time. It is the story of what goes wrong for us as human beings, and especially what goes wrong in the heart and the consequences of that.
So, I don't intend to read the whole story. But it is, as we know, the story of Adam and Eve. It's hard to know exactly what the author had in mind when they wrote it. Undoubtedly, there were circumstances that they were seeing, yes, when they spoke about what they did. And there was the symbology of the story that related to those circumstances, not all of which we can really know. But here's what we can do. We can intuit for ourselves the significance of this story, the potential significance, in terms of our own life experience and what's happening for us. So, I'm inviting you to see it a certain way, to try it on, and see if it illuminates something for you. I'd like that to be the test here, not whether it's accurate to a past that we don't really know for sure anyway.
What I want to suggest to you is that in the story, Eve is the human heart. She is the human heart. And Adam is a representation of the human mind. It's a story of what happens between heart and mind, and not only between themselves, but in relationship to the highest order of identity.
Portrayed in the story is the Lord God, the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. So, what happened? The idea came to Eve that there could be wisdom and it would be good for her to gain the wisdom, as it was put, of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What would be good and what would be bad? We might imagine, what would be good for her? Instead of allowing that tree to be in the hands of the Lord God, in the hands of the Creator, so that the unfoldment of creation happened according to its own times and seasons, its own direction and purpose and pattern, that she could eat of that tree, meaning that she could change the cycles of unfoldment of creation around her in a way that would be good for her.
And the story is of a collusion, the collusion between heart and mind. And the heart says, “Hey, mind, I got a great idea here. Will you collude with me in this great idea to make things better and to make me happy, the heart happy? I would be happy if you, the mind, helped me arrange the pattern of life around that would be pleasing to me.” In a way, a logical thing to do, right? Why not? Yet we know how the story goes. The way the story goes is that in doing that, in that act of collusion, what was cut out of the picture was the Creator, the presence of the Creator, the wisdom of the Creator, the wisdom of life itself, the wisdom of how to create, the wisdom that allows human beings and the planet and all life to prosper got cut out of the picture.
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There's something so remarkable in this story, I'll say remarkable to me—you can see what it is for you—that only just became glaringly evident to me in the last little while. And it is that the story is a story of the volition of the heart. Volition, not a word we use that often. Volition has to do with will. And in the origin of the word is also the word wish, the wish, the will, and I believe in there also is choice. And so, the story is a story of the volition of the heart, of the choice of the heart, what the heart chose to do. And the mind went along and then blamed it on the heart. That's in the story, too. So why is that significant? Why is it significant to recognize that the heart makes a choice? It is for this reason: that if the heart could make one choice, it could make a different choice.
I think I tended to see choice as a matter of the mind, like a mental choice. That's easy to think about. But consider this. I invite you to ponder deeply that your heart has a choice to make, and that the choice of the heart establishes the basis for everything else that goes on. If the heart makes the choice that Eve made in the story, the mind is helpless. That's a strong word, yes? Helpless. The best the mind can do is stay steady. Stay steady and stay centered. But without the heart, the mind can't create. It can think. It can use its rational faculties but it is unable to create in alignment with, in attunement with the Lord God, because the means for the connection with the Lord God is through the heart.
The best, as I say, the mind can do in that case is to stay steady, undeviating, and the mind can also be, you might say, a coach for the heart. Isn't that true? Whether it's between us or have a little conversation with your own heart. Do you ever do that? Give yourself a little talking to, give your own heart a little talking to, and say, “Hey, it's gonna be okay. Hey, you could recenter here, you could open here.” And still, at the end of the day, it is the volition of the heart that allows all the rest of what is meant to happen for us as human beings to happen.
When the heart opens to the presence of the Lord God, to the presence of the Divine, there's all kinds of connection between heart and mind. Realms of the subconscious mind begin to open up and be available to the conscious mind. That happens within an individual. If the heart is frozen do you think very well? If the heart is frozen in fear we don't think very well. The subconscious mind is not ready to play its part to offer up what it should offer up. It's impossible to be intelligent on that basis, truly intelligent. And so, we have postmodern man. Tremendous intelligence at one level of things to build an atomic bomb, but incredibly, incredibly ignorant, incredibly ignorant. Only someone who has a sickness of the heart could do such a thing.
So, as I began to think about these matters and how all this goes, there is something incredibly sad in the story, and something incredibly sad in where we've come to as humanity. But there's also something happy portrayed in the story. And it is the simplicity of the path back to wholeness, to the healing of the psychic break, as we've spoken about it. The psychic break between the human psyche, between our humanity, and the higher reality of who we are, the simplicity of that healing. You might say, in its outworking, there's complexity to it. But at the root of it, at the beginning of it, is the volition of the heart, is a heart choice. And if our heart has made one choice, it could make a different choice. And when it makes that different choice, everything is set up for success in the human experience.
