2016 number 2

pentagramLectorium Rosicrucianum

A storm of the Spirit effervesces and

drives to deep Gnostic awakening,
for every human being
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pentagram – basis of soul consciousness

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volume 38. 2016 number 1 pentagram
A sepal, a petal and a thorn
Upon a common summer’s morn –
A flask of Dew – A Bee or two –
A breeze – a caper in the trees –
And I’m a Rose

Emily Dickinson

Wonderment and inquisitiveness are both a blessing and a curse. No

animal will wonder why it lives, why it walks around here. But a human
being will search and search again. Ever further he searches to control his
world and the material plane. But does he also control the depths of his
spirit?
An inward search is something that is awe-inspiring. Whoever undertakes
it with some subtlety, will discover frightening aspects of him/herself,
as well as sparkling colours of goodwill and love. Necessary for it is a
measure of curiosity as well as a longing to reach a purity of soul.
Wherein lies the origin of a conscious way of living? Is it hunger, a drive
for food? Is it the drive to protect our personal circle, our own family or
community? Was it a yearning for emotions and feelings that have made
us intelligent and caused the thinking faculty to develop?
Or is it something quite different? Is it a gentle breeze – something
inexpressible? A flask of dew, at the summer’s break of day, which made
you go searching, and gather roses, in the service of mankind? And didn’t
you then learn, through that delightful bouquet of gifts, how true the line
is from Gilbert Bécaud’s chanson: L’important, c’est la rose… That it is the rose
that is essential?

Cover
Threatening storm in spring
© Les fenêtres ouvertes

1
Index

4 The Wisdom of the Serpent

J. van Rijckenborgh

8 The wisdom of the Waitaha

The insights of Winfried Altmann

16 The power of expression in Athens

Observations of a visitor

19 A Golden Footprint
Column

20 The little paper boat

J. Anker Larsen

30 The Fiery Triangle

34 A lifetime advocate of the Gnosis

Interview with Timothy Freke

41 The Center
Essay

54 American presentations
Book review Italo Calvino

58 The forgotten word

61 The dragon
Symbol

63 The dragon slayer of Brixen

2 Index
 World images

When, in the mysteries of Transfiguration, someone is confronted for the first time with the glory and majesty
of the new life-field - which is the magnetic radiation of the sixth cosmic domain – he experiences this as the
violence of a magnetic storm and he fears that the end and his annihilation are near.

In this experience preserve your inner peace!

Stay attuned to the spirit-spark-atom!

Then you will assuredly make a wondrous discovery, so wondrous and so boundless that a great thankfulness
will arise within you, and you will confirm from within the ever-current message of the Spiritual School: ‘Brother,
sister, in everything you do, give first place to the primordial atom! Indeed, it is the key to your true being; the
mystery of all mysteries; the origin and fulfilment of all new genesis.’
Albert Bierstadt. Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California,1868

3
The Wisdom of the Serpent

4 Inhoud
The Wisdom of the Serpent
In the sacred symbolism of all ages,
the twofold nervous system is dis-
played as a tree - in the Bible as well
as in the philosophy of the East more
particularly as a fig tree. That makes
good sense for when we observe the
spinal spirit-fire column arising out of
the plexus sacralis as the trunk, then
the head sanctuary is the crown and
the twelve pairs of cerebral nerves,
descending from the head sanctuary
into the entire body, are the drooping
branches of the tree.

5
W
hen one speaks of
the tree of life it is
clear that the origi-
nal, pure and ideal
working of the life-
system is indicated here. And when the J. VAN RIJCKENBORGH
‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’
is mentioned it is makes sense that our
attention is drawn to the disturbed, un-
holy workings of that same life-system.
Thus we are confronted with the two
trees of the mythical paradise – they are
within us – both the tree of life and the
tree of knowledge. Man has made an
unholy morbid growth of the holy fig
tree. And the classical myth is so very
much to the point that the Bible unfolds
for us in all its clarity.
Take the serpent for instance. The
serpent hangs and lives in the fig tree.
The serpent is the soul, the conscious-
ness, living in the spinalis i.e. the spinal
nervous cords. And it is clear why the
image of the serpent is used here for the
shape of the spinal system can indeed
be compared to a serpent.
When Jesus the Lord tells his disciples
to be “wise like serpents” he alludes
to the original, pure and holy link that
once existed between the spinalis and
the divine life; to the divine wisdom
that was once one with the spinalis.
However, the original serpent of the
sublime mysteries has degenerated into

6 The Wisdom of the Serpent

The lucid thinking of Jan van Rijckenborgh and Catharose de Petri and
their great love for humanity brought them together to found a modern
school for the development of consciousness, the Lectorium Rosicrucia-
num. They did so in the firm conviction that the elimination of the lack of
knowledge about the background of human existence is a key factor in
alleviating the worlds’ suffering.

a reptile. The hissing serpent slithers must be extinguished as regards their

through matter, its venom besmirching earthly functioning. The head of the
all created things. So you may under- old serpent, its sevenfold head, gets
stand why on the one hand the Bible crushed, in order that the divine Yoga,
tells the pupils to be “wise like ser- the divine wisdom, might enter and the
pents”, and on the other hand calls the divine Will might rule the spinal system
serpent the most hideous of creatures. as its high priest. The seven lights are
You may now also fathom the stories kindled and the pupil holds them as if
about the seven-headed dragon rising in his right hand. The twelve pairs of
from the flood of the waters and of the cranial nerves are propelled to regene-
many-headed Hydra in the labours of ration as the branches of the tree of life.
Hercules - for the spinal serpent does The restoring vital fluid penetrates the
indeed have seven ‘heads’. These are the three sanctuaries. And from the sacral
seven cerebral cavities, which are closely plexus the living water flows through
and organically connected with the the eight gates of the sanctuary into the
entire spinal system. The seven lights crystal sea and nothing remains that
that burn in the seven cerebral cavi- could scatter it.
ties are the seven heads of the serpent The thirty-three aspects of Will and
or dragon; they are the seven eyes in Yoga, the thirty-three aspects of the
fairy tales – and the seven passages into spinal system, rise as a serpent, full of
Shamballa. wisdom. And the serpent that formerly
Thus the divine intervention is revealed spoke words of death now speaks words
to us as if a curtain on a stage is raised. of beauty, wisdom and love. The son of
We see the majestic and glorious work the All-One, the divine Architect, is the
of the Universal Brotherhood. We see its only begotten Son of God, the son of
attempts to raise and transfigure fallen serpents and lions. The Tree of Life is
man and his mutilated personality. The resurrected once more as a pillar in the
tree of life, the original eternal human temple of God.
fig tree, must again be erected and we
must return to the paradise within us.
In this regard we understand why
they are in a unity of seven. The seven
aspects of Will and Yoga, burning like
candles in the seven cerebral cavities,

7
 EASTER ISLAND, MYSTERY CENTER OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC

The wisdom of
the Waitaha

I
In the Song of Waitaha we are told how the discovery of a remote “out of the
world” place like New Zealand was no mere chance but that its discovery was pur-
poseful and guided by a higher impulse. The traditions of the indigenous people of
New Zealand have been kept secret for centuries, until they were brought out into
the open several years ago. According to these traditions different peoples, different
races even, were led to this special place under by a powerful impulse. It was a radi-
ating centre - a mystery centre it is said - for the entire Pacific region. Hutu Matua,
the famous heroine of the Maori people of Polynesia, and Kiwa, the navigator of
the Uru Kehu from the East, from South America, came from areas at least 8000 km
apart, to meet at the loneliest place in the world.
This implies more than the personal fate of two people. Just as later their grandson
Maui searched for and found uninhabited New Zealand, driven by an inner com-
mand rather than wanderlust for discoveries. Finally still another race found its
way to the Easter Island, the “stone people” who were described as an independent
third race. They were led purposefully to this place, despite their great peregrina-
tions that far exceeded the residential boundaries of the different groups. For over
a thousand years this place, Easter Island, the mysterious centre in the South Pacific
full of spiritual energy, was a starting point.

Rewriting chronology
On the basis of the Song of Waitaha we are able to write a new chronology, based
on the descriptive history of more than 70 generations, which figure in the story.
In it we also find an account of the huge volcanic eruption of Tamatea on the North
Island of New Zealand. This took place about 1700 years ago.

8 The wisdom of the Waitaha

 For Paul Gauguin
the Maori on Tahiti
were people who
lived very close to
their origin.
In his charcoal
sketch “Faces from
Tahiti” 1889, he was
able to capture their
ethnographic origi-
nality as well as their
spirituality within a
single image.
The Metropolitan
Museum of Art,
New York, VS.

9
Around the beginning of our era Maui, the grandson of Hotu Matua and Kiwa, set
foot on land in New Zealand after traveling there from Easter Island. In the third
and fourth centuries many races accessed the country. Among the imported food-
stuff were potatoes from Easter Island. Pounamu (greenstone, a type of jade) the sa-
cred stone of New Zealand was collected there for its healing power and distributed
throughout the Polynesian archipelago. This period lasted for about 37 generations
until the twelfth or thirteenth century AD. Through raids of the warlike Maori from
Polynesia the ‘old people’ perished, without, as they said, ‘having been able to take
the roundabout way’ to assimilate the knowledge of Easter Island.
The history of Easter Island can also be rewritten thanks to the insights of these
ancient traditional stories. According to the Song of Waitaha the first colonisations
took place simultaneously. From Polynesia came Hotu Maua and her people. From
South America came Kiwa at the beginning of our Common Era. A little later a third
people arrived, probably from Asia. In the fourteenth century violent Polynesians
who did not follow the ancient ways, brought strife and conflict to Easter Island According to the Secret Teachings of
and New Zealand. This ultimately caused the old Easter Island culture to perish in Mrs. Blavatsky Easter Island, where
the seventeenth century. we find these statues, had sunk into
the ocean and thereafter rose up
The testimonials found on Easter Island show that not merely that some local tribal again. These statues show a close
culture developed there, but we find evidence there of a highly developed civiliza- resemblance to similar statues found in
Mongolia (see right side picture), the
tion. The giant stone statues it left behind are found here only. It is hard to imagine origin of which is equally unknown.
how people who had no iron tools could create, transport, and erect such sculp- Easter Island and the Pyramid of Giza
tures, up to 12 meters high and with a weight of more than ninety tons. There is are located exactly opposite each other
on our planet. It is equally unknown
how that pyramid was erected.

10 The wisdom of the Waitaha

an unfinished figure with a height of 21 meters in a trench. They also had their
own writing system, which is among the few languages that have not been deci-
phered so far. What is striking is its similarity with the script of the Indus culture
in Northern India (Mohenjo-daro, Harappa), which also has not been deciphered
as yet.

The splendour of the rainbow

The stone sculptures have a striking resemblance to the stone-carved figures in
Mongolia, which also stand alone in the landscape but have no legs. In the Song
of Waitaha there are some, be it vague, indications for an Asiatic origin of the
“stone people” (Luke Takapo), who came to Easter Island under the direction of

THE SONG OF CREATION

In the Song of Waitaha there are some, be it vague, clues that point at an Asiatic origin of the
‘stone people’. They came from the ‘highest mountains, the roof of the world’. According to
the Secret Teachings (Blavatsky) Easter Island belonged to the earliest civilisation of the third
race, to which the Lemurians belonged. After sinking down into the ocean with the rest of
Lemuria, a sudden volcanic uprising of the ocean floor caused this small remains of archaic
times to rise up again integrally, with its volcano and its statues. As a remaining witness that
Lemuria did exist. It is said that some Australian tribes are the last remaining descendants from
this race.

The Song of Creation

“In the depths of the Void there was a Great Sound.
In the beginning, Io Mata Ngaro, God of the Gods, Father and Mother of the Unborn, Creator
of All called the Universe into being. And all those born of the stars were brothers and sisters,
kin within one family. And the human kind travelled the tides of the womb to the World of
Light. And their spirit soared free. And they fell into the World of Darkness where evil reached
out to send the Children of Tãne on trails of pain and sorrow. And they turned again to the
Light and stood tall within the Circle of Peace.”

This is the beginning of the Song of Waitaha, the histories of a nation. During centuries the
elder people of the Waitaha passed on these stories orally. In 1994 they were published for the
first time in Christchurch, NZ, with permission from the elder given in 1988.
Time after time archaeologists found traces in NZ from a people that knew no weapons. They
created trade methods and transported stones throughout the entire length of the country.
The Song of Waitaha narrates how this peace loving society was known as “The Nation”. In
the preface it is explicitly asked that the reader will respect what is written in the book. As a
warning it is said: “If we lose the storytelling words then we will lose our dream..”

11
Rongueroa and who were probably the
sculptors of the stone carvings. After
all, they came from the “highest moun-
tains - the roof of the world”. But this
cannot mean the Andes, because Kiwa
came from there. The origin of the three
different nations from totally different
directions and currents is emphasised
several times.
In the collective memory of the Easter
Island culture there is mention of mul-
tiple catastrophes in which fire plays a
Nothing the Waitaha ever did was
role. These catastrophes may have been without meaning, but the symbolism
caused by volcanic eruptions or fire that of the Waitaha rock paintings – in
which boats, snakes, and dancing
‘fell’ from heaven. There is also talk of people are shown – is for the greater
a great flood, a huge wave caused by a part still not understood. Two centu-
seaquake, of which archaeologists have ries ago they were found in the Hazel-
burn-Blacklers caves in the Timaru
indeed found traces. Yet the story tells District, Canterbury, New Zealand.
that: “In the splendour of the rainbow
lies the certainty that the flood will
never recur again and will no more
cover the earth with its deep water. In
the rainbow the colours of all peoples
of all countries are visible; the dream
has been fulfilled: the promise of peace.
Because the purifying and healing fire
is yet to come, it does not speak of the
Great Fire.”
This demonstrates the knowledge of
the elders and ancestors of great floods
and other calamities, which caused the
downfall of unknown civilizations long
before their own adventures.
Could it be that the mystery centre on
Easter Island goes as far back as the ear-
liest hazy times of origin? Is it perhaps
a source of the original knowledge of
humankind, possibly in line with the
mystery centre in the Gobi Desert in
Inner Asia? Does the knowledge of the
great floods and the emergence of the
rainbow also come from here? “In the Light is life and compassion. In the dark
there is only obscurity. In the Light the dream
knows no borders; in the dark the dream is
The upper and lower jaw
mutilated, cannot find its beginning, and is
The traditions of the Waitaha and the
afraid of the end. “
other ancient peoples mention nothing

12 The wisdom of the Waitaha

concrete about mystery teachings, initiations or cults. Yet we can clearly discern two
levels of knowledge and wisdom: the sacred stories of the ‘upper jaw’ and the voice
of the ‘lower jaw’. The ‘upper jaw’ knowledge was strictly confidential and only a
few chosen ones educated from birth became acquainted with it. These chosen ones
had to be gentle people. The ‘power of the upper jaw’ was never entrusted to one
who lived for himself rather than for others. And it was never passed on to people
‘who were possessed by anger and brought others sorrow’. Access to these areas of
knowledge was only granted to those who possessed an extraordinarily well-devel-
oped awareness and great spiritual potential. Only they could approach the ‘elders
of the world’, and become skilled in the original knowledge, the authenticity of
which is reflected in their continuous and consistent verbal lore.
The voice of the ‘lower jaw’ however is not bound to any prohibition or silence;
its stories ‘evoke the young and the old’ at the evening fire, where they experience
worlds that are more real than one can touch, more clear than one can see, and
more beautiful than one could sustain. Each of these stories is like a grain of seed;
they do not germinate everywhere, but there are always some listeners who will
certainly recognize the true spirit within.
This early culture of the South Pacific is characterized by communal peace, harmo-
ny with nature and great knowledge of life processes and energies of the etheric
plane. Indeed, the area was mostly “pure”, i.e. spiritual and subtle energies hardly
met with resistance. This also applies to New Zealand; there were no higher mam-
mals and human presence came significantly later than in other areas. This is shown
amongst other things by the colours of its plants and flowers, almost all with strik-
ing bright colours.

