“Why,” they say, “have we not had the experiences that you have had, we have not had visions, we have not had premonitions, the custodians of the future have not told us what is to be?”
In the same manner they say to the botanist, “We walked the field you walked in, yet we did not see the rare plant you gathered, or to the gold-seeker who found gold, “We did not find gold though we traveled over the same land.”
Michael Juste, The White Brother
When I came into your field of vision
The end was defined at the onset.
You relayed a line of freedom
As you met me at the gateway of my life.
In no time at all, you recognised me,
And time forever lost all meaning.
The night was reclaimed from darkness
And a song was played for me, by you.
I smiled at knowing this and stayed
So you could hear my soul calling.
At the very end of the New Testament John described the holy of holies that he saw in his vision. There was the throne of God and the Lamb, there was the river of the water of life, and there was the tree of life. The servants of God and the Lamb saw his face and had his name on their foreheads. They stood in a place of perpetual heavenly light, needing neither lamp no sun, and the reigned fore ever (Rev.22.1-5). For the first Christians, this was their vision of heaven.
They were standing in the temple, but not the temple rebuilt by Herod and completed only a few years earlier. They were standing in the temple as it should have been, as it had once been and as they hoped it soon would be, because in their vision they were standing in the true temple. The temple they knew – or had known, since there is no way of dating this vision – had neither the heavenly throne nor the tree of life in the holy of holies. Josephus says that at the end of the second temple period, the holy of holies was empty.
In another part of the vision of the temple, John saw the ark (Rev.11.19) which had been lost for centuries. Later tradition remembered it had disappeared in the time of King Josiah, during the temple purges of 623 BCE. It would be restored in the time of the Messiah, along with the other things that had been in the first temple but not in the second: the fire, the menorah, the Spirit and the cherubim. Since the first temple furnishings symbolised the temple teachings, this was saying that the faith of the second temple was very different from the faith of the original temple.
Margaret Barker, The Mother of the Lord
As soon as ever of
my second age
I was upon the threshold and changed life,
Himself from me he took and gave to others.
When from the flesh to spirit I ascended,
And beauty and virtue were in me increased,
I was to him less dear and less delightful;
And into ways untrue he turned his steps,
Pursuing the false images of good,
That never any promises fulfill;
Nor prayer for inspiration me availed,
By means of which in dreams and otherwise
I called him back, so little did he heed them.
So low he fell, that all appliances
For his salvation were already short,
Save showing him the people of perdition.
For this I visited the gates of death,
And unto him, who so far up has led him,
My intercessions were with weeping borne.
God’s lofty fiat would be violated
If Lethe should be passed, and if such viands
Should tasted be, withouten any scot
Of penitence, that gushes forth in tears.
Dante, Purgatorio, Canto XXX
We pull an unwinding thread into the centre and destroy all monsters.
By the silver cobweb we retrace our steps, slowly through the darkness without shadow.
The sun rises, water evaporates to mist and there a rainbow frames a hidden gateway to the flaming portal.
Paths unfold before our feet, across the bridge of twilight.
Space and time dissolve.
All is transfixed in perpetual motion, beyond the borders of our mind.
Only eternity, silent and golden, is present within us, suspended at the moment of return.
Then we are shown that our lives emerged from a vow to save love,
To rectify and redeem the moment it was lost,
That movement springs from the unquenchable longing for reunion,
An unbreakable promise to never relinquish the quest, seeking always the One
Inside, where almost all there is can be revealed, when everything else can be held in the vision of our selves, as in a dream
And the temple of our soul becomes the body in our hands.
May God, who in the mystery of his vision and power transforms his white radiance into many-coloured creation, from whom all things come and into whom they all return, grant us the grace of pure vision….
He is the sun, the moon and the stars. He is the fire, the waters, and the wind…
Thou the blue bird and thou the green bird; thou the cloud that conceals the lightning and thou the seasons and the oceans. Beyond beginning, thou art in thy infinity, and all the worlds had their beginning in thee…..
There are two birds, two sweet friends, who dwell on the self-same tree. The one eats the fruit thereof, and the other looks on in silence.
The first is the human soul who, resting on that tree, though active, feels sad in his unwisdom. But on beholding the power and the glory of the higher Spirit, he becomes free from sorrow.
Of what use is the Rig Veda to one who does not know the Spirit from whom the Rig Veda comes, and in whom all things abide? For only those who have found him have found peace.
For all the sacred books, all holy sacrifice and ritual and prayers, all the words of the Vedas, and the whole past and present and future, come from the Spirit. With Maya, his power of wonder, he made all things, and by Maya the human soul is bound.
Know therefore that nature is Maya, but that God is the ruler of Maya; and that all beings in our universe are parts of his infinite splendour…
May the seer of Eternity, who gave to the gods their birth and their glory, who keep all things under his protection, and who in the beginning saw the Golden Seed, grant us the grace of pure vision.
Svetasvatara Upanishad
When Dawn broke my sleep with a light, golden spear,
Out peeled the bell o’er my hypnotised head.
My eyes opened wide as I sat up in silence,
Raising the silver shield up from my bed.
The bright, ruby ring I had plucked from the deep stream –
Blood of a rosebud that sparkled in my eyes –
Finely it glimmered, a star pink as sunrise.
By the night river of clear running water,
I had watched servants weave garlands of wonder,
Maidens make ready for dancing and feasting,
Faerie-folk tending the flowers of summer.
