We find it in Hinduism, Buddhism and – around the beginning of our era – among the Gnostics. Plato depicts it vividly in his ‘Allegory of the Cave’. Today, we have created a cave that we carry with us in our mobile phones.

In recent times it has become, if not commonly accepted, then at least a topic of considerable debate, that the world we live in, from the cozy familiarity of our own homes to the furthest galaxy unthinkable light years away, is a kind of fake, or at least a copy, a simulation. What may once have seemed the stuff of science fiction – think, of course, of the film The Matrix –  is, for some scientists, now seen as, if not yet fact, then as a 99% probability on its sure way to becoming one. High profile technology giants like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel seem to accept it, and in an odd way, the fact that the simulation theory is yet to be proved or even to be accepted as provable, seems, in their case, to be one very good reason to accept it, as an act of faith; both have described themselves as Christians, although not in an orthodox sense. In some ways, this faith strikes me as an example of the “promissory note” character of much current science, the contention that, while we may not be able to prove X now – whatever X might be – we most likely will be able to prove it soon enough. So, if we can’t yet prove that we live in a simulation, don’t worry. With a few more years and more technological advances, we’ll get there, you’ll see.

Are we being simulated by a future civilisation?

The main idea behind this notion comes from the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom. In essence he maintains that just as we, now, run computer simulations of any number of things, from the weather to traffic to military combat – not to mention video games and virtual reality – so too, advanced civilizations – either extraterrestrial or in the future – will run them, but on a much larger and more complex scale. These advanced civilizations would run many such simulations and one of them is life here on planet Earth. Quantum physics allows this, with quanta of ‘reality’ being manipulated in the same way that pixels on our computer screens are. The many ‘coincidences’ that seem to have been involved in life appearing here, and which for other scientists suggest what is known as the “anthropic cosmological principle” –  which argues that, rather than a fluke in a hostile and meaningless universe, our universe is one in which intelligent life must emerge – are for the Simulationists, evidence for, well, the simulation. Someone, they say, is running the show.

For some that might be God. For others, it’s the great computer programmer in the sky. For some of the Simulationists, it is ourselves, in the future. We then are simulations that our future selves have created. Yet if we give rise to the future generation that the Simulationists suggest are simulating us, it’s difficult to escape the logical problem of how a ‘fake’ reality can give rise to the ‘real’ reality that creates it.

One remark by one of the scientists advocating the simulation theory stopped me when I read it. Rich Terrile, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, believes the simulation theory is so probable, that “if we are not living in a simulation, it is an extraordinarily unlikely circumstance.” How he could possibly determine whether it was likely or unlikely escapes me, given that, if we are living in a simulation, any notion of “likelihood” would necessarily be part of the simulation and so unable to pass judgment on it as a whole. And in any case, how “likely” was the Big Bang – if indeed it happened – or, better still, how likely is existence itself? How could we possibly answer that question, given that our notions of likelihood are part of what we are asking about?

The question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” has stopped some hefty minds in the past: Leibniz, William James, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, not to mention countless children, before the wonder is drummed out of them. That what I see when I open my eyes is a simulation is no more likely than that I see anything at all. That the universe “just happened” seems incredibly unlikely, but minds like Stephen Hawkings, who believed he could know the mind of God, more or less said that it did, although his suggestion of a “quantum fluctuation in a pre-existing vacuum” being behind things sounds much more scientific.

Besides being “unfalsifiable” – the philosopher Karl Popper’s definition of a theory lacking “scientific” status – simulation theory has some other things going against it. For one, it assumes that “advanced civilizations” would be doing the same things that we are, like running simulations, but on a bigger scale. That strikes me as suggesting that they would have busses, just as we do, but that they would be a mile long and move at 1,000 miles an hour. If these civilizations are so advanced, why would they bother doing the same things scientists here and now are doing? Perhaps their being ‘advanced’ would be better evidenced by their transcending technology altogether?

The assumption that any definition of being ‘advanced’ must be in terms of technology is itself is a product of another problem with the theory: it presents a metaphor as a fact. When Newton did away with the old Ptolemaic model of the universe and replaced it with one modelled on a machine, he projected a metaphor onto reality. The Einsteinian revolution did the same when it overthrew Newton; now, through relativity, the universe was like an expanding balloon. Today it is no surprise that computers and the ‘virtual realities’ that emerge from them provide the metaphor for the latest model of the universe, the simulation.

The illusory nature of our experiences

Yet even more than this, while being presented as the sharpest point on the cutting edge of scientific theory, the notion that the world we inhabit is somehow false – or at least not all it seems to be – is as old as the hills, simulated or not. Hinduism speaks of Maya, the illusory character of our experience of being separate from the world. Buddhism does as well and speaks of our Nescience, our ignorance of reality. But we needn’t go to strange altars to discover ideas that predate our current fascination with simulations. The west has produced them as well.

