Transformation On the Way
THE WAY OF THE GRAIL – SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS – January 20, 2020
Czech original: Proměna na Cestě · cesta-gralu.cz
Great helps incline themselves down to this small Earth
In their calling the luminous souls seek to penetrate through to earthly men
Through the inner voice, through the conscience, they seek to stir those for whom they care, that they may thereafter be permitted to pass on to them such knowledge as might yet once again be of help to men who are inwardly open
One of these helps is the reminder of how petty many things will show themselves to be to which here on Earth man ascribes importance, soon after there dawns the transformation which lies in the laying aside of the earthly body
Many opinions which here on Earth appear as matters of importance, to which millions of men cling who profess this or that spiritual direction, philosophy, religion or political view, will show themselves in a new light as so many lifeless and convulsive things, which were bound in great measure only to their earthly comprehension of things
If these bear within themselves the liveliness of the spirit and sufficient purity, they will gradually recognise, in the planes of the lighter spheres wherein they awaken for the continuation of the way, what a rigidity it was with which for the most part they sought to take up their attitude towards the world and towards their fellow men
Discords and implacability, disputes of opinion, acts of violence in thought, in word and also in earthly deed, all these are the outcome of the failure to comprehend the way within the Laws of Creation, which yet offers itself as straight and easily recognisable, in a natural outlook for every human spirit
Thus many who have already passed over into planes finer than the earthly denseness here recognise, with the experiencing of indescribable happiness, how in reality all things are simple and plain
The way upwards is for them ordered in the finer planes more directly, through the experiencing of the effects of the Laws of Creation, and at the same time there gradually fall away many dogmas with which perhaps some soul still came into these planes more richly blessed by the Light
With shame and with sorrow the soul turns and looks back upon its hours on Earth, when it held itself to be truly orthodox and strictly clinging to its knowledge of the letter in the teaching or the philosophy to which it professed itself
In reality it clung for the most part only to details in proportion to its own maturity and comprehension, it clung to little particles narrowly torn out of the whole of the great harmony of Creation, particles taken over through thought forms which had often been fashioned beforehand by other men
Looking back, the soul feels itself put to shame as it beholds its earthly rigidity in particulars, through which the outlook was lost to it upon the truly important things in life, such as the receptivity to every moment through its own fervent intuitive perception
Suddenly it experiences that for the trees it did not perceive the forest
That it might have been otherwise, for this it lacked the power and the courage, the inner freedom to be willing to receive and to experience the happenings about it with its own pure, ennobled intuitive perceiving
The capacity for pure intuitive perception always gives the possibility of grasping a higher view of one's own life, of other men and of the whole happening in society which is just taking place as the present
Alas, it is just this capacity for living intuitive perceiving that is overlaid by the intellectual fencing with particulars torn out of the whole, which, however, cannot hold good if they are to remain in accord with the Laws of Creation, which work always livingly and all-comprehensively
Far too cheaply does man let himself be drawn into the snare of the fallen archangel, into the implacability of opinions, wherein human conceit and the desire to know better than others labour for the baneful principle of the Fallen One
The awakened soul, gazing from the planes which give it the possibility of a greater freedom of intuitive perception, then looks back upon the hours of its supposed dogmatic victories on Earth precisely as upon moments of great disappointment of its inner being
With the greatest anguish do those experience their looking back who were permitted already on Earth to draw near to the Truth and who suddenly see how they did not comprehend It, how with their spirit they did not in fact penetrate to Its essence at all
They recognise how they used the Truth, the fragments of It, for shameful matters, only that in their supposed inflexibility they might pass for Its faultless, high-standing connoisseurs
They recognise how petty it was, and suddenly they see that not for a single moment did the All-Wise Will of God the Father require anything of the kind from them, but that it was they alone who placed themselves in such strained attitudes
Shame and inward pain pursue them thereafter until such time as they find and enter upon the way to atonement
It is an exceedingly singular picture and earthly almost incomprehensible, but it is indeed possible from time to time to behold in the lighter planes, as working together, precisely those souls which earthly waged implacable struggles, meant both figuratively and in actual fact “to life and to death”, and which earthly could never be reconciled
In the planes of a lighter kind they then often seek ways to each other, that the one may bow before the other in apology and in the plea for forgiveness for its earthly rigidity and narrowness
The transformation of which we here speak is conditioned upon the severing of oneself from earthly opinions and rigidities of thought, whereupon only then can there come about in the soul a liberation in the true sense of the word
All this, however, holds good for those souls which bore within themselves sufficient nobility of character and spiritual dignity, and these conditions were joined with the purity and the childlikeness of an untroubled spiritual foundation
Where this is lacking, there in coarse lack of understanding, in stubbornness and in self-complacency, there is lacking also the possibility of swinging oneself up into the planes which make a wider survey and comprehension possible
Such souls lack the possibility of standing back from their entanglement in the narrow-minded judging of things and of happenings, and such a soul bears within itself continually the threat of complete failure and of sliding down into still greater depths, out of which it is not easy to raise oneself
The will towards humility is the foundation which raises both the soul and the spirit upon its true way to the Light, to God
Together with the transformation which comes about through the laying aside of the earthly covering there then offers itself a standing back from the narrowed view of many earthly rigidities which, however, many in this world hold to be important
The true way to ascent is to become aware of this baneful condition already here on Earth and, in pure experiencing through intuitive perception, to lay aside the rigidity, that in the simplest manner we may free ourselves from the needless attitudes which we bear within us towards human society and towards the individuals who are our fellow men
Whoever achieves this, whoever frees himself in the spirit, is further upon the way to the Light than many others who cling convulsively to particulars
To step forth out of the captivity of narrowness in thinking lies solely and only in the hands of each one of us
He who longs for a true inward soaring should not hesitate for a single moment, for the squandering of time upon secondary things is the wasting of a great part of the time graciously bestowed by the Creator upon this Earth
Let us think in the great circles of the Law of Reciprocal Action
No one is exempt from the words of Jesus concerning the necessity of paying all debts to the very last farthing
Inward greatness and the capacity to forgive others is a hope not only for ourselves, but it can show the way to many who long for such acting yet themselves do not know how and where to begin
And yet it is easier than anything else, we are to begin just now
Just now let us step forth and let others know that we have advanced in our inner being and that in the freeing of ourselves we hold out to others a hand to clasp in the spirit of friendship and of pure working
Great helps and blessings from the luminous heights descend to meet every such man
Already on Earth he can be truly set free, surrounded by the calm, balanced surface of the spirit
The Light surrounds his inner being and he nourishes his spirit with the true bread of Life