“All are kin of Tãne Mahuta. All descend from the red earth shaped into the First Woman. Yet, Maori mask
some children stand tall and gentle in the Sun, while others crouch in the dark feeding on anger
and hurt. The children of peace are like saplings nurtured by the Earth Mother. Seeking the light,
they reach ever upwards to the sky to become the tall trees of the forest.
The Children of the Darkness grow as stunted plants. Their minds are bound within soured roots
and tangled branches that turn on themselves in frustration. And their anger feeds on anger to
grow without design, to twist and enfold, to hinder and harm. The Darkness has forgotten the
beauty of the tree that stands straight and true.
They are the children of Tu Ma Tauenga. And as long as they walk to the beat of his drum they
remain as children bound within the unfinished mind, bound within the thwarted spirit, bound
within bodies that see strength in destruction and find succour in the suffering of others.”
Then follows the report of the arrival of the warriors, the Maori, who very soon conquered the
countries of the Nation, because the people did not resist.
Then the Song of Waihata ends:
“And we went in peace. There were no battles, only our dead. The young, the old, the women,
the men, everyone went. And where the families fell the circle of our dream was broken. Once
we were numbered as the sands upon the shore; now we are but a few.”

13
14 The wisdom of the Waitaha
Collectively the Waitaha consisted of three different nations. The Moriori or Maeroero who were
tall, and known for their work in Kumaru wood and the playing of the flute. The Urukehu, a light
coloured people, also called the star walkers, who were navigators and read their course in the
stars. The Kiritea or stone people that came from Asiatic territories and brought the Greenstone
(jade). They populated the archipelago in the South Pacific from 400-450 BC, until the end of
their civilization in the seventeenth century with the arrival of the Maori.

Notable features
The original inhabitants, as we know them from the Song of Waitaha, fitted com-
pletely into this world. They were a gentle harmonious people who avoided con-
flict, anger, and annoyance as much as possible. Those emotions would have been
punishment to them. They were very tolerant though they did cast out violent
people from their community. When foreign conquerors such as the Maori brought
threat and conflict to the country it meant the end of their culture. They could not
live with the violent and unrestrained mentality of their conquerors.
Apart from the qualities mentioned afore, the earliest inhabitants of the islands
must also have known great courage and perseverance. They were young men and
women who were specially chosen for these voyages. They sailed from Easter Island
to New Zealand and South America and back in rafts of trees bound together, un-
aided by navigational devices except for the stars in the night sky above the endless
sea.
During the decades that lie behind us, many souls from younger generations, main-
ly originating from America and radiating out to Europe and the rest of the world,
brought surprising new impulses, striving for peace, love and a totally new inner
relationship with nature, which eventually led to a new environmental awareness.
Could it be that the old impulses of the Easter Island culture are again active in a
modified form today? Could such a flourishing culture rise again, in which the
qualities of peace and knowledge of life forces are sustained and educated inten-
sively in a new epoch?
Reference
Translated, summarized and edited from
three articles by Winfried Altmann.
Published in Das Goetheanum, 1997-1998.
She discusses in this series the book: Song
of Waitaha, The Histories of a Nation,
Being the Teachings of Iharaira Te Meihana
c.s. B. Brailsford ed. Ngatapuwae Trust,
Christchurch 1994

Rock on the beach of Christchurch, New Zealand

15
The power of expression in Athens

Impressed by the impos- an outstretched hand. the attributes necessary to be-

ing old Greek buildings come and to be a true human
an onlooker is impelled Clear understanding being. We have the examples
to look at himself. Who It is a sign of a healthy spirit to from ancient Greece - its sto-
have I become? How follow a logical line in all you ries, statues and buildings. The
have I come into being? undertake. The desire to have Greek myths tell us about the
A trip to Athens means a goal in life is commonplace. creation of the world, of the
discovering the world Many people have the need gods and the people. In these
within oneself. It is a for a well thought out course. stories there are structures
path from amazement Most of the time however hidden regarding the structure
to insight because the Life itself steers us in another and the psyche of the human
myths, the sculptures, direction. A certain possibility being. It is interesting to see
and the temples take the comes within our reach, or not that many children, also in
visitor into a wider per- quite. Some people are very this present time, at a certain
ception and far horizons. driven and able to deploy their moment are greatly interested
will to grasp it, but they also in these stories. It appeals to
As a child you probably must they experience that there are something within the human
have had experiences that you sometimes gates and roads being and the essential ques-
treasure and will never forget. that are closed to them. The tion why he is here.
An experience of something average human will sigh: ‘Yes, A simple small white statue
sacred, of something outside that’s how it goes.’ But some- from the Cycladic period, arms
of time and space. It may even times he may also rebel against folded and the face looking
give you a feeling of home- it – for to understand how and up to … yes whereto? … A
sickness when you think back why it went awry is difficult. deity? The vast universe with
on it. It has a radiant place in It turns out that each human its stars? As if pleading for
your life and will never leave being must fill his own per- help it looks upward, seek-
you. You cannot give it a sonal place as well as follow a ing guidance on its way to
name. You can only savour it specific direction, a course in consciousness. The statues
as a holy moment, a mystery. life. At all levels, in encounters, of the Kouroi and the Kourai,
Then, when you become an in opportunities and in his sometimes quite large statues,
adult it recedes into the back- spiritual life as well. Strange beautifully shaped in stone and
ground but there are moments how these things go.
in your life that you long for
Left: The Cyclad islands lie in a
that same experience, for the Seeking guidance circle around the island of Delos.
overwhelming experience of Much has been given to man- For thousands of years these kind
greatness, the sanctification kind. In the course of centuries of idols were made there. Their
religious meaning is related to the
of creation wherein you could there has been drive, inspira- even older Anatolic people’s wor-
lose yourself briefly. And tion, teachings and a general shipping of the mother goddess.
Right: The Temple of Hephaestus
sometimes the moment is contribution to our under- from the fifth century BC, Athene,
there, as a miracle, a meeting, standing and consciousness: Greece.

16 Inhoud
The power of expression in Athens
 Report

marble, many in stone, yes and ence the vast space of land, him conscious of what lies in old Athens on the Hill of Jus-
yet there is that secretive smile sea and air. Where the earth within the human being and tice. The Spirit-soul power that
that ripples over the stone, like takes the human up in a wider needs to be developed. Like lies hidden within, as a seed, as
a remembrance, a deep primal perception and gives him a far Plato, who said: ‘Come out of a great possibility.
soul memory. horizon. And there is the tem- your cave with its carven im- Onward the human being must
The extraordinary temples with ple in Delphi with the inscrip- ages into the clear light, where go on his own road of develop-
pillars, constructed on elevated tion ‘Know yourself’. no shadow exits.’ ment with trial and error. But
places in-land or on the coast Man must get to work on him- like the Corinthians he, too re-
where wind, sunlight, blue Discovering the possibilities self, discover the world within. ceives a letter again and again:
skies and sweet fragrances There were great thinkers, like Paul, the messenger of the ‘Therefore these remain:
play around the pillars. Where Socrates, who wanted to shake unknown god, speaks of Jesus faith, hope and love. But the
one may look far and experi- the child-man awake and make the Christ on the Areopagus, greatest of these is Love. Strive

17
Left: Kouros. The Kouroi were in the time of the
aristocracy (650-500 B.C.) the Greek ideal of man-
liness and of the richness of the givers.
Magical powers were ascribed to them as well.
Below: The ancient theatre of Herodes Atticus at
the foot of the Acropolis.

after these and receive the gifts rose of the heart, the human ous. There is a chance that
of the Spirit. Become a new being finds a new compass. In the ship, the ship of life on the
man in this way.’ the power of the rose he tries sea of life, gets stranded, gets
What a great way of gaining to follow her directions. Step damaged, and gets lost.
consciousness and what a by step he follows the lamp Perhaps you follow the correct
long road… The Rosicrucians that shines before his foot. course – but is there sufficient
of the seventeenth century All directions of the universal strength and insight in your
spoke in their Confession of teachings and the embracing short life to complete the
a: ‘in itself-eternally-constant and helping power of the work? Perhaps you must con-
guideline that will rise above Spiritual School form a guiding tinue the work in a next life?
all confusion and will come line for many. However, not one true deed or
in place of digression and victory over ourselves will be
darkness.’ Staying the course nullified and the small spark of
What is this guideline? What Across the blue shining sea the spirit-soul consciousness
else can it be but the power of Greek ships sailed out to dis- cannot get lost. This small
the rose; the help of the broth- cover the world, to exchange spark will become a benefit
erhood? In other words: the ideas and to trade. Some- to the whole - to the develop-
Christ power that moves the times they didn’t even know ment of each human being.
universe in our being? Within the way. The captain set the Think of the words: ‘Truth
us the monarch butterfly must course, and looked at the stars made available through peo-
emerge. We can start on for guidance. ple, to people’.
this road ourselves and react The captain trusted the hands, Walking on the Agora in
consciously to the Spirit of God the goodwill and the expe- Athens, we discover the still
and in that way become an rience of the crew and the intact temple of Hephaestus,
executor of God’s council. strength and the quality of his the god of fire. An expression
Paul says to the Ephesians: ship. The sea is often stormy, of beauty. Miraculous, like life
‘It is God’s gift. Not from grey, threatening and danger- itself.
yourself. Not from your own
labours’.
These words seem to be
contradictory but indicate that
we are dealing with completely
different values, which can
only be understood rightly in a
soul-evolution. In a different
era Lao Tze says: ‘He who
knows himself is enlightened.
He who conquers himself is
almighty.’
With the awakening of the

18 The power of expression in Athens

Inhoud
 Column
A Golden Footprint
In the 16th century there was an idea that a secret rela- itself but as an instrument to make the community stronger
tionship existed between the metals and the stars. The and to give the individual person within that community the
brilliance of the gold had to have a connection with chance to draw the best from himself. People must get the
heaven. In his book The Words and the Things (Les Mots et chance to pull themselves up through the help of others and
les Choses) Michel Foucault describes how man believed in turn give others the opportunity to better themselves. Tim-
that Providence had put gold and silver mines in the mermans understands that almost everyone longs for unity,
earth and had gradually let these become more exten- liberty and brotherhood. He places the accent on brother-
sive, in the same way that plants grow and animals mul- hood in order to make the community of people stronger.
tiply. They also saw a connection between all the things The first reactions to such a drive are sometimes ‘that this is
that a human being needs and those glittering hidden not achievable, just look around you’ or ‘that is superhuman.’
veins in the darkness, where the metals grew. Yes it certainly looks that we need a little of something else
besides our normal self to become a brotherhood, an exist-
ence without enmity. If the people from the 16th century

T his idea that originated in the 16th century seems

perhaps strange to us now, but upon taking a closer
look it shows insight and knowledge. When we
apply this image to any human being on a quest, filled with
longing while searching for the divine, this idea may apply
could take a look at our times they would say that - besides
the gold in the mines - Providence has now been good
enough to make the internet connections grow as well, even
into a world-wide-web. That cannot be without meaning.
The possibilities of this time to form a brotherhood are
to everybody and all times. In a profound change, originat- therefore magnificent. We are able to connect with the
ing from the golden pearl that is present within each human entire world. And on top of the layer of all those lines, all
being, new longings, a new need, and a new requirement of those www-threads, we can place golden drops that glitter
what is necessary, comes into being. This causes more gold in the sun. Even if it asks perhaps ‘superhuman’ deeds of
to flow ‘through the arteries’; the spirit/gnosis is growing heroism, we can weave a golden web and leave a glittering
within the human being. This accumulating gold, ‘down footprint behind.

The possibilities to form a brother-

hood in this time are magnificent.

there’, is able to do its work, and at the same time create a

brilliant beauty of stars ‘up there’.
Thus there is development and growth under the earth,
on the earth and above the earth. With golden wings one
is able to fly between the earth and heaven. With golden
threads you are able to weave a world-encompassing web.
With golden feet you leave a shining track.
In the leaflet Brotherhood, a plea for solidarity (Dec. 2015) the
Dutch Euro commissioner Frans Timmermans asks us to re-
pair old ties and to make new connections. Not as a goal in

19
The little paper boat
J. Anker Larsen became famous with his book The philosopher’s stone. Bypassing church, esotericism
and mysticism, he became a direct observer of true life, as we may gather from one of his first works,
The little paper boat (1908), in which he already shows remarkably sharp powers of observation and
in which the boundary fades between the here-and-now and the unknown other half of the world.

20 Inhoud
The little paper boat
 I
It was a beautiful house with a well-kept garden and it was a most beautiful day in J. ANKER LARSEN
October, but factory owner Borglum valued neither the one nor the other. He felt
one of his attacks coming on and when it took him he couldn’t bear to see either
people or his possessions, which was the reason he hadn’t left for his office this
morning.
He studied the sky – leaves were softly floating to the ground. The same old song –
every autumn again!
These attacks of tiredness in which everything wearied him followed each other
ever faster. His hair became thinner. The subjects in which he was interested fell
from him like the leaves he watched. His world was hollow and as empty as he felt
himself. He was not yet fifty and sadly he had to cope with this situation for anoth-
er twenty, thirty years. He had an impressive rucksack of experience: poverty, toil,
travelling, riches and all sorts of pleasures. There was nothing new for him under
the sun. He had seen it all and done it all and there was nothing that he would like
to do or see again. If only he could suffer from an ordinary illness that would need
ordinary treatment. But for the life of him he couldn’t think of any good way to pass
the time. Yes, sleep, but sadly one cannot do this permanently.
Last year they had made a journey to the Congo. His wife had wanted to see what
it looked like there but he himself had rather wanted to be stung by a tsetse fly and
catch the sleeping sickness but alas, no such luck. And for the Congo, he had seen
that place so often that it was really all the same to him: to go along or stay at home.
Early in his life, travelling had been his great passion but that time was long past. If
only he could experience something totally new and different. But to him there was
nothing new under the sun – to him it was all six of one and half a dozen of the other.
He entered the house and avoided looking at the elegant furniture and the beautiful
pieces of art on the wall – he was completely done with them and when he thought
back to the many times he had shown them to admiring guests he felt disgusted
with himself, too. Rather go up to the nursery for there was surely nothing there
that people ‘ought to have’.
Having entered the children’s room he kicked his way through the mechanical toys
lying about. All his work, to which he’d rather not pay attention any more, was rep-
resented here. The outcome of his work as an engineer in all parts of the world was
strewn all over the floor.
He let himself down on the sofa and gave himself up to his mood.