One indigenous source of an early simulation theory, we might say, are the Gnostics. The Gnostics were a diverse group of early religious movements, some of them Christian, flourishing mainly in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Many Gnostics distinguished between the transcendent, supreme God and the creator God of the Old Testament, whom they identified as a lesser divine being (the Demiurge). They tended to interpret Christ’s life, death, and resurrection in a symbolic and spiritual manner, emphasizing inner knowledge (gnosis) rather than a literal or historical reading.They are called Gnostics because, rather than accept Christ’s teachings through faith and dogma, as the literal Christians did, they sought gnosis, a Greek word meaning ‘knowledge’. This was not the sort of knowledge one gets through learning or study – what the Greeks called episteme – but a kind of immediate experiential knowledge, a knowledge that was an ‘experience’. This knowledge was of the true character of the world, which they believed was created by a false god – the ‘demi-urge’ – who came to believe he was the true God. We are trapped in the false god’s world, but we retain within our souls ‘sparks’ of light that are from the true God beyond creation. The Gnostics saw Christ as a liberator who came to Earth, not to die for our sins, but to teach the truth and show the way to release the sparks and return to our true source.

Until relatively recently, most of what we knew about the Gnostics came from hostile accounts by the early Church fathers. In 1945, this changed when a collection of Gnostic writings were discovered in Nag Hammadi, in Egypt. Through works like Elaine Pagels The Gnostic Gospels, a more positive understanding of what the Gnostics were about has emerged. By now, the term ‘gnostic’ has entered our common language and is used to characterise a number of works in popular culture, all sharing in some way the notion of a “false world.” I’ve mentioned The Matrix. Other films, such as The Truman Show, Dark City, and The Cube, present similar scenarios, of humans living in a world that they don’t realise is “unreal.” The novels of the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, many of which have been made into films, are frequently based on the same idea. Netflix series like Dark and others use the same theme of everyday reality being unlike anything we believe it to be. I would even say that the kind of “hermeneutics of suspicion” that the philosopher Paul Ricouer developed in the context of texts – seeking for their ‘hidden’ meaning beneath the surface – has translated into our contemporary epistemological uncertainty, exemplified in the rise of what we’ve come to see as a “post-truth” world made of “alternative facts” within a malleable reality. We seem to live in a time when everything is plausible yet nothing is certain, with a plethora of pervasive conspiracy theories dissolving the distinction between fake and ‘reality’.

Yet, even before the Gnostics, the father of western philosophy, Plato, presented what still stands as a symbol of the difference between knowing reality and being trapped in illusion. In The Republic Plato presents what we know as the Myth of the Cave. He asks us to imagine people chained in place in a cave, where they are forced to look straight ahead at a wall, on which shadows move back and forth. Behind them is a fire, which they cannot see, and before the fire people, whom they also cannot see, carrying objects which cast the shadows they see. As those chained look at the shadows, voices explain what they are. Fixed in place, unable to move, reality for them is what they see on the cave wall.

The philosopher, however, is somehow able to loosen his chains and turn around – can we say he looks inward, away from the unreal images on the ‘outside’? He sees that what he had taken for reality were merely shadows. But even more, he makes his way out of the cave. At first he is blinded by the sunlight – the Truth is a shock – but when his vision adjusts, he returns to the cave to tell his fellows what he has discovered. Alas, those who cannot see the Truth will not believe it and, as Socrates himself came to know, will hate those who try to make it visible to them.

In many ways, Plato’s cave strikes me as a more apt metaphor for today than the simulation theory. Or rather, I see our current obsession with our personal technology and the digital electronic world we enter through it, as a blend of Plato’s cave and simulation theory. But in this case, the simulation is not the world ‘out there’, the world of stars, clouds, sunlight, mountains, animals, trees and other people, but the world we enter when we narrow our consciousness down to what we see on an iPhone or other device. More and more, it strikes me, we are losing interest in the outer world – which the Simulationists tells us is a simulation – and are becoming increasingly addicted to the simulated world we find on our telephones. We seem to be going back into our own personal caves, portable ones, that we carry around with us, and on which we watch the shadows of reality provided by social media. The simulation, then, isn’t the world we see around us, but the one we spend our time in, when we shut out the world and enter the stream of electronic pseudo-reality we carry around in our pockets. Those who choose not to enter the cave, have to entertain the “extraordinarily unlikely circumstance” of an unsimulated world that still confronts us with the mystery of its existence.

This article is also published in the German print issue of LOGON

The flight Secondari speaks of can be compared to what Eckhart Tolle describes in the introduction to The Power of Now: a state of deep peace and joy, joined to a renewed, vivid perception of everything around us.

Anyone who has known this ‘flight’ understands it as a profound inner shift.

When the door opens to perceiving each thing with more light and beauty, we then awaken to the monotony we have been living, without even noticing.

And as Secondari suggests, once you have lived it, you will always long for new flights.

The span of a flight can vary, but without question, the first experience is the most remarkable, because everything in it is new.

A flight may begin – after a period of intense longing for illumination – through a sudden change in breathing.  It quickens and deepens until, quite naturally, we arrive at a new inner state, without the inducement of any technique or substance.

In that moment, ordinary, merely pulmonary breathing – the kind that sustains our life within our nature order, where everything is perpetually changing and bound to duality – can give way to a subtler rhythm.  This is magnetic breathing, a sign of realignment with an entirely different reality: a static reality.  This reality is the original divine order, a sublime state governed by spiritual laws wholly different from those that rule ordinary life.

