Harmonious  Complexity  in  the  Tone

Alan Hammond

In our last service someone was emphasizing radiant, tonal thinking, rather than judging by the appearance of things, which is reflective thinking. I thought we could think some more about the Tone. The so-called Fall of human consciousness related to its orientation in the externals, and its subsequent false judgments—calling things good or bad, whereas we recognize that the processes of life are constantly changing and evolving, and the fixation on good and evil is an illusion. True tonal thinking is a process whereby the mind ascends into union with Spirit, or the Tone, and is radiantly moved by that.

What is the Tone? The Tone is the quality of the Spirit that radiates out of the undimensional levels of Being into time and space, and manifests simultaneously through all the forms in the dimensional universe. The Earth, as a physical form, has a particular tone. This tone, however, is composed of many sub-tones. Every physical form on the planet has its own tone. All the human beings, all the animals, plants, insects, fish, are all unique variations of the one Tone. So we can see how incredibly complex the planet’s tone is. This planetary tone moves into the solar system and is the Earth’s radiant contribution in that larger creative field. There are changes in this tone, as the proportions of forms change in the planet—such as fluctuations in vegetation, or proportions of species of animals, and so on. All this relates to the Earth’s radiant role in its larger creative field.

We have come to the awareness, however, that the Earth’s Tone in the dimensional levels is currently slightly off-tone. This is because of an aberration in a central component of the planet—namely, mankind. Because of the lack of a certain quality of fine substance, man’s conciousness and function are not integrated with that aspect of the Tone for which he is responsible. This has caused aberrations in nature. The lack of substance, and therefore the lack of an accurate manifestation of the Archangelic Tone, has many ramifications in the experience on Earth. With the lack of fine substance the human consciousness is crude, and consequently there are many mistranslations of the currents of Life, or the Tone, in human experience. Therefore, experiences are often given crude labels. For example, there are what are called desirable experiences, such as joy, carefulness, compassion, or bravery. But then there are some undesirable experiences—such labels might include sadness, anger, or resentment. However, bear in mind what I was saying about crude translations of experience.

All experience starts off from the true Tone, so at the core there is validity to sadness or anger. With sadness, for example, there may be a quality of experience that can be known as one comes to the end of a cycle, perhaps when someone that one has loved disappears from one’s life. That might evoke a certain feeling of sadness. Now, in the true state, that would be a very different quality of experience. There would be a hint of something of the nature of sadness, but for various reasons it wouldn’t be the emotional pit into which people usually fall. It would be a slight pulsation. At the conclusion of a cycle, one would know that one was moving on into another beautiful cycle—so it would be difficult to remain very sad if one were playing one’s part in the eternal, divine outworking. And in any case, identified in true Being, there is no leaving or separation of Angels in Spirit. There is not the same sense of loss. So what I am pointing to here is that what is known now as sadness is a pit, rather than a slight undulation in the processes of eternal life. Something like anger, which is usually frowned on, is an exaggerated distortion of what, in the true Tone, is an intensification of energy to remedy something that may be going slightly off-course. In an eternally changing cosmos, there is always the need for adjustments in order to maintain the true Tone in expression and the creative direction in the course of events.

So we can begin to sense that, with fine substance, the Tone has myriad nuances of translation. And in fact, no experience is ever just one thing. Here again is the crudeness of the current human psyche, because invariably a feeling is a combination of many tonal nuances. You’re not just happy. If you could examine such a feeling with fine substance you would discover that there are moderating factors present. It may seem a pity to ruin the notion of unadulterated, ecstatic bliss, but there are always other subtle elements influencing the experience—that is the truth of the matter. The quality of experience we have in any moment is actually a combination of many, many nuances. There are as many nuances of feeling as there are colors, and there is an almost infinite number of those. What I am describing now, of course, is largely unconscious to most people. They categorize their experience in these crude definitions: happy, sad, angry, and so on.

Everyone and everything on Earth articulates something of the vast planetary tone. And in any situation there is a certain blending of nuances of the Tone through all the things and people that are present, and their interaction. We can immediately see the complexity of this process, and the outer mind of itself cannot possibly navigate accurately in the midst of such complexity. In fact, the fallen mind doesn’t even realize how great the complexity is until we start drawing it to our attention, as we are doing now. The mind just blindly blunders on. It is futile for the isolated, reflective mind to try to successfully navigate this complexity, but it is natural for the Tonal Self to accurately navigate it all with ease.

This leads us to a parenthetical meditation on righteous judgment. In situations we will often find that rightly we neither fully approve of everything nor fully disapprove of everything. You might say that the accurate picture isn’t that cut and dried, because in every situation there is this complexity moving, and we will find that in any situation there are mixed feelings discernable. To be truly accurate to the Tone in a situation, all these myriad factors would need to be taken into account. Here we are getting into a zone that is out of the usual range of conscious human function. The mind likes to have it all cut and dried—“This is good,” “That is bad,” “I feel fully approving of this,” or “I feel fully disapproving of that”—it cannot stand seeming ambiguity. So what I am saying would sound incomprehensible, impossible or nonsensical to most people.

In any situation we don’t love everything, nor do we hate everything. Rightly, it is something else. “Spiritual” people like to imagine that when they arrive at their spiritual apex they are going to love everybody and love everything. But there is also such a thing as Truth, which relates, for one thing, to definition of proximity and relationship. If we love everything with the same intensity we’ll get it wrong, because there are some things which we—I hesitate to use the word hate, but nevertheless such a feeling has its usefulness, because some things need to be kept at a distance and other things drawn near. In the human consciousness, people like to have what they love right next to them, and what they hate or dislike they prefer further away. But in this level of function about which I am speaking, hate or dislike isn’t a condemning attitude. Rather, it describes a feeling process that helps move factors to their proper distance from one. In all of this we can see the vital necessity of a pure heart. The impure heart mistranslates a great deal of the vibrational information it contacts. Only a pure heart is a trustworthy instrument of perception and expression.

