That is why we can only be courageous – in the original sense of the word – if we see ourselves as part of a larger whole, as part of a communal cause that is greater than oneself.

About the founders of the Golden Rosycross

It is not very difficult to attribute courage to the founders of the Spiritual School of the Golden Rosycross when one knows what the word courage means in its original sense. It comes from modaz, which, three thousand years ago in our region meant something like spirit, thought or the inner state. Modaz, courage, is a movement of the soul, an action of the heart.

The true heart does not exclude, it embraces. That is why we can only be courageous – in the original sense of the word – if we see ourselves as part of a larger whole, as part of a communal cause that is greater than oneself.

Z.W. (Wim) Leene, Jan van Rijckenborgh, Catharose de Petri and their friend and comrade-in-arms from the very beginning, Cor Damme, have proven more than clearly that they were aware of the larger connections. Already in their youth, they discovered that they were part of a spiritual field, part of an invisible brotherhood and sisterhood rooted in thinking, in a pure, living reason and in the universal spiritual sphere of Christ. One spirit, one sphere, one field that presupposes unity, that has always remained one in spirit through all times and circumstances, that has always remained one and will remain so, because it transcends the temporal.

The goal of the founders of the modern Rosicrucian movement was, as Z.W. Leene put it, to give Christianity the place it deserves in the world of real life and philosophical thought. After the death of Z.W. Leene in 1938, his brother Jan – later Jan van Rijckenborgh – took over the leadership of the young Rozenkruizer Genootschap (Rosicrucian Society) and gave it a powerful impetus. In 1945, he became chairman of a board of four members. Together they continued to work purposefully and fearlessly. For that is the spirit that is needed to carry out the liberating work of the Light, the attitude of mind that has always been important in all ages: to summon up the courage to work effectively without a break. Decisive is neither the rapid progress of the work, nor the eventual success of the few striving persons, but the work itself, the sowing of selfless thoughts, the awakening of the memory of the field of life in searching souls, an atmosphere that extends beyond the earthly realm, the atmosphere which the souls once knew. It is an activity that comes from an inner necessity, not triggered or imposed from outside.

It takes a certain mindset to be able to say as a nineteen-year-old:

From my early youth, I have sought the Lord and served Him in a constant struggle for life. In 1915, I made a vow before my inner tribunal to devote my life to the service of the Lord and, if I should be granted the privilege, to give this to the world:

1.  new Christian philosophy that would be based on the hidden things,
2.  free school to impart this philosophy to those who are suited to it,
3. the foundation of a brotherhood that would sweep away the boundaries between material bondage and freedom of spirit through knowledge and lifestyle.

I was told that I would eventually reach my goal through a series of storms, as long as I remained true to my ideals and led a pure life in spite of all difficulties.’

Anyone reading this may shrug their shoulders and dismiss it as youthful exuberance. How often does something we set out to do in our younger years actually come to fruition? But here is the courage, the state of mind that expresses itself in a different way than one would expect. This courage is the signature of all those working and ploughing courageously in the fields of Light.

How great was the merit of Madame Blavatsky’, Max Heindel writes, ’with her fantastic moral courage to confront the materialism of her time with the spiritual values of a completely different, inner science!

And Eduard Schuré was writing to Rudolf Steiner:

If you want to fight the enemy, start by understanding him. You can only defeat the dragon by crawling into its skin. You have to grab the bull by the horns. It is precisely so that in the highest distress you will be able to find your weapons and your comrades-in-arms. I have shown you who you are, now go – and remain yourself!’

As for the young Jan Leene, by the time of his death in 1968, he had brought seven international conference centres into being, written forty profound books, edited more than ten journals, authored hundreds of articles and given countless lectures. An unbiased observer can draw no other conclusion than that his project (formulated in his youth) was impressively successful.