Magnetic breathing does not wholly belong to the physical state.  It unfolds in the etheric body when a spark of consciousness begins to express a more static state.  It is not just the in‑and‑out of air, but the absorption and circulation of living forces (prana, chi) that emanate from this higher order.  It is as if the whole being begins to inhale a living current directly from a more real and enduring source, filling not only the lungs but the space between thoughts, awakening subtle centres.

While pulmonary breathing ties us to the cycle of birth, change, and death within this nature order, magnetic breathing signals the being’s reconnection with its true home in the static order.  This is where the flight begins – not as an escape from the world, but as an entry into a more real and eternal dimension of existence.

Of course, there are surface similarities to altered states brought on by drugs.  Even so, that path is misleading – unsustainable and risky.  Drugs operate entirely within the spectrum of polarities of this nature order (pleasure/pain, euphoria/depression), creating an illusion of expansion that, in truth, binds us even more deeply to it.

Using substances to chase expanded states, creates illusory, fragile perceptions.  They work from the outside in, never as a truly inner process of rebirth from the static order.

Hence the biblical warning:

“Truly, truly I say to you: whoever does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a robber.” — John 10:1

The “gate” is the path of genuine awakening that leads to the static order, while “climbing in by another way” is the attempt to force a spiritual experience using the expedients and forces of this nature order, such as drugs.  As true spiritual teachers have long emphasized, purity of the vehicle – the body and the bloodstream – is a condition for this new life‑principle of the static order to manifest sustainably, moving us toward a lasting bond with what Secondari calls, ‘heaven’.

The aim, then, is to turn what were once only flights, into a new and enduring way of being – a rebirth through a transfiguration into the glorified body of the original divine order.

May we all make that shift.

Some encounters do not announce themselves as decisive.

There is no sense of conversion, no dramatic break with the past, no outward change of identity. Life continues. Responsibilities remain. Yet something interior shifts — quietly, almost imperceptibly — and from that point onward, nothing is entirely the same.

The physical setting has long since faded into the background. It was an ordinary room, unadorned and functional. No atmosphere was constructed to inspire reverence. No symbolism claimed attention. A Bible lay open, and the words were read.

What remains vivid is not the room, nor even the sentences spoken that evening.

What remains is recognition.

The teaching did not attempt persuasion. It did not appeal to inherited identity or demand allegiance. It unfolded in a measured and coherent way.

And something within responded.

Agreement can be reasoned into existence and reasoned away again. Admiration may depend on personality or presentation. Recognition moves differently.

It felt less like encountering something new and more like meeting something long sensed but never fully articulated. The search up to that point had been sincere. There had been study, exploration, immersion in ideas that promised depth and structure. There was an attraction to ordered ways of living — to the possibility that life could be shaped by principle rather than impulse.

Yet each system, however meaningful, carried layers: cultural history, institutional form, collective identity. These sustain communities and preserve continuity. Inwardly, however, the question gradually shifted. It became less about belonging and more about truth.

Recognition answered that shift.

It did not require prior affiliation. It did not insist on identification before understanding. It stood on coherence.

There was a simplicity to what was encountered — stripped of excess. Nothing stood between the teaching and the listener. No spectacle. No emotional pressure. No expectation of group identification as a condition of engagement.

The effect was disarming.

There was peace — the peace of alignment. There was clarity — something falling into place. There was authority without dominance.

It felt like coming home.

A home is more than familiarity; it is a place where one stands without inner contradiction. In that encounter, what was addressed was something deeper than biography or background. The teaching did not overwhelm or compete.

It corresponded.

The word used to describe this place was “school.”

Only later did the depth of that word become clear. A school implies learning, patience, and discipline. It assumes that understanding unfolds gradually and that growth requires sustained participation. It suggests that what begins in recognition must continue in effort.

Yet in that first moment, none of this was analysed.

Recognition came first.

Explanation followed.

Over time, it becomes evident that recognition differs from enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm may arise from novelty and diminish when novelty fades. Recognition endures. It remains through questions, through routine, through disappointment and fatigue. It is tested by time and, if genuine, deepens rather than diminishes.

Years bring complexity. Life rarely simplifies. Responsibilities expand. Cultural currents shift. Public discourse grows louder. Identity becomes central to almost every conversation, and belief is often framed in terms of affiliation.

In such an atmosphere, clarity can be obscured.

Recognition provides orientation.

Orientation is the quiet knowledge of direction, even when the terrain is uneven. Without it, every difficulty feels destabilising. With it, difficulty becomes formative. Questions continue, yet they no longer erode the foundation.

Trust grows from this continuity.

Trust in coherence. Trust in correspondence. Trust that the initial recognition was not projection or mood, but response.

Belonging, in this sense, is directional. It belongs to a principle rather than to personality. Belonging to a group may offer reassurance; belonging to a principle calls for inward work. It invites transformation.

That invitation was never imposed.

It arose from recognition.