And the choice is so simple. It doesn't depend on anything other than finding the source of love, the source of identity and presence within yourself, within being, to find that and to turn to it with all your heart and love with all your heart and open with all your heart. That’s all. And then in that turning and in that opening to receive, to receive the river into the heart. And doing that, yes, there's something to think, there's something to do. I'm not saying that's the end of it, and I'm not saying we should be mindless people. I'm just saying that the road back to wholeness as a human being and as a human race begins with an act of the heart.
And so here this morning, we're speaking to the body of humanity and bringing this change of heart to the fore and calling attention to the opportunity for that simple act of turning the heart and opening the heart and letting in the spirit. And then the simple act of doing the most natural thing in the world when love comes in, which is you love back. And when you let love in and love back, then there's a generation of love in the human capacity that begins to burgeon and affect everything in the human psyche and then begins to flow out into your world, our world.
I want to cite a second story here in the Bible, in Genesis. There are a number of stories, as I've pointed to recently, of what goes wrong for us as human beings, just as there are in all cultures, yes? Maybe the most familiar might be the story of Pandora. Pandora's box, the role that curiosity plays, as it's put. Anyway, you go around to peoples around the world; they have what we think of as mythological stories or symbolic stories of what goes wrong for us as human beings. There are four or five of those right at the beginning of Genesis. And one of them is the story of the Tower of Babel. I've come to view it as a humorous story. It has a lot of humor in it to me when you get the symbology of it, and maybe I'll just read it here:
“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.” [Genesis 11:1-3]
What could be the significance of that? They had brick for stone and slime for mortar. So, what is slime? It's generally thought that slime is pitch. So, some kind of petroleum product. Can you imagine building a tower to heaven with gooey petroleum pitch in between the stones? Like that's destined for failure right there. And they didn't have stone. They didn't have like the real thing, which is they would want to build it out of, which is stone. They had this humanly manufactured thing, bricks. They had bricks and slime, right? It's a story of not building out of reality.
“And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name…” Let us make us a name. Any ego in there? “…lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” So, you have a human effort to make something of ourselves and make something of even oneness. And so, the remainder of this story goes back to a superstitious view of the world that was so prevalent back then and even now. And in the superstitious view of the world, the gods are doing everything. There are supernatural powers that are at work. And if we screw up, we blame it on them, right? They're taking it out on us. So, it's portrayed exactly this way in this story. And I say that just because you have to understand that element of the storytelling and kind of filter it out, because it is this superstitious lens through which the author of the story, forgive me, was influenced. So, as it said:
“And the Lord came down to see the city and tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they all have one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.” [Genesis 11:5-8]
So, it is a story of misunderstanding among people, and division
There's a man who is a friend of some of ours, Etzion Becker, who writes about Genesis. He lives in Israel and speaks Hebrew fluently. And he says of the Hebrew language that it can't be translated. He says that the Hebrew Bible can't be translated because for people who truly understand Hebrew in the deepest sense, it is speaking to them at many levels—at many levels, and those levels aren't translated by a mental translation of the words. There is vibration.
There are pictures in the written language, all of which are conveying something of a spiritual nature. The little I know of the Hawaiian language is that there are vowels and an articulation of vowels that are conveying a meaning that is past the intellectual meaning that could be translated. Uranda said of the Motherland tongue, something similar, that it spoke in a different way. It conveyed meaning in a different way. The vowel sounds were far more important than the consonants were. And through those vowel sounds, the essences of spirit were conveyed.
Does it strike you that these things are related to a matter of the heart? That true communication among people involves the heart and the heart's ability to express essences of the Creator and essences of creation, to communicate at that level. So, what happens if the heart has made a choice not to open to the Creator, not to be a vessel for the processes of creation, for the expression of Spirit?
One individual makes that choice, another individual makes that choice, and then the basis for communication is undone, the basis to be speaking one language. And you could get all of the intellectual components of what is said and shared right, and there will not be oneness, and there will not be communication. Because without a communication of the heart, which brings the communication subconscious to subconscious, there's a Tower of Babel. And as it said, you can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again that way. That's not how it happens. It happens because there's something that's happened in the heart. And when that happens in the heart, there's something that happens in the mind, conscious and subconscious. There's a communication that’s possible, subconscious to subconscious, heart to heart, and then the mind can be brilliant.
One of the things that's portrayed in the story of the Tower of Babel is a quality of human bravado. Did you hear the bravado in it? “Let us make a name for ourselves.” And it was in Adam and Eve. This will be good. This will work well. We'll be happy. In the story that I know of, the history of humankind, it went like that, meaning that there was something that went off in consciousness. There was this psychic break that happened. And then there was bravado. “This is going great.” And for probably centuries, that bravado continued. The bravado continued. We'll build this. We'll build that. We think of Atlantis as being a place where there were all kinds of inventions, all kinds of technology. Bravado. We've eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We're doing this on our own. We got it going.
