Group Souls

Reincarnation: An immense and subtle subject. Very few of those now here are in full incarnation; that is to say, the Ego sends down a different ray from itself, one at a time, for the gaining of discipline and experience. It is for this reason that memories of past lives on earth are so very difficult to recover. Ultimately, the Ego absorbs all its rays, and then when the individual’s evolution on this planet is nearing completion sends down into incarnation its completed soul as a single entity.

At least thirty per cent, probably more, of those now on earth are not yet even individualised, being still parts of a group soul. There is no fixed standard by which the umber of incarnations can be gauged, and this number varies in different cases, largely in accordance with the state of each Ego’s development before the present twenty five thousand year round of evolution began.

One who has started seriously on the path of selfless service can call down from the Ego whichever particular rays are needed for the work in hand.

Most people hate the idea that the complete Entity does not incarnate until many separate sections have experienced a series of earthly lives. Those who in a material sense feel complete are the more likely to cut themselves off from communion with their Mother soul. Yet many have the urge to seek out and follow a ‘teacher’, one who is, like themselves, in incarnation. I think it is in Matthew (ch 23) that Jesus roundly exhorts his followers to ‘call no man your father upon the earth….neither be ye called masters’ (or teacher, in some modern versions of the NT). And is all this hunting of the Guru more reprehensible than the flitting from medium to medium, intent on the same quest?

‘Seek and ye shall find’ should be interpreted almost exclusively as a seeking within, that is, a strengthening of the link between one’s incarnated self and one’s whole self; through which a direct road is opened between man and his Creator.

Wellesley Tudor Pole, Letters to Rosamond Lehmann

Miracles of the One Thing

True, without error, certain and most true: that which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, to perform the miracles of the One Thing.

And as all things were from One, by the meditation of One, so from this One Thing come all things by adaptation. Its father is the Sun, its mother is the Moon, the wind carried it in its belly, the nurse thereof is the Earth.

It is the father of all perfection and the consummation of the whole world. Its power is integral if it be turned to Earth.

Thou shalt separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the coarse, gently and with much ingenuity. It ascends from Earth to heaven and descends again to Earth, and receives the power of the superiors and the inferiors.

Thus thou hast the glory of the whole world; therefore let all obscurity flee before thee. This is the strong fortitude of all fortitude, overcoming every subtle and penetrating every solid thing. Thus the world was created. Hence are all wonderful adaptations, of which this is the manner.

Therefore am I called Hermes the Thrice Great, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That is finished which I have to say concerning the operation of the Sun.

Tabula Smaragdina

Conjunction of the Mind

My love is of a birth as rare
As ’tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrranic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant Poles have placed
(Though Love’s whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.

As lines (so loves) oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

The Definition of Love, Andrew Marvell

Drifting

We cannot keep the gold of yesterday;

To-day’s dun clouds we cannot role away.

Now the long, wailing flight of geese brings autumn in its train,

So to the view-tower cup in hand to fill and drink again,

And dream of the great singers of the past,

Their fadeless lines of fire and beauty cast.

I too have felt the wild-bird thrill of song behind the bars,

but these have brushed the world aside and walked amid the stars.

In vain we cleave the torrent’s thread with steel,

In vain we drink to drown the drink we feel;

When man’s desire with fate doth war this, this avails alone –

To hoist the sail and let the gale and the waters bear us on.

Drifting, Li Po

Abode of the Magi

When you hear the lovers’ words, think them not a mistake
You don’t recognize these words, the error must be your take.
The here and hereafter cannot tame my spirit and soul
Praise God for all the intrigue in my mind that is at stake.
I know not who resides within my heart
Though I am silent, he must shake and quake.
My heart went through the veil, play a song
Hark, my fate, this music I must make.
I paid no heed, worldly affairs I forsake
It is for your beauty, beauty of the world I partake.
My heart is on fire, I am restless and awake
To the tavern to cure my hundred day headache.
My bleeding heart has left its mark in the temple
You have every right to wash my body in a wine lake.
In the abode of the Magi, I am welcome because
The fire that never dies, in my heart is awake.
What was the song the minstrel played?
My life is gone, but breathing, I still fake!
Within me last night, the voice of your love did break
Hafiz’s breast still quivers and shakes for your sake.

Hafiz

The Second Coming

What does the Coming Mean?