With time, what first appeared simple revealed depth. What seemed clear demanded responsibility. Understanding unfolded gradually through lived experience rather than abstract reflection.

The foundation, however, remained constant.

Recognition did not depend on complete comprehension. It depended on resonance.

Spiritual impulses arise in many forms — through tradition, service, contemplation, or study. Recognition is personal.

When it occurs, it carries a distinct quality. It does not dramatise itself. It does not insist. It remains steady, unforced, quietly authoritative.

Perhaps that is what many seek now. In a culture saturated with messaging and competing claims, there is a longing for something that stands without ornament — something transparent enough to allow genuine encounter.

Recognition cannot be manufactured.

It cannot be argued into existence.

It can only be experienced.

And once experienced, it quietly shapes a life.

‘To be or not to be – that is the question.’

The face in the mirror is startled. ‘Who am I?’ And, between astonishment and discovery, it realizes that it is a shell, a mask, a persona. ‘But is that all I am?’ – it soon asks itself.

Inside this cocoon, the sleeping caterpillar no longer crawls on the lowest levels of its earthly nature. But it dreams of being the blue butterfly that rises to other unknown dimensions, with ethereal and eternal lightness.

Suddenly, it realises that it is no longer a caterpillar, but it is not yet a butterfly. So, inside this cocoon, like a seed, it feels an immense desire to blossom, to be free, to break away and fly towards an unknown sun.

But the caterpillar-self still wriggles inside. It thinks about its social obligations, its survival instinct, its desire to dance and sing its joy full of earthly lightness. Yet deep down, the almost-butterfly is eager to gain infinite and eternal space.

Inside the cocoon, the conflict begins: the caterpillar self feels in its veins the “blood” of its parents, its country, all its traditions and beliefs. The almost-butterfly feels a deep nostalgia ─ a longing simply to be.

Thus, an unknown light, coming from above, opens a crack and reaches the center of the cocoon. The caterpillar self-surrenders. It realises that it no longer is.

The butterfly flutters lightly.

At dawn, the supreme joy of  being is realised.

Many years ago while meandering along on a beach, I came across a young lady sitting cross-legged on the sand writing in a notebook she held on her lap. Pondering and apparently noting down her thoughts. We said very little other than a greeting but I was aware of something different about her and reflected that “today I met one”. I wasn’t exactly sure what a “one” was but I sensed that it was something special perhaps in the sense of a soul being. I walked on.

Today I was conscious of the same sensation from another young lady who had come to help me with some work. A lightness, a joyfulness, a genuine and spontaneous love for her fellow human beings. A naturalness. Again the sensing of “today I met one”.

But wait – the following day, I met another two of these special people, one a friend who I have known for a long time, another a young man walking his dog in a local park. There was the recognition of something special within each of them, just as with the previous people. Something not forced, not manipulated in any way, just natural and real. Warm, loving, genuine people with a natural inner joyfulness, unaffected by, disconnected from the world’s turmoil. Perhaps not even perceived by themselves but nevertheless present.

How had I not noticed them before? I pondered that if I have met a small number of these beings, how many more could there be on the earth right now. In each case an endlessness about the experience, time and distance playing no part, past and future not relevant. They were just there doing what was needed at the moment.

If there were some, there must be, will be many more now and in times to come. Perchance their lightness and love can and will enhance that same experience which is growing on this planet right now, in individuals but also collectively, lifting it up to a higher vibration.

Let there be joy!

playing with earthly architecture, dreams, and utopias. How many revolutions have attempted to stop the hands of time, to carve out a niche of eternity! How many shipwrecks have there been in search of non-existent cities of the Sun? New worlds are always just copies of the same world, as was well known to the Gnostics from the beginning. Today’s disillusioned and lost man no longer has magic lanterns of chimeras that can pierce the dark ocean, but tries to burn in the brazier of denial every transcendent value, every old custom, as in the succession of ancient Chinese dynasties, remaining under an empty sky, in agonizing solitude. False rebellion animates ordinary people who would like to turn the page, to overcome the Taedium Vitae that assails them, but who remain completely identified with the conditioning and unconscious mechanisms of personality. To dismantle one’s personality, to rid the brain circuits of everything that culture has instilled in them, to go against the tide of common thinking, or against habits, to silence one’s ego, is an endeavor doomed to inevitable failure, without a path to rebirth. That journey to the center of the earth, the acrostic V.I.T.R.I.O.L. , which can be interpreted, according to Servier, as:

“Descend into the depths of yourself and find the invisible core on which you can build a new man”.

A journey that can lead to Compostela, like the one made by Nicolas Flamel, or that of Captain Cook, who discovered islands and archipelagos in succession, dying in the last port, on the island of Sandwich. Death that must be understood as mystical death. A journey into the self, since knowledge of the outer world passes through knowledge of the inner world. Eliade recalls that in Eastern alchemy:

“The search for the elixir was linked to the search for distant and mysterious islands” .

When the ego entrenches itself in its ivory tower in comfortable situations, an unconscious, amoral, archaic force bursts in, taking its place and causing a profound sense of disorientation.