And then there was a looking to people who had not broken their allegiance, their alignment, their entrainment with the Most High. And we can only imagine that when those people were looked at, it's like, “You poor slobs. You have no idea what you're doing. You're so ineffective. You're not doing all this brilliant stuff that we've got going.” I think it had to go something like this. I can't claim to know. You look at the Kogi people. Who are they? Funny little men climbing down out of the mountains. But they know something. And the thing that they know is the thing that all people should know. I'm not claiming anything spectacular for them because I don't really know them that well. But that's the principle of it.
I do believe we've, as Western civilization—in fact, the whole world—totally underestimated this matter of the heart. It gets so overlooked. I can say not entirely, but in both East and West, there's a tendency to intellectualism. There are different brands of it, but a failure to recognize the matter of the heart that is so pivotal underneath it all.
I looked it up again last night, and in our King James version of the Bible, how many times over would you say the word “heart” is used relative to the word “mind”? Any ideas? Five times over. You know, we don't think of it that way. The Bible is often thought of as a moralistic book, a book of dogma and doctrine and so on. But within it is a teaching of the heart. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” Not just of the heart, but a teaching of the heart is there. What do you think the Psalms are about and many other teachings? What was Jesus teaching? He was teaching something of the heart, you might say, in a spiritual context with vast spiritual consequences. And yet, what he was teaching was something that so challenged the human heart to do something different “as we're forgiven, we forgive those who trespass against us.” That's a radical teaching of the heart, and so it goes. I could cite many more.
In the Hindi tradition, the heart center here is Anahata Chakra. Here it is, halfway up and halfway down the stairs, with three centers above and three below. There is something here that is so vital, that is embodied right in our physicality—right in our physicality. And as there's a softening here, the higher centers within the human experience can descend and move into the lower centers, and what's from below can rise up. But it requires, then, that openness of heart. And yes, there are those two directions. There is our openness upward, we say, the openness of the heart to the source of Love above in the presence of the Lord, not as something separate from who we are. And then there's the descent down through the heart into the world so that we take heart-filled action in the world, not just mentally-based action, but heart-based action. We call that courage, “Coeur”—the heart. Courage. That's the Spirit of God in action that moves through the heart, not just the heart, but moves through the heart so that there's heart-filled action, there's courageous action in the world, and we need that courageous action.
Maybe like you, I've got nothing better to do than allow my heart to be centered in the One I love, the reality that I love, and then follow the path that is given to me, given to us, out of that reality, and just be with that, be with the Way of the River. And then as Robert Frost said it in his poem, “You go too. You go too.” We invite our friends to go with us. Let's do this. Thank you all.
“And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John
and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart;
And was transfigured before them:
and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.”
I would like to continue the pattern of Meditation which we have been sharing on the basic realities of the Magic of Life. Human beings have for so long unwittingly, ignorantly, been subject to the black magic patterns of distortion in the world, and as we gain a comprehension of the reality of Heavenly Magic we can begin to live, for most people spend the days of their years dying. Let us spend the days of our years living. In opening this pattern of Meditation, let us have a moment of devotion.
Our gracious LORD and Holy KING, with thankful hearts we gather here in the peace which is born of Thy Love, wherein we yield to the control of Thy Eternal Truth, and let the Beauty of Design which Thou hast ordained come forth in body, in every nerve and tissue, gland and organ, and in heart, every part of the emotional or feeling nature, and in mind, that in all levels of the mind we may yield to the Truth and be at peace within and in relationship to those round about us, to the end that we may truly fulfil Thy Eternal Law according to the commandment: Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, and with all thy strength; for we realize that as we love Thee with all that we are we have no love left for self love, no love left for our neighbor, but all of our love centered in Thee allows Thy Love to come through us to those round about us, to loved ones and friends and neighbors, that the expression of Thy Eternal Love may have meaning on earth now and forever, for so shall Thy Kingdom come and Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven, with the same results as in Heaven; for Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory, for ever, IN the Christ. Aum-en.
Last evening in the pattern of our Meditation [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2025/04/enoch-and-moses-elias-and-jesus.html] we began a consideration of some of the principles of ascension, and we saw that the recorded pattern relating to ascension revealed the Shekinah Pattern of Being—the Cloud of Glory, the Light that Glows, the Fire that Burns, and within the Fire the One Who Dwells. The One Who Dwells. The Master spoke of this Shekinah Pattern of Being as the Father, not excluding the One Who Dwells, for there is the centering, but including the Shekinah Pattern of Being. And wherever we read His words translated as referring to “the Father” we should bear this in mind.
As we begin to gain a comprehension of the reality of Shekinah, we begin to comprehend the basis of our relationship with God, and the things of God are no longer to our consciousness far away, vague, or ambiguous. We begin to yield in a realization that we are not required to do something fanciful, something rather foolish, something that violates logic and reason, but that under the Law, the Law of Being which contains and unifies the Cosmos and all that is therein, we ourselves can begin to know, not in wishful thinking, not in prejudicial concept, but in knowing—not merely knowing about, but knowing the reality of our relationship with Deity, so that we, like Enoch of old may walk with God, and like Moses of old we may talk with God, and like Elijah of old we may reveal the essential Spirit of God, and like our Master who lived on earth, and invited us to follow Him, we may reveal God Himself, not just the Cloud of Glory, not just the Light that Glows, not just the Eternal Fire which is in reality God's Love, but a revelation of the One Who Dwells by the fact that we live.
