There exists a golden thread,
which leads out of the labyrinth of our broken reality and towards the Truth
There exists a golden thread, which leads out of the labyrinth of our broken reality and towards the Truth.
The Lectorium Rosicrucianum, or International School of the Golden Rosycross, aims to help seekers find and form a living connection with this shining filament, which is woven of love, wisdom, knowledge (gnosis) and action.
Most importantly, this golden thread is a Path that can actually be walked, a Path shown by all religions in their original form. No Master or Initiate can give the Truth to another. It can only be approached by our own efforts, and by persevering throughout all the obstructions and difficulties we encounter on the way. And it can only be reached through an inner process of transformation called 'soul-rebirth', or 'transfiguration'. A bonafide School points out the Path of transfiguration and teaches its pupils how to follow it.
It is not the I-central self, or personality, that profits from the process of transfiguration as meant here, but the inner, divine Self, which is awakened and enabled to become increasingly active. This has tremendous results for the personality: he or she becomes an instrument, a servant, of another Order, the Divine Order, the 'kingdom not of this world', and in that state is able to stand right in the midst of the world in the service of every human being.
The Lectorium Rosicrucianum is a modern organization in the sense that its message is adapted to the strongly individualized consciousness of twenty-first century humanity. However, it has deep roots in the past, for it is part of the long and ancient tradition of Mystery Schools, and is a development of earlier impulses of spiritual awakening such as those of the gnostics, Cathars and classical Rosicrucians of the 17th century.
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At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying : ‘Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?’ And calling to him a child , Jesus put him in the midst of them, and said : ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven . Whoever humbles himself like this child , he is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven .’ (Matth. 18 : 1- 4)
Hence two commandments have to be fulfilled: to turn and to become ‘like children’. So, not only becoming like children, but first turning, turning around. When we speak of ‘becoming like children’, the question crops up what is meant by ‘growing up’. Jesus speaks to adults. Are they big, grown-up people? Does this refer to a certain age, or to a civil, social aspect? Apparently not. Jesus means something else.
When is someone truly grown-up? Well, this is the case when his development on earth has been accomplished, when his journey through matter has been finished after many incarnations. When someone can say on the basis of all of his experiences: ‘It has been enough. More is not necessary, for there is not more.’ And when in that situation he experiences from the depth of his heart that he is not a child of this earth, but a child of the divine Being as to his true essence. That he is a child of eternity. Being grown-up is the awareness that the true inner essence is a child of God. Truly being grown-up means repenting, turning into one’s inner being, turning around and being a child again.
Hence repenting, turning around comes first. A person can only repent, when he has truly grown up, when he has finished his earthly journey of life and is standing at the border. When he can be called an inhabitant of the border, an inhabitant of Ephesus. In The Gnosis in Present-day Manifestation , Jan van Rijckenborgh writes that Ephesus is a town at the border. A n inhabitant of that town lives at that border. He has emptied his earthly cup filled with its bitter-sweet content and is now able to turn around. In the Book of Revelation, the Angel of the church of Ephesus is told: ‘Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first .’
true inner essence is a child of God. Truly being grown-up means repenting, turning into one’s inner being, turning around and being a child again.
Hence repenting, turning around comes first. A person can only repent, when he has truly grown up, when he has finished his earthly journey of life and is standing at the border. When he can be called an inhabitant of the border, an inhabitant of Ephesus. In The Gnosis in Present-day Manifestation , Jan van Rijckenborgh writes that Ephesus is a town at the border. A n inhabitant of that town lives at that border. He has emptied his earthly cup filled with its bitter-sweet content and is now able to turn around. In the Book of Revelation, the Angel of the church of Ephesus is told: ‘Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first .’
Surrender to eternity.
Hence, when someone has become fully grown-up, he can turn around to the Light. Thus being grown-up is above all knowing that the monad is a child of the Light. In that realisation the key to liberation is hidden. Then the grown-up can surrender to the inner child of eternity. Being a child means having trust, living in selfsurrender and cherishing a deep yearning. Trust in and surrender to the one who gave him life. And, as Peter says in his first Letter (ch.2 : 2): ‘Longing for the pure, spiritual milk .’ Trust in the divine primordial ground, the true giver of life. That means surrender to that Primordial Ground that penetrates and sustains everything. That is possible when there is an irrepressible yearning for truth, for pure, spiritual milk. Those are the signatures of being a child of God.
Whoever, after many cycles of existence, has become grown-up, is a philosopher, an alchemist. Just as the child longs for pure milk, thus he longs for the truth, for the one divine truth. The word philosopher means friend of wisdom. The true philosopher loves wisdom and truth. Without truth his life has no meaning for him. Only truth will set him free. But what is truth? It is not a philosophy in the ordinary sense of the word nor a mental concept, or a doctrine, or a theory. Truth is power, Divine A ll-Power. Truth is the Light behind everything, in everything and through everything. Truth is that everything , in whatever form or formless state it exists, is Light. Instead of Light we could also say divine All-Energy. Everything visible and invisible consists of energy. The physical world consists of materialised All-Energy. The physical world, the physical human being and everything that belongs to him is a crystallisation of energy. Thus we might say that fundamentally everything consists of the one energy, of Light. The truth is: God is Light. And outside God nothing exists, because God is infinity, omnipresence.
Transforming Darkness into Light.
The Rosicrucian is a philosopher and an alchemist. He is a philosopher, because he is immensely in love with The Truth ; he is an alchemist because he liberates the Truth and transforms the Darkness into Light. Hence Wisdom is truth lived through. Wisdom is truth that is lived daily, that is demonstrated in daily life by acting from it every day. That is repenting, turning around. That is why it is said: ‘Repent and do the works you did at
first .’ The fruit of that wisdom is alchemy. The result of lived-through truth is transmutation, change of our whole being, including the blood and all cells of the body. Thus there are three aspects: truth - wisdom - alchemy. That is the path of the sincere seeker for the truth. That proves the state of being a child of God. Truth is: God is Light, everything is Light. Wisdom is: transforming this truth in our daily life. Alchemy is: the effect of the one wisdom in our own being and in the world around us. It is leading the energy caught in the three dimensions back to its original state.