A scenario of suffering and pain that unites both the nihilist and those who embark on a spiritual journey. The starting point is the same, but the nihilist will stop at the edge of the abyss, succumbing to the labyrinth of the unconscious psyche, while the true traveler, whose goal is the objectives of the self, will see the rainbow appear, as in Durer’s admirable engraving “Melancholia” (1514). A sign indicating the numerous transformations of the personality, which appears under different lights, followed by constantly changing moods. Wim Wenders’ film “Perfect Days” attempts to break through in this world of ruins.

Jean Cocteau said:

“Cinema is modern writing whose ink is light.”

A mixture of lights that is skillfully blended in the film under review and reminiscent of the colors of the alchemical tables of Salomon Trismosin’s “Splendor Solis.”

We move from the darkness of night, nigredo (mystical death), to the lights of dawn, albedo (white work), to a resurrection finale, in which a red sun reigns supreme in the sky, representing Rubedo (rebirth). The protagonist goes through all these phases without letting himself be drawn into an alienating Tokyo where skyscrapers tower against the inaccessible sky and where money takes on a privileged role: the baseball team wins because it has more money, love is won through money. Everything is rotten, devoid of values, but the protagonist does not lose heart. Starting with the smallest things, he tries to elevate his philosophical mercury through reading, poetry, and music, in order to detach himself from a tragic daily life and a job that involves human waste. But above all, he discovers what it means to live without a greedy and conflictual ego: poetry is already a source of transformation. The etymology of the word poet, in the language of Sappho and Alcaeus, means I form, I build, I create. For Henry de Vaughan, poet and brother of the Rosicrucian alchemist Thomas, poetry means the search for a vigilant innocence capable of perceiving eternal light, through the call of analogies that weave the world of appearances and finitude. Finally, the encounter with the shadow, that unresolved unease that we hide in our dusty drawers and that should not be avoided, but integrated, overcome, knowing how to grasp the message it conveys. The nihilism of the third millennium, which masquerades as libertarian and hedonistic, actually creates a tyranny of desires, an automatism understood as dependence on material and technological goods. Shopping malls become the true idola tribus of our times. A Sunday meeting place for families. Desiring is a passive activity, because it is not a desire to give, but a desire to have. Its goal is to shift one’s center outside of oneself and is subordinated to the urgency of fulfillment. Desire distances us from the voice of our soul, which knocks desperately in the dungeons of our being. The writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald intuits the illusory nature of the web of desires that individuals weave:

“Desire is a cheat. It is like a ray of sunlight that wanders here and there around the room.

It stops and covers an insignificant object with gold, and we poor fools try to grab it,

but when we succeed, the ray moves on to something else and we are left

with the insignificant part in our hands, while the sparkle that made us desire it is now gone.”

As long as we are bound by a thousand attachments, we are agitated and unhappy. Catharose De Petri urges:

“Do not let your soul be sensitive to the mood swings of the natural being.

Keep yourself beyond joy and pain. If you let yourself be sucked into all the turmoil of time,

how can you be part of eternity?”

Modern man, always connected to the web, is no longer connected to the threads of consciousness that Ariadne, the soul, offers him, so as not to get lost in the inner labyrinths.

In megacities, people in a state of perpetual agitation come and go like ants in an anthill without being aware of their feelings, their actions, and the results of their activities. William Blake, poet and painter, understood that the “dark factories of Satan” of the contemporary industrial landscape were built in the image of a mechanistic philosophy that enslaves human beings and annihilates the soul. In an era of epidemics such as the one we are experiencing, bourgeois economic morality, which worships the sanctification of production, insinuates subtle Darwinian messages:

“Many of us will die, especially the most fragile, but we will emerge stronger and ready to produce.”

In Marco Revelli’s book “Umano Inumano Postumano” (Human Inhuman Posthuman), an important episode that occurred during the Covid epidemic is mentioned:

“Daniel Loeb of Third Point and Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone became regular attendees of almost daily

conference calls with the President during the height of the epidemic, when mass graves were filling up in  New York

on Hart Island, the island of the dead, to ensure that he stuck to the idea that we are not made to stand still

‘and bring into line’ those cowardly governors who stubbornly listened to scientists and closed factories,”

(taken from the Washington Post, 24/03/2020).

In this, albeit brief, overview of the ills afflicting modern society, the loss of a sense of wonder cannot be overlooked. Especially after World War II, this realism, dear to the progressive bureaucracies of the East, triumphed:

“The first tractor arrives in the village”

is one of the recurring headlines in the press.

Nowadays, however, the fluctuating fortunes of GDP take on greater importance. We live in the chaos described by Meyrink in his novel Walpurgis Night, where the protagonists lose their individuality, reduced to surviving only through a series of repetitive acts, without ever seeking anything higher. Some psychologists speak of the “repression of the sublime” when the spiritual door is closed, giving more importance to the concrete mind and using the left side of the brain more. In the name of science and a philosophy defined as rational, modern society claims to exclude any mystery from the world. Rationalism as a belief in the supremacy of reason proclaims a veritable dogma, denying everything that belongs to the supra-individual order and pure intellectual intuition. Cartesian common sense excludes the intervention of spiritual influences in what is designated as “ordinary life.”

