Hortus Conclusus

More Light:

All religions in the world call man in some way to repentance, to seeking and finding once again his spiritual original homeland, however different the image of this ‘original homeland in the spirit’ may be, however different the path to be walked.

 Common to all religions is the recognition that this original homeland in the spirit does not show the same state in which man finds himself here on earth, and that this new again state can only be reached by some ennobling of deeds, through the subordination of lower impulses to the higher and highest impulses found in man.

 In almost all religions can be found the idea of an individualised self-manifestation of the eternal First Light as a trace of a profound recognition of reality. Only in Taoism, Shintoism and in the beliefs of the southern Buddhists of the ‘Hînayâna’-school is this recognition not found, but it is nevertheless wrong to call these religions per se ‘atheistic’ simply because their imagination of the divine is not able to raise itself above the unformed ocean of divine original being.

 Northern Buddhism, the school of the ‘Mahâyâna’, the ‘major crossing’, as against the ‘minor crossing’, or the ‘Hînayâna’, displays the image of an individualised self-manifestation of the eternal First Light in its purest expression, in its heavenly original Buddha, ‘Adibuddha’, even if the individual doctrines considerably blur the purity of this image. It is possible that this image is Gnostic in origin and only reached Nepal and Tibet much later via Persia and Turkestan, from where it was disseminated further.

 The ‘Logos’ concept is derived from Gnostic insight. But here, in the ‘Word’ that is of God and is God, we are faced with nothing other than the self-expression of the eternal, incomprehensible First Light in an individualised spiritual form. This insight of spiritual reality entered the teachings of Christianity where it was completely confused with the  utterly different status of ‘son of God’ of the Master from Nazareth, so that the ‘Anointed One’, the Christos of the Gospels, has been understood and worshipped for almost two thousand years as: the Logos ‘become man’.

Yet essentially the Gnostic-Alexandrian doctrine of the Logos shows with great clarity the insight in a reality which gives complete justification to all – commonly termed: ‘personal’ ideas of God, assuming they do not degenerate into an anthropomorphic non-spirituality which leads to a ‘personal God’ imagined above the clouds which is nothing other than an ‘earthly, all too earthly’ potentate equipped with divine omnipotence.

 The traditional Christian idea of God is unfortunately not too far removed from this concept.

 There is then only a twofold way for man to approach this heavenly ‘king’.

 Either one fears not gaining his ear if one were to enter his presence personally, without any intercession and so looks around for spiritual mediators to establish the relationship in the good old courtly manner, or – one disdains with proud self-regard all mediation, and believes oneself to be justified in seeking a relationship alone and without ‘intercession’.

 An indescribably narrow, earth-bound concept of the divine essence is peculiar to both attitudes, – even if you believe you are experiencing your God in a fully ‘spiritualised’ manner.

 What is experienced in this way: – the ‘God’ with whom you believe you can enter a relationship in one of these two ways, is always a dreamt up God!

How petty, and also: how arrogant and presumptuous, however, is a concept of the eternal origin of all being which manages to win the favour of its God through intercession, or which can tempt to seek a direct dialogue with the First Light without considering that this First Light, and no less its eternal self-expression in individualised form, transcends all human capacity for comprehension just as the greatest of the blazing suns in the physical universe overpowers a glimmering spark in the fireplace!

 If the eternal all-encompassing spirit from the First Light had not prepared an accessible path for all being, no human spirit could ever return to his eternal origins.

 Yet this ‘path’ is the same path spiritual man once walked before he united with the human animal of the earth.

 It would be inaccessible to man of this earth, had all spiritual men once ‘fallen’ together.

 And so there always is just a small number succumbing to this ‘fall’, even though we are speaking of myriads, who, in the course of millennia, must partake of the life of the animal in their time on this planet and on other planets.

  Yet some who did not fall into the manifestation of the animal body live, of their own free will from primeval days glowing with divine love and mercy, here on this earth in an invisible form, so that they might keep open the way back to the First Light for their fallen brothers. They are guided by one of the originally propagated spiritual beings from the original world of the pure spirit who has never left his original place in the ‘Word’ that is ‘God’.