But here is one of those inconsistencies which beset human beings. Being subject to death, spending the years of their lives, or their existence, the days of their years, in dying, they wonder why they do not more successfully reveal God. But how shall God be revealed by a dying soul? Would that be a true revelation of Deity? No. We must recognize that if we would truly reveal God, if we would let Deity find manifestation in our lives, we must be living souls. That is the first word concerning MAN—the first word concerning MAN in the beginning of things. For God said, “Let us make mankind. Let us make mankind, in our image, after our likeness.” And so, God created mankind; in His own image and likeness created He mankind; male and female created He them. And God breathed the Breath of Life into the nostrils of mankind, into man's nostrils, and MAN became a living soul. The first word with respect to life, action, being—“And man became a living soul.”
Last evening, in our pattern of Meditation, we touched briefly upon the statement the Master made as recorded for us in the Seventeenth Chapter of Matthew, where we find the words—the Master stated, “He charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.” Now some there are who have imagined that Jesus was talking about Himself, but most surely He was not. Until he shall be risen again from the dead. Had He already been dead somehow? Not at all. The Son of Man, the Son of mankind, the Son of Adam, the whole body of humanity. Had man been dead before? MAN, though formed by the hand of God, was dead until the Breath of Life had been breathed into his nostrils and man became a living soul, which is to say, MAN first-formed had been a dead soul. And so, the first time man rose from the dead was when man was first created by the hand of God, and man became a living soul. And that is resurrection, resurrection, rebirth. And so, the Son of Man—“Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of Man be risen again from the dead.” Our Master had not been dead before; He was not dead after that; He did not die upon the cross as so many have supposed. He was not dead at all. He gained or revealed the victory over death, which means that He did not die—for had He died, where would the victory have been? Not to die and then to live, but to not die. And He gained the victory over death.
Now if we begin to see these things truly, we begin to be in position where we can comprehend something of the real significance of ascension, the meaning with respect to these four men who revealed the Shekinah Pattern of Being by their lives, by the fact that they did not die, by the fact, as it is put, that they ascended. Ascended from what to what? Now some suppose that it means leaving the earth's surface. But we recall the Master's word, just after He came forth from the tomb and spoke to Mary in the Garden. She was about to fall at His feet, and He said, “Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended unto my Father.” The outer form of Being, in other words, was going through the process of ascension. If He was just going to ascend sometime later on, there would have been no reason why she should not have touched Him. But He was going through the process of ascension while He stood there on the surface of the earth.
Now ascension may mean moving from the surface of the earth, if we are talking about an airplane, or a balloon. That may mean being up from the surface of the earth. But if we are talking about the laws and principles of Being, it does not mean moving from the surface of the earth, it means a vibrational change into a higher level of being at that same point in relationship to the earth's surface. For if we are going to think of Heaven as being up, up is a relative thing. Up, what we say is “up” in this moment, twelve hours from now will be “down”, and yet we will say “up” and it will be exactly opposite of what was up when we said “up” in this moment. Twelve hours from now you will still say “up” from the earth's surface and mean exactly the opposite direction from what you mean when you say “up” in this moment. “Up” is a relative thing—let us not forget. And so, ascension is not a matter of ascension from the earth's surface; it is a matter of change in the vibrational state of Being, or the level of Being, without changing from the standpoint of the human concept of the relativity of “up” and “down”.
Now, let us examine this thing. Up from what? The state of the world. To what? The state of Heaven. And everyone has imagined that Heaven was in some far place. But is it? Our Master came and made a statement, a statement that He said was His Good News, His Gospel. Human beings have ignored it, generally speaking. They have said that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was that He died on the cross. In the first place the idea that He died on the cross is a contemptible lie. The idea that He had to die on a cross by some decree of God to save man is a blasphemous falsehood. God did not ordain that He should die. For the Master Himself said, remember, before the betrayal, before the trial, before any of that great atrocity took place—He said, in prayer to the Father, “I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.” He did not say, “I am about to finish it. I will have finished it when I have died on the cross.” The Master did not at any time in any recorded word signify that He was to die, although people assumed that that’s what it meant because He was crucified—pure assumption. He did not say He was going to die; and He did say, before any of these things, “I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.” If we say that He, in that prayer to the Father, did not know what He was talking about or did not mean what He said, then we attempt to judge Him and make Him a liar. Let it not be so.