In this well-oiled clockwork mechanism that claims to mark every moment of our day, the killers of magic kill, behind the scenes, the winged hippogriff that lies within us and can connect us to purer heavens.

“Inside every man lies a dead child,”

says Curzio Malaparte.

The sense of wonder is typical of children, whose souls are able to capture fragments of the original soul. In the Chinese wall that surrounds us, cracks can still open up. The ocean of the unknown breaks its waves against everyday life: it can be a book that opens to a page that has been ignored and reveals important meanings that had not been noticed; it may be ice flowers forming on the windowpane, drawing patterns like finely chiseled jewels, which may be messages sent by the soul of the world; it may be a celestial symphony that bridges other dimensions; it may be dreams that indicate a spiritual path to be taken. The law of Hermes:

“Quod Superior Sicut Est Inferior,”

which summarizes the transition from the sphere of air to the lower sphere of the waters of becoming (and vice versa), is taken up by Arthur Osborn:

“Just as a sponge is impregnated with the air, water, and chemical constituents of its environment,

so are our bodies impregnated with the subtle matter of the lower planes”

(The Meaning of Personal Existence).

But these are distant echoes of which human beings can only grasp fragments. In the Corpus Hermeticum it is written that our personality, with which we identify ourselves, is not only earthly, but also belongs to the zodiac. The zodiacal system governs our lives and our personality is determined by it. The tent, the personality we inhabit, exists thanks to the twelve activities of the zodiac. Twelve signs representing twelve vices. In reality, twelve imperfections representing twelve vices, that is, something that has not yet become a virtue. The path to liberation therefore implies leaving the wheel of the zodiac, the

“painful wheel of life and death,”

as found in a 4th-century BC Orphic tablet. Liberation implies the weaving of the golden wedding garment between soul and spirit.

A very young child, not yet of school age, not yet influenced by the world’s ideas and thoughts, stood alone outside under a blue sky and pondered. Where did the clouds of yesterday go to, where will those of tomorrow come from? What was beyond that overarching canopy in which they floated, disappeared and then reappeared in new shapes and forms?

And an answer presented itself within that child, in the words of a song, a lullaby, that had stayed with her since its hearing in even earlier years.

“Over the rainbow, way up high, there’s a place I have heard of once in a lullaby…. if birds fly over the rainbow, why then, oh why, can’t I?”

That question had remained throughout her life and now, many years later in maturity as an adult those same words still resound, over and over. Life has responded over the years in many different ways, with many different experiences and different directions but only one response has always remained true.

Seek within, seek the rainbow within your heart.

That early childhood experience proved to be the gateway to life.

If the inner heaven opens — and it sometimes does — it does so quietly. There is no trumpet, no threshold that one steps across. No signal sounds. And yet something is different. Not dramatic, not visible, but different.

Paradoxically, the more we try to seize it, the more it slips away. It seems to come on its own, when it chooses.

The first thing that changes is not the world, or even our experience of it, but the relation to that experience. Attention releases its grip. The compulsion to explain loosens. There’s a momentary pause in thought’s endless momentum. Listening becomes possible, a listening not aimed at results, but one that waits… almost helplessly, yet alert.

Often, it happens indirectly. Perhaps in rest, or during something very small: a pause while washing hands, a hesitation in a conversation, a glance out a window. When the usual demands fall away and when you’re not looking for anything, something else, very slight, may appear.
It doesn’t require any special conditions. Just availability. Just not blocking it.

A poem can sometimes mirror such a moment Not because it explains. Not at all. But because it reflects something alive, something moving just under the surface, not yet spoken. The right poem doesn’t deliver the mystery. It steps aside so the mystery can be felt.

Heaven Within

The phrase “inner heaven” is odd, if you think about it. It doesn’t point up or out. It gestures inward, but not to a place. It suggests a condition, a way of being.

In the language of the Rosycross, it refers to the awakening of another kind of consciousness, one not centred in the personality or ego. One that doesn’t come from the self, but arrives within it from another source entirely.

That source, sometimes called the spirit-spark or divine nucleus, doesn’t speak in emotions. It doesn’t rise from memory. It stays quiet until it’s heard. And when it is heard, everything is different, not in appearance, but in meaning.

This new order of perception doesn’t stand apart from the world. It shines through it. Just as light isn’t “seen” itself, but reveals what is there, this light reveals a kind of inner truthfulness, present all along.

Some of the Gnostic writings describe this as the light of the Pleroma, the fullness, while the human soul has wandered into forgetfulness. The task isn’t to climb back up. It’s to make space within so that the light can be received again.

This space comes through letting go, a kind of inner poverty. Not despair, not lack, but the voluntary loosening of all that clutters. Thought, fear, control, interpretation. Not because they are “bad” but because they are in the way.

The way inward is not a staircase. It’s an undoing. We don’t become more spiritual by adding to the self. Something else, something quieter, must come forward as the self steps aside.

The Condition of Receptivity

It’s strange how we prepare for what we cannot be ready for. You can’t reach for the light without diminishing it. And yet, we must somehow become ready.

