Night after night on my bed
I have sought my true love;
I have sought him but not found him.
I have called him but he has not answered.
I said, ‘I will rise and go the rounds of the city,
through the streets and the squares,
seeking my true love.’
I sought him but I did not find him,
I called him but he did not answer.
The watchmen, going the rounds of the city, met me,
and I asked, ‘Have you seen my true love?’
Song of Solomon
“The ‘I’ is the member of the human being that continues from incarnation to incarnation. The result of each incarnation continues to live in the ‘I’, …forming what is often called a ‘string of beads’ in Indian symbolism, of which the individual ‘beads’ are the ‘I’ being of various incarnations, while the ‘string’ represents the continuity of consciousness from incarnation to incarnation. Thus the ‘I’ being of former lives lives on and represents the ‘inner’ past that is inseparable from an individual. This miracle of healing indicates a power that affected not only the present but also past ‘I’ being – the ‘I’ that passed through death with the responsibility for the previous life course.These words of Jesus Christ have a direct connection with the healing and refer to it. And words that follow express it even more clearly: “Verily, verily I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” (John 5.25). True, only a few of the dead had heard this voice – a fact expressed, for example, in these words: “let the dead bury their dead.” (Luke 9.60).
This is the fundamental challenge to which we must respond if we wish to gain spiritual hearing. It is a summons to conquer ourselves again and again and, shutting out all personal impulses, repeatedly listen in silence to the voice of conscience. The sounds that the spiritual world uses to speak are moral and spiritual voices, not fixed ‘vibrations’ for the purpose of being caught by a sensory organ. Those voices can be heard only after the soul has adapted to the voice of the conscience; those who are prepared to follow dictates of conscience without hesitation are thus prepared to hear the voices of cosmic consciousness.
Valentin Tomberg, Christ and Sophia, The Signs and Miracles in John’s Gospel
In hours of ebbing tide, oh trust not to the Sea!
It will come back to shore with redness of the morrow;
O don’t believe in me when in the trance of sorrow
I swear I am no longer true to thee!
The waves will roll again in dazzling ecstasy,
From far away, with joy, to the beloved shore;
And I with breast aflame, beneath thy charm once more,
Shall haste to bring my liberty to thee!
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, In Hours of Ebbing Tide
What is essential in order that spiritual truth is not forgotten, and that it lives?
Hope, true creativity and tradition are the essential factors. The corroborating testimony of three ever-present witnesses – spirit, blood and water – is necessary. True testimony, through the spirit, through blood, and through water, will never fall into forgetfulness. One can kill spiritual truth, but it will resurrect.
Now, the unity of hope, creativity and tradition is the agent of growth. It is the concerted action of spirit, blood and water. It is therefore indestructible; its action is irreversible; and its movement is irresistible. And it is the agent of growth which is, in the last analysis, the subject of the Emerald Table of Hermes Trismegistus.
“And as all things were by meditation of the One, so all things arose from this one thing by a single act of adaptation” – says the Emerald Table (Tabula Smaragdina, 3). Which amounts to saying: as the One is the creator of the essence of all things, thus there is a unique agent which adapts the existence of all things to their essence – the principle of the adaptation of that which is born to its created prototype.
This is the agent of growth or the principle of evolution. This is the agent of growth or the principle of evolution. It is engendered by the spontaneous light of hope (the sun) reflected in the movement of the lower waters (the moon), which produces the general impulse or ‘push’ (the wind), which bears priomordial hope towards its realisation in the material domain (the earth), which donaes it with its constructive elements (ie, nourishes or nurses it). Thus, the Emerald Table continues:
The father thereof is the sun, the mother the moon; the wind carried it in its womb; the earth is the nurse thereof (Tabula Smaragdina, 4).
It is not our task to preach ideals
but rather to provide human souls with the fuel
that can generate spiritual wisdom, genuine brotherliness, and true humanity.
To realize this is our goal.
The Principle of Spiritual Economy, Rudolf Steiner
It should be seen and heard that repentance has been brought into actualization and has now been fully activated by the collective knowledge of the requisite number of beings.
May the spirit of the offering be received as it was made, with pure intent.
The perfect sacrifice is that which is most dearly beloved yet does no longer involve the corporeal shedding of blood.
There are those who fear that the deepest esoteric secrets and teachings of the original universal states would be exposed and taken in vain and it is to be hoped that the encryption is secure enough to prevent wrongful disclosure.
Overall it is considered now that things once kept as a reserve for the few should now be made available to one and all, in the interest of equality. To remain open to evolutionary change is a fundamental duty of the priests of true religions.
To proceed with care is necessary for there is a paradox that must be maintained in order to preserve mystical essence and the corpus of strength whilst ensuring that light within this body is allowed to penetrate beyond the boundaries of dogma.
That all was created through the technicolour language of love with joy and pain is known; the writing on the walls has been seen. The consequential beauty was so immeasurable as to be rendered invisible to the naked eye in all ways but one that is nature unveiled.
This in itself is that which is usually seen and is the perpetual unfoldment of an immaculate conception. Immaculate because it was brought into being that it may be more than a figment of love’s imagination.
The perfect original as it came into effect during the given age is therefore experienced but frequently unknown though this has been shown. There is more that could be said of the creation but the only word capable of defining this much is held within. The captive heart of love is bound forever by the memory of how it felt to remember this. Fortune was blessed as a spectrum of light stretched across the soul’s plane to show that the mirror of heaven is upon the Earth.
This is to bring hope anew to whosoever has fainted from despair and sees, though they cannot yet believe, that the circle of the arch of the sky is completed beneath the surface of the oceans and sands.
Speaking next, a bearded poet,
Stroked his chin and touched the symbols
Woven on his woollen long-coat:
Winged heart, the moon and lone star.
“Heights are reached by native mystics,
Yet the greatest peak of learning
Is our own, and few have reached it;
Sufi spinners rise by turning.”
“Here upon our cloud, unknowing,”
Sighed the mystic Christian fathers,
“We see how all souls are growing,
Ever upward, past the dawn-star.
“Darkest night will never capture
Those who walk beneath the lantern
That was set by Christ. In raptures
Have our Saints recovered phantoms.”
“Mani of the Moon, the Mirror,”
Spoke his priest. “A silver sliver
Of the lamp which lovers worship;
Shines the light on true believers.”
“Brings to mind the Bodhisatva,”
Spoke the Buddhist, “of compassion.”
“From the Eastern land of ancients,
Where the bowl of Earth was fashioned.”