21
Everything he had accomplished in the years behind him came back to him as it
invariably did before he fell asleep and he lay on his side prepared to undergo this
familiar torment once more.
At once the images appeared: a tunnel in Persia, railways in Siam, bridges in China,
electricity installations in Sweden, and now and then in between something white
appeared that he couldn’t quite make out.
And once again the whole series flashed before his mind, and again the white object
that he couldn’t quite bring home. It caught his imagination and he prepared to
observe it more closely if it would appear again. Maybe it was the image of the paper
of his sleeping powder. Everything he had built now hammered and banged in his
mind. They turned into a mass of cogs and wheels in which he became caught: small
wheels, big wheels, cogs on earth and in the water, and in between fluttered that lit-
tle white something. The wheels finally became smaller and the white object larger.
Then all the wheels and cogs sank down in the sea as if by magic, but the white
object was able to float and lay bobbing on the waves.
Then the thought struck him: this was the only permanent object of all that he had
engineered and it was made of paper. A little paper boat.
And because all the other objects had sunk he felt obliged to go aboard. There was a
snippet of paper on the fo’c’sle and he thought he recognised it.
‘But certainly you know me’, the snippet addressed him, ‘for I am the man.’
‘What man?’
‘The man aboard. For I had to be shipwrecked and be drowned for you.’
‘So you are. I now remember it clearly’, Borglum said. ‘I am glad to know that you
didn’t die because of it. So you’re the captain?’
‘Yes’, the man said. ‘Is there any purpose to your journey?’
‘Oh yes,’ Borglum said, ‘I want to leave.’
‘Fine’, the man said, ‘then we’ll sail away’.
‘You know the way?’
‘Oh certainly. The route will mostly be through the gutter.’
This was
‘Through the gutter! May I remind you that I am someone with a decoration?’
‘Excellent. All the better for the standing of the gutter’, the man replied. ‘ But let’s
the only
quit all this talking, we have to be alert not to bump into anything.’
‘Bump into what?’
permanent
‘Into all the wheels and cogs. One bump against a wheel and we’ll never get away
from here.’
object of
‘Anyway, it’s a beautiful boat,’ Borglum said, ‘but apart from having built it myself, I
can’t explain why it’s so excellent.’
all he had
‘Simple really,’ said the man, ‘it has no purpose.’
At this Borglum had to laugh heartily and he felt relieved, as if the earth’s gravity
engineered:
was suspended.
‘As soon as I am home again,’ he said, ‘I will tell the people that the world’s prob-
a little paper
lems have been solved and that they can stop worrying about them.’
He kept laughing happily. The man looked at him and said: ‘It is good to laugh at
boat. He had
nothing.’
‘But I do not laugh at nothing,’ said Borglum, ‘I laugh because you tickle me. But say,
to go aboard
with what are you tickling me?’

22 The little paper boat

‘With this,’ said the man and showed him a small white feather.
Borglum studied the fine white fronds. ‘I seem to recognise this feather,’ he said.
‘What is it made of?’ ‘It is made of everything that you have forgotten’, said the man.
‘You may be right….’ said Borglum, ‘how white and fluffy it is. May I hold it again?’
‘Yes, but only if you will also hold the rudder. Look at the feather and steer exact-
ly in the direction that it points to. As long as we travel through the gutter with its
wheels and cogs we have to navigate around them.’
‘But how in heaven’s name have these wheels and cogs ended up in this gutter?’
asked Borglum.
‘Because they are useful’, said the man. ‘All that is useful will someday end up in the
gutter, otherwise there would be no room for all the useful things that others make.’
‘Yes, that’s logical,’ said Borglum, ‘all right, I’ll take the rudder.
‘And I will take care of the engine.’
‘The engine?’ Where is that?’
‘Within you. My word, you have become rather stupid over the years. Have you real-
ly forgotten that the boat will move only when you move it with your fingers?’
‘I am sorry’, said Borglum, ‘I am well on my way to senility, I believe.’
‘Yes, you have ended up in the gutter with all the other useful things. We must now
try to find the right way out.’
‘How may we do that?’
‘Let’s say by steering for deeper water. By the way you don’t notice the landscape
much, do you?’
‘No, that doesn’t much interest me’, said Borglum. ‘I know it all too well. It’s always
the same and has been the same forever. Now, speed, that’s more my style.’
‘Yes, that’s about all that is left of you I would say. But how will that work for you if
you get to be old and slow?’
‘I have indeed given some thought to that. I think I would just lie down on my bed
and die.’
The man looked at him obliquely and smiled.
‘What are you smiling about so secretly?’ asked Borglum.
‘I don’t dare to tell you,’ said the man, ‘but I dare say you will find out for yourself
before our journey ends. What is your destination, by the way?’
‘Just away.’
‘ Ah yes, you mentioned that. Certainly a good choice.’
‘It’s the only place I’ve never been,’ said Borglum and again the man smiled.
Borglum started to pay some attention to the landscape and shortly said:
‘Let’s tie up here for a while. It is the most beautiful spot I’ve ever seen.’
‘All right, we shall stop here and this will at the same time be the end of our journey.’
‘Is this ‘away’ then?’
‘No. ‘Away’ is only the next stopping place but our journey will continue over land.’
‘What is this place then? What is this beautiful spot called?’
‘This spot?’ said the man, ‘I thought you would know that. It is called ‘here’.
‘By Jove,’ said Borglum, ‘now I remember and I recognize it, it is indeed here – yes,
look, here is the willow and the small pond in which we sailed our boats.’
He looked up through the willow branches. It was springtime. When he went aboard
it was autumn, but then, it had been a long journey.

23
‘O my word’, he said and his eyes became wet, ‘that this willow would still be here.
I thought it would have been long gone.’
The man smiled again. ‘Why are you laughing at me?’ asked Borglum.
‘That you will discover when you’re ‘away’,’ said the man.
‘But how do I get away? There is no railway here and no one will get me to build
one, I tell you.‘
‘Ah, well…how did you manage it in the past then?’
Borglum looked up into the willow branches. A small twig waved back at him which
made him laugh and he said:
‘In the past I just rode away’. And before he knew what happened he had broken the
twig off and stuck it between his legs like a stick horse. He looked at the man won-
deringly: ‘Well, dear God, it feels alive!’
‘That stands to reason,’ said the man, ‘for it felt that way to you in the past, too.’
‘Well yes, in the past,’ Borglum laughed, ‘but since then many a wheel and cog have
rolled into the gutter. I think I must start using my brains for once. Can you tell me:
is it really alive or is it just something I am imagining?’
‘That is not for me to say’, said the man, ‘for if I were to tell you, it would die.’
‘Can it really die?’, said Borglum. ‘Then it must be alive.’
The man had to laugh again.
‘Ah, yes, there we have it. If you people can attach a logical explanation you are sure
of your business. Very entertaining.’
‘But we do try and research if the logic holds water in practise.’
‘Well, give it a try then’, said the man ‘and see if you can ride it.’
At the same moment the horse started to gallop.
‘Whoa beast’, Borglum yelled, ‘you are running skywards.’
‘Of course, ‘said the man, ‘for it is part of a tree that grows upward into the sky. Take
care you don’t get dizzy.’
‘Dizzy - me? I have flown before, my friend.’
The horse took him high into the sky. Borglum took a deep breath. It was as if
he had come outside on a beautiful morning and that first deep breath had taken
away all his tiredness. And so it continued. Every breath was an expansion. Borglum
thought to himself: ‘How strange. It stands to reason that there is always something
that precedes a first breath but I don’t really understand how this … in practise… oh
pardon me!’
Surprised and overwhelmed he bowed. Right before him, under a willow, stood a
young woman and she was so beautiful that he thought she must have been created
from the source from which women have received their beauty from the beginning
of time. He just stood and stared at her and couldn’t get a word to pass his lips. He
had completely forgotten all and everything and was completely gone.
‘You were deliberating something’, she said.
‘Uh yes’, he said, ‘that was only…that was something to do with my breathing…
this freshness – I couldn’t fathom why it didn’t fade.’
“That is because everything here either comes into existence or is resurrected,’ she
replied.
‘Comes into existence or is resurrected?’
‘Yes, there is eternal resurrection here,’ she said.

24 The little paper boat

 J. Anker Larsen

‘You use out-dated terms’, he said. ‘Do you mean to say that one always gets up
again, as when one goes to bed?’
She laughed: ‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘Where actually are we here?’ he asked.
‘In heaven,’ she replied simply.
‘What!’
She just looked at him quietly and therefore he continued:
‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so, young lady, but I am a well-educated man and
I conform to the modern way of thinking and I can assure you that in our cosmos
there is no place for a heaven.’
‘Heaven is within everyone,’ she replied.
‘There you go again with those outmoded terms.’
‘Would you know a better way to express it?’
‘No - oh, I have to admit I don’t – this freshness… this mildness…this well-being…
bliss! If there were a heaven it would be just like this – and it is certainly also within
me. I just cannot understand how it got to be within me.’
‘Every time a child is born God creates heaven and earth anew,’ said the young woman.
‘Do you really think…’ Borglum started, but she continued quietly:
‘ For every child the earth is created again. Never before has a foot trodden her
ground before the child learns to walk upon her. The earth is green, the sky is blue
and the earth will only turn ugly and grey and the sky empty if man himself be-
comes so.’

25
Borglum followed his own thoughts and therefore did not really take in what she said.
‘But listen,’ he interrupted, ‘you just talked about God but may I remind you, before
you use those arguments and terms again, that I am not a religious man.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘you may not be religious, but you are.’
‘That is undoubtedly true,’ Borglum said, ‘I am.’
‘And those are God’s words that just passed your lips.’
‘Dear young lady, I am a civil engineer.’
But the young woman continued: ‘God said: ‘I Am.’ That was the word that created
the world. Every human who says: ‘I am,’ necessarily confirms God’s existence.’
‘I am,’ repeated Borglum. ‘Well, of course I am – but what am I actually?’
The young woman pointed him to a mirror and Borglum went and stood in front of
it. He saw a small boy of seven, riding his stick horse made from a willow twig.
‘Is that supposed to be me?’
‘Yes, that is you,’ she said. ‘That was your age when you died.’
‘Wait a minute, let’s not run away with it,’ protested Borglum. ‘That was my age
when I first went to school.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s where you caught the disease.’
‘But I have never been ill. May I enquire of what I died?’
‘Your teachers poisoned you.’
‘You may have a point there,’ Borglum said, ‘but it seems to me that I grew up fairly
sturdy and mostly ignored them.’
‘Once you get used to the light here you can see it in the mirror,’ she said.
He stood there for a time and looked.
‘Yes, I can see it now, by Jove,’ he cried. ‘You’re right: six foot – but mostly hollow.
I don’t want to see it any more and I refuse to think about it.’
He stood there for a while, contemplating the willow and the pond.
‘How lovely it is here,’ he called out. ‘It really is… well, a blessed place.’
He looked at her reflectively and wondered how anyone could be so beautiful. But
then, she was an adult. He would dearly love to grow up and to become just as adult
and as beautiful as she was. Maybe she could love him when he would be an adult.
‘When I am grown – do you think that you could…?’
He stopped and watched the willow and the pond again. It was so insignificant what
he could offer her. And he couldn’t imagine that she would choose him for himself.
‘This heaven looks small to me,’ he said.
‘Well, we can’t help it that you didn’t make it bigger.’
We? Oh well, there must be others of course that were in service here. It must surely
be a large institution. ‘Are you in service here?’ he asked her.
‘Whatever you may want to call it,’ she laughed back at him.
‘As a…a…’ he had to think for a moment – as a typist? - a bookkeeper? ...no, that
didn’t fit at all. He looked her up and down and finally asked: ‘As…an angel?’
She smiled and said: ‘If you see me so?’
‘Yes, I see you so’, he said decisively and wished he had something grand to offer
her. He looked despondently at the willow and the pond.
‘My park on earth is much larger,’ he said and she responded with: ‘With beautiful
trees?’
‘Yes, rather,’ he said, ‘though actually I don’t really know. To me, who sees them

26 The little paper boat

day in day out they are rather dull but the many guests we entertain are often quite
enthusiastic. And there are the personnel that now and then… Dear God, I totally Every
forget my business! I was rather down this morning but I feel as fresh as a daisy now
and there may be important letters waiting for me! Do excuse me!’ human
He jumped on his horse and quickly rode downward.
‘It is of the utmost importance to be in the office on time,’ he said. who says:
When he mentioned the word ‘office’ the horse died under him and he fell to the
ground with a thud. ‘I am,’
The man bent over him and asked: ‘Did you hurt yourself?’
Borglum groaned ‘I hurt my hip rather badly. The horse died under me and took me necessarily
to the ground. Is the animal really dead or…?’
Borglum got up shakily and took a few tentative steps. confirms
‘Of course it is as dead as can be. The beast never was alive in the first place.’
‘When it can die, it must have been alive first,’ said the man, ‘that stands to reason.’ God’s
‘Save me from your sophisms,’ said Borglum, ‘I am in a hurry, I have to be at the
office.’ existence.
‘Let’s get on board then,’ said the man.
‘In a paper boat? Then we’re certainly sure to go under.’
‘There’s nothing else for it; if you have to be at the office you will have to take the
only means of transport that’s available now.’
‘I just have to be at the office,’ said Borglum and went aboard.
The paper became damp.
‘Faster!’ cried Borglum, ‘full speed ahead!’
‘We sail as fast as possible,’ answered the man, ‘we can’t risk the engine blowing up.’
‘But if that happens, what then?’
‘Then the heart stops beating and we sink. And here, on the real sea the waters are
very deep.’
Borglum clutched his heart. It hammered thunderously.
‘I must have a fever,’ he said. ‘That’s because my feet are icily cold for the water is up
to my knees. Or maybe it’s because of my fall where I hurt my hip.’
The water rose and rose until finally the boat was filled to the railing.
‘We’re sinking!’ cried Borglum.
‘And I see we’re back in the gutter,’ the man said.
‘Thank God, then we have firm ground again,’ said Borglum and ran off.
From time to time he stumbled and fell over a wheel and he often hurt his right hip
on a cog. The last time he fell he woke up and looked about him wonderingly.
His right hip still hurt him. He got up and rubbed the sore spot.
He had lain on a length of rails of a toy railway.
‘That damned business,’ he grumbled.
‘Are you awake, father? You dozed off.’
Paul, his little son, had entered the room.
‘Yes, …I have. I believe I have been under sail,’ said Borglum and then stared with
fascination at the floor where something white lay.
He brought his hand to his head and carefully asked in a hushed voice: ‘Paul, my
boy, tell me – that piece of white there… what is it?’
‘That is the conical hat of Pierrot,’ said Paul.

