When the Conditions are Right
Daughter of a migrant coal miner, California, November 1936. Dorothea Lange.
June 15, 2023
When the Conditions are Right…….
Neither are the contents intended only for very advanced entities, in which case they would be difficult for beginners to understand. On the contrary, this gospel has everything to say to the beginner. Is it not precisely that ‘difficult beginning' which always plays tricks on us? Just one mistake can leave us so exhausted, so sick and so weak that we may be put out of action for some considerable time. That is why beginners, in particular, need to read, re-read and study the Tao Te Ching word by word. If you can understand the words of the Tao Te Ching, they will aid you in every danger.
Just take the first sentence of Chapter Four: Tao is empty. To our ordinary understanding, to our ordinary sensory faculties, the senses of touch, smell, taste and hearing, Tao is empty. It cannot be perceived. Neither can Tao be grasped with our thoughts, and anything we may imagine in this regard, however infinitesimal, is an error. And neither can Tao be attracted or controlled with the magnetic faculty of the will. To the dialectical state of being in all its aspects, Tao is absolutely empty. That is why the method of not-doing is not merely a recommended course of action, but the essential foundation for all genuinely liberating work. With the ego and its intellectual and mystical faculties, nothing essential, nothing liberating, can be grasped. For the ego, Tao is empty.
The reason why Tao is empty to the dialectical faculties, to the ego and to the present state of the microcosm, lies in the fact that the vibration-field of Tao — the serene astral field of the Brotherhood — rises far above our ordinary field of life in subtlety, velocity and ability. Tao imparts itself to a magnetic astral field other than ours.
“That's not right,” you will be saying, `because it says that Tao makes itself akin to the dust.' Now you should understand this to mean that Tao has endless love for fallen beings. But are you such a fallen being? No, you are not! You belong to this nature — you are of this nature — your beginning and your end can be traced and established precisely. You are only a manifestation of this nature, a being with a mortal soul. So why don't you feel at home here? Why do you feel so lonely and forsaken? Well, that is the reaction of the ‘Other One' in you. That feeling is caused by the activity of the primordial atom, the rose, and what lies within it. Only to that Other One does Tao impart and reveal itself, but to you, as an ego, Tao is empty.
“So in that case, what have I to do with it all? Why should I concern myself with all these things?”
Well, that Other One, for whom Tao is intended, lies imprisoned within you, and only you can set him free, by allowing him to awaken in you, through self-surrender and your willingness to be completely dissolved for his sake. You must perform this work in wu wei, in the practice of not doing, in self-surrender to the primordial atom in your microcosm. This should not be seen as some kind of melodramatic effort to destroy yourself. No, what happens through self-surrender is that the dialectical self fades into the Other One; something of the old I is replaced by the new I, and its radiance can be perceived. That is why Paul could jubilate: `Not I, but Christ in me.' But as long as the ego of ordinary nature has not surrendered itself to the Other One, as long as one does not know Wu Wei, Tao remains empty.
No two people are completely alike. Although all of us have followed the same descending path, this path has been coloured by personal experiences and occurrences and, throughout the microcosm's many incarnations, all this has had a tremendous influence on the state of the primordial atom, on the condition of the rosebud and its imprisonment. Accordingly, each of us has a different curriculum to follow with respect to the great work. So in that sense, when you enter the valley of death of self-surrender, you are on your own. What you have to do, no one can do for you, not even your friends.
However, that need not worry you, because listen to what the Tao Te Ching says next: when the pilgrim enters his personal valley of death, he discovers that Tao's radiations and activities are inexhaustible. This is a wonderful truth, and to experience it is even more wonderful.
Your personality exists in the midst of a magnetic field. We call it the magnetic field of the microcosm. By means of this magnetic field, the mortal soul is connected with the microcosm and with the macrocosm of the nature of death. All the electromagnetic radiations of the nature of death have etched a web of magnetic points into this field, and this magnetic web controls one's entire state of life. However, in principle, it is also scientifically possible for electromagnetic radiations of a higher order, of a higher vibration, to manifest themselves in this magnetic field. The Gnosis, too, can make its influence felt and leave its mark. But that can only happen as a result of self-surrender, via the process of the rose. Then the candidate will experience the felicity of a new astral-magnetic bond.
Now the word `candidate', (from the Latin candidus, pure white) means: `clothed in white'. You are a pupil of the Spiritual School, but are you also a `candidate'? Are you clothed in the white purity of your motives, in a self-surrender that is not affected but totally genuine?
Only in that purity will Tao come to you; only in that purity will the power of the magnetic Living Body of the Spiritual School become your share.
Extract from Chapter 4 ~ Tao is Empty
Jan van Ricjkenborgh and Catharose de Petri
“But the dream may suddenly end for you, just when you least expected it. Suddenly the storyline of your book of life changes and the I character loses the way.
And funnily enough you need to lose the way to find the path.” ~ Dream World
