Past, Present, You (Two)
19 May, 2022
Past, Present, You……..Two
Many pupils of the Spiritual School seem unable to see this one, true life, this one essential thing, even though they are searching and yearning for it.
This must have a reason, and it can only lie in the fact that many are still clinging too tightly to the things of the old life, and expect divine revelation simply to penetrate the innermost parts of their earthly being and awaken the one true life within their microcosms, without their needing to follow any process.
But that is not so! If you want to travel to the new, promised land, you yourself will have to cast off the many heavy anchors you have driven into the shores of your life. And the fact that this is possible is confirmed by the holy language, which says: `He that calls you is nearby.' Yes, even nearer than hands and feet. So:
The pilgrim on the path to liberation from his lower self,
Casts off all his desires as useless ballast,
Naked he enters the temple of the highest initiation,
The tabernacle' s portal is the grave.
As a pupil, or someone who is interested in the Gnosis, you know the need to become a freemason and build the holy cathedral stone by stone. The holy mountain, Mont Salvat, is invisible in matter, yet, by passing through the grave of the lower nature, you may enter there and join the mastermasons as an apprentice. Learn, then, from Lao Tzu, your fundamental impediments and the key to Tao:
The highest knowledge is to acknowledge that we know nothing.
This not-knowing makes us tranquil and devout.
In letters we may know more than illiterates,
But as to the profound mystery of life and death, we know not one jot more.
Man's real illness lies in `not knowing that he does not know'. Yet you should not think Lao Tzu is recommending some kind of negative, mystical dependence, some kind of mystical rejection of the fruits of understanding. No, Lao Tzu is simply saying that the mentality is like a dam, preventing the flow of the spirit, and that is the reason why your way of thinking must be set aside.
Just ask yourself what, in fact, you are doing with your thinking faculty. You are intellectualising gnostic thoughts and your heart is mystified by your emotional thoughts. In this way you erect a dam, preventing the influx of the spirit. Yet doesn't universal wisdom teach that heart and head must form a unity?
Besides, as long as we refuse to acknowledge that we know nothing, the highest reality will remain, at most, a beautiful dream, and only we ourselves can remedy this lack of new consciousness.
He who recognises this sick spot is already healed thereby.
Recognition is the arcanum of this dark disease.
The essence cannot be touched by intellectual thinking.
Neither can the sublime ideal he attained by human deeds.
Extract from Introduction - The Sublime Wisdom of Lao Tzu
The Chinese Gnosis - A Commentary on the Tao Te Ching
Jan van Rijckenborgh and Catharose de Petri