Soul that enables the rise to happen. We don’t have to get rid of problems, but rather transmute them by seeing them as teaching aids.
So the silver key of science that The High Priestess holds in her hand symbolises all the qualities that have lifted us right up to a refined level of concrete knowledge. Though it is refined the knowl edge is still dogma; for example, we have a fixed idea that a plant is a plant and it grows like this or that, according to its species and its chemistry with the soil and the light. While a thing is seen sci-entifically it is a dogma, whether it is religion or science. Because of this we know that the next initiation has to happen from within, for there is no deeper truth than the one that comes from our inner chemistry, just as there is no possible plant unless the seed is taken from the heart of the plant so it can unfold into the flower and the fruit. When we have used all these beautiful social, initiatic paths at the level of matter, we have to kill the perception of ourselves as we are at that time, so as to be reborn into a different awareness; this is what we mean by the initiate killing his initiator. The plant in our example is then seen or perceived as a specific symbol of sacrifice; a gift, rather than what it is seen as purely biologically.
The initiate, having found his inner truth, has to take it beyond the God of religion, or the God that took him to where he is. He must rise above all dogma, wherever it comes from, in order to have a vision beyond his own preoccupation. This is initiation – to merge with a higher vibration of perception. Science is fantastic, because it is the job of the intellect to name everything, so that we know the body of the God we live in at the physical and chemical level. In the same way, religion is wonderful because there are tens of mil lions of people on the planet who need to be carried and protected by a structure. A religious service is wonderful, although if we rely on it to feel comforted and protected we have to recognise this as a need. We have to learn to participate humbly in its symbolism, rather than participating because it is beautiful and makes us feel better. It doesn’t matter which faith it is, all religious services are touching, because it is about the Soul of mankind moving towards God through a structure, which is as old as the beginning of the rise of consciousness in nature and it is beautiful. However, the true transformation can only happen inside, in silence. ‘The word is sil ver and the silence is golden’ – the word is the translation through the intellect and then silence is golden, because the understanding is complete and undiluted by the poverty of the intellect.
‘The Word’ is a teaching, given by a teacher or master. Silence is a re-thinking of the word, so that it can be assimilated by the pupil for his own understanding. It is a harmonious value that he vibrates with and can in turn pass on. We have all read books that have moved us, because we recognised truth in them and realised that we are made of that truth and can appropriate it. It doesn’t matter who has written or said these truths, we feel the duty to pass them on because they changed us.
If we repeat what is read in a book in our own words as we feel it and know it, it will have a hundred times more value than read ing directly from the book, because it will be Soul given, rather than intellectually sent. That is the power of transmutation. An exam ple is a great and beautiful sentence sounded by a poet or master; we take it in and resonate with it in the cave of the heart, so bringing another facet to it and making it more beautiful. Then when it comes through us it is able to touch somebody else. If we find something that resonates in us, it is our duty to bring a specific sound out of that inner resonance. Only when we are ready to see the great truths, will they come and vibrate in us. The will is there in the heart of every atom of life and for a while nobody resonates with its sound, then suddenly some of us do and start sounding, so that somebody else picks it up. This is how more and more sound is created; it is truly bringing the word of God right into every breath of everyday life. Some people might hear us and say; “Yes, that is it, I’m going to start a business at the corner of the street and feed the poor”. They are interpreting that particular sounding in their own way and yet the original great sentence was, ‘I am the bread and I am the life’. They have translated it into something practical and that translation has come from within them, which is why it is important to only follow the esoteric way from within. Silence is golden, but silence without the silver of the intellect doesn’t communicate its peace to the ones who need the vibration of the teaching and the word.
When we have completely exhausted the experiences of life through seeking and nothing has worked, then we are at the begin ning of the threshold and realise that ‘life is going to do it for us’. If all the exoteric ways weren’t there, we wouldn’t get to the end of that lane, for once we have tried everything and it hasn’t satis-fied us, we can scratch our heads and realise there is something else. When that is done, we can become our own teacher. One of the great beauties of experiencing as much as we can is that event ually we realise that there is no satisfaction and nothing has come out of all the experience. We can go and learn from another book of knowledge and it will just be the same, so eventually we realise that all these things are superficial and that knowledge, pleasure, dogma and using the physical, the form and the intellect, ulti mately gets us nowhere. People, who make the biggest mistakes in an experiential way, can often cut the link with the superficial form more quickly.
Once all this is seen and it is understood that the value of it is only superficial, we should ask ourselves; “Which law drives life that make us so subservient to what holds the material in place?” Whenever that question is asked, we are then starting on the occult path. The question might not be asked again for another 40 years, or 40 lives, but there is hope because it has been felt and sounded. From that first question the man will not stop searching, even if he takes a lot of holidays in between. He is very much in the dark to start with and just going with his feelings like a blind man, trying to convince himself that what he has done in the past isn’t futile or worthless, so he will say that maybe the past is real life. He has to recognise all his weaknesses, temptations and hates, so he has to start to hate everything that his life has been, as he contrasts it with where he wants to go. He has been in the profane world, the world of the superficiality of matter, form and greed and then he begins to think that there has got to be something else, so he starts looking. He goes deeper and deeper; he starts to hate what is in his mind, seeing it as mediocre and manipulative. All his past and the way he has always lead his life, suddenly looks very gross and ugly and he starts hating what he had previously loved, to the point of losing his Spirit. If we don’t do it like that, we don’t do it properly and we are not good searchers. He will keep on until he gets to the inner door of the temple of Solomon, the Holy of Holies, where only the high priests go. The higher mind reaches the depth of all the experiences of the human heart, where the love/wisdom princess awaits her knights in shining light.