27
‘Ah yes, now I see,’ said Borglum relieved. ‘For a moment I really thought it was a
paper boat.’
‘That it is, too,’ said Paul – ‘if I fold the point inward. If I pull it out it is the pointed
hat again and if I put it on sideways it is Napoleon’s cocked hat.
Borglum had to let this sink in.
‘Do you never play with those?’ he asked and pointed to the mechanical playthings
strewn all over the floor.
‘O yes, often,’ said Paul, ‘but if my head gets tired from them I put on the hat and
play with that.’
‘And then your tiredness disappears?’
‘Yes.’
‘May I try it for myself?’
‘The Pierrot hat or the Napoleon cocked hat?’
‘The Pierrot hat.’
Paul put the hat on his father’s head and laughed heartily. Borglum laughed along.
‘It’s wonderful to laugh at nothing,’ he said.
He lifted the boy onto his knees.
‘Why are you looking at me so?’ asked the boy.
Borglum did not answer. He looked into the eyes of his child. Where had he seen
those eyes before? It seemed to him that just now in his dream he had seen exactly
the same pair of eyes. Eyes that hadn’t as yet learned to do mathematics.
‘Now I can see you’ve been asleep,’ said Paul, ‘for your eyes are wet and that will
often happen when somebody wakes up.’
Now he knew where he had seen those eyes before – they were the eyes of the angel
in the ‘heaven.’
‘She was totally right in what she said,’ he thought, ‘it is indeed within us.’
He looked obliquely at Paul’s eyes again which now looked outside through the
window.
‘Is that a walnut tree, that big one there?’ asked the boy.
‘No, that is a willow,’ said Borglum. ‘Oh no, what nonsense, it is indeed a walnut
tree – but it is so alive and so beautiful it could well be a willow.’
He looked at his boy again and then knew that his walnut tree was Paul’s willow and
he thought: It is true that every time a child is born, heaven and earth are created
once again. – Dear little Paul, the sky reflects the blue in your eyes and the earth is
green around you. May the one never let you forget the other.’

28 The little paper boat

 World images

As soon as you ascend from the seeking life to the life-plane of the spirit,
the soul’s light and force will become many times more powerful, making
them a dynamic and active force on earth. The electromagnetic influence
of the light will then reach so far that it stills the astral storms, enabling the
light to break through and shine forth, which is the only way to bring peace
closer and which will have only one outcome: the glorification of the One,
the spirit of life.

A dramatic storm over the Giza Plateau, Egypt © 2011, ProcyonA

29
The Fiery Triangle
The first impression of the Black forest area in Germany with its
vast and deep forests of fir and spruce is darkness, but its charac-
ter is rather light, airy and spiritual.
Menhirs (large upright standing stones) and other impressive
rock formations can be found here.

T
he region around Tübingen forest surrounding the city of Malsch.
and Calw has been a highly It was built under the direction of Ru-
spiritual area for many dolf Steiner. He stated that in ancient
centuries. The light has times a sun temple had stood in this
radiated there for the past same place. This small temple was, for
500 years, encouraged by the work of Steiner, the small-scale model for the
several spiritually inspired people who later Goetheanum.
spread their teachings via the spoken or Albert Schweitzer, born in the Alsace,
written word. settled in Koenigsfeld in the 1920s.
People like Johann Arndt, Tobias Hess Here in the Black Forest, 800m above
and Johann Valentin Andrea (who cre- sea level, he found the necessary soli-
ated the mystic and symbolic figure tude and inspiration to write his pro-
of Christian Rosycross) as well as the found and compassionate philosophical
group of adherents around them. The works in the years that he travelled
great healer Paracelsus primarily advo- between Koenigsfeld and his hospital in
cated healing through the living water Africa.
of the gnosis but he also praised the Thus it comes as no surprise that a tem-
spring water from Bad Liebenzell for its ple of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum,
healing properties. with the name ‘Christian Rosenkreuz’, is
Johann Michael Hahn, inspired by Jakob also located in Calw.
Boehme, followed in his footsteps dur- The Fama 400 Conference took place
ing the 19th century. He had many fol- here in 2014 to remember and celebrate
lowers, even in distant regions. the beginning of the Rosicrucian Broth-
More about Hahn will be published in a erhood 400 years ago.
future Pentagram edition. Menhirs and strange structures of gran-
Herman Hesse (1877- 1962) was born ite and sandstone, overgrown by moss
in Calw and spent many years of his life and tree roots, can be found in almost
in Calw and Tübingen. inaccessible places in the Black Forest
West of Calw, close to the river Rhine, and also in the nearby Vosges moun-
stands a small Rosicrucian Temple in the tains.

30 The Fiery Triangle

 Stone triangle near Kinzig,
In close proximity to the valley of the of the heathens). Baden-Württemberg, Germany
river Kinzig there exists a circle, formed In ancient times it was most likely used
of old trees and massive rocks, on an by the Celts as a spiritual sanctuary.
800 m high mountain plateau. In its About 25 metres further on, situated
centre stands a huge 3 m high trian- between impressive rocks, is a majestic
gle-shaped stone. It is part of an exten- granite colossus in the shape of an ark.
sive rock formation that has evolved in a It is about 20 metres long and 6 metres
natural way. high. It recalls Karl von Eckartshausen’s
It is called the ‘Heidenkirche‘ (church description of the ark or heavenly vessel.

31
The ark is most sacred to Jewish people
- their ark of the covenant is the greatest
mystery of all mysteries: the reunion of
man with God.
Did our Celtic ancestors also see such
symbols in these rock formations?
Let us continue with our imaginative
journey.
To penetrate deeper into this ‘greatest
mystery of all mysteries’, the reunion of
a human being with God, we go back to
the impressive triangular shaped stone. A Rosycross temple hidden
Jan van Rijckenborgh says: “We know the
cosmic triangle as the aspects of Father, Son and deep in the forest
Holy Spirit”. He also describes it in his
work as the Triangle of Aquarius: Good-
ness, Truth and Righteousness. For him
the triangle is the symbol of absolute
Harmony, a symbol of the Tri-unity. connection line of astral radiations between liver, Above: Forest chapel near Malsch,
Three is the number of absolute Unity, spleen and heart sanctuary.” Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Right: ‘Seven-stone’ near Yach
of Absoluteness. In his comments on the Further on she says: “And this triangle can in the Kinzig valley
‘Fama Fraternitatis’ he states: be intensely vivified in the candidate. It means
“The pupil who, in the night-watch of his life, that the astral radiations of the astral earth can be
scans the sky to discover the light of God sees the pulled up into the heart so that from the tip of the
fiery flames shooting downwards and touching his triangle a new power can emerge which will fill the
life. The triangle, the fiery triangle of his microcos- entire head sanctuary.”
mic being, is touched by the divine triangle.” As soon as the fiery triangle begins to
Now it remains to be seen if the seeker, radiate in the head sanctuary the soul’s
thus touched, will follow the Light and development has begun. Then the mi-
in which way he will do so. crocosmic triangle in our being can be
Let our attention linger a little longer touched by the divine triangle. And,
on the massive stone triangle in the speaking in the words of the Fama Fra-
Black Forest, which leads our thoughts ternitatis, the battle can be fought with
to the fiery triangle of the mysteries. the fire of Goodness, Truth and Right-
Catharose de Petri says in her book ‘The eousness - with the seven flames that
Living Word’: “This triangle is formed by a originate from the triangle.

32 The Fiery Triangle

 Before we leave the Black Forest we
return once more to Calw and the small
chapel of the Rosycross. In this chapel
we find two symbolic keys arranged in
mirror image above each other. What
is locked with the lower key can be
opened with the other key - the ‘above‘.
As Catharose de Petri writes in ‘The Liv-
ing Word’ Chapter 3:
“ Your attention is drawn ever more urgently to the
With these seven flames in our mind, need to free the astral body from the astral sphere
we leave the stone triangle and the ark of the nature of death.
of rock and continue southward, a few In the name of God you are being prepared for the
mountains and valleys further down the ascent of the Spirit-Soul into the electrical fire
Kinzig valley. Here is another wondrous ether, the fifth ether, released by the Holy Spirit, so
monument! Also on a mountaintop, that the awakened Spirit-Soul can breathe, live and
close to the village of Yach is the 6 me- work in it.”
tre high ‘Seven-stone’ (‘Siebenstein’). And she concludes with:
Seven enormous stones of different “We therefore hope that very fresh impulses will
sizes are stacked onto each other. Yes spring from the heart as a result of your gnostic
‘stacked’, because it is out of the ques- directedness and your sensitive susceptibility to
tion that such a structure was formed the inflowing forces and radiations. May you re-
in a natural way. How extraordinary our ceive these as a new breath from and through the
Celtic ancestors were! Holy Spirit, harmoniously attuned to the Spir-
it-Soul light of the field of resurrection. May the
This image brings another passage from change from an outward person to an inner Man
a book by the grandmasters to our soon be completed.”
mind:
“There are seven different divine light streams and
so there are also seven root elements out of which
a human being must live. The ancients called them
the seven harmonies. The candidate in the Gnos-
tic mysteries must be able to react to these seven
harmonies in their entirety. He must possess them
completely and to store them in the seven brain
cavities, the storehouse of his personal state of life.”

33
Interview

A lifetime advocate
of the Gnosis
Coming from the baggage hall at the airport, he vigorously pushes his
suitcase on wheels out to us to greet his hosts. His suitcase is filled with
several books on gnosis and the practical aspects of a gnostic attitude of
life. The internationally renowned author Timothy Freke arrives with a
broad smile on his face. A Pentagram volume in our hands (as identifica-
tion) is really unnecessary. Tim recognizes his interviewers intuitively.

We are at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam for an interview with the author of ‘The INTERVIEW WITH
Jesus Mysteries’ (1999). It is a book that made it into the top-ten bestseller lists in TIMOTHY FREKE
both England and America. Timothy Freke is also the author of many other works
about gnosis. He is an energetic Brit from Glastonbury and is visiting the Nether-
lands for a weekend course with presentations and workshops about gnosis.
The world over he gives similar seminars to actively introduce gnosis.
At the airport two members of the editorial staff of Pentagram experience a spon-
taneous introduction of Freke’s message of Love.
The conversation with him is moving and inspiring.
“I am always grateful that I can experience the true awakening and evolving of
a new consciousness together with thousands of readers. Becoming conscious
means, first and foremost, to be connected with the source of Love. And Love can
only increase when it is shared.” says Freke whilst shaking hands upon his arrival.
With these words our conversation goes right into the quest of his life: the con-
nection of the human being with the never-ending stream of Love. Timothy barely
has time to drink his coffee. From the very first moment the conversation is in full
swing with this radiant and jovial man in his fifties. A hyperactive and convincing
personality focused on the essence of life on an everyday basis. In his daily life he
puts into practise what he sets down in his books.
Despite the constant background noise at the airport is he able to take his listen-
ers with him in an engrossing conversation with his melodious, clear voice. With
every change of topic he also changes the tone of his voice - a habit of someone
who is used to conveying complex explanations to a large audience.
It is the essence of a radiant personality who is aflame, who stands in the gnosis
and in the world at the same time.

34 Interview with Timothy Freke

T
imothy Freke and Peter
Gandy became world fa-
mous with their book ‘The
Jesus Mysteries: was the Original
Jesus a Pagan God?’ (1999).
They state that the historical Jesus figure
we know from the Bible never existed.
Jesus is a myth, a legend that was created
to compile and unify the essence of all
pre-existing myths about sons of God
with the old testamental Jewish tradition.
The authors point out the great similarity
between the historical Jesus story and the
‘pagan’ Osiris-Dionysus legends.
A few examples: Osiris-Dionysus is the
God that became a human being ‘in the
flesh’.
His mother was a virgin who was preg-
nant for 7 months.
He was born on December 25 in the
presence of 3 shepherds.
The first miracle he performed was the
transformation of water into wine at a
wedding.
The authors try to inspire their reader to
‘your journey of awakening’. At the same
time they raise the question of whether
gnosis is merely not another artificial
theory like countless others.
But no! Gnosis is not a theory; it is an
experience and also a state of recogni-
tion!
“Gnostics do not try to convince us of
their opinion that life is merely a dream.
They use philosophical ideas to shake us
and wake us so that we can experience
reality for ourselves”.
The books ‘The Jesus Mysteries’, ‘Jesus and the

Sumerian-Akkadian victory stele of

Akkadian King Naram-Sin, ca. 2220-2184 BC.
Limestone, about 2.60 m high, in the Louvre,
Paris, France.

35
Lost Goddess’ (2002), and ‘The Laughing Jesus’ everywhere. I found inspiration in Hin- the origins of early Christi-
(2005) form a trilogy, which caused duism with Swami Vivekananda who says anity.
quite a stir and attracted hundreds of that the true religion of Hinduism is the What actually was the true
thousands of readers. eternal religion because it includes and message of early Christianity?
Timothy Freke’s good reputation as a embraces all other religions. Even though
researcher was recently confirmed by I didn’t see myself as a Hindu, it still gave Are you, as co-authors, es-
his receiving an honours doctorate in me the strength to continue my search sential to each other?
philosophy. At present Freke appears in and to discover that the universe is filled Pete and I have known each
public on his own, as Peter Gandy (his with Love. I began to have conscious other since we were 10 years
co-author and friend) rather stays in the awakening and enlightening experienc- old and have been explor-
background for family reasons. es. In retrospect I realized that I had had ing life together ever since.
To date the authors have published 40 these experiences from the age of 12, Sometimes we joke that
books in 15 languages about various although I recognized them as such only we’ve been having one con-
spiritual topics. Especially noteworthy in later years. I am so glad that in my versation for almost 50 years
is the book ‘The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom youth I was already allowed to experi- ... and it still fascinates us. He
of the Pharaohs’ (1997). This book offers ence different states of consciousness. is like a spiritual brother to
a clearer and more easily understanda- It is important to me that my friend Peter me and at times he is also my
ble version of the essence of Hermetic Gandy’s search for the meaning-of-life neighbour.
wisdom. was also caused by the same experience We think alike about many
of the supposed meaninglessness of life. things, so working togeth-
How did Timothy Freke find the Path of His father was closely connected to the er is a delight. I trust Pete’s
the Gnosis? Anglican Church and so Pete was raised insights and he trusts mine.
Early on, as a child, I was looking for as a, shall we say, fundamentalist Chris- When I write on my own
something I needed but couldn’t find tian, which gave him no solace. about ‘awakening’, Pete is the
where I lived. I then started to seek This gave rise to his and my search for first person who reads the

REBIRTH
‘He who is reborn communes with the For a man cannot become a god whilst he Rebirth is not a theory that you can strive
All-Father who is Light and Life. believes he is a body. to learn.
To become divine he must be transformed But when Atum wills,
You will only experience this supreme by the beauty of Primal Goodness. he will re-Mind you.
vision when you stop thinking about it, A man may only seek to know Atum
for this knowledge is deep silence and The womb of rebirth is wisdom. by controlling his passions
tranquility of the senses. The conception is silence. and letting Destiny deal as she wills with
The seed is Goodness. his body which is no more than clay that
He who knows the beauty of Primal Good- Those born of this birth are not the same.
ness perceives nothing else. They are of the gods and children of Atum belongs to Nature and not to him.
He doesn’t listen to anything. - the One-God. He should not attempt to improve his life
He cannot move his body at all. They contain all. by magic or oppose his fate by using force,
He forgets all physical sensations and is They are in all. but allow Necessity to follow its course.
still, while the beauty of Goodness bathes They are not made up of matter.
his mind in Light and draws his soul out They are All-Mind. Excerpt from Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy,
of his body making him One with eternal ––– “The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs”,
Being. London, 1997

