The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one.
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.[1]
(Francis William Bourdillon)
It is a story of love.
It is a story about light and darkness.
It is a poem about multiplicity and unity.
It is not a long poem; it is only eight lines divided into two stanzas. Yet it is very powerful and balanced imagery.
We are all searching for love. Its whereabouts and its being are as yet a mystery to us. The little prince says of his beloved rose, “But I was too young to know how to love her…”
Uncertainty relation
Scientists established at the beginning of the 20th century that Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is a fundamental property of our world. It means that the observer influences the observed. Spiritually oriented people would say that the reality we perceive depends on our consciousness.
The sun is the source of life for natural man, man living in space and time. With its light, warmth and sustaining life force, the sun is a beautiful symbol of love. In the time-space order, the sun is outside of ourselves. Because of the orbits and rotations of the heavenly bodies, everything is always in motion. The sun disappears from our field of vision at some point, only to return later. When the sunlight dies away from our consciousness, the thousand eyes of the night open.
Magically the stars twinkle in the firmament. The night is clear, but cold: love is missing. We look into the past. The constellations show us an image from times gone by, because the light had to travel to us. It is the forces of our subconscious that act upon us in the darkness of the night. As the sun rises, love returns; a new day is born. Yet at sunset, love will slip through our fingers again.
Eternal love
Is there then no such thing as eternal love? The planets, and therefore we too, circle around the sun in wide orbits. We are in an ‘outer ring’. We look hopefully towards the centre, the sun, and long for light, warmth and love. There is a relationship, a time-space uncertainty, between us and the object of our longing. Along with our planet, we turn our backs to the sun and darkness falls.
It would be different if we were not in an outer ring, but in the centre. If we were to merge with the sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, the outer ring, and the heart only one, the centre.
First love
Man is a mystery, a microcosm, a universe in miniature. In the centre of our being we too possess a sun, one of a spiritual nature. We do not know this spiritual primordial principle, we are not aware of it. The Bible says, “Nevertheless I have this against you, because you have abandoned your first love.”[2] We search in the outer ring for love, finding it and losing it again, while we have forgotten our true love, our first love.
There are those who, driven by the pain and sorrow of the never-ending circles of life, long to return to their first love. This turns out to be far from easy. Although our true love is constantly calling and beckoning us, we do not hear its voice. At least, we cannot understand and properly process the impulse that touches us. We race around the world in search of love. Perhaps tragically, but inevitably, because the appropriate body to hear the calling voice is still missing. The spiritual sun needs a suitable vehicle to reveal itself in a pure way in the personality. This connecting body is called the soul. It is the vehicle that ‘stands in the middle’, having a bond with the Spirit as well as with the body. We see before us the perfect man: a three-unity of Spirit, Soul and body. It is the person who has found his first love.
The soul
From a philosophical point of view, the concept of the three-unity is not complicated. Practice poses greater challenges. Why do so few people find their first love, when we are all searching for love? The problem lies with the soul. The soul will have to submit to a process of renewal, of purification and transformation. In mystical terms, this is called the rebirth of the soul. The old gives way to the new. The New Soul, fundamentally and structurally different from the old one, is going to dress itself in a garment of fire. It is with this fiery body that the spiritual sun can be approached and understood. It is the transformation of our consciousness, so also entering into another reality.
The natural soul, living in the three dimensions known to us, seeks love outside itself, in space and time. But the night has a thousand eyes and they revolve around us. We see the image of separation, brokenness and disharmony. The night is cold. The extraordinary thing about the universe is that it always reflects ourselves. Our consciousness determines our reality. If we are inwardly broken, not forming a unity between Spirit, Soul and body, then we also experience the universe as fragmented: the thousand eyes of the night stare at us.
How do we overcome this state of separation?
How do we re-discover our first love?
How do we end the uncertainty principle of the time-space order?
Golden key
In ordinary life, people say that love must come from both sides for a relationship to be successful. That is understandable. It is also the basis of the uncertainty principle, because there is a dependency between the parties. The lovers circle each other in a closer or wider orbit, absorbing the energy of each other. A relationship exists.
Earthly love is a marvellous thing, however, it has a downside: it also causes a lot of suffering and sorrow. Sooner or later, one of the parties is knocked out of its orbit. Through illness or death, through the attraction of another party or through the fading out of love, our outer sun becomes dark.
Love, in the spiritual sense of the word, points to something else.
Jesus the Christ said, “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you”.[3]
Here we have a one-sided relationship; of a love that never forsakes, of a sun that never sets. It is a love that can only emanate from the reborn soul.
In a publication issued on the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Golden Rosycross, Jan van Rijckenborgh is quoted to say about the first golden key, that of compassion and love:
“And if anyone thinks that he will not get far with this key, or considers it completely useless in our world order, then we say: this golden key is one of the most powerful weapons that one will ever be able to possess.”
Is love then a weapon?
First, in the sense that it makes the emitter of that love invulnerable. God is love, therefore God is invulnerable. God’s love knows no more or less and asks nothing in return. Second, love has the ability to close the thousand eyes of the night. That is, love can cover our astral self and auric firmament, shine over it, transform it. The cold eyes of the night are swallowed up by the golden rays of the inner sun. The astral self is like a mirror that has fallen to pieces. The result is misunderstanding, strife and coldness: the chaotic rays cannot unite. Love possesses the ability to heal the astral self, to transform it. When the inner sun of spiritual love arises, our firmament reflects its golden light. A thousand eyes of a new day are then born. They are the harmonious and ordered reflections of the inner spiritual sun. A new heaven is born, the mirror is whole again.
For the human soul to become immortal and invulnerable, it will have to become one with the central microcosmic spiritual sun. With its first love. This central spiritual principle is also the force that feeds the universe. “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”[4]
Is there then again a dependence, in the sense that the soul is dependent on the Spirit? Yes, but the dependence rests solely in the hands of the soul. The soul can turn toward the spiritual sun, or not. God’s love will never abate, knows neither beginning nor end, sets no conditions and demands. The soul, our consciousness, is free to choose: the thousand eyes of the night or the central spiritual heart that is love.
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[1] The Night Has A Thousand Eyes by Francis William Bourdillon – Famous poems, famous poets. – All Poetry
[2] Revelation 2:4
[3] Matthew 5:44
[4] Empedocles