So, He had finished the work before that atrocity took place; He had finished the work which God gave Him to do, but He faced something which man bed imposed upon Him, which was not required by God, and which was not in any sense essential to the salvation of man. And until we begin to see that we cannot comprehend the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel which He Himself stated as, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”—available, within reach. And according to His Word, this Gospel of the Kingdom that is at hand was to be preached unto all nations, unto all peoples, and then should the end come. The end of what? The end of the rule of evil, the end of discord and inharmony, suffering, misery, sorrow, meaningless futility, the end of misery, the end of the self-active pattern of humanity. But not the end of the world, not the end of the earth, not the end of MAN—the end of the fallen state of man, that man might be restored to his Divine Estate. And where would that be? In some far-off Heaven? Not according to the Bible; not according to what the Master taught.
In the beginning God created MAN to be on earth. He created MAN in the image and likeness of God, to be on earth and to have dominion on earth. Man is not supposed to be thought of as some particular asset to some far off Heaven. Man never gets to Heaven in that sense, never has and never will. MAN belongs on earth; and that which is MAN never gets away from the earth, for that which leaves the earth is not MAN. It is something else. MAN's place is on earth, and until we begin to comprehend that basic, fundamental fact, the delusions and superstitions and prejudices which have bound human beings for so long will continue to entangle and betray us. Let us, then, remember that the place for MAN is on earth. God created MAN to be on earth, to have dominion on earth, and the only place where God has any use for MAN is on earth, and MAN is never anywhere else, for that which ascends in the sense of going somewhere else is not MAN, for then MAN has been absorbed into something that is of a higher level of Being and it is no more man or woman. That is a large subject and we do not want to get into it this morning.
But what is ascension as far as we are concerned? The movement from earth, in the sense of the fallen state of things, from this world to Heaven. And where is Heaven? Where is the Kingdom of Heaven? At hand. If it is at hand, it is within reach, it’s available, it’s right here. And until we begin to realize that the true pattern of ascension does not mean that we become something else than that which we are, it does not mean that we leave the surface of the earth and go into the sky, it does not mean that we are to be confused with the relativity of up and down. It means that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and that we ascend from a state of being subject to the pattern of fallen man to the state which God first ordained for MAN—for in that beginning man knew Heaven and earth to be one. They still are. They have never been anything else but one. Man lost consciousness of the heaven aspect, but it was there all the time. And the good news, the thrilling news, which the Master brought to the children of men, was the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, right here, and we do not have to go anywhere to ascend into it, we do not have to lose our bodies, we do not have to die, our bodies do not have to become ethereal things. Our bodies as they are can ascend into Heaven.
Now remember the distinction. The Master said with respect to His body that He, the MAN, had to ascend unto the Father. That is an altogether different thing. In the Divine State, if a God Being incarnate, had completed his or her task on earth, there was an ascension unto the Father. But let us not assume that ascension to Heaven and ascension unto the Father are the same thing. They are not. The Father is there—the One Who Dwells. Individually and collectively the principle holds true. But ascension unto the Father means for the body to leave this sphere of things as we know it, into a level of vibratory Being that is still right here but which human eyes as such cannot see, regardless of all the fantastic tales of so-called visions and all the rest. People suppose they have seen a vision of Jesus Christ, for instance. They have not. They have not. They may have had a vision that was contained within their own consciousness; they may have thought they saw it out here; but it was something formed in their own consciousness and was not a vision of Jesus Christ. It can’t be done. It never has been done since our Master left this sphere of things, and until there’s some radical changes in relationship to man, man is not going to see Jesus Christ again. They will never see Him just as He was. But the same God Being will come—when? After the whole earth has been restored to the Divine Estate and we are ready to turn the Kingdom in full functional form over to the KING. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/the-pattern-of-his-appearinglight-of.html] But the KING did come, and He suffered that great atrocity at the hands of men. Those who imagine that He is going to come floating down out of the sky somewhere but delude themselves. He is not going to come and set everything to rights on earth. If it is done, MAN is going to do it in the spirit and power of God; for God always acts on earth through MAN, through the human being, or through the body of mankind. So, we better be busy about letting the Kingdom come.
If it was so important, according to the popular concept of the second coming of Christ, as it is put, that He should return, why did He not teach men to pray, “Hasten Thy second coming so that then Thy Kingdom may come and then Thy Will may be done on earth as it is in Heaven”? He did not teach men to pray any such thing. He said that we are to pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” the Kingdom of the KING appear, that is the first thing, that is the important thing; everything else has value only in relationship to that in a relative sense—the coming of the Kingdom. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” And according to all reports, the Will of God does very well in Heaven, producing beautiful, lovely, wonderful things; not producing misery, suffering, sickness, sorrow, death; not producing any of the ill things which are commonly attributed to God's Will, in a blasphemous attitude. God's Will produces on earth exactly the same thing God's Will produces in Heaven. So let us let His Will be done on earth.