36 Interview with Timothy Freke

manuscript to input his ideas and edit
the text. He is very generous in this way.
forced ‘positive thinking’ but rather by
embracing both your negative emotions Timothy
We enjoy each other’s exploration of this
strange business we call life.
as well as the positive ones and giving
them both their place in your life. Freke: ‘The
Everything seems to be about Love and Science is an important source of inspi- body is the
connectedness.
After all, this is the essence to which
ration in your journey of discovery of
the mysteries. What place do you give night club of
gnosis lead a human being. It is through
gnosis that we are able to leave behind
it?
Indeed! I try to understand and experi- the soul’
our forsakenness and can open up to the ence this mystery with the help of the
All-Oneness, which is Love. Many see it accomplishments of quantum physics,
like this! Let me specify that. In many with Tao and meditation, with Walt Whit-
spiritual teachings ‘awakening’ is indeed man, Greek mythology, Carl Gustav Jung
the way to overcome isolation. This is and Albert Einstein.
not the essence for me. The main thing That is also a bit paradoxical. The highest
for me is that we cannot simultaneously wisdom is that we know nothing. There-
experience our separateness as well as be fore in reality it is like this: we actually
aware of our oneness. This is the prob- don’t know anything yet about life and
lem! its unfolding.
Take for example this person Tim: All my Science does not know much, and nei-
imperfections and preferences did not ther do the religions!
just disappear with my ‘awakening’. Even Whoever claims otherwise is a great
in my most awake moments I still did liar! Many physicists who are Nobel
not like rice pudding! Prize winners state that although we can
assume many things, and the laws of
Life as a paradox – might that be the nature seem to be unshakable, we still
mystery? have to stay open for new possibilities. I
That comes indeed close. We should no do not say that we have to throw religion
longer think in terms of exclusiveness overboard and only follow the logic of
like: ‘either this or that’, but rather think: science.
‘this as well as that.’ The past has proved that this does not
There are always two possibilities work. It is not that simple but rather
because life and nature are essentially more complicated: religion and science
paradoxical. can complement each other enormously!
In my books I describe this as ‘paralog-
ical thinking’. My experience with the You seem to have a special affinity with
mysterious are not something vague Albert Einstein.
or supernatural but rather an openness Yes, I respect Einstein very much, both as
in the moment for the miraculous in a great remarkably deep scientist and at
everything as well as for other possibil- the same time as a very spiritual human
ities and options. When you live in the being. I quote him quite often. Here,
moment you don’t get absorbed by the for example, is what he wrote about the
vagaries of the past nor by your worries supposed heretics in the history of the
about the future. gnosis:
It is to be filled with hope - not through “The religious geniuses of all ages have

37
been distinguished by this kind of reli-
PEOPLE BELIEVE WHATEVER THEY WANT
gious feeling, which knows no dogma
“In Amsterdam everything focuses on commerce.
and no God conceived in man’s image;
The clergy lost their influence and so quite a number of other belief-systems were
so that there can be no church whose
slowly established. There are Calvinists, Catholics, Jesuits, Protestants, Mennonites,
central teachings are based on it. Hence Jews, probably Rosicrucians, different Anabaptists and also atheists. (....) I am in
it is precisely among the heretics of Amsterdam in the year 1666.
every age that we find men who were I heard that all people are equal in the free provinces of the Netherlands, especially
filled with this highest kind of religious in Amsterdam. The population there is not sharply divided in belief systems, classes
feeling and were in many cases regarded and gender. Christians speak with Jews, the upper class speaks with the lower class
by their contemporaries as atheists, and and women write books and operate businesses on a par with men. People here are
sometimes also as saints. Looked at in more equal than elsewhere.
this light, men like Democritus, Francis I also heard that this young Republic is in the process of establishing centres for
of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to commerce all over the world and, at the same time, subjugate regions (colonies) in
one another.” (Religion and Science) order to rule over them.
Considering this, one could see the Dutch as rulers that favour equality and are also
I have the same fascination for the physi- humble conquerors. That sounds paradoxical to me. I must travel there to experi-
cist Niels Bohr. ence it for myself. Paradoxes have always attracted me. It seems as if the human
When he created his own family crest he being has hidden secrets within.”
chose a spiritual symbol from ancient Excerpt from Torben Guldberg’s novel: “Thesis on the Existence of Love”, 2008

China: the Yin-Yang figure. [In this novel an ancient storyteller must find out what the essence of love is, before he can attain peace. To

With this he expressed that the essence that end, he undertakes a magical quest that also takes him to Amsterdam at the time of Rembrandt.]

of all being is primarily the combination

of complementary opposites.
In that same vein we may see the famous In contrast to this pronoia there is a deep As long we see ourselves
vision of the philosopher Cusanus, ‘coin- trust in a fundamental goodness of exist- merely as separate individu-
cidentia oppositorum’ - coincidence of ence. A trust that takes hold of us when als, we will remain as vulner-
opposites. we awake to unity. able specks in an immense
Bohr identified himself with this state-
ment by adding to his family crest the
Latin motto: contraria sunt complementa
(opposites complement each other)

In your book ‘The Laughing Jesus’ -

who actually is this ‘laughing Jesus’?
With ‘laughing Jesus’ I mean an awak-
ened state in which we recognize that
life is good and death is accepted. We call
this pronoia. It is a sensible trust that life
is on your side and that everyone is out
to help you. Pronoia is actually a new
expression for ‘faithful trust’. The word
‘faith’ is so devalued through its long
use by main stream religions that it has
become almost meaningless. The general
understanding of faith could be described
as a ‘blind faith’ in irrational dogmas.

38 Gesprek met Timothy Freke

accidental universe. However, when we ed work place. Timothy is stunned: “So dam - the city that repeat-
are in an awakened state of mind, we are many people come together for the gno- edly offered refuge to those
in a state of pronoia. We just know from sis? Unbelievable - fantastic. Nowhere in persecuted for their faith, like
deep within that we don’t have to be the world have I come across anything Jan Amos Comenius from the
afraid of life - like we don’t have to be like this!” Czech Republic.”
afraid of a dream. To sum it up: our life is Then he raises another question: “Why We can’t give a conclusive
then filled with meaning and purpose. are the Netherlands such a fertile and answer to Timothy Freke.
tolerant ground for the gnosis?” Maybe an excerpt from a
500 people together for the gnosis Surprised by this question we search for novel by the Danish writer
Time is running out. Forty interested an answer. “Is it perhaps because of the Torben Guldbert could pro-
people that yearn for gnosis are waiting battle against the sea over the centuries? vide an answer. In his novel
for Timothy Freke in a village close to The Dutch always desperately needed “Thesis on the existence of
Utrecht (in the Netherlands) each other for this. Love” he describes with great
We give him a lift to his lodgings. Consultation and tolerance of culture accuracy the Dutch national
During the car ride it becomes imme- were necessary and a certain degree of character.
diately obvious that Tim also has many self-preservation. With a greeting to the Penta-
pressing questions himself. Another possibility could be the legacy gram readers, Timothy Freke
“What is a gnostic conference of the of Erasmus of Rotterdam (15th century). says goodbye to us and, with
Rosicrucians like? How many people His papers (in Latin) about tolerance and a kind gesture, he signs a few
participate in it?” freedom were known all over Europe. of his books for us. It says:
The answer is that worldwide Rosicru- Also Dirck Coornhert – when this nation “Big Love! T!M”
cians generally attend a monthly con- was established in the 16th century
ference. Usually there are five services -committed himself tirelessly and suc-
during the course of such a weekend. cessfully to freedom, especially religious
About 500-650 pupils (in the Dutch freedom. This was rather exceptional in
‘work field’) come together in a temple, those days.
which can be understood as a consecrat- We also think of the character of Amster-

Albert Einstein: The intuitive

reason is a sacred gift and
the rational mind is a faithful
servant. In the society that we
have created, we honor the
servant and we forget the gift

39
essay

Vluchteling in Londen. © Bernadette Szvabo, Reuters

40 The Center
The Center
Our inability to perceive unity, to know or experience it is
rooted in the law of consciousness that we can only differ-
entiate between opposites and differences. But how can we
attain consciousness then? In this article, we shall look into
the circle and its center, the self and the One. In us lies the
divine Idea that thinks and demands that we should be in
perfect agreement with it.

T
he following statement is attributed to the Greek-Egyptian
mystery figure of Hermes, ‘God is a circle whose center is
everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere’. In this
statement an image is conveyed to us only to be immedia-
tely withdrawn again. The circle and its center exist, and at
the same time they do not exist. We have no chance to get an idea of God,
but we will nevertheless need to address it. This image of a circle and the
center may seem a little less mysterious if we replace ‘God’ by ‘Unity’.
Unity is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. If we do not under-
stand unity quantitatively as a compilation of parts, but rather as the one
First Source, out of which everything originates and is contained, we can
imagine the following better: that unity when it is not found as a unity
cannot be recognized.
Our inability to perceive the unity, to recognize or learn about it, is deter-
mined by law: one can enter a field of consciousness that is presented as
different, as opposite or distinctive. We only know a reality that consists of
parts, which are related to each other. If I want to bring the circle and its
center to life, it is necessary that the central point which I myself hold is
released to make room for the prospective one single circle. We only know
a reality that consists of parts that are related to each other. The image of a
circle and center will only starts to live if the central point that I take wit-
hin my circle of consciousness is replaced by the perspective of that one
circle itself. We recognize that for instance when we make a jigsaw puzzle.
We do not begin by just fitting the many pieces together - we do not make
the unity from the individual parts, but we start with the unity itself, that
is: by visualizing that image as a whole that is depicted on the box. Only
unity can know unity. So in order to know unity I have to be one; that is a

41
clear distinction with having an image or constituting consciousness, there was
an experience of unity. nobody who followed him in his line
Hermes stated: ‘If you make yourself not of thinking. The concept consciousness
equal to God, to the One, then you will is equated to our world of perceptions,
not able to perceive God. Because equal thoughts, experiences, phantasies, etc.
can only be known by equal’. By studying it as a ‘thing’, we make it an
object.
The center as space But consciousness can never be a subject
The middle is not the center, but a space of study, it cannot be perceived, observed,
in which many centers appear and disap- it is always the perceiver, the observer.
pear. So we say for instance that many If we want to grasp this observer, we
people are in our midst. All the different make it the observed. Our seeing can-
interlocutors and the many subjects form not see it. That is why we try to approach
temporarily a center. They are everywhere what consciousness is not, as a ‘knowing
and nowhere in a middle that forms an of not-knowing’.
open space in which the interaction takes The misunderstanding that we have con-
place. sciousness, that our reality is a world out-
As outside so inside: the open ground side us, and that we are an independent
together with its participants create a ‘I’ that is situated opposite to the world,
representation of our life-consciousness. shows that we have not yet surpassed the
This also forms a field in which thoughts stadium of objectifying consciousness
and experiences come, make connections that is making an object of consciousness,
and disappear. Consciousness is the open which we will call object-consciousness.
center where alternatingly our percepti- That is why our perception of reality is
ons, thoughts and experiences form the false. Object-consciousness and being-
temporarily center of the I-form. conscious are of fundamental distinct
Shankara said: ‘There is only one thing order, and of a different quality of being,
that never leaves us: the consciousness representing another reality.
deep within us. That alone is the constant I do not have consciousness, no ‘I’ and
factor in all our experiences. And this no reality. This trichotomy shows that
consciousness is the real, absolute Self’, my consciousness is divided within me
Vivek Vilasini, Include me out II
the One. and that I can only observe division. (Triptych), 2011-2014.
For a good understanding, it is essential Consciousness as a unity is as the Eye in Digital print on canvas
to make a distinction from the contents which these three appear; it is the one
of our life of consciousness: of our source in all division, the Seeing in seeing point in a continuing chan-
thoughts, experiences, in short of the ‘ten the All. That is why self-consciousness, ging (consciousness) world,
thousand things’. self-knowledge is so essential: it shows he subjected his whole rea-
With the statement ‘I am consciousness’ the difference between self-consciousness lity to a radical fundamental
Hermes does not mean ‘I am the con- and object-consciousness: The difference doubt; at least that is what he
tents of the consciousness’. Besides, this between who I am and what I am. thought. What remains when
distinction is not accepted in Western I doubt everything? Ultima-
philosophy. E. Husserl emphasized that One and inseparable tely the doubt that doubts
consciousness is always being conscious- Who am I? This question was posed – itself, one could say. But
of-something, so of a content. When he maybe for the first time so explicitly – in Descartes was not that radical.
later withdrew from the conclusion that the seventeenth century by René Descar- He found his final fixed point
all appearances find their source in one tes. In his search for the truth, for a fixed not in the doubt but also not

42 The Center
 All people
and the many
subjects form
temporarily a
center. They
are every-
where and
nowhere in
a middle; an
open space
in which the
interaction
takes place

in the doubter, but in an ‘I’ that doubts: ‘I cribed God as the one Substance and cult to see through because
doubt, so I think, so I exist.’ at the same time inseparably present in our sensory and spatial-
This positioning suggests that I stand in our consciousness and the world, thus temporal reality seems to
front of, and independent of an objective both ‘Inside’ as well as ‘outside’. That prove the validity of this
reality. This is, after all, object, subject to one Substance manifests itself as unity in objectification: everything
my seeing, my hearing, my feeling, my its attributes ‘thinking’ and ‘extension’. has its own place in space
knowing. That is why spirit and matter are one and and everything follows each
In this position I seem to be the fixed inseparable. other in time. However, our
point, the center; so it seems that not my Which tragedy has taken place in Des- reality is not known by us
consciousness is the observer, but I. cartes’ analysis? Unity-consciousness has as objective ‘being’ but as
Spinoza, living in the same time, funda- been replaced by object-consciousness. consciousness-reality; and is
mentally disagreed with this. He des- A misunderstanding that is very diffi- therefore subject to the law

