Emissaries of Divine Light offers an invitation to people to look up — to look to a higher order of reality than the immediate world in which a person lives. That is something that has been done for millennia on planet Earth to whatever degree. The ancients looked up at the night sky, appreciating the vastness of the universe in which we live. And then they saw worldly affairs as transpiring in the context of that vastness.
In the modern scientific world, we look up at the night sky — if we look up, with all the light pollution and distraction — and we tend to see it all as energy and matter and then the emptiness of space. That is a very recent perspective. The ancient cosmic view, the cosmic view for millennia, was that the universe is alive. The universe is not just energy, stuff, and emptiness. It is Being. It is alive with Being. The way that knowledge has come down to us, it perhaps seems superstitious and perhaps was, in many cases. And yet there was an awareness that we are surrounded by Being. It is no coincidence that the planets were named after gods and goddesses.
Something happens when, in our own eyes, we turn the cosmos and even the world around us into simply energy and matter and do not grant the universe the presence of Being — if we do not acknowledge and honor it. What happens? Do you think it hurts the sun? Does the sun care? Not really. But we do something to ourselves when we deny the beingness of creation, in the cosmos or the world, or in each other. We hurt ourselves. It comes back around and affects us when we see things that way.
I was reading from the Book of Job, which is relevant to all this. It is perhaps the most ancient text in the Bible and among the most ancient texts available to humankind.
This is from Chapter 38. It is known as the examination. When we think of Job popularly, we think of all his boils, all his troubles, and all his travails. And he endured. He kept his integrity. He never cursed God. And toward the end of all that, he got a big examination, as it is said, from the Lord.
It begins this way. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind. Out of the whirlwind. Out of the center of the creative process. And there is a still point at the center of the whirlwind. And so, he is listening. He is listening to something right at the heart of things, and it is challenging him. And this is what he hears.
Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee and answer thou me.
Job 38:2–3
So, you might say somebody in his position might be demanding of God. How did you let all this happen? But, actually, something is demanded of him.
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the cornerstone thereof; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Job 38:4–7
Do you have some understanding of what is behind all this? How it all got made?
It goes on to speak of constellations.
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?
Job 38:31–32
We probably know the Pleiades and Orion are constellations up in the sky. Mazzaroth is something like the science of astrology. Arcturus is a sun in our Milky Way galaxy.
And there is this wonderful verse:
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?
Job 38:33
Whatever is established for creation in the vastness of it, do you know its relevance to your own life and the world in which we live? Can you apply the order of the universe to your life and to your world?
So yes, look up. Look up at the night sky. Open yourself to what is larger than your own immediate experience, your own experience of yourself and of the people around you. Look beyond all that so that you can entertain something larger. And if there is anything you are caught up with in the world in which you are living — any entanglements that do not belong, that are hindering you — free yourself. Look up and feel yourself in the presence of that vastness, whether it is the vastness of the night sky or simply the vastness of Being, the vastness of God. Know yourself there. Find yourself there.
You and I belong there. We are a part of that. Let that vastness tell you who you are. Do not accept all those petty versions of yourself that your own mind may tell you or other people may tell you. Let the universe, let God, tell you who you are.
And then it all comes around to this verse, does it not?
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?
Job 38:33
Apparently, we are made to live here. Yes, as a part of the vastness, but we have more to relate to than the Pleiades and Arcturus and Orion. We have each other in the world in which we live. But on what basis?
These verses talk about cornerstones and foundations at a cosmic level. But how about right here in our world? We are in some sense a reflection and an embodiment of that vastness that is meant to be stepped down by us as human beings into the human world.
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened?
Job 38:6
Whereupon are the foundations of Sunrise Ranch fastened? If not on you and me, the people who live here, where are they fastened? They are fastened on Diana, Tess, Michael, Keahi, Michael, and Bob. These are some of the cornerstones of this world. These are the foundations of this world. And I am just using Sunrise Ranch as an example that is readily available, familiar, and significant. But so it is with every endeavor, with every world within the whole world. What are the cornerstones? And then there is another question we have been speaking to.
