Aren’t we humans like pieces of a puzzle? Each and every one of us is ‘knitted’ differently, has a different shape and different contents, different feelings and thoughts.
Are we in the process of forming a beautiful, new overall picture despite our individualisation? Although a goal is set, the development towards it is a creative process in which freedom is intended, voluntary participation.
In front of me, I see pieces of a puzzle laid out on the table. If I do everything right, it will end up being a beautiful landscape. I start with a few border stones and then work my way further into the centre of the picture. Aren’t we humans like pieces of a puzzle? Each and every one of us is ‘knitted’ differently, has a different shape and different contents, different feelings and thoughts. Our habits and goals differ from person to person. Are we in the process of forming a beautiful, new overall picture despite our individualisation? Are we working on a common goal with the next step in the development of humanity, as it is expected in the new age, the Age of Aquarius?
Unlike a jigsaw puzzle, we are not finished pieces that fit together to form a predetermined image. The great seers of humanity describe a common goal for humanity and common stages of development that need to be achieved. Some speak of peace and freedom, others of brotherly and sisterly love that encompasses all people, animals, plants and all of creation.
Since the individual is connected to the collective and the individual waves of life are interdependent, the development of each individual has an effect on the cosmos as a whole. The waves of life – angels, humans, animals, plants and minerals – each have their own developmental task, but they always remain connected to each other because they influence each other. Thus, without the plant world, we would have no oxygen to breathe, and without pollination by insects, blossoms do not produce new plants.
The whole of creation is based on a single great plan. And this plan vibrates as a forward-pushing potential in every being.The Danish-American author, theosophist and Rosicrucian Max Heindel speaks of seven world bodies that undergo seven times seven developmental cycles over long periods of time, with activity and phases of rest.1
Diagram
So, although a goal is set, the development towards it is a creative process in which freedom is intended and participation is voluntary. Today’s humanity has deviated from this divine plan of development by using its free will to strengthen its own being, to build up its own ego. It must therefore mature through experience. In everything it does, it is accompanied by the harmony and unity of the Divine-Spiritual. This makes it possible for the spiritual soul within each of us to sooner or later express itself – the soul in whose consciousness the whole can shine. In this way, we are repeatedly presented with a choice.
What about our will? Can I want what I should want in order to achieve the great developmental goal? No, I can’t do it just like that. Before I can really want something in freedom, there must be clear insight about what I am striving for with my thinking and feeling. Through experiences of all kinds, I learn that my will often brings about the opposite of what I intend, simply because the unpredictability of other people and circumstances, as well as my own uncertainty, are always present.
My feelings can also deceive me, and I learn this through corrections from outside and inside. From within, because my innermost self knows what is right, and from outside, because the world repeatedly shows me how far my feelings are from sensing and understanding people and things from an expanded perspective.
Only when reason and feeling have been purified by experience can I succeed in orienting myself towards what ‘really’ makes sense, towards the whole in which we are all embedded. It can only be grasped intuitively if I listen deeply within. Because that is where the answer is. It is pure when I am purified, when the veils before my innermost have become more permeable and I can therefore hear and understand the inner voice.
In his book Dei Gloria Intacta Jan van Rijckenborgh describes the process of becoming truely human on the basis of initiation steps. Before a new will can attune itself to the divine plan, which he calls ‘Mars initiation’, the initiations of Mercury (mind) and Venus (feeling) precede:
The Mercury and Venus initiations have become the property of the new human being. A light of God and a power of God have been handed over to him first hand. A strong, balanced, dynamic new will must begin to direct the Mercury-Venus gifts. Therefore, after the Venus initiation, the new ‘companion’ [the spiritual soul] is not yet fully created. This completeness will only reveal itself after the Mars initiation; the new Mars develops the new will of the ‘companion.2
If you start with the will first, then you are on the wrong track, because you go about it experimentally and forcefully. You then continue to move in the circuits of conditioning, remaining a piece of the puzzle that does not organically fit into the living whole. But the new aspects of consciousness can awaken, a self-initiation into one’s own innermost self can take place. It leads to insight into what is good for the whole organism of man and earth, for the creatures and worlds with which we are inseparably connected.
The maturing soul transforms us into a new human being who integrates him or herself creatively and responsibly into the perpetual process of development of creation, from moment to moment, from situation to situation. Each of us is an indispensable piece of the puzzle, of the greater whole. Everything is waiting for him/her to find the place that only he or she can occupy.
The impulse for this comes from the Spirit. The Spirit disquiets the soul and urges it to develop. The goal is the spiritualisation of the soul – and ultimately the spiritualisation of the world.
1 Max Heindel, The Rosicrucian World View, Diagram 8.
2 Jan van Rijckenborgh, Dei Gloria Intacta, Chapter 6