43
of our consciousness which means that In-between or doubling can see all things but itself,
we only recognize opposites, differences, There is no question of ‘the reality’ but because objectifying seeing
relationships. on the contrary only my awareness of requires distance. The tree of
That is why the one needs the other in that reality. We quote Ramana Maharsi.: paradise that is in the middle
order to differentiate itself from it; and ‘There is no such a thing as a separate (in-between) should become
that is why there is nothing that can consciousness that is conscious of that- a tree-of-knowledge, a tree of
exist by itself. By distinguishing between what-is. That-what-is is consciousness. distinction and opposites. The
‘inside’ and ‘outside’ it brought Descartes And that is I’. That ‘I’ refers to the higher unity ‘I’-‘not I’ fell apart in a
to file consciousness in just the one of unity of ‘I’-‘not I’, inside-outside.’ two-unity, and from two-uni-
the two positions: ‘the inside’ together A soulless product of our object-con- ty into one-of- the-two: ‘I’
with the ‘I’. The world thus became an sciousness is the pitfall that the given All-consciousness narrowed
outer-world, outside of me, apart from reality ‘outside me’ is the same for eve- to I-consciousness; the open
me. ‘Spirit’ belongs to me and the outside ryone else, irrespectively of my aware- Middle narrowed to a center:
world is the world of form, of objects, of ness of that reality. And that does not add ‘I’. Thus, by identifying with
‘matter’. Unity of consciousness ma- anything to this reality whether I exist thoughts, feelings, experi-
kes place for object-consciousness. The or not. This attitude, that I do not mat- ences, emotions, temper, the
content of our consciousness is separated ter, is not only a basis of permissiveness, ‘streaming’ reality of con-
from the consciousness in which it ap- but it also diminishes the insight that it is sciousness was doubled with
peared. Thus we place our consciousness necessary for me and the world in which a frozen upper layer, that an
contents as ‘the word, the other, god’ I live that I need to change. And this is ‘I’ can follow what knows
outside us. not meant as a nice theoretical conclusion itself to be one with the
For clarity, this is not a plea for the popu- but as a reality, as an active factor in the world of form. In our world
lar frame of mind: ‘everything is subjec- world. of forms, we give everything
tive’ or ‘objectivity does not exist’. These Because, if consciousness, the mother its own name. Thereby we
only confirm the illusion of separation. In field, the matrix, of all my consciousness strengthen the illusion that
every conscious being there is both a sub- contents, renews, then at the same time everything would be separate
jective as well as an objective part - at the all these contents will be renewed also: and independent, whereas yet
same time the thinking is an extension of ‘I’, the other, the world, god become dif- everything is absorbed by and
both inside and the outside. ferent and new. And because conscious- extends through the One. In
And that is already saying too much, ness is not a personal possession but an the Gospel of Philip we read:
because by naming two opposites we all-embracing and living essence, which ‘The truth created names
suggest that there must be two. In es- is a source from which we all draw; re- in this world, because it is
sence there is only: inside and outside, newal of consciousness contributes to the impossible to know the truth
‘I’ and ‘not I’, not two-one but óne, but inspiration of all. without names. The truth is
our objectifying consciousness cannot Consciousness is perceiving, it is kno- simple, however, it is mani-
understand that at all. And if we want to wing. Unmediated by objectifying thin- fold, to bring us through the
understand it, then here are the words of king it is one, it is immediate. Opposites multiplicity to the One Name
Zhuangzi ‘… that people in their separa- are not yet awake; they are two-one in (…)’
teness go searching for wholeness’. a zero point, in an in-between. As this Names given to earthly things
Consciousness does not stand opposite point has no size, it cannot therefore be are very misleading. They
the outer world but is the center of the objectified, cannot be perceived. Opposi- derive their meaning from
circle of consciousness in which reality tes as knower-known are created after- imperishable things but are
appears. There are not two: I and my re- wards, when the objectifying thinking used for transitory things.
ality. The image is unity, right then, right breaks away from the unit of knowing. Who hears ‘god’, does not
there: the two-unity inside and outside. Consciousness itself, the in-between, is think of the imperishable, but
‘too close by’ to be observed. The eye starts to think of the transi-

44 The Center
tory’. We have lost the one Name in the
multitude of names.
another culture his/her point of reference
for the environment changes, then at the He who
Horizon or context
same time self-image changes with it.
My self-image is constituted of many and observes
Ramana Maharsi: ‘The ‘I’ is everything.
The search for what the ‘I’ is, is therefore
changing self-images. What we call ‘self’
is therefore a quantitative unity, in fact a himself as
the true path to let go of everything. Seek
therefore the Source from where the ‘I’
collection of ‘I’s. The all-one I is on the
contrary a quality: unity. ‘conscious-
comes from’. Within the sphere of our
consciousness, everything is relative, eve-
That we cannot get around the reality of
an ‘I’, whatever that may be, is addressed ness’ must
rything appears to us as in relation to so-
mething else, and thus not as an indepen-
by S. Kierkegaard: ‘Can one imagine so-
mething more terrible than the dissolu- inevitably
dent thing-in-itself. Everything becomes
known in a relation. Reality and truth
tion of our being in a multitude, turning
you into several individuals, like those come to the
are therefore relative concepts. When I
possess a hundred euros, I am poor in
unfortunate ones who were possessed by
demons, and so you lost your most inner conclusion
relation to someone who owns more, and
at the same time rich in comparison to
being, the most sacred in a man in this
way; you would have lost the unifying that con-
someone who possesses nothing. I am not
poor or rich, but poor or rich depends
power of your personality?’ In case our
conscious life would not form a certain sciousness
on the comparison that is the relation. We
know therefore no independent things-
order in which we recognize ourselves
we would not only live in chaos, but knows sev-
in-itself, but differences, relations.
Thus ‘water’ means something else for a
be chaotic, insane ourselves. The I, the
unity-of-consciousness, or the center in eral layers,
chemist than for a thirsty man, a fis-
herman, or a drowning man. Therefore,
which all the antipodes are one, must
distinguish itself from the self-image that more than
water is what it is and is what it is not.
We derive the meaning ‘water’ from the
we have.
We derive our self-image from four main one level of
context in which it appears. Also our
worldview, our view of god, and our
directions of orientation, the ‘cross of
consciousness’. From the center of this activity and
view of each other derive their being-
known from the field of relation in which
cross, the place where I am seated as an
observer, the beams point to four directi- reality
they appear. In order to be what it ‘is’, it ons: the inside, the outside, above and be-
needs to get a place within our horizon, low. My orientation can go to the inside:
so in fact within our past. All our pre- to my thoughts, experiences, feelings,
sentations are shifting, relational centers phantasies, and knowledge. I can direct
within a total field: the middle. myself to the outside: the other, to god,
Just as I have a comparative image of the Other, the Spirit-spark in my heart,
others, and therefore a relative view of my perspective of the future and ideals.
the other, the world, god, I have in the These four orientations on one cross re-
same way a view of myself: the self- present, though different in aspect, one
image. As image, it seems to be inde- and the same consciousness, my con-
pendent; but there is no ‘I’ without ‘not sciousness, and thus my consciousness-
I’; in the two-unity ‘I’-‘not I’ both these quality. For the object-consciousness,
polarities have equally a common origin. that is divided in itself, they appear as
One recognizes that: if one moves to distinct realities, that objectively take

45
Girl studying front covers of Mercury magazine, Powells Books

their own place. But consciousness has found somewhere in the circle as mean- my being. Then – according
no plural and also I has/have no plural. dering and temporary centers, the energy to my objective knowledge
So there is the question: how much am of purified longing reveals the circle itself derived from other philo-
I one consciousness? Because, according from the first person perspective. sophers, spiritual teachers
to Mikhail Naimy: ‘As is your conscious- The ‘I’, as the principle of the conscious- and spiritual movements –
ness is, so is your I. As your I is, so is the ness in unity, is an omnipresent con- the declaration of where I
world. If I is a unity, then the world is a sciousness: it is present everywhere and stand cannot be any longer
unity. If I is a multitude, then your world in everything. avoided. One cannot remain
is a multitude; then your struggling is The one vertical axis, which is in the uncommitted. At the same
endless, with yourself and with any other Middle, is the ‘tree that stands in paradise’ time, one cannot any longer
creature’. - the ladder in which the ‘I-am’ presents place God, the One or the
itself in several layers of unity. From a other one above himself. That
Energy and longing qualitative point of view, there are several is beyond him. I can no lon-
If consciousness is full of desire and tiers of unity. ger get away with ‘objective’
empty of content then the vertical dimen- When a ‘seeing from above’ opens up, statements like ‘God is love’
sion opens up. The in-between or median observing everything in one single light, because then the question
space appears as a vertical axis, planted then one inwardly lives through the ‘AM I Love?’ imposes itself.
in the mutual center of all opposites. In identification with an image of god or And if I refer to the divine
this center, the circle opens, the Middle, self-image which is equal to the denial spark in the heart, it also
the I-am. Where the many ‘I’s’ are to be of the One that I am in the depth of becomes an outward orienta-

46 The Center
tion to keep me away from who I really The difference in consciousness between Prejudices and conventions
am. In the objectifying consciousness the ‘I’ which belongs to the world of Every layer of the human
appears what I am – with the annotation the immanent God, the Creator, and the psyche seeks only its own re-
that what I am what I have. However in ‘I am’ of the transcendental God, can be alization. No layer can surpass
the one and yet empty consciousness it recognized in the following words of C.G. above its own and grab for
reveals itself who I am. Taken up in the Jung: ‘When worry and anguish become a higher reality, or a greater
central axis in the middle, a renewal of too intense, there is still the unity of the unity. This egocentricity is the
the consciousness takes place and there self, the divine spark in its inviolability, basis of the mutual struggle
is unification. Because my reality is in and offers peace that is not of this world’. of the many I’s. Anything
complete accordance with my conscious- The One, the divine spark of our true that moves us within our psy-
ness-life, so my whole reality is renewed ‘self’, is not touched by the many up- che can be seen as a ‘will po-
in all four orientations at the same time: heavals of personal life. wer’ according to Nietzsche.
everything that I have placed inward, Identification of the contents of our Sometimes it is the instincts
outward, below and above myself renews consciousness is replaced by the con- that hold the upper hand, and
simultaneously in four directions. It is sciousness-self, which is permeated by sometimes emotions or fee-
the stepping-stone to Hermes’ first per- a single Light, that of the divine spark. lings alternated by countless
son perspective ‘I am consciousness’. This That the one, the Spark, the True Self, is thoughts. How many times
is the same self-insight that can be found in principle present in all the ‘creation’, ‘I want’ or ‘I think’ quarrels
in Inayat Khan: ‘The Self is the only in all the contents of consciousness, does with ‘I feel’ or ‘I desire’? We
living thing, and the signature of eternal not imply that it has been manifested are not made of one piece,
life’. The bi-polarity of knowing what is in the whole of creation. In this sense, and we are not free thinkers
known which arises from knowledge is the One is both transcendent as well as either, we are not ‘I’. Fear and
elevated into the One. immanent – as a transcendent source of desire prevail in this interplay
all realities and levels of consciousness, of forces. They determine
This unity-of-consciousness is our gui- as an immanent activity, it drives itself the thinking life by certain
ding principle here and it can easily be upwards in creation and it has therefore prejudices and conventions.
misunderstood. Nowadays, the idea of a transcendent view of it. Step by step They divide our conscious life
‘do not objectify but live here-and-now’ the creation becomes more self-conscious as we perceive as pleasant and
has become a cliché. Whoever examines so in this way the One can make Itself true and therefore as the I, or
himself as consciousness concludes that conscious and therefore recognizable. as opposed to what does not
consciousness has multiple layers, several If god is fully awakened in us, so that confirm to ourselves; what
levels of activity and reality. The Sufi wis- we can make a distinction between the we consider to be unpleasant
dom: ‘God sleeps in the stone, dreams level of consciousness where the many or false. And this we do not
in the plant, moves in the animal and ‘I’s’ play their game, and in contrast to attribute to our own consci-
awakes in man’ explains it and that is the that the One (the level of consciousness) ous life. We consider it non-I
fourth level of consciousness. The human in which the game is played, then this and foreign to our clean
consciousness is thus a pivot point: God- faculty of discernment is the proof of the consciousness.
the-creator, active from below and the inner presence and activity of the One. Therefore, if the One is ma-
one God or the One, as the action from Meister Eckhart: ‘that which a man loves nifested in our consciousness,
above, meet each other in human con- must be understood as follows. If he loves a new stratum will be added
sciousness. a stone, he is a stone. If he loves a man, to the previous four. And mo-
It is the birth of the One as self-con- then he is a man. If he loves God … and reover it must be greater than
sciousness; the Self that precedes all now I do not dare to continue speaking the previous four or we will
creation. As we read in Proverbs: ‘The because if I would say that he is God, you continue to identify ourselves
Lord created me before the origin of the would stone me’. with the other four. However,
world’. the fifth level is no addition;

47
it stands perpendicular to the other four, poles of the ‘I’ and ‘outer world’ and to the sense of sight, in the
as a ladder of Jacob, as a vertical axis, as raises it into a higher unity. The One not center of vision; the center
the tree in paradise. expressed in our mental sphere which is has no inherent sense of color
It is crucial to discover that we tend to precisely the opposite level, but within otherwise it would permeate
identify ourselves with the content of our the Reason. According to Spinoza our fee- the subject of our vision.
consciousness which we find pleasant lings or our troubles cannot be tempered Thus we can say that the
and fair, while whatever arises in oursel- by Reason – we can consider that only a vision is not in the world of
ves, aroused by situations or outsiders, sensation. If Reason could not trouble us, color because the device that
is also our consciousness, it is also an or move us, that would mean that It is allows the vision to happen is
integral part of the life thereof. independent of what drives us, indepen- free of any color. In the world
By taking responsibility for everything dent of what animates us, and is eventu- of colors one cannot find
that I become conscious of, I no longer ally in opposition to our soul. The point the seeing, because it is free
attribute anything to others - not to ac- is that it is an integral part of our whole of color. That is why, viewed
cident, not to karma, or to my destiny, psyche and it is as representative of the from the world of colors,
my god, my horoscope or genome. Even One as it can be. It is in the aptitude of the vision is rather nothing
though the ‘outside world’ triggers my Reason to be more forceful than any more than something. The
thoughts, my emotions and feelings, other soul impulse relationship between God and
when they befoul my consciousness the whole is similar to the
and sow discord, it does not help me to Open and radiant relationship between the sight
point the finger to something outside The precondition to be open and radiant and the visible’. Or in other
of me. Rejecting or repressing is quite is to distance oneself from the automatic words, God relates to the
useless, because I cannot let go of what stream of consciousness where all the lay- whole as the consciousness
has a grip on me and would not let me ers of their own psyche request their own relates to its contents.
go. Strange as it may seem, admitting space. Such is the condition to recognize The consciousness itself is the
all images and experiences, in order to that this dislodged reality is the substi- light; the reel of the film con-
endorse a single light which penetrates tute of the original consciousness, open sists of my fixed frames, my
the consciousness, - the one full of loving and radiant. According to the objective past has become the sustaina-
thought - to neutralize and integrate all consciousness, I live the life of a spectator ble content of my conscience
these images and experiences. who looks at the screen in front of him, and determines the images
Only then consciousness seems more outside of him. I identify myself with that I can see before me on
powerful than all its contents. What is certain people or images on the screen the screen. Self-knowledge
referred to as ‘bad’ or ‘evil’, as a psy- and with others I don’t. This is much is a path that runs from the
chic content, draws its strength from its more a natural process or the automatism outside inwards, from the
distance from me, so that it can remain of perception than a conscious choice. By screen towards the reel and
staring at me. nature, we discriminate everything. You from there to the source of
In contrast, when evil is seriously accep- can only change something about this light that is present in all the
ted in the light of the consciousness, the once you become conscious of it even images while being indepen-
entire contents of the psyche is integra- though it might already have happened. dent of them.
ted. Love unifies and a unified conscious- Will I finally realize that in the eyes of The quality of the light of our
ness is way stronger, independent of any the spectator I am the colorless flood of consciousness is measured by
content. When the whole conscious life all staged scenes in the film, of all the the quality of our desires. We
connects with the Eye of reason, the unity projected images from the beginning to seek that quality in books of
itself can observe from above. That is the the end? wisdom, in seminaries and
new, the fifth ‘layer’ that joins with the According to Nicolas of Cusa: ‘God could religious meetings, in inter-
former four. be compared to the perception of color views, in yoga or meditation.
Reason integrates, nullifies the opposite in our world, it is only possible thanks Therefore, the One that is