Christians expect this manifestation to be clothed in the form of Jesus. Muslims anticipate the return of their own great Prophet. The Jews are looking forward to the arrival in their midst of a modern manifestation of Jehovah. Followers of other oriental faiths are imbued with similar expectations, in accordance with the prophetic tenets of the religion to which they belong. Expectation is world wide and by no means confined to any one section of the human race. The Bahais are convinced that this universal ‘Coming’ has already happened and that the founder of their faith Baha’u’llah, arrived among us last century, in fulfillment of the Promise made by Jesus, the Christ, nearly 2,000 years ago.

I should like to turn your attention to a wider and more extensive concept of the ‘Coming of the Lord’ in these latter times. I do not interpret this coming as a single event, fixed immutably in history for a particular moment in time and space.

In my view this Advent consists of a long series of cosmic and mundane happenings, that may well extend over a period of at least 100 years of our ‘time’. I have touched upon this thesis in ‘A Man Seen Afar’ in relation to the incarnation of Jesus in Palestine to herald the birth of the Christian era. His Coming had been in process for the best part of a century, before his bodily arrival on earth. During this period, cosmic and spiritual movements were taking place in regions beyond our ken, preparing the way and the conditions for hte personal arrival of the Master. Details of these preparations cannot be defined in human terms – they included the release of a particular and specific wave of spiritual energy, which was destined to bring a measure of enlightenment into human consciousness: to create a leaven of a kind that would enable the Christ Spirit through Jesus, to carry out its mission, when the time came for Jesus to walk bodily among us. In my view, similar happenings have always preceded the descent to earth levels of great messengers from the mind of the Creator and from time immemorial.

Now let us return to our times. I have spoken of what Christians refer to as the Second Coming, adding that, in my view, it is already here. By this I mean that the influx of a fresh wave of cosmic energy is now among us, available for immediate use in our daily lives.

The Coming is gradual, unrelenting and still far from its culmination. The first evidence of its presence and influence is to be seen in the mighty fermentation now so apparent in the hearts and minds of many millions everywhere, and especially among the younger generation. Fermentation of this kind is a cleansing process, involving, to use a trite phrase, the shattering of many old bottles and formal outworn beliefs. It is a process which causes unrest, tribulation, revolution and in so doing, its Divine purpose is obscured from the eyes and minds of all those who are ‘Asleep in matter’. Behind and within all this turmoil, the discerning can perceive that a ‘Coming’ is now in process of manifesting here and now. The vast movements influencing human consciousness inwardly herald the dawn of a new Era and cannot be stayed, or prevented from ultimate fulfillment.

The culmination of this coming may well be already on the horizon – beyond time and space conditions this culmination has in fact reached its fulfillment, but we who are at present confined in time and space, are aware of this and await mundane events to prove it concretely and to our limited understanding.

Wellesley Tudor Pole, God is Love

Tsimtsum

Let us turn now to the idea of tsimtsum – the ‘withdrawal of God’ in the Lurianic school of the Cabbala. The doctrine of tsimtsum reveals one of the ‘three mysteries’ in the Cabbala: sod hajichud, the mystery of union; sod hatsimtsum, the mystery of concentration or divine withdrawal; sod hagilgul, the mystery of reincarnation or the ‘revolution of souls’. The two other ‘mysteries’ – the mystery of union and that of the revolution of souls – will be treated later, in other letters. Concerning the ‘mystery of the divine withdrawal (or concentration)’ which interests us here, it is a question of the thesis that the existence of the universe is rendered possible by the act of contraction of God within himself. God made a ‘place’ for the world in abandoning a region interior to himself.

The first act of En-Soph, the Infinite Being, is therefore not a step outside but a step inside, a movemetn of recoil, of falling back upon oneself, of withdrawing into oneself. Instead of emanation we have the opposite, contraction…The first act of all is not an act of revelation but an act of limitation. Only in the second act does God send out a ray of His light and begin His revelation, or rather His unfolding as God the Creator, in the primordial space of His own creation. More than that, every new act of emanation and manifestation is preceded by one of concentration and retraction. (Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism).

In other words, in order to create the world ex nihilo, God had first to bring the void itself into existence. He had to withdraw within in order to create a mystical space, a space without his presence – the void. And it is in thinking this thought that we assist at the birth of freedom.