This is based on a mindset expressed in a different way than one would expect. It is a courage that comes from the heart, a mindset that is based on the words of the Bible: ‘

Judge not.’[ii]

Those who judge no longer perceive things openly and objectively; they have made up their minds and their understanding is no longer open to the Great Breath that speaks to the heart in a subtle way and keeps everything in motion and in flow. Such people are rarely able to see beyond the surface of things. Jan Leene said:

For the people of the spirit, this nature-order is a mystification. There is a hierarchy of human beings – and human beings are bound by blood, all of them are part of one humanity. There is only one way, one method – and I speak only to those who are ennobled to approach the words of Christ spoken on the Holy Mountain: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’

The founders of the Golden Rosycross could not escape the grey and oppressive reality of human existence. In the life of Jan Leene, it happened in February 1941 that he was picked up by the dreaded Gestapo. His friend and fellow fighter for the Light, Cor Damme, immediately travelled from The Hague to Euterpestraat in Amsterdam, where Jan was being held. A former school served as an interrogation and torture centre for the Gestapo and the security service. (It was bombed by the British in 1944.) The street bears the beautiful name of the Greek muse of poetry, playing flute – a cynical and bitter contrast to reality. During the occupation, the black monster, the Nazi secret service, was based there; Jewish people were brought there and the resistance fighters were detained and tortured there.

(After the war, the street name continued to have negative connotations for the people of Amsterdam, so the city council decided to rename the street after the resistance hero Gerrit van der Veen.) Damme was not allowed to go in to see his friend, but waited for his brother at a distance. Meanwhile, a friend and fellow member of the Rozekruizers Genootschap, E. Roland-Retera, used her contacts to Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart to get Jan Leene free again.

Later, J. van Rijckenborgh recounted his experiences as follows:

I sat in front of one of the top leaders of the Gestapo. So, I was under arrest! The man had a handsome face and light blue eyes. In front of him on the desk were pictures of his wife and children. He was a completely normal person. There was certainly nothing bad or beastly about him. He looked at me – and I looked at him. We smiled at each other. We recognised the tragicomic nature of the situation … And then, suddenly, it happened. His eyes became fixed, his pupils dilated. He was overshadowed, his larynx was controlled. This can always be recognised by the unmotivated rising and falling of the voice and its total change in tone. His head was bent back slightly, as if he were being grabbed by the neck. I realized immediately that the man was possessed. His own self had been suppressed and the spirit from the background, the lurking black beast, was the one who was speaking to me. I forgot my resistance, the reason of my arrest. I was filled with deep compassion for this being, and while a flood of insults poured over me, I prayed for this strange enemy and enveloped him in the light of the Rosicrucians. And behold, the possession receded. The man shook himself like a wet poodle, my strange enemy became normal again, he became himself again. I had seen and heard who my real enemy was, I had resisted and defeated him, I had chased him away. For, my enemy was not this senior officer, it was someone else.

Finally, Jan Leene was allowed to go home on condition that he refrained from any further activities for esoteric Christianity. That same evening, he and Cor Damme held a course in The Hague. [iii]

A similar incident that occurred just less than two years later is worth mentioning as well. This time it was not Jan Leene who was affected, but Cor Damme. In 1943, he was summoned by the SS in Amsterdam and he had to report to SS headquarters, which was also in Euterpestraat. When Jan Leene was picked up and taken there in February 1942, he, Cor, stood at the corner of the street and waited. Now Jan went with him and waited at the same street corner. Cor said to him, ‘If I’m not back in a few hours, you must go home and tell Jos’[iv].

Inside the office were piles of confiscated works of art. And now everything is turning out quite differently than the friends had feared. The colonel who had ordered him to come seems to have been unexpectedly called back to Berlin. The deputy commander bosses him: ‘Mr. Damme, do you know why Colonel Ruempke ordered you here?’

Cor thinks quickly. It doesn’t seem to be about hiding Jews, as he had feared, or about the secret resistance that he is supplying with food in The Hague. But all this art he sees there! Now, being the owner of the Kunstsaal Damme, which specializes in Eastern art and Persian carpets, something occurs to him. It would be worth a try … He points to the pictures on the wall and the objects on the desk.