48 The Center
present in our longing is indeed in search is more or less satisfied and our desires Observer and observed
of himself. In reality, should my quest purified and emptied, our consciousness- That observer and observed
consist in searching why and where I self can break ‘from the background’ are two references for the
should search if that light is already pre- through all our consciousness-contents. same content, and that unity
sent in me as a guide? By living outside For a moment, the third person perspec- and love cannot be known
myself, that is in texts or movements that tive of the object-consciousness makes by objectifying it was a key
speak to me, sooner or later, the question place for the second person perspective, issue for Krishnamurti: ‘Can
of the observer’s identity and all that it the mystic I-Thou relationship. Myths, spirit have a quality by which
observes will be bound to me. Who is he esotericism, statements of Buddha, Her- it does not seek the outside
who knows all that I know? Maybe we mes, Jesus, Böhme, Eckhart, find inner but by which it is complete
need an object of devotion, an outside resonance and open up a completely new and whole in itself? (…) All
mirror to recognize us in our character of self-perception and self-recognition. Was divisions in me and you, in
observer. our ‘self’ in the magical or mythical con- my god and your god, means
That we still place god above and out- sciousness still in a pre-conscious unity, division of energy. There is
side us fits ‘a personality that needs an by projecting on the Thou the ‘I’ awakens only energy and division of
object to get a feeling of its own exis- which is the necessary stepping stone to energy, division into frag-
tence’ (Jung). When our spiritual hunger the upper-conscious Self or I Am. ments’. By identification

49
energy solidifies into matter. I call myself
Christian, Buddhist or atheist. But in es- I have identified myself
sence I am nothing of that at all, because
what I am – consciousness itself – has with certain images of
no form and therefore has no name.
In essence I am an open formless con- persons on the screen,
sciousness circle, the Center in which my
personal life takes place. Therefore the fol- and not with others
lowing words of the Upanishads do not
point to outside but to a new conscious-
ness, a new ensoulment: ‘Know that the
totality of this moving and restless world
is encompassed by consciousness itself, Disappear-picture. Liu Bolin disappears almost completely
by God’. If the fragmentary intellect gives in the background of his work, like a chameleon of art

50 The Center
way to reason that sees-in-unity, and that a path towards above and a path towards G. Meyerink: ‘Put away
reason is indeed our strongest ‘affection’ below: the way of ascent to the shining everything that your body
(Spinoza), then the following description Source, the mystical unification, and at is and then your ‘I’. When
of Ramana shines forth to us: ‘Can a sen- the same time our reality ‘downstairs’ can it has become totally naked
sitive photographic plate that is exposed be seen in a new Light. In this way the it will start to breathe as a
to sunlight still capture impressions? Can words of Spinoza become reality: ‘The pure spirit’. This spirit that is
there be something apart from You after Spirit has it in its power to bring back all consciousness-self, sees from
I have seen Your Light? There can be no the physical impressions or images of the ‘above’, from a higher unity
conception or experience to cling to the things to the conception of God’. and then appears in the words
intense Light of the consciousness-self. of Krisnamurti: ‘Every pro-
In the vertical axis, the center in which Prelude to reversal blem is related to every other
all temporary centers disappear, the sun After integration by total-identification problem, so if you can solve
of the Center rises. In that center the with all my consciousness-contents – one problem, it does not
circle encloses itself as the one sun that which is a ‘horizontal’ process under the matter which one, you will
outshines the world of form and with- action of a ‘vertical’ ensoulment – this notice that you will be able
draws from the objectifying eye. can be fulfilled by identification with to face every other problem
In the book, The Fama of the Brother- the One, as it resounds in individuation, and to solve them effortlessly.
hood of Rosicross, we encounter a which literally means: being undivided. The concept ‘self-surrender’
crucial passage in which a nail is pulled By total-identification, by saying yes to comes to stand in a complete-
out of the wall. This nail can be seen as everything that arises in our conscious- ly different light: considered
the central point in which our whole ness – the phase of integration – there is from below it means that ‘I’
mental existence is suspended: the ‘I’ or no waste of energy anymore; our con- surrender myself to the One.
I-consciousness. If this nail is removed sciousness-life becomes more transparent, But this is impossible, since
and a portion of the wall is pulled down, so that the light of the pure and empty one can know only one’s
behind that wall an immense space is consciousness can shine through it. equals. ‘I’ as an empty point
revealed where our true Identity houses: Here the words of Krishnamurti that the of consciousness, makes this
the Sprit-Soul-Man. The nail, the ‘I’, is total denial is the highest confirmation kind of self-surrender to an
the pivot point. Naked and emptied of are applicable: the confirmation that empty concept. True self-sur-
objectifying its feelings, emotions, expe- we are all our consciousness-contents, render is the surrender of the
riences and thoughts, I recognize myself appears to be the prelude to the total one Self to us, that is in the
as a unity-kernel-of-consciousness, as a reversal. vertical axis of the Middle.
reflection of the One. Precisely in a total-identification lies the It does not mean that when
That reversal is not an I-annihilation since possibility of total denial encapsulated: I we are sometimes out of
the I is already broken, shattered, into am not my consciousness-contents. This balance we should correct
countless ‘I’s’. We are not an I. Emptied total denial opens the insight that I am ourselves. We are as men, as
to a point-of-not-being the ‘nail-I’ dis- not the contents but the consciousness human consciousness, out
closes two worlds and forms the central itself. of the center. And that does
‘axis’ to the Center. J. van Rijckenborgh: The realm where the ‘I’ is emptied to the not happen only once in a
‘The I, the consciousness of the perso- point of consciousness has therefore no while, but it is our usual state
nality, is the visible manifestation of the size, has no form, and is gladly hailed as of ‘being’, of consciousness.
All-consciousness, like the physical sun is I-lessness. However, the ‘I’ as principle of Sticking to the light by ascen-
the visible manifestation of the spiritual unity-of-consciousness, as reflection of ding Jacob’s ladder is referred
Sun’. The ‘I’, if stripped of all that it clea- the One, never disappears. Purified in the to as ‘the Path’. It is not meant
ves to, as central axis is as it were the hole Fire of the One I-lessness does not mean: as a way that we go to the
through which the Light of the One co- having no ‘I’, but having no identifica- One, but rather as the way the
mes to us. That Light is at the same time tion. One is going with us. There

51
is no path to unity, unity is the path. That recognize ourselves better as a persona-
this ‘way up to the Light’ is continuous lity. Within this horizon we possibly set
renewal of consciousness was apparently ‘higher’ goals, but there is no valid way
also the experience of R.M. Rilke: ‘from below’.
‘I live my life in an increasing strug- Knowing, gnosis, is not being conscious
gle’. This describes not one circle of of unity, but it is unity. It is not like the
consciousness that is widening, but a eye that looks outside; it is the Eye in
qualitative hierarchy, several steps of which everything is. It is the conscious-
renewal. In this way self-consciousness ness-circle, the Center, which encloses all
transforms into consciousness of the Self. centers. Ramanan: ‘You are the Eye of the
The transcendental One, the true core of eye. You are that what is not seen by the
our self-consciousness becomes more and eye, but by which the seeing itself is seen
more immanent in ourselves, it gradually (…) The Self is the Eye, the unlimited
becomes reality. What is beyond us does Eye’.
not need to remain subject of faith. In the words of Eckehart: ‘The Eye in
which I see god is the same eye in which
New inspiration god sees me. One eye, one soul, one
Consciousness is consciously-seeing, seeing, loving (…) God and I are one in
symbolized by the eye: ‘the eye’ of thin- Knowing’.
king, feeling, wanting, experiencing. The Even though we can understand these
largest outer ring as the all-seeing Eye words as object-consciousness, it does
encloses all these functions. Ramana: ‘The not mean that we understand the content
One is the eye behind the eye of thinking as self-consciousness. The high energetic
and feeling. It is itself the area of Con- level of the new Consciousness, where
sciousness in which the space of thinking there is no place for the object-conscious-
appears (…) In the area of the purified ness is set before us, not without rea-
thinking facility where the out itself il- son, as Fire. Hermes: ‘I know you as the
luminating I shines’. imperishable, eternal Eye. The Eye of an
This shining Eye, this new inspiration that everlasting burning Fire’. And J. Böhme:
comes out of the Centre, is the Soul-I. It is ‘The soul is a fire-eye and a likeness of
the space wherein all conscious life takes the first principle. As eye she receives the
place. In order to penetrate and transform Light, because the life and the Soul arise
our total personal existence it creates a from the Fire’. This Spirit-Fire is trans-
vehicle, a soul-body. Because, according cendent. Because in this Fire all opposites
to C. de Petri: ‘Starting with the birth of are abolished, this Consciousness cannot capable to receive and realize
the soul-body the true human manifesta- be a personal possession, not even a per- the ‘mundus imaginalis’, the
tion begins, the true manifestation of the sonal quality. It is the one Fire that burns divine Idea-world, of which
thinking facility ordained by God.’ in the Knowing. Plato spoke .The restoration
Our total physical structure, from the ma- of the tri-une Man has been
terial body to the l form-consciousness, Receive and realize the purpose of true spiritua-
is a resistance against renewal. That is Only by means of the Soul, the Spirit-Fire lity from earliest times on. So
why – how improbable this might sound can transform the personality further to we read in the Bhagavad Gita:
– our preference is going to familiarity realize the unique Man Idea: the process ‘I am the Spirt the depth of
and being identified with our past, our of transfiguration. The unity of Spi- the Soul that inconceivably
sorrow, our fears and desires, our pain rit, Soul and Personality stands for the lives in every creature (…)
and thinking patterns. Nowhere we tri-unity of a microcosmic Man. This is In every force I am the pri-

52 The Center
 A Syrian child in the middle of a Turkish police cordon at Edirne, @2015, NA-MPA

mordial force, in all the existence, the from divine Ideas that reflect themselves in opposites, in relations, can
source. Because I am everything; without in the Spirit, and is not a mental percep- never penetrate in that.
me there is nothing. I am in all things tion. Ideas are creative forces that renew Krishnamurti: ‘If you love, it
only Me-Self’. themselves, that are overshadowed by the means that you give yourself
Referring to the new Personality, we read one Light. Ideas are timeless essentials completely away to some-
in Psalm 104: ‘He envelops himself in that reflect themselves in a fiery con- thing, and then there can be
the Light as a mantle. He stretches out sciousness. no relation. Then there is not
the heavens like a tent cloth’. The Soul- The divine Idea thinks within us. the one and the other, there is
robe as a cloak, symbolized by the Rose, That asks a proper attuning from man. a complete unity’.
unfolds from the bud and fills the total In the Spirit, in the Intellect, the divine
microcosms. reality is reflected as one living totality,
Spirit is Fire. Therefore consciousness is as Love. Our object-consciousness, active

53
American Presentations

Six memos for the next millennium a remedy for the intensity of
life. The other lectures howev-
A gossamer network of light rays and a quest for a er, carry just as much ‘weight’.
new language; how do you give expression to a body In his lecture Calvino contrasts
of thought that is feather-light; what language can lightness with heaviness and
carry it; an inspiring language that can make hearts attempts to define what he as
sing and heads light up? We find traces of such a an author has tried to say in
quest in the works of Italo Calvino, the author of the his novels and short stories.
books ‘The Path to the Nest of Spiders’, ‘Cosmicom- In forty years of writing he
ics’, ‘Mr. Palomar’ and his best-known work: ‘Invisible has always tried to avoid
Cities’. heaviness in language, seeing
lightness as a value, not as a
shortcoming.
Italo Calvino,Italo Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923. In 1985 he Calvino tried to detract the
wrote ‘Six Memos for the Next Millennium’, a series of lectures heaviness from celestial
he was to present at Harvard University. However, after deliv- bodies, people and cities, but
ering five of them he died in Siena. Later, his daughter Esther most of all from the structure
Calvino decided to posthumously publish her father’s literary of a story and the language.
‘testament.’ The century in which he
It has been claimed that Calvino fled into fantasy stories trying worked was specifically one of
to escape reality. It is also said that he made use of an extremely heaviness: in matter, in the in-
efficient and concise language. But his stories can also be read dustrial revolution, in thought
as finely woven compositions that open up the imagination. and in the arts.
They are anything but a dream world. His own lectures about ‘In the time I started writing it
literature show that he thought completely differently about was the duty of every young
this, and he describes his writing as an ongoing dispersion of writer to give voice to the
heaviness. categorical imperative of the
reality of that moment. There-
Lightness fore, full of good will I tried
With these lectures on the eve of the new millennium Calvino to identify with the relentless
endeavoured to discuss the fate of books, placing the future of energy that the history of our
literature itself in the context of the postmodern industrial age. century exerted in its collec-
Will the ‘book’ as such still exist in its present form? If so, what tive and individual events. I
qualities and values should literature pursue? In these lectures tried to find harmony be-
Calvino considers symbols and images that are able to lead us tween the emotionally moving
into the new millennium. world spectacle - which to me
Calvino envisaged a literature that should be light, quick, exact, sometimes appeared dramatic,
visible, diverse and consistent. These relate to the titles of the six sometimes grotesque - and
lectures, five of which he delivered, and here we would like to the picaresque and adven-
introduce the first of these, in which he pleads for lightness as turous rhythm in myself that

54 Inhoud
Books
 Books
Italo Calvino

drove me to write. But I soon

discovered a chasm between
actual life and the agile,
sharp, light-footedness I want-
ed my language to be. Per-
haps I was only aware of the
heaviness, the sluggishness
and fogginess of the world:
qualities that cling directly to
your words if you don’t know
how to shake them off in
some way or other.’
Calvino had the feeling that
the world around him was
slowly fossilizing and that this
‘stiffening’ appeared to affect
every aspect of life, as if noth-
ing and no one could avoid
looking at Medusa and turn-
ing into stone. Only Perseus
with his winged shoes could
move on to the lightest there
is: the winds and the clouds. mean that I must change my answers in science. We are of image he envisaged was of a
There is an allegory between approach; that I must consider course writing around 1985 kind that is already very old in
the writer and the world, but the world from a different when computers were just the history of poetry. He refers
a danger also lurks there, viewpoint, with a different making their appearance and to De Rerum Natura (The
according to Calvino. With logic and other methods of the discoveries in quantum Nature of Things) by Lucretius,
myths you must not jump too knowing and verifying. The physics were certainly not a poem that conceives of the
quickly. You must assimilate images of lightness I seek yet mainstream, but in this world as a density-dissolver
them slowly and not force must be able to withstand evolution Calvino saw a and where Lucretius endeav-
yourself to accommodate their being swept away like dreams confirmation of his dreamed- ours to escape the waltz of
meaning, because the lesson by the present reality affecting of lightness, namely the matter, so in 50 BC Lucretius
is within the myth. the future.’ dissolution of structures, and could already see a metaphor
‘At those moments when it a second industrial revolution in language for the subtle ma-
seems to me that the human Lucretius and Ovid that would not be defined like terial substance of the world,
realm is doomed to heaviness, When it became apparent that the first one with steel mills a sign-system that is continu-
I think that I, just like Perseus, literature could not always and grinding images, but as ously in motion.
will have to fly to another offer the assurance that he a flow of information in the Italo Calvino also draws
space. I don’t mean a flight was not merely pursuing form of electronic impulses from Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
into a dream or irrationality. I dreams, Italo Calvino sought that are weightless. The world the author who can cause