Freedom is not determined by God; it is part of the nothing out of which God created the world….The void – the mystical space from which God withdrew himself through his act of tsimtsum – is the place of origin of freedom, ie, the place of origin of an ‘existence’ which is absolute potentiality, not in any way determined. And all of the beings of the ten created hierarchies are the children of God and freedom born of divine plenitude and the void. They carry within themselves a ‘drop’ of the void and a ‘spark’ of God. Their existence, their freedom, is the void within them. Their essence, their spark of love, is the divine ‘blood’ within them. They are immortal, because the void is indestructible. Further, these two indestructible elements – the meonic element (ov – void) and the pleromic element (plenitude) – are indissolubly bound to one another. (Nichoas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man).

Meditations on the Tarot, Letter IV, The Emperor

Golden Mouth

Let every pious man who loves God rejoice in this beautiful and glorious
ceremony!
Let the devoted servant delight to share the joy of his Master!
Let him who has fasted diligently now receive the promised reward!
Let the labourer of the first hour come forward to receive his due,
Let him of the third hour also render thanks and be joyfull
Let him of the sixth hour have no doubt: nothing
will be held back from his wages!
Let him who waited until the ninth hour
approach without hesitation or fear,
and let him who appeared only at the eleventh hour not be afraid,
for the Lord is generous! He welcomes the last as the first.
He gives rest to the labourer of the eleventh hour,
as to the one of the first hour.
He is full of mercy towards the former,
and of kindness towards the latter.
He commends the completed work
and appreciates the intention.
He esteems the act, and he lauds the desire
Enter ye all to the joy of your Master
First come or last, now take your reward!
Rich man or poor, you can celebrate together!
You who have abstained, and you who have neglected to do so,
honour this day! Whether you have fasted or not, exult today! The banquet
is ready: come all and sit down; the calf is fat: let no one go hungry! Enjoy the
banquet of Faith, gather the riches of mercyl Let no one deplore his poverty,
for a Kingdom has appeared which
belongs to us all! Let no one lament his faults, since pardon has sprung from
the tomb! Let no one fear death: foe the death of the Saviour has liberated us!
He who was its prisoner has vanquished it. He who descended into hell has
overcome it. He has struck down the death which tasted His flesh. Isaiah
prophesied about it:
‘Hell was brought low by death when it met You under the earth,’ Hell was
brought low by death because You have annihilated it; brought low by death
because You have laid it low; brought low by death because You have
enchained it. View yourself as flesh,you will find yourself before God; View
yourself as earthly, it is Heaven you will see. Regard yourself as visible,
and you will find yourself face to face with the invisible. Where then is
thy sting, O death? Hell, where is thy victory? Christ is risen, and thou
art brought lowl Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen! Christ is risen,
and the Angels rejoice! Christ is risen and Life remains.
Christ is risen and the tombs are emptied of their dead, Christ
has risen from the dead; For He is the first of them all!
To Him be glory and power for ever and ever.
Amen

St John Chrysostom

The Eighth reveals the Ninth

Write the language of the book on steles of turquoise. My son, it is proper to write this book on steles of turquoise, in hieroglyphic characters. For Mind himself has become overseer of these. Therefore, I command that this teaching be carved on stone, and that you place it in my sanctuary. Eight guardians guard it with […] of the Sun. The males on the right are frog-faced, and the females on the left are cat-faced. And put a square milk-stone at the base of the turquoise tablets, and write the name on the azure stone tablet in hieroglyphic characters. My son, you will do this when I am in Virgo, and the sun is in the first half of the day, and fifteen degrees have passed by me.”

The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth, Nag Hammadi

Destiny

I thank Thee, O Lord,

for Thou hast redeemed my soul from the Pit,

and from the hell of Abaddon

Thou hast raised me up to everlasting height.

I walk on limitless level ground,

and I know there is hope for him

whom Thou hast shaped from dust

for the everlasting Council.

Thou hast cleansed a perverse spirit of great sin

that it may stand with the host of the Holy Ones,

and that it may enter into community

with the congregation of the Sons of Heaven.

Thou hast allotted to man an everlasting destiny

amidst the spirits of knowledge,

that he may praise Thy Name in a common rejoicing

and recount Thy marvels before all Thy works.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, Hymn 10