The Mystery of Life and Death
The waiting potential that we all have within us, that when offered up and allowed to grow and bloom may leave death ‘swallowed up in victory (1)’.
August 21, 2022
The Mystery of Life and Death……
Transcript
What do we know of the enigma of life and death.
What is life, what is death.
What we call life is a complex of phenomena like metabolism, growth and procreation.
Life is also existence in time.
It is that peculiar feeling that we remain the same as in our youth but in the meantime have grown into adulthood, matured and burdened by memories.
The end of life is death.
When we are confronted with death, when even our own death seems unavoidable the inevitable question crops up; what is the purpose of our existence, and if we are unable to discover this purpose of life in life itself, do we then have to look for it in a life after death if it exists.
These are the questions humanity is struggling with.
We read a fragment of Mani’s prayer in his hour of death,
“Oh my father look, I am chained in fetters
Oh my father first manas hear my voice, listen to me in my distress
May all covering and veils fall away by my supplication
I invoke Christ by his name
All angels in their glory and lustre I invoke your names
Liberate my spirit from its prison
Take away from me the garment of grief and lead me out of this world
Oh my father o original manas open upon my supplication the gate through which my complaint can reach supernature
Answer it virgin of the light
Hear my voice o you angels
Hear the voice of my supplication and release me from my fetters”
Many people believe in some form of afterlife.
How they exactly imagine this depends on their upbringing and religious background.
For those who only believe in things that are visible, tangible and measurable life naturally stops at the last breath.
On the other hand, the traditions of many nations refer to a land on yonder side or the hereafter, a realm in which the deceased dwell and that is separated from the land of the living by a veil.
Sometimes that realm is considered the final destination, heaven or paradise in which one can stay forever.
Sometimes that realm is seen as a temporary abode after which a new life on earth will follow.
This last view implies that deceased human beings would incarnate repeatedly and hence have many lives.
But friends could we possibly detach from the idea that the earthly human being is the eternal being.
Could we allow the thought to rise up within us that there is something that is bigger than we are, something that does have eternal value and of which we as earthly human beings are partaking only temporarily.
In the Universal Teachings this eternal being is called the microcosm.
Hermes Trismegistus the Thrice Great Hermes says about this,
“that is why of all creatures in nature only man is dual, namely mortal as to the body and immortal as to the essential man”
That essential human being is the microcosm.
When Mani in his hour of death says ”may all covering and veils fall away and lead me out of this world” this does not refer to the physical human being but to the microcosm.
For Mani knows that the physical human being reaches his definitive end at death but the microcosmic human being can be liberated from the chains of this earth.
There is a path from birth to death and there is a path from death to birth.
This is a cycle, the turning of a wheel, the wheel of birth and death.
In this process, the personality is born, grows up and dies. He is a temporary inhabitant of the eternal being that we have called the microcosm.
During the process of death this personality is dissolved and disappears.
The essence of the experiences gained during the life of that personality is recorded in the microcosm.
Subsequently a new birth is prepared.
During this reincarnation the microcosm adopts a new personality, then the cycle has been completed .
Thus, time and again the cycle is passed through in repetitive turnings of the wheel until the microcosm, filled with experience begins to speak.
I am of the present and the past because everything that is has already been. Many incarnations have occurred but no victory has been celebrated. The whole past had to take place the wheel of life turns ever on. No one can ever escape this self until he understands the divine word, love your neighbour as yourself, perceive the selfishness of your being, yes even more see the new other one, let him within you be the foremost. The I of the present and the past in the house entrusted to me, the microcosm, now received the insight from all eternity through the cross.
The cycle consists of two mysteries.
The first one is the mystery of the path between death and new birth.
The second one is the mystery of the path between birth and death.
We know little of the path between death and birth. From esoteric sources we can sometimes learn something of it. Then we read about the etheric and astral fields, about hierarchies, about all kinds of entities, about enchanting heavens and about frightening realms of hell, but even those authors only lift part of the veil.
It seems as if we are not meant to be involved with these fears while we are at this moment still living between birth and death. Whatever the paths the deceased are walking in that world, they ultimately end at the predetermined point of the cycle, a new incarnation in the physical world, a new start of paths on this side of the veil.
We are now standing on that path between birth and death.
We do now have a personality at our disposal with which we have to go the paths of this half of the cycle.
Our personality, our individual character and our consciousness are determined by the experiences of all preceding personalities that have inhabited our microcosm, thus everyone can be found on his own path.
Our paths may have jagged twists and may lead to strange places, over mountains and through valleys, light and darkness. Life does not leave us untouched, it sometimes leaves deep marks and scars. The path we go is a path of experience.
In the world in which we live we ultimately gain the essential experience that nothing is forever in this world, that nothing possesses eternal value, that sooner or later everything turns into its opposite. Love turns into hatred, light into darkness , happiness into grief.
It is a path that sooner or later in this life or in the life of another personality in our microcosm will lead to the realization freedom, real happiness, true peace cannot be found in this world, neither on this side nor on yonder side of the veil of birth and death.
The personality experiences that it becomes bogged down in its efforts in this world and begins to experience this world as a prison from which it wants to escape, and begins to search for a solution.
This is what Goethe refers to in the following lines,
“For a long time life was a struggle, finally I gave it up.
The old human being is demolished and the new one is rising up.
If this doesn't suit you yet, dying unto new life, you are a sad companion in earth's dark realms”
The human being who gains the insight that this world with its cycle of birth and death is a prison is longing for liberation from it.
This is possible on the basis of a divine nucleus that is present in every human heart. It is the divine spark, the nucleus of the microcosm which does not originate from this world of cycles, but from the divine world.
Outside space and time, outside the world of this and yonder-side, the Spirit, the world of God, of the absolute, Atman can be found.
The divine spark in the human being, the spiritual principle in the centre of the microcosm, corresponds to the world of God within ourselves.
The spiritual principle cannot be manifested in the physical world in the world of time and space and is yearning to return to its divine origin.
When the personality begins to hear the call of this inner longing and gives up the control from the I from its own free will and surrenders it to the divine spark in his heart, then he begins to correspond to his purpose of life.
In that case the process of dying will have a totally different result because during life the emphasis has been shifted from being directed on material, mortal nature, to eternal values.
Then another incarnation is no longer necessary and the microcosm will experience a continuous development free from the wheel of birth and death.
Jan van Rijckenborgh wrote in the book Elementary Philosophy of the Modern Rosycross,
“We saw that life cannot be maintained here. The repeated immersion in death shows that the great lesson we have to learn has not yet been learnt, and that humanity has not yet begun the process of regeneration. The lesson has to be learned here because it is the ‘here’ that gives us the complete threefold personality as to consciousness, soul and body. It is in this condition that the new body, the heavenly body has to be built. That is why the human being, the microcosm, is bound to the wheel. That is why death is always followed by the manifestation of a new personality. That is why every manifestation of a new personality constitutes a new chance of liberation for the microcosm. Only when a human being has learned to build his heavenly body and has made progress with it will the moment come for him that he is liberated from the wheel. Then his death will be a resurrection in the Kingdom of Heaven, in the divine order.”
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(1) 1 Corinthians 15
‘I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For the perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and the mortal must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is thy victory?’ ‘O death, where is thy sting?’