55
everything of form to change, by representing the human A sepal, petal, and a thorn and Celtic folklore.
while preserving the same del- image in many interchangea- Upon a common summer’s The weightless heaviness of
icate case that envelops all the ble forms. morn – which Calvino speaks, blooms
indivisible parts. He admires In his poetry everything moves A flash of Dew – a Bee or again in the time of Cervantes
the language Ovid employs so fast that even the words two – and Shakespeare, when the
to describe form-transforma- can defy the heaviness. Calvi- A Breeze – a caper in the etheric influences of the
tions. In both Lucretius and no points out that the world trees – macrocosm and microcosm
Ovid he detects a lightness consists of weightless atoms And I’m a Rose connect; from the neo-Pla-
based on a philosophy and a and we would be unable to tonic firmament to the metal
science: for Lucretius it was appreciate the lightness of Romeo and Juliet spirits that change form in the
Epicurus and for Ovid it was a language if we could not Just like Dickinson, Shake- alchemists’ melting pot. That
the teachings of Pythagoras. muster the appreciation of a speare also uses light lan- cultural background ensured
To emphasise his quest even language with heaviness. guage, whereby the meanings that Shakespeare could find
more he cites Cavalcanti and ‘dance’ on a weightless fabric plenty of examples of the
asks us to keep the following Shakespeare and Emily of words. natural forces for the imagi-
image in mind: Dickinson For example in Romeo and nation.
‘If I were to choose a sym- In the history of literature two Juliet when Mercutio appears Many characters speak with
bol for the way in which I trends are evident: one makes on stage and says: You are a a combination of melancholy
would want to meet the new the language into a weight- lover; borrow Cupid’s wings and humour, the melancholy
millennium, then I would less element that glides over and soar with them above a is the light that has become
take this image: the unex- the contents like a cloud, a common bound. sadness, and the humour is
pected, weightless leap of very fine substance, or even Verbs such as: to dance, to the cosmic substance deliv-
the poet-philosopher who better as a field of magnetic soar, to prick, indicate that ered of its physical weight.
soars above the gravity of the impulses; and the other strives Shakespeare does not immedi- Calvino goes so far as to say
world and thus proves that to make the language convey ately put Mercutio into a phil- that Shakespeare described
his weightiness possesses precisely the heaviness, the osophical argument, but has emotions as a haze of minute
the secret of lightness, while density and the concreteness him tell a story of a dream: moods and feeling particles,
what many consider to be of things, bodies and sen- like a cloud of atoms out
the life-force of all times, the sations. Cavalcanti sought Her waggon-spokes made of of which the diversity of all
noisy, aggressive, droning and the road to lightness and in long spinners’ legs, things essentially exists.
raging, in fact belongs to the Dante’s work we sometimes The cover of the wings of
realm of death, like a grave- see an expression of that grasshoppers, Light-seekers for a new
yard for rusted car wrecks.’ second trend. As well as The traces of the smallest language
Cavalcanti, Calvino also refers spiders’ web, At the end of the lecture
With that image in the back to Shakespeare and Cyrano The collars of the moon- Calvino acknowledges being
of our mind he describes the de Bergerac, while he also shine’s watery beams, at risk of losing track. Too
Florentine troubadour of the draws upon Emily Dickinson Her whip of crickets bone; many threads have been spun
Dolce Stil Novo, Guido Caval- to illustrate his quest for that the lash of film; and he wonders which thread
canti’s (1255 – 1300) poetry lightness. Dickinson makes will lead him to the function
as one of lightness in which the language so light that And then the carriage is of literature, which must be
his characters come across not meanings seem to be carried drawn with ‘…a team of little existential. It is only in his
so much as people, but rather along on a fabric of words atomies’, a group of small second lecture that Calvino
as exhalations, light rays, and that seems weightless - by atoms. This dream makes the himself gives voice to the rela-
above all as messengers that which also the meaning itself dream of Queen Mab (a fairy) tionship between the different
he calls ‘spirits.’ Cavalcanti becomes thinner. a fusion of Lucretian atomism, lectures and the essence of
disperses the material weight Renaissance Neoplatonism the first lecture.

56 Inhoud
Boeken
‘I am aware that this reading, there is no need to construct adding unnecessary weight.
which is based on invisible the new language, now we And in order to escape the
connections and branches must just remove the weight stony grip and perspective of
out in diverse directions, runs from the words themselves. things – Medusa’s petrification
the risk of becoming frag- This ‘new’ language can be – we can hold before our eyes
mented. But all the topics I woven - can consist - only of the image of Perseus. The
have treated, and perhaps winged words. gnostic doctrine is weightless,
also those of the previous and likewise the language of
lecture, can be seen as a unit, The ideas are perhaps best the Light. By taking just one
insomuch as they are all in beheld in those moments leap we can put Mercutio’s
the spirit of an Olympian deity when we can let go of the language into effect, a lan-
that I honour in a special way: language, and meet in the ac- guage that soars and dances.
Hermes-Mercury, the god of tive silence we share together. There is no need to compose
communication and media- For Calvino too it is what a ‘new language’. The winged
tion, who under the name of language cannot capture that words are already there. We
Thoth invented writing, and describes the highest good. can truly ‘lighten’ it by effec-
according to the studies of And it is also our assignment tively connecting with that
C. G. Jung about alchemical to search for a language that network of Light. Just as we
symbolism, also represents the gives it expression, which too, though able to fly, must
‘principium individuationis,’ as ‘carries’ this lightness. But first free ourselves of all the
the spirit Mercury.’ * there lies the key. And maybe weight. Let the words precede
vice versa, we must make our us and weave a quality fabric,
It may be obvious that Italo words so light that they can like a magnetic network of
Calvino was a light-seeker, for be carried by that network light rays that we simply need
all his novels and short stories of Light. Are our words not to follow.
bear the traces, but nowhere often inclined to hold fast
else does he speak so clearly to the heaviness of old ideas
of his quest than in these and structures? It is no longer * The principle of indi-
lectures. In the last lecture, he a question whether they still viduation, or principium
states that he actually looks ‘weigh’ heavily enough and individuationis, describes
for a work that originates whether they are still fully un- the manner in which a thing
outside of the ‘self’, outside derstood; new language just is identified as distinguished
the limited field of vision of waits to be set free to reach from other things.
an individual ‘I’; not a voice far beyond the walls, free of
to reach other similar ‘I’s’, all structures, thought frame-
but to give the word to that work and assertive belief.
which has no language. It is
that endeavour, that quest We have lived for a consider-
which causes him to desire an able time in the new millen-
unweighted language. Calvino nium to which Calvino refers,
extends the building blocks of the dematerialisation has
the new language to us, but already started, it is no longer
they are not massive stones, the era of petrification and
more feather-light light- aggravation, and these traits
spores. So we no longer need should no longer be attached
speak of building blocks, for to our words and thoughts,

57
Sometimes you realize that too many words have already been said –
too many great but at the same time meaningless words. Hollow words
that seem to express just more of a great inner emptiness. Wouldn’t
it be better to just stay silent in all languages? Why don’t we just
stop the gratuitous proclamation of our views and opinions?

58 The forgotten word

 The forgotten word

S
uddenly you realize that our the original language! How far they are is a language that goes ‘far’ and
language has become pro- from the forgotten language of the Mys- at the same time far surpasses
fane and vulgar. Babble and teries and have they drifted away from the this ‘far’; a universal language
gossip, usually gathered from sacred language that says so much more that encompasses all spoken
the vagaries of the day – from than these empty words dare to convey. languages. Behind all the super-
what attracted our immediate attention. For us average people these words are not ficial talk, this Babylonian con-
Or instinctive expressions of a personal comprehensible because we are not open fusion of tongues, this universal
emotional imbalance, delivered in either to this language anymore. According to language still vibrates as a quiet
a seductive or an aggressive tone, accord- tradition, as H.P. Blavatsky writes in her call to all those that can keep
ing to the situation. A verbal violence that Secret Doctrine, this language was once writ- silent for a moment and whose
is rightly discredited because it usually ten in Senzar, the secret language of the soul is capable of listening and
sounds fake and unreal. priests, in which divine entities dictated understanding. Then this word,
Then there is the language of logic, the the words to the sons of light in Middle which is behind all spoken
sober sensible language, which describes Asia in the early days of our era. That was words, can still be heard. There
and lists and only seeks to interpret and a time that this language (the Sen-zar) was exists a divine name, a word
explain. It is a language that offers an known to the Initiates of every nation […] that cannot be expressed by
abundance of information stripped of who inherited the language in their turn human language: the genera-
all feeling and passion. It pulls down from the wise ones who had learned it tive ‘Fiat’ which from the very
everything that is above its own ground from the sons of God of the third, second beginning resounded: ‘Let
level of cold objectivity and reduces it and first race. there be’! It is the holy formula
to the world of phenomena and events. It is a language that connects us directly that forms the blue print of all
Stored in the memory it is used to cite with the Essence of creation from which creation; the primordial sound
and classify plain facts, convenient or not. it comes forth. Because it speaks not only that pulsates though the All. He
It uses a chilly vocabulary that no longer about something but also always out of and who hears it again becomes a
knows how to touch the heart. A language from Something. Therefore it propels us, it sounding board an a mouth-
that sounds heavy and weighty but does does something to us and it moves some- piece of the liberating word that
not make any real sense. thing within us because it touches our so many have been awaiting for
How far are all these words removed from heart far beyond our superficial intellect. It so long.

59
60 The Dragon
 Symbol

The Dragon

T
he dragon is a much loved symbol both in the Greek mythology as well
as in western and eastern alchemy. One of the most best-known myths in
Europe is about the fight between Saint George and the dragon to liber-
ate the beautiful princess (the soul) from the grip of ‘lower’ life. In the
language of the Apocalypse it is Michael who conquers the power of the
dragon, which refers to the instinctive energies – the dragon or serpent of lower life -
as well as to the higher spiritual awareness, after the necessary transformation.
The mythical sea-monster Leviathan, or the many headed hydra, is initially threatening
and poisonous for without transformation we experience the world as threatening and
dangerous. This monster must be conquered by the hero: Mardoek, George, Siegfried
or Hercules through the sword of the spirit. Then, at last the dragon can spread its
three pairs of wings: those of the body, those of the heart or soul and those of the
head or spirit. The harmonious unity of spirit, soul and body is achieved and can rise
out of the depths of the material world.
In alchemy it is the fleeting ambiguous Mercury who, like the genie in the bottle, in
the shape of a creeping reptile has to be released. This is the prima materia, or original
matter, of which the Universe is made and which is converted during the alchemical
process. The black dragon has changed into a golden dragon. It is freed from the pris-
on of time and space.
Ouroboros is another symbolic dragon or reptile from the Hermetic and the Gnostic
wisdom. This serpent from ancient Egypt and classical Greece is always shown with
the tail in its mouth and has many interpretations. The name means ‘he who eats his
own tail’. This image refers to the endless circle of perpetual return to the earth. In
the oldest pictures it symbolizes the shapeless chaos around the ordered world (that
was Egypt). Egypt, which is the land of order and civilization with the elevated goal
of protecting the Universe. By keeping and protecting the eternal order, it can ascend
above this chaos.
In the Gnosis, Ouroboros shows us the unity of all things, spiritual and material, of
which the essence never disappears but is constantly dying and born again. The gospel
of the Pistis Sophia describes ‘the disc of the sun like a twelvefold serpent with its tail
in its mouth’.

61
62 The dragon slayer of Brixen
The dragon slayer of Brixen

T
he dragon slayer of Brix- itself, goes to battle with the greedy, In a small square next
en symbolizes man con- self-centeredness of the threefold na-
ture-ego. This is not the common love
to the great cathedral
quering his threefold
nature-ego. In myths and that is so much part of the nature-ego, of Brixen (Italy) there
fairy tales the dragon, or which embraces the one and rejects the is an inconspicuous but
the three dragons, are often shown as other. Because that love predominantly artistic bronze statue of
creatures spewing fire, which are insatia- hungers for its own gratification as will
ble. Their fire always needs more suste- be clear through an honest self-investi- a figure with a spear in
nance and it will never be enough. gation. his hand piercing one
The threefold nature-ego of thinking, No, only in the power of unselfish Love of the three dragons
desiring and feeling - in short the ego can this ‘fightless battle’ be fought. It is under his feet. It is a
of the I - is very like the insatiable fire of not against others who think differently
the dragon in its search for happiness. It but a battle fought within oneself. statue with a profound
is an insatiable hunger in man’s blood. Geocentric thinking is virtually outdat- significance and not a
The blood flows in an endless circle ed. Those who think that the earth is new creative concept.
throughout the whole body, reaching the center of the Universe get ridiculed.
every fibre. There is no place without Egocentric thinking however is by no
For many centuries the
this hunger. means obsolete although this way of underlying message
The statue expresses this hunger. Wa- thinking is just as unreasonable. The ego has been conveyed to
ter sprouting from the dragon’s mouth is only a small and lowly aspect of the mankind in many differ-
into a fountain is pumped around in a whole human being system and it cer-
continuous cycle. This continuous circu- tainly does not deserve to be in center ent ways.
lation and insatiable hunger causes man position. But this way of thinking is by
all kinds of misery and conflict. We need no means generally accepted.
‘food’ to feed this aspect within our- Within the human system exists an-
selves, the cause of which is our inner other, an all-determining predominant
feeling of separation. We polarize and power - the ego is only a would-be ego.
create conflicts and enemy-images, both That power is the Soul, the real man,
individually and collectively and a whole immortal, everlasting. It is a power, a
culture has been developed from this reality within us and not something or
way of thinking, desiring and feeling. someone that is outside of us. It is of
But there is also the power of Love, this power of which was spoken: ‘He
symbolized by the man with the spear. who is, who was and who shall come
The essence of that Love is giving and again’. This core essence in the human
sharing. This Love, the source of Life being is called: the philosopher’s stone,

63
the jewel in the lotus, the priceless pearl,
the white water-lily and the spirit-spark
atom. It is the last remains in us of that
‘what was, what is, and what shall come
again’.
These and many other indications refer
to the Gnostic sensitive meeting-point
within a human being from where this
liberating power, through intelligent
and practical application is particular-
ized in the blood. Through the blood,
this power spreads throughout the body,
nullifying the ‘dragons’ and gaining ever
more influence.
Moreover, the figure of the statue does
not have an aggressive face as he slays
the dragons but rather a soft sober face,
a concentrated gaze, as if there is a cer-
tain co-operation.
This co-operation is indeed conditional.
The human being must make a choice.
The Light must be admitted. The three-
fold dragon must be completely aware
of its poor existence and recognize the
Light and Love Power so that at last its
insatiable hunger may finally be stilled,
voluntarily and with full consciousness.
The Light shows the way for this pro-
cess with unimaginable and liberating
consequences.
These were some thoughts that came up
regarding the statue in Brixen.

64 The dragon slayer of Brixen

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CONTRIBUTIONS
• Wisdom of the serpents
• The killer of dragons of Brixen
• The forgotten word
• The paper vessel
• The wisdom of the Waitaha
• The flaming triangle
• Interview with Timothy Freke

SECTIONS
• Books: American Lectures. Italo Calvino
• Reportage: Expressiveness in Athens
• Column: A Gold Track
• Symbol: Ouroboros

ESSAY
• The Open Center