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
Job 38:5
What are those lines? They could be lines that have to do with cosmic energies in space. That is relevant. There is a line between the sun and here, for instance. But on Earth, for Sunrise Ranch and for every endeavor that we are about, we need more than cornerstones. We need lines. Yes? Lines between those cornerstones to hold the world, to be the foundation of the world.
If we are building a building, we do not just have cornerstones. There are beams in between the cornerstones. Walls, lines, connection. And here, we are not talking about concrete or wood. We are talking about human beings. And the lines between us are the lines of conscious awareness, the lines of energy, the lines of spiritual power that are never dropped. Because we know the building comes tumbling down if those lines are dropped, if there is not a cornerstone, or if a cornerstone that was there just crumbles away, if there is some kind of forgetfulness or unawareness, self-obsession, entanglement, that then reflects itself as disagreement, dispute, and static.
Let us have fierce arguments. But let us do it in the context of the lines of agreement that we hold — never changed, never altered, never let down, knowing that we are cornerstones of this world that we are holding together.
These are the principles that we are operating under here. I have the honor this morning of presenting these principles with all the passion with which I feel them. But to be clear, I did not begin this. If anyone is interested, I remember it is in a series of booklets, Behold, I Create, in which Uranda presents this brilliantly in 1952.
There are the more general patterns of connection among us. And then, specific creative fields and specific cycles of creation require the intensification of connection between two people. We no doubt know this from experience. And are we available for that? For intense creative energy between us.
With intense creative energy comes some heat. Let there be heat. But let the heat be contained in our interlacing, interlocking patterns of agreement. Let it be contained as creative energy.
And let the heat be accompanied by the light of awareness, seeing more and more and more.
I enjoy the intensive consideration of things that are sparky yet contained and which bring light to a situation, not only so that we can see in the usual sense of seeing what is happening in a circumstance, but so the circumstance itself can be filled with light, so that our world can be filled with the spiritual substance of our generation.
All together we are about this. And all together there is a building of mana. Mana — that is the Hawaiian word, as I understand from Keahi Ewa, for what we as Emissaries call pneumaplasm. It is auric substance, prana, and chi. There is a building of mana among us if we do this right.
If you are a cornerstone and I am too, we can draw a line between us. That line empowers us to generate mana together. And in that substance, light and power are conducted. It means that our community is filled with love.
Tonight is Yom Kippur. I was not raised Jewish, and many of the Jewish people I know do not observe the holiday. So, to some degree, it goes out of consciousness, but not for everybody.
I read a little bit about Yom Kippur. Included in the commentary I came across is the term radical self-honesty.
In the early days of Emissaries of Divine Light, before the founding of Sunrise Ranch, Uranda brought mystical knowledge and knowledge essential to healing. And many of us are aware of his writings from the early 1950s, when for three years he taught Attunement here at Sunrise Ranch. And those writings have a particular flavor.
The year 1949 was three years after a small band of spiritual pioneers had come here to Sunrise Ranch. This past week, the Trustees of Emissaries of Divine Light shared a reading of two services from that year. They were amazing! They revealed a man of uncommon vision and an uncommon knowing of himself, using his very considerable powers of persuasion and inspiration to call to the people who were with him to form what he called a unit, a community of people who would fulfill the purposes for which they came. One of those talks was a call to radical self-honesty, perhaps like the examination in Job. In fact, many of them have that flavor to it. And as we shared the reading of it, it was like having someone speak right to you, demanding your radical self-honesty. It was monumental, especially from someone who is so deeply loved.
The spirit of that, here on the day of Yom Kippur, which starts this evening, is this: no justification, no prevarication, no dissembling, no hiding. And what is the answer to an experience of knowing that there is a demand for radical self-honesty? The only answer is, Here I am. I hear you. I am here. I am here in innocence and devotion and commitment to what my life is about.
We have that to know for ourselves and to share with one another. I do not care if you are here for the first time or the thousandth time. As human beings, in our radical self-honesty, we have something unusual to share. We have a chance to share what is a reflection and an embodiment of the creative constellation of the stars known among us as human beings in our radical self-honesty, knowing and experiencing who we are at depth.
Thank you for being here this morning. Thank you for all the lines that are present among us.