The longing for truth overrules everything. This longing opens the gate. Living from the truth is wisdom and the result of this life is alchemy.
Whoever lives in wisdom in this way, is a blessing for himself and for others. He involves the others in his being a child of God, without the intervention of his own will. Those who are striving for the truth, often stimulate each other to be an example to others. That may turn out wrong. Being an example, without wanting to be one, is good. But wanting to be an example, without truly being one, is misleading for one’s own being and that of everybody else. The personality may claim ‘being an example’, and tell itself: ‘I must be an example. I want to be the ideal human being and everyone should see it. That is my duty.’ Then the great danger is that the I is going to play a ‘new’ role and many in this time - especially young people - look right through it. They perceive very sharply what is sincere and what isn’t! They feel that this exemplar y figure is caught up in a pattern, is playing a role and thus bends the truth. The pure example is not based on the personality. Whoever has become grown-up in the way described here, whoever has understood that he is a child of God, lives spontaneously from the primordial image in his heart. Spontaneously from within, that is the example. The spiritual primordial image is the source of the example.
Firsthand or second-hand knowledge?
Hence wisdom is truth lived through. Following rules and guidelines is something quite different. That is second-hand living. Sometimes that is useful, usually it is necessary and may have a function for some time. But true wisdom is lived through truth and lived-through truth is power. It is the only power that truly exists and of which everything consists. That power is called L ove. Thus there are Truth, Light, Power and Love - different words for the same thing.
Living truth from within releases power. Hence wisdom is radiation that can be felt. Light has a magnetic effect. When all these aspects converge, we can speak of a living field, a living body in which the seeker for truth, wisdom, light and love can find his way. By releasing these four elements an initiation school is built, in which the inhabitant of the border can receive the power with which he can break through that border.
Light, power of attraction and life belong together. Although infinitely differentiated, they form a unity. Together they make the alchemical transformation possible. Truth is Light, Light is Power, Magnetism and Life. And together they are Love. Whoever is going to live from it, will be granted to taste the wisdom in everything in his daily life: in all situations, however small and insignificant or great and important, in all problems and difficulties, all surprises and joys, in a word, a look, a gesture, a so-called coincidence. For everything, however crystallised perhaps, is an effect of power. Everything in the world is initiation material for those who as grown-ups truly consciously live in the state of a child of God.
Transferring something into a form.
Such a field, in which truth, wisdom, power and love are active, is an information carrier. The word in-formation not only refers to the registration of data. The hyphen between both parts indicates the way it works. To in-form means: transferring something into a form. Or making something adopt a form, to shape something. The alchemical process is an in-formation process. Something happens in the form, in the first place in the form that is the human being himself. In all cells of a body magnetically sensitive material can be found, for example in a very concentrated form in the brain. There we find billions of brain cells and in all those cells such magnetically sensitive substances are present. That also applies to the living field that has been described here. By the magnetic respiration of the cells information is absorbed into the body, but also in the more subtle bodies. Messages are transferred into a form and adopt their own form in it or cause changes in the old form. All our doings, our thinking and feeling and everything that happens in our bodies are to a certain extent determined by such magnetic information and assimilation processes. Sometimes we speak of the secret help of the Rosicrucians.
This help is based on the activity of Love. Whoever has become grown-up and experiences himself as a child of God, a child of the truth, as to his innermost being and is going to live from the truth, is a truly wise person. He emanates a special activity that is offered as secret help to all who are seeking it , in an unselfish and impersonal way. His will and the motives of his personality no longer play any role in it. He has repented, turned around. He has completely surrendered to the new and renewing activity. He is only an instrument, not more, but not less either. Hence, the secret help does not originate in the personality. The I is completely detached from it. And that is why that help can be called secret.
Words cannot guide the Light further
Thus the proverb ‘Speech is silver, silence is golden’ has a profound, perhaps unexpected background. The secret help is given in silence. Spoken words may support this. It is said that of all precious metals silver has the highest power of reflection of light.
This metal reflects 95 % of the light. Words, too, can reflect the light, pass it on and lead it further. But even the purest words can never reflect and transmit the total fullness of the light. That can be done only by the light, the gold, itself. At best, words are silver. The great work is done from the silence, the rest can only support it.
Truth, light, living magnetic activity - together they form the unity that is Love. Whoever becomes conscious of this, receives the power truly to serve his fellow creatures. That power is offered to all who are able to use it in the only correct way.
The conditions are: living from the truth, decreasing and increasing in wisdom, being reborn by true alchemy.
Divine paradox.
Jesus said: ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven . Whoever humbles himself like this child , he is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven .’ The smaller, the greater, that is the divine paradox. I, the grown-up, must decrease. He, the Other One within me, will thus be able to grow up. That is totally turning around.
The grown-up as to this nature becomes small and insignificant, meek and humble. He fully submerges and is taken up in the inner child of God that develops and grows up. He becomes the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. The greatest in his own microcosmic heaven that is one with the divine macrocosm. Of him it is no longer said: ‘Dust to dust and ashes to ashes,’ but: ‘You are Light and to the Light you will return .’
The child of God is the greatest, for it knows it is one with the Father; it knows it is one with the divine Source of the A ll, one with infinity. Greater than infinity does not exist. Of that greatness the child of the Light partakes.
* The text of this issue is from Pentagram magazine articles published by the Lectorium Rosicrucianum"