These few were able, unimaginable ages ago, to prepare human spirits before they were born in the human animal in such a way that they, once born, could reach that state which forms the bridge for the human spirit to cross over onto the first headlands in that blessed higher-world of the spirit from which he had once banished himself through his fall.

 Those prepared in this way among men on this earth have become, through the eternal which reveals itself in them, the ‘Luminaries of the First Light’; those few who may be called, to use a common expression: – the ‘older brothers of mankind’, – ‘older’, because they would have been born thousands of years ago in the human animal of this earth, had they not decided freely, even though they too belong to those spiritual men who had surrendered to the fall and now had to unite with the animal, to offer themselves to the few brothers who had not fallen, living here in spiritual form, in order to be prepared to become, as it were, human lenses for gathering the rays of the First Light.

 This preparation, however, also required them to be of service for thousands of years to their brothers, who had not fallen and who remain in spiritual form in mercy and love close to the men of this earth, in their work of illumination and redemption; in this way they had a helping influence on this earth long before their birth into the animal.

 Not each of them on this earth is given the same task once he has become manifest in the human animal.

 Yet each is committed to his own particular calling and hearkens only to it, regardless of whether life on this earth brings him honour, glory and wealth, or poverty, lowliness, martyrdom and contempt.

 If he withdraws from what earthly life is bound to bring him he will fall deeper than he had ever fallen; it makes no difference what form of destiny he withdrew from, – whether it comprised the highest earthly joys or its most terrible woes – for he can never live up to his calling in all its demands without fulfilling the kind of life he encounters through wise guidance in order to be able to follow the calling especially issued to him.

On earth this most subtle union imaginable within the spiritually alive effects a kind of ‘magnetic’ pure spiritual force, imperceptible to the external world,

on all human spirits who are already capable of ascending, and it draws them upwards into a spiritual condition resembling that of its members. Yet there is a difference in that a spiritual man who has reached the state of being awake in this way is raised only so that he might walk onwards; he is neither obliged nor capable of carrying out the work of help which the spiritual community of the Luminaries unceasingly accomplishes, for this requires, as I have already said, a preparation lasting millennia.

 One who has awoken in this way through the invisible help of spiritually ordained helpers will, however, following the death of the human animal with which he lived in unison on earth, immediately become capable of reaching the next higher spiritual state in which those who did not fall live in a spiritual form. Their very own work presents the communality in the pure spirit living here on earth in animal-human appearance – for it receives uninterruptedly, whilst working on earth, spiritual impulses without which an earthly man could never become the revealer of the eternal revealing itself within him.

 Here there are a few who have ‘died’ to the earth in the animal and who, as soon as they reached this higher state like those who did not fall remain among men of this earth in an invisible state out of love and mercy, furthering the work of help and redemption carried out by those who have not fallen, inasmuch as this becomes possible through a kind of accumulation of the will.

Yet almost all of them, except those few whom northern Buddhism knows as the ‘Boddhistavas of mercy’, the older Christian church as its ‘saints’, ‘angels’ and ‘archangels’, – (the later ‘fourteen auxiliary saints’ belong here too!) – strive further upwards from this higher spiritual state. And thus the human spirit passes gradually in periods of time beyond earthly measure through every increasingly higher state of the hierarchies of the spirit until it returns to that highest original essence within the spirit, – to the self-expression of the First Light, – to the ‘Word’ that is ‘God’, so that it might find united within it its highest individual expression of spiritual humanity for all eternity, already long since united with its human-spiritual erotic counter-pole as ‘man and woman’ in the spirit.

In this manner the once ‘fallen’ spiritual man will find his way back from the animal of this earth to his original homeland in the eternal pure spirit, into the ‘world’ of blessedness and clarity which knows ‘life’ of a completely different kind than can be found even in the most mysterious regions of cosmic nature to which belongs this earth!