This readiness is like… ripening. Something unforced, unhurried, invisible. Until it is.

The inner heaven begins to open as the soul offers itself. Not out of ideology, not because it should, but from a knowing, unspoken, unprovable — that this is what it is for. That it was made for something it cannot own.

And this knowing… it doesn’t start in the intellect. It stirs deeper down as if we are remembering something that was never taught, but always there.

Receptivity, then, is not a skill. It’s not learned. But certain things can support it, quiet, study, genuine companionship, and honest solitude. Yet none of these guarantees anything. They only create conditions in which the real work — the unseen turning of the soul, might begin.

And when it begins, the landscape shifts. Circumstances may remain unchanged. But something changes in how they are seen, how they are walked through. That is the quiet miracle.

A Different Quality of Light

In some of the writings of the Rosicrucians, the inner sun is said to rise in the sanctuary of the heart. This isn’t just a metaphor. It points to something that can be known, not conceptually, but inwardly.
As the physical sun changes what it touches, so too this inner sun changes the atmosphere of awareness. Perception begins to carry a warmth and clarity that were not there before. But it’s subtle. If you chase it, it hides.

This light doesn’t divide. It doesn’t assess. It doesn’t say: this is worthy, this is not. It doesn’t compare. It is seen as a whole. And seeing the entire brings peace. Not the peace of absence — but the peace of presence.

And this presence gives meaning through direct participation.
To live from this light is to serve it, though not self-consciously. It seeps into the most minor things. A gesture. A silence. A word said without calculation. Even doing nothing, if that nothing is true, may become a vessel.

Over time, something happens. The soul begins to measure life differently. The dramas that once seemed vast are now simply passing weather. Sorrow is no longer the enemy — not because it disappears, but because it fits within a larger sky. The light does not take away pain. It holds it differently.

The Veil of the Ordinary

What hides this light from us is not darkness, but the ordinary. Not evil — but familiarity. Habits. Assumptions.

Opinion, distraction, urgency, comparison — none of them wrong. But taken as final, they thicken the air. And eventually, we can’t see through.

To pierce this veil is not to abandon the world. Quite the opposite. It is to see it with clearer eyes. Without the filters of self-reference. Without the insistence that it serve our story.

And then, quietly, the world becomes transparent, not in the mystical sense of vanishing, but in a more human way. You see what’s there, and what’s behind it. Light begins to pass through. And in that meeting, heaven and earth kiss. Not as ideas. As presence.

The inner heaven brings us into it with a heart that no longer clings or demands. A heart that can give, because it has received.

Even the most minor things, walking to the sink, folding a cloth, can become the site of awakening. Not because we dramatise them. But because we meet them cleanly, without noise.

The sacred, when it arrives, is usually not loud. It doesn’t need to announce itself. It comes gently when we stop grasping, when the inner noise fades.

And then, something begins. Not new, exactly. But newly seen. Not an idea to carry — but a way of walking, a way of being.

This is not a finish line. It’s the start of a new life.

In this space, the question is no longer what must I do to awaken? It becomes something quieter: how do I remain open to what is already awakening in me?

There is no answer. Only the walk. One step. Then another. In silence, fidelity, and the listening that no longer demands anything in return.

‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main’

John Donne (1572-1631)

Sometimes I wake up with ideas in my head. They come in the form of a single word, a phrase, an image. Today, I saw a field of golden wheat dancing in the wind under the sun.

A spark of thought-feeling sprouted with the word ‘seed.’ I was left with the feeling that, however fragile they may be, like all seeds sprouting in search of sunlight, they multiply their strength a hundredfold when exposed to that light together. Visualising the harmonious dance of the wheat stalks, I felt that the multitude of seeds knew their strength.

I imagine that the core of our being only survives when it seeks its transcendent energy in a harmonious way, when it connects with the core of the being of others we meet in our daily lives. “Namaste!” In this way, the God in me greets the God in you.

As the metaphysical poet John Donne said, ‘No man is an island!’ His contemporary, William Shakespeare (1564-1616), challenges us when he proclaims in Hamlet: ‘To be or not to be! That is the question.’

Then I understood that we are truly ourselves when we realise our transcendent interaction with other beings. It is an essential connection: an exchange that makes the Light of our essence grow.

Bringing this feeling-thinking to the here and now, in these times of social networks and light and quick interpersonal contacts, I imagine that the Uber driver, with whom I have a very brief contact, contains an essence that converses with mine. Together, we are seeds in the Sun. And in the Sun, our essences – brilliant – grow, happy, exchanging sparks that enrich us with every word or silence. In these moments, we are truly Human Beings.

When I reflect on our time, it increasingly seems that the world has forgotten that there once existed a boundary between the sacred and the ordinary. Everything now flows together in a single stream, carrying both the eternal and the fleeting, the holy and the trivial — on the same information feed, within a single click, a single glance. Ancient texts appear beside tabloid news or sports updates, and no one even flinches if an advertisement for sneakers appears next to the Gospel.