But now, once we begin to realize that the place of man is on earth, it always has been on earth, always will be on earth, we will stop trying to get out of the earth into Heaven. In that same prayer what did the Master say? “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world.” He recognized this weakness, this tendency in human beings, and He Himself put in His prayer. In the Seventeenth Chapter of John it is recorded, if you want to read it for yourself—“I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” And yet human beings have been imagining through the centuries that if they wanted to get to Heaven they had to die and get out of the world. Blasphemous nonsense. Heaven is at hand. It is here. And until we begin to recognize that Heaven is here, and our place is here, and we are not to be concerned about getting to some other place, we cannot possibly have the right attitude toward living or the opportunities that are granted to us day by day. Ascension then is ascension from the state of fallen man, the state of self-activity, the state of misery, to the state of the Kingdom of Heaven at hand, the restoration to the Divine Estate on earth.
Now let us connect this up with something upon which we have given Meditation before. For God planted a Garden eastward in Eden. Now Eden is what? The earth, the whole earth; not just some part of it. Eden is the earth as a whole. “And God planted a garden eastward in Eden.” People have wondered if it was not in the region of Mesopotamia, or here or there. They imagined some kind of a garden just planted on the surface of the earth, like you might go out and plant a garden on some spot on the earth's surface. But that is not what the Bible teaches. Eden is the whole earth, including every part of it—every part. And the Garden of Eden God planted was eastward in Eden. From what point? From every point. From all points. And that means east is in the future—tomorrow morning or the next five minutes. What is coming to us from out of the east that will appear and get here in just five minutes from now. Can you prognosticate and tell me? You certainly cannot while I am up here and you are listening to me, because you do not know what I will say in five minutes from now. But the point is that everything of God must come out of the future.
When human beings begin to realize that they cannot change the present—you have to live in the present, but if there is something in the present that needs changing you cannot ever, at any time, change the present. That which was in the future a little while ago is now in the past. The present is never more than one instant long—just this instant; and in this instant we are in eternity. We can’t get out of eternity and we can’t get into it. Why? Because we are in it already. If there is such a thing as eternity it is now. You cannot have an eternity in the future, can you? Without an eternity that is present, an eternity that is past! It is all one. This is eternity. People talk about getting into eternity. They have never stopped to think. You cannot get out of it. This instant is eternity. But you cannot change the present. You can change your future however; you can refuse to let what God planted in your future to come into manifestation, and then that which manifests in the moment will be evil, it will be unpleasant. Or you can let what God planted in the Garden eastward in Eden manifest as it comes to the point of fruitage in the moment, and appears and takes form, and it will be lovely, beautiful, wonderful.
You cannot change the present. The present is going into the past so fast that before you begin to get something changed in the present, if you think you can, it’s gone and you never get oriented. Trying to change the present is the most foolish and futile thing which human beings undertake, unless it be to try to be as God. That is more foolish still. But trying to change the present is impossible. Why waste time trying to do it? The present is as it is. We may look at it, we must live in it, and we must not try to live in the future or in the past—live only in the present, but let your future be changed, let God design it—for the Garden that God planted eastward in Eden is still there.
What is the Divine Word? That there was an angel with a sword which turned every way, a flaming, fiery sword, who was placed in the way that leads to the Garden. What is the way that leads to the Garden? The future. It’s there; it has been in every instant of time, for every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. And if you can pass that flaming sword that turns every way, you can walk in the Way that leads to the Garden of God. But that Garden is still there, and that Garden that is there, at hand, as close as the next second, is the Kingdom of Heaven that the Master talked about, the Kingdom of Heaven that is at hand.
Now if you are going to ascend up into some place, physically speaking, what meaning are you going to have on earth? None. Your place is on earth; that which you need to do is on earth, in relationship to the earth. As I pointed out before, why be in a hurry to get to Heaven? Do you think you will be some especially beautiful ornament up there, or that God needs you up there to make everything work right? Somewhere else you want to go! You don’t know what it is but you want to go. No. Here is our place, and it is only here that you can live, only here that you can live. So if we wish to reveal Deity on earth, if we wish to let the things of the Garden of God come out of the future, into our lives and into our circumstances, we must live here in the present, we must be on earth, and we must be spending the days of our years living and not dying. The time you spend dying you have shut out from yourself and your life, your environment, all those things which God has provided for you in the Garden that He planted eastward in Eden, eastward in the future, the days of our tomorrows. And with each day we have an opportunity to receive something from out of the future, that God provided, that God made possible to you.
What then is ascension? Not leaving the surface of the earth, but moving from the realm of misery and suffering and sorrow and death, moving from the realm of the self-active state to the realm of attunement in and with the continuity of manifestation coming to us from out of the future, from out of the Garden that God planted eastward in Eden. And where is eastward? In the future. Our days come out of the east; the sunrise comes in the east. And so, in the days of our tomorrows the things of God are already provided, but we must learn how to receive them on earth. If we once start receiving them, we may not receive completely all at once, but then the things of God start being around us, and they start extending into the past. What is it that extends into the past with most people? The beauty of the Garden of God or the misery of the hell that man has made on earth? Once you reach a point where that which comes from out of the future from the Garden that God planted eastward in Eden, has come to you, been made manifest in you and through you because you live on earth so that it surrounds you, and begins to move back and extend into the past, where are you then? You are in the midst of the Garden of God. But it’s the only way you can be, when you let it come out of the east, manifest where you are, and extend into the west or into the past. Finally, you are in the midst of the Garden that God planted. And what is in the midst? The Tree of Life.