The design of Being is a miracle, because each tiny detail fits into this vast, complex design. Your eyeball fits in the cosmos! In order to fit in its place, each part must sound its true tone. When it sounds its true tone, it finds its place, its sense of the fitness of things. We can see here that we are invited to participate in a tremendous art—the art of finding where and how we fit in this vast complexity in every moment. As is obvious from what we have been saying, the key to discharging this art is in sounding our own true tone. There is something of the character of true Being to be expressed exactly where we are. In doing this, we find that we are in exactly the place where we belong.

Human nature doesn’t belong—it doesn’t belong anywhere. That is why so many people are always looking for somewhere else to have a sense of belonging, because they don’t feel they belong where they are. The Tone always belongs. Here is something of a paradox because, in our experience in the world that the isolated human mind has created, we don’t always feel that we do belong in it in various ways. It is, after all, a foolish, distorted world. We often feel that we are “in the world but not of it.” However, we have come to know that, even in this dysfunctional world, we have a role to play, and that role is to reintroduce the true Tone of Being. So we do belong, even in this mad, sad world!

Our individual tone, when sounded, has some interesting powers. To begin with, it attracts and repels the substances that compose our own physical bodies. Each physical body is unique, composed of different proportions of substances. The true Tone implements that composition. This principle applies to the individual’s personal world also. The radiation of the Tone will draw elements that should fittingly be close, and move others further away. This is true of the planetary body too. Radiation from the undimensional core of the Earth changes the proportion of vegetation and animals, and so on, in the physical body of the planet.

However, these attractions and repulsions are for the benefit of the Whole, not merely for the individual, which is where the mind usually leaps when contemplating this radiant power. The radiation functions only to further the purposes of the Whole. We can ask ourselves, “What should be my personal contribution to the Whole?” We know the answer to that—“It is the expression of my true Being, the tone of my angelic Self.” This life is also the same life that is emerging through the planet, and its contribution is the same—“I am here to express the purity of my true Being.” As an individual, I emerge through the complexity of this physical human form. It’s a small thing but very complex. And I express Myself, the Tone, through this complexity. Simple! And it is simple from the Archangelic point of view also. The Archangelic Identity says, “I express Myself, my creative Tone, through the complexity of this, my larger planetary Body.” I don’t have to think about all that complexity because, in spiritual Identity, the Tone is the focus of My Being and action.

The Earth’s radiation is not merely reflected energy from the Sun. There is a radiation from the Earth, through all of its life-forms. This includes individual human beings also. There is something that is radiant through the form—namely, the Tone. It is the radiant Identity which sees. Without radiation, there is no seeing. Dead forms cannot see anything. Mankind as he currently is, is half dead, so he doesn’t see very much. When he looks out into the cosmos at other planets and solar systems, for example, they all look dead to him. The big question posed by the blind mind is “Is there other life in the universe?”—because it cannot see anything that it interprets as life. On Earth, when a person looks at other human beings, they only see a fraction of who is present—usually the outer reflected form and its distorted personality. As mankind looks at the vegetation and animals, he thinks he sees something, but it is only a little of what is really there. There is no radiant vision. We might say that, in radiant vision, one begins to see Being—Self, I Am, differentiated. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”—everywhere! We can see how important the purity of heart is.

All this hints at another interesting factor, which is that all Being is in constant communication. Again, the current fallen consciousness is virtually unaware of the potential communication and communion in the Tone. Human beings endeavor to communicate; we know that. What we long to communicate is communion, but because of the lack of fine substance there is only communication of blank to blank—and distortions! But all creatures communicate. We have a couple of doves that live on our ridge, and it is very beautiful to hear them communicating from one end of the woods to the other. Of course all the other birds are at it as well! Even a rattlesnake will communicate that you are about to step on him! It has been suggested that vegetation can communicate. I read that a group of fir trees were diseased and their leaves turned color. Other fir trees, within view, developed an immunity to this disease, which to the researchers indicated there had been communication and that the observing trees had generated an antidote before the disease reached them. Be that as it may, vegetation certainly communicates with human beings—for example, flowers speak volumes describing beauty. The forms in Being are not mindless, and there is communication that is designed to maintain fitting relationship for creative function in the one Design. All aspects of the Tone are complementary to each other, facilitating this vast process of creativity.

So we are concerned to sound our aspect of the Tone, not for our own benefit, which is the preoccupation of most human consciousness—“Me, Me, Me, Me.” There is a larger Identity and a larger creative purpose. We might start by considering the planetary Identity and purpose. “Well, what is that?” This is currently far beyond human thought and consideration, which reflects the state of human consciousness. Such a question seems irrelevant to most people. And our own consciousnesses certainly can’t encompass the answer to that at the moment, but at least we entertain the question and acknowledge the fact that there is a planetary purpose. We are concerned that this purpose be undertaken and we are seeking to reintroduce the true Tone of Man again, which is part of the process of restoring the larger vision.

Our immediate purpose could be said to be “I Am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Our purpose is the burgeoning of the whole of Being. A human ego hearing that might think, “Oh goody, I’ll hang around this guy; he’s going to do everything he can to make me happy!” No, it is the kindly dissolution of the isolated human ego that we have in mind! And beyond that lies the true restoration.

The Tone is not something that can be described by the mind. A part of our living purpose and adventure is to give expression to It. It is, after all, who we are!

© Alan Hammond