Somewhere were singing the undines…. A page-boy
Whispered of treasure to those who could listen,
Spoke of a ring that endowed one with wisdom
All who would go there were seeking this treasure –
Moonlight enraptured the realm of enchantment –
Nowhere directions for those without vision –
Lost beyond time in a place of deep dreaming.
Fed by the fountain of memories, like snow-flakes,
They watched without seeing in shadows of knowing,
Drank without thinking a draught of forgetting.
Washed with silver moondrops was the mirror of our mysteries.
So we saw the darkness as a mantle jewelled with diamonds,
Studded deep with stars that traced the path of constellations,
Watching, quite transfixed, as there unfurled the secret history.
Running through the labyrinth of the library deep within it,
Lit by lonely lanterns left at strange, bewitching corners.
Racing through all time, the fourth dimension, as if finite,
Lost yet seeking – yearning – for the promised destination.
Then a shock! A shadow out of nowhere jumps to grab us:
Silent, strong vibrations make us shake upon our mattress,
Right inside our being sounds a minor chord of warning.
Dr Rudolf Steiner sends us out of the Akashic.
What could he have known that had eluded our awareness,
Hidden from our sight the buried purpose of that mission?
Who set out the stakes and said ‘go forth, your task is given’,
Hypnotised our souls and made us act on their suggestion?
Came into our mind another must-be-answered question:
Was it something in us or a force beyond our being?
How to view the source of what accomplishes our seeing:
Body made of light and indestructible with vision.
Into the New World my first message.
You who gave the Ashram,
And you who gave two lives,
Proclaim.
Builders and warriors, strengthen the steps.
Reader, if you have not grasped — read again,
after a while.
The predestined is not accidental,
The leaves fall in their time.
And winter is but the harbinger of spring.
All is revealed; all is attainable.
I will cover you with My shield, if you but tend to your labors.
I have spoken.
I am — your Bliss
I am — your Smile
I am — your Joy
I am — your Rest
I am — your Strength
I am — your Valor
I am — your Wisdom
By holiness in life, guard the precious Gem of Gems.
Aum Tat Sat Aum!
I am thou, thou art I — parts of the Divine Self.
My Warriors! Life thunders — be watchful.
Danger! The soul hearkens to its warning!
The world is in turmoil — strive for salvation.
I invoke blessings unto you.
Salvation will be yours!
Life nourishes the soul.
Strive for the life glorified,
and for the realization of purity.
Put aside all prejudices — think freely.
Be not downcast but full of hope.
Flee not from life, but walk the path of salvation.
You and We — here together in spirit.
One Temple for all — for all, One God.
Manifold worlds dwell in the Abode of the Almighty,
And the Holy Spirit soars throughout.
The Renovation of the World will come —
the prophecies will be fulfilled.
People will arise and build a New Temple.
In creation realize the happiness of life,
and unto the desert turn your eye.
Aflame with love for Christ,
carry joy to Him.
You bear wings of light.
When departing life, you
will see Me once more.
Do not demean yourselves.
Summon the courage to safeguard the mysteries.
Comprehend the great gift of love to the One God.
Try to unfold the power of insight,
That you may perceive the future unity of mankind.
The one salvation is to turn the spirit toward
the light of Truth.
The great gift of love lives in the one vision bestowed
upon the fearless soul. You, my daughter, who have seen!
Pure art is the true expression of the radiant spirit.
Through art you gain the light.
Leaves of Moraya’s Garden, Book I, The Call, Nicholas Roerich
Let us consider the domain of forgetting and remembering – the memory.
Memory is magic, in the subjective domain, which effects the evocation of things from the past. It renders past things present. Just as a sorcerer or necromancer evokes the spirits of the dead by making them appear, so does the memory evoke things of the past and make them appear to our inner mental vision.
The present remembrance is the result of the magical operation in the subjective domain, where one has succeeded in evoking from the black void of forgetfulness a living image from the past.
A living image from the past….imprint? symbol? copy? phantom? It is all of these at once. It is an imprint in so far as it makes use f my imagination to represent a reality which goes beyond its imaginary representation; it is a copy in so far as it only aims at reproducing the original from the past; it is a phantom in so far as it is an apparition from the black abyss of forgetfulness and in so far as it recalls to life the past in making it present to my inner vision.
What is the force at work in the subjective magical operation of remembering? There are four types of memory that one experiences: mechanical or automatic memory, logical memory, moral memory and vertical or revelatory memory.
Vertical or revelatory memory is not a memory of the past in the sense of the horizontal line: today, yesterday, the day before, but rather in the sense of the vertical line: here, higher, still higher. It is a ‘memory’ which does not link the present to the past on the plane of physical, psychic and intellectual life, but which links the plane of ordinary consciousness to planes or states of consciousness higher than that of ordinary consciousness to planes or states of consciousness higher than that of ordinary consciousness.
It is the faculty of the lower self to reproduce the experience and knowledge of the higher self or, if you like, the faculty of the higher self to imprint its experience and knowledge upon the consciousness of the lower self. It is the link between the higher eye and the lower eye, which renders us authentically religious and wise, and immune to the assaults of sceptism, materialism and determinism.
It is also this which is the source of certainty, not only of God and the spiritual world with its hierarchical entities but also of the immortality of our being and reincarnation, wherever it is a matter of reincarnation. “Dawn is the friend of the muses” and similar proverbs relate to the benefits of vertical memory form which one benefits in the morning, after the return of consiousness from the plane of “natural ecstasy” or sleep.
Meditations on the Tarot, Unknown Author, Letter XIII, Death