Not ‘far’ from this physical cosmic nature is the world of the pure spirit and the ocean of the powers of the soul to which the human spirit owes the possibility of its individual formation! Yet a chasm yawns between everything belonging to this physical cosmic nature and the world of the pure spirit which would never be bridged had those who had not fallen, who dwelt in spiritual form with the fallen human spirit, had not established and preserved since primeval time that single ‘bridge’ enabling the return to the life in the eternal spirit.

 Only after the completed return, united with the ‘Word’ that is ‘God’, will spiritual man see the Godhead the way it eternally is and works from ‘countenance to countenance’, yet not from without but within himself.

 Only then will he ‘recognise’ and also ‘be recognised’!

Yet even at the very start of this immeasurable path his ‘living God’ can beget himself within him in a form which can be experienced by man.

 The ‘living God’ of the awakening or awoken man on this earth is like a incomprehensibly small spark from the eternally radiant light of the ‘Word’ that is ‘God’ from eternity to eternity, and which is itself the First Light in its self-expression as the First Word, – just as it contains itself as eternal ‘Godhead’ ‘at the same time’.

 For the sake of ultimate clarity let us permit the comparison here with one of the forces of the physical universe which man has put to his service:

 Just as electric power can make a wire thin as a hair light up and glow, yet the current from the same power which supplies a city, used at its full strength, would destroy this wire  in a moment, so too would the capacity for comprehension of earthly man be destroyed in an instant, were it capable of approaching unprepared the radiance of the eternal ‘Word’ and with it the First Light itself. The human power of comprehension can well bear that endlessly tender permeation which produces in the deepest interior of the soul that ‘reflection of the father’: – that illuminating star in which alone his ‘living God’ can be comprehended by him here on this earth, but it is not to destroy the consciousness  of the earth-born with the fullness of its radiation.

 If he who has finally woken up then walks upon the one path which truly leads back to the original homeland of spiritual man, this star will shine in front of him and becomes brighter and more radiant with every achieved higher state, until eventually in the unnameable radiance of the eternal ‘Word’: – in the  eternal First Light which begets itself, – he becomes one with it for all eternity.

This is the path, as well as man can describe, leading spiritual man upwards again after his fall!

 This is what must be comprehended if one wants to recognise in its reality the path leading to the essential spirit, the only accessible path for the human spirit, the path all spiritually impregnated religions on this earth essentially suspect and seek to teach in their way how to find.

 Those who think they can show other paths to the spirit are deceiving themselves, – even if they act from the best of intentions they will only lead themselves and those who follow them into the torment of the soul’s confusion, already here and through aeons after the earthly death: – if not to the utter dissolution of consciousness, – to eternal ‘spiritual death’ from which there is no possibility of arising …

 The ‘laws’ of the eternal spiritual realm work unerringly, and no power and wisdom in heaven or on earth can ever bend them, for nothing is expressed in them other than the eternal will of the First Light itself from which shines forth everything that is.

You see the host of stars at night and cannot comprehend what it contains, and yet this whole cosmic universe with its countless solar systems is but the most insignificant witness to a power and its inherent will, to a power to which you also owe your existence and whose higher revelation can be yours in its most very own essence, if you should walk the path which love and mercy keep open for you!

 “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, the things which God has prepared for them that love him!” Nothing of a physical earthly nature can comprehend the eternal!

 May my words teach you to love everything divine!

 Only when you recognise the divine, inasmuch as you are capable of it in contemplation, will you love it! Otherwise you will only love a fetish which you have created for yourself in you imagination.

 Only when you feel, while meditating, the upward pull of the power of the divine within you, will you recognise eternal love within you through which you can accomplish everything useful for your spiritual salvation!

 Only then will you learn to use yourself that incomparable power which masters all powers: – love, freed from every object of love!

 This divinely living, oscillating primeval power from the spiritual ‘world’ through which alone life of man on this earth can be freed from all fetters!

 This supreme power through which you can free yourself from the servitude in which you are kept by the invisible forces of the cosmic physical nature in which you live, – forces which are far below you and yet are currently more powerful than you, until  love as such makes you the unconquerable lord of your life!

 Then you will learn to understand the meaning of the saying:

 “God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God, and God in him!”