The Tree of Life is in the midst of the Garden. It is to manifest where you are—where you are! If you think you can go to it, by going up or down or sidewise or something else, you are wrong. The Tree of Life is just as available to you as to any Adam or Eve in the past, before the fall or after. It’s at hand; it’s available; the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; the Garden that God planted eastward in Eden is at hand; for they are one and the same thing. But we must let them come into manifestation, and when we do that what do we do? We ascend out of the old order of things into the new, into the Divine Estate. But we do not leave the earth's surface. We are living right here, letting God's Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. And so does His Kingdom come. Where from? From out of the east, from out of the future, in a manifestation through those men and women who let His Will be done; and it takes form around them; and it begins to extend into the past; and others begin to see, and they aspire to that same ascension—to ascend to the place where there is the evidence of the Presence of the One Who Dwells.
That is the mystery unveiled by Enoch, by Moses, by Elijah, and by our Master, who was made manifest through the body of Jesus. And He said, “Follow me”—follow Me, that the mystery may be unveiled, that you may begin to know the reality of the Cloud of Glory. The Tabernacle—your own body—the Tabernacle filled with the Glory of the Lord until it shone round about. Yes, to be true of you. Where? In the wilderness of this world as it is, until the wilderness is caused to blossom as the rose because the Garden of God comes out of the east and is made manifest through those who let His Will be done.
Seeing these things, let us take another look at the Mount of Transfiguration. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2022/07/spirit-carries-us-up.html] For He ascended a mountain—the process of ascension—but He did not leave the surface of the earth, to be transfigured. The Mount of Transfiguration—let’s take another look at it. “And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John”—again the three and the one, the four—“and bringeth them up,” ascension, “into an high mountain” of consciousness, “apart” from what? Apart from the discords and the limitations that are characteristic of the world. “And was transfigured before them.” In other words, they saw that which gave evidence of the Divine Estate. “And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.”
Now wherever we have had a description of the One Who Dwells, hasn’t this same pattern of language held true, in the Old Testament or the New, in Revelation or wherever you turn? “His face shone as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.” Now note: “And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him.” Why just Moses and Elias talking with Him? That made three. Where was the fourth? Here on this level, He was a part of the three, and the fourth was higher still, the next up focalization in the Higher Level of Deity. Up. Moses and Elias, and the Master, making the three. But there was a fourth who was not seen. But these three gave the evidence of the Presence of the One Who Dwells on the next higher level, carrying the Focalization of Being.
Then Peter had to get impetuous and talk out of turn. We will skip that. It does’t mean anything. “While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them.” A bright cloud overshadowed them. The Cloud of Glory, whether of the Old Testament or the New—it’s all One. “And a bright cloud overshadowed them”—the Shekinah Cloud of Glory. “And behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” Now what was overshadowed? Not just Jesus, but the manifestation, the evidence of the Presence of the One Who Dwells, the Next Higher Focalization of Being, “overshadowed them.” Then the Shekinah Pattern of Being is the Son, the only begotten Son.
Those who imagine that the body of Jesus was the only begotten Son do not know what they are talking about. It was not, is not. Your body is just as much one of the Sons and Daughters of God as the body of Jesus was, just as much. What was the only begotten Son of God? That which issues forth from God at all times. What is it that issues forth from God? The Shekinah Pattern of Being, the Fire that Burns, the Light that Glows, and the Cloud of Glory. These are present wherever God is, wherever a God Being is present. And that which issues forth from God all the time, that which reveals His Presence to those who have awareness, is the only begotten Son of God.
The Cloud of Glory enfolded Elijah and Moses as surely as Jesus. All three were there, and in that pattern they were the three in relationship to a higher fourth. And “This”—this what? This one man? No. It does not say that. Take a look at how human beings have assumed and jumped to conclusions. What the word said was This—“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” That which was the expression through Jesus was the Shekinah Pattern, yes, but it is the Shekinah Pattern of Being, the Fire of Love, the reality of Truth, and the reality of Glory or Life. Yield to Love and Truth and Life and you will be hearing, you will be feeling, you will be knowing, the Son of God. Because human beings have assumed ignorantly that the body of Jesus was the only begotten Son of God, they have felt separated by nineteen centuries, and by some far sky, from the body of the only begotten Son of God. But the only begotten Son of God is here just as much in this hour as in any moment when the Master walked on earth, in actual fact. Perhaps not revealed as much, but the only begotten Son of God is the Shekinah Pattern of Being; and once you ascend out of the state of dying into the state of living in Shekinah you begin to be a part of the body of the only begotten Son of God because you are a part of the body of mankind, yielding to the Spirit of God or the Shekinah Pattern of Reality.