And I notice: when a person pauses just for a moment, and no longer, they scarcely feel the difference – as though everything has become equally important and equally empty. The temptation arises – and how could it not? – to make the texts lighter, to turn them into a kind of “spiritual fast food,” adapted to the taste of “modern perception.”

Instead of stopping, becoming silent, and listening — instead of entering into a living, thoughtful encounter — we usually just keep scrolling, through paper pages or digital ones, without ever catching our living breath.

Through the digital stream, sacred and philosophical writings flow together in a confused mixture — from Plato to the Gospels, from Jacob Böhme to the Bhagavad Gita. Not long ago, inattentiveness to the sacred seemed like an accident; today, it has almost become a natural state.

Reading increasingly turns, not into a dialogue with the text, but into a signal for a like, a comment, or a reply – so that the algorithm may note: “thought viewed – recommendation confirmed.” Even profound mystical works — from Master Eckhart to The Alchemical Wedding of Christian Rosycross by Johann Valentin Andreae, where the union of the soul with the higher principle is symbolically revealed — are sometimes simplified to the level of easy, “digestible” reading, losing in the process the delicate thread of inner transformation toward which they lead.

So gradually, a habit forms of seeing spiritual knowledge as something that should be accessible, brief, and effortless. I understand this desire – not long ago, it lived in me as well. But behind this habit lies more than a craving for ease: it is a symptom of profound shifts in consciousness – that inner image of the world through which a person perceives reality, themselves, and God. And this image, alas, seems trapped in a closed loop of already simplified meanings, much like a stomach accustomed to ready-made meals: only the quick result matters, not genuine engagement of the mind, not inner immersion, not the quiet work of the soul that a true encounter with the living Word requires.

From a Gnostic perspective, this is particularly palpable. Gnosis is not information to be “downloaded” or instantly grasped. It is a quiet, almost imperceptible awakening, requiring not so much effort as trust, attention, and inner stillness. It manifests in silence, in attending to oneself, in listening to one’s own heart and thoughts — not as a student completing an assignment, but as a human being heeding the mystery that whispers from within.

As outlined by Jan van Rijckenborgh in The Universal Gnosis, true understanding demands personal discipline and inner experience, not the passive consumption of texts.

The desire to preserve a text in its canonical form is not a conservative whim. It is one of humanity’s oldest spiritual practices. Consider the tradition of the soferim — Torah scribes — who for over two millennia copied the sacred text with such meticulous care that not one letter, not one mark, was lost. Why? Because the Word is not merely a vessel for meaning; it is a living Presence. To alter it is to sever the connection to its Source. Thinking of this, I feel not a fear of error, but a reverence for how the letters reveal something far greater than ourselves.

This is not literalism. On the contrary, the text’s stability is a conduit to its multidimensional depth. Jewish tradition teaches of Pardes — four levels of interpreting Scripture: peshat (the literal sense), remez (the hinted, symbolic meaning), derash (the ethical interpretation), and sod (the secret, mystical sense). Each deeper level emerges not in spite of the text’s fixed form, but precisely because of its fidelity to itself.

The Gnostics, also, recognised this layered nature. The Gospel of Philip states: “The Lord did not reveal the mysteries to everyone, but only to those worthy of them.” This is not elitism, but a spiritual law: not everyone is prepared, not everyone can bear the silence in which understanding is born.

Today, even the word “God” itself can become a barrier. Upon hearing it, many are quick to close the book — dismissing it as the language of a bygone era, a language of fear and power. The temptation arises to replace it with something more contemporary: “Energy,” “the Absolute,” or “Higher Consciousness.” I, too, once thought this would make discussing the eternal easier. But the longer I contemplated on this, the clearer it became: the words are not the obstacle; our inability to perceive the depth behind them is.

In the Apocryphon of John, we read: “He is incomprehensible, ineffable, and invisible. He is not a god as the existing ones understand god, for He surpasses God and transcends everything.” Here, the very word “God” is already a symbol – an attempt to express the Inexpressible. Sometimes it seems to me the problem lies not in the word itself, but in our lost capacity to read symbols and sense the light hidden within them.

It is crucial to understand: this is not about freezing the language of the past. Words and forms do evolve as a people’s language changes – without translation, Ancient Greek and Old Church Slavonic are largely inaccessible today. But there is a fine line between translation and free adaptation, between conveying the text’s breath and tailoring it to the tastes of the age.

Translation builds a bridge that preserves the source’s power. Arbitrary adaptation for the sake of convenience is a substitution that dilutes its very essence. I come across such texts – smooth and understandable, yet nearly lifeless.

A text’s archaic form is not a museum piece, but a living filter. It separates those seeking easy understanding from those ready for inner work. It is where familiar words become unfamiliar that space opens for genuine experience – for an encounter with oneself, for a silent dialogue with the text.

In our rush to “modernise” sacred texts, we often strip them not only of their form but of their breath – and with it, their capacity to awaken the soul. For the Living Word does not require updating. It waits only for the moment when a person grows silent – in mind, heart, and soul – and in that inner quiet, perceives the vibration of that subtle string of living breath, which gradually dissolves the habitual boundaries of perception and opens the path toward the union of the soul with the Divine Spirit.