And it is here, and you do not have to go anywhere. And ascension is not leaving the earth's surface; it is living here on earth. And our work, our place, is on earth, and it is our job to reveal the fact that Heaven and earth are one, they have always been, they will always be, and as we let the Garden which God planted eastward in Eden come into manifest form because we live we will be doing our part toward letting the Kingdom come, and the Will of God be done on earth as His Will is done in Heaven. So let it be in you and through you, now and always.
Our gracious LORD and Holy KING, we would indeed let Thy Kingdom come, that Thy Kingdom may be made manifest and may be made ready to receive Thee, that all who enter Thy Kingdom may know the oneness of Heaven and earth and know that Thou art near, that there is no necessity for Thee to come floating down on a cloud from some far sky, but that Thou art here in Heaven on earth, in relationship to this part of the Cosmic Body of Being, and that the centering cycles extend on and on until we are caused to realize that this part of the Cosmos is centered in the Center of the Cosmos as surely as any other part, and that All is One, and that Thy Allness is here insofar as we are capable of receiving it and revealing it and using it to Thy Glory and to the blessing of the children of men; for Thine is the Kingdom; therefore Thou art the KING, and we would act like it, and we would let Thy Kingdom manifest, we would let it come; and Thine is the Power by which these things shall be done; and Thine is the Glory revealed as they are done in the blessings of Life to all who will receive, IN the Christ, now and forever. Aum-en.
The opportunity to have such a Class here on Sunrise Ranch is something that appears by reason of the fact of the Church of the Emissaries of Divine Light. The Church programme is a part of the work of the Third Sacred School. This programme of special training for which you are now here is also a part of the Third Sacred School.
You might say that any really constructive endeavor—this may sound fantastic to you to start with—but any constructive endeavor, anything that has a part toward moving to the fulfillment of the Divine Design, anywhere, through any person upon the face of the whole earth, is a part of the Third Sacred School program. Every church on the face of the earth, every religious body that has any meaning in truth, or that is being of any service in blessing to human beings, whether they know it or not, is within the pattern of the Third Sacred School. Every human being, whether in the scientific world, or the industrial world, or the professional world, or anything else, regardless of place on the face of the earth, color, creed, language—it matters not, everything little or large—that has a part toward moving the mass of humanity toward the fulfillment of God's Will on earth, is contained in the scope, the program of the Third Sacred School.
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This program is not something that was recently inaugurated. The application to the present problems was initiated at the time of the Fall. Our program does not just date back to the time that Jesus came into the world, or some such period. His coming into the world was a part of the Third Sacred School program. The prophets before Him, who revealed in the current of the Holy Spirit some of the truths of Being, the patterns of the Divine Design, were a part of the Third Sacred School program. The application to the world's need in the fallen state was established at the time of the Fall, but the Third Sacred School was not initiated at the time of the Fall—only in application of it's purpose was it altered to meet the need.
The Third Sacred School was initiated at the time of the creation of Man. In the beginning of the history of this world, from the time of the creation of Man, there has been a definite program working. Most human beings know little or nothing about it, but it is there—and coming here you have accepted a degree of responsibility in the conscious realization of relationship to this great program that has been in action down through the millennia. The Third Sacred School was functioning long before the Fall of man, and has continued to function, both with respect to the truepurpose—which you will understand more about as we go along—and the specific immediate purpose of saving man from the results of his wrong function.
We look back in history and see that which was accomplished by great men and women, and we recognize that they had a part to play in making this hour possible. They may have made mistakes, and what they did may not have in all things been perfect—but they had a part. Those who have worked to build, say the railroad, or to develop the highway system, in any capacity, whether designing, developing in any fashion, or working as a laborer—any man who has ever worked upon a railroad, or a highway, between here and there, wherever that may be, has had—unknowingly probably—but definitely has had a part in making this here possible. And in that pattern of life expression, there may have been many things that ought not to have been, but there was a contribution to the program of the Third Sacred School.
It is impossible for any human being to live upon the face of the earth—whether he knows it or not—it is impossible for any human being to live upon the face of the earth without doing something, without contributing something, to the program of the Third Sacred School. He may, in some respects, do things that seem to, or actually do, hurt it. There may be opposition, but even oppositions are used. But there is in every life, wherever there is anything that could in any sense be called normal, or natural, or that unheard of thing, average—there isn’t any really—but every person has contributed something constructively. Even those who may be classified as evil, by reason of their life pattern—they may not know it, it may not be immediately evident to the human vision, but every person that has lived on the face of the earth, before or since the Fall, has contributed to the program of the Third Sacred School.
We begin to realize that while it has been a seemingly slow process, all who have gone before us have had a part, and all who live on earth now have a part. We begin to realize something of the integrated factors, so that you are not thinking of yourself on a segregated basis. Others have gone before us to make this possible. People have lived and died and suffered, gone through all sorts of things, so that we could have this hour. So there are factors of appreciation to God and to the working of His Will in the children of men, extending in all directions in all fields. You begin to realize what it means to be a citizen of the world, and a citizen of the Christ Kingdom, by which you may be a good citizen of your country, whatever it may be.