‘But it’s obvious! Because of the art here, of course.’ ‘Why is that?’ Cor thinks and sighs as if slightly annoyed and takes out his business card. ’Look, I’m a recognized art dealer and antiquarian. The colonel knows that and he wanted me to provide an official appraisal of all these items. I would like to get started!’ And indeed, he produces a detailed analysis of the art objects stolen by the crew. He draws up a list and gives an estimate of the value of each picture, painting and vase, assessing most of the items according to their art-historical value. In The Hague, too, he was asked to do the same from time to time. Most of the time, he gave the lowest possible values so that as little as possible would be confiscated. His actions were therefore called ‘The Rescue Brigade’. However, he is more cautious now – these works have already been claimed. When his work is finished, the deputy colonel seems to be satisfied. The expert opinions are good and the prices are pleasing. The colonel thanks him, shakes his hand and Cor Damme quickly makes his way out. Jan is standing outside waiting for him.

Two episodes in an already very eventful life. A truly open heart and an alert mind prove to be key factors in protecting against further misfortune. Both friends remember the words of their brother in spirit, Wim Leene:

That is why we are pioneers and why we must draw clear guidelines, because the world has been deceived for a long time. In spiritual matters, one either is made to look hopelessly ridiculous and, as it were, a spiritual evildoer, or one acts redemptively through reason and insight. The transcendent God is the Creator, the immanent God is man. It is like this: we cannot find the transcendent God within nature, but we can find him in man, because God is Spirit, just as man is Spirit. God is therefore not in nature, for nature is only the basis on which everything unfolds.

Teach us to control fear through the joy of knowledge!

We are spiritual beings, eternal, immortal spiritual beings, called to be completely spiritual in the Spiritual Order.

Thereby we do not forget that we are material human beings as well, mortal and undoubtedly called to leave the material world behind, not just for the time between one of our material existences and a new incarnation, but to leave it forever.’ [v]

The joy of knowledge, of being part of a sphere, a field, a Spirit that presupposes unity, in the service to Christ – that is the Rosicrucianism of the heart. It is white through its purity, red through its love for humanity, and golden in its radiant, comprehensive thinking.

[i] Called from the Heart of the World, Haarlem 2010, p. 158,

[ii] Matthew 7: 1

[iii] Called from the Heart of the World, p. 184

[iv] His wife

[v] Called from the Heart of the World, p. 158

 

 

‘There is a crack in everything, that`s how the light get`s in.’
Leonard Cohen.

Anyone researching the topic of ‘courage’ may come across the American psychologist and author Dr David R. Hawkins. In 1995, he published the concept of a scale of consciousness that assigns different states of consciousness and emotions to a sequence of levels from 0 to 1000. He gives ‚courage’ a very special status: that of the turning point in the development of consciousness. Hawkins considers this ‘calibration’ to be universally valid. As Hawkins explains, these gradations have been confirmed in countless kinesiological muscle tests and can be verified at any time. One can speak of mental vibration states that can be read on the scale of human behaviour and states.

The following observations are initially based on Hawkins’ view. 0 represents death, and 1000 represents the highest level, enlightenment. For him, the lowest emotion is shame/self-rejection (20), followed by guilt (30), apathy/hopelessness (50), sadness (75), fear (100), desire/greed (125), anger (150) and pride (175). According to Hawkins, all states below the value of 200 are energy-sapping, restrictive and unhealthy. They weigh us down like sandbags on a hot-air balloon. People with these emotions are in a deficient state and may tend to draw energy from others.

Only at a value of 200 does the deficiency cease and the person enter a positive energy balance. This is the value of courage. For Hawkins, it is the turning point, the point at which the ‘balloon’ begins to rise. From this point on, emotional reactions are increasingly reduced. This is followed on the scale by neutrality (250), willingness (310), acceptance (350), reason (400), love (500), unconditional love/joy of existence (540), peace/inner silence (600) and enlightenment/divine consciousness (700-1000). It can be said that, from a certain level of consciousness onwards, the spiritual state of vibration can only be explained by a higher energy field, by participating in a ‘world of unconditional love and peace’.

It is also interesting that, according to Hawkins, each level of consciousness reflexively brings with it a certain self-image and image of God or a divine idea.

Courage (200) = I can rise above myself = God is behind me.

Pride (175) = I am better than others = I don’t need God.

Anger (150) = I have to fight against something or someone = God is unfair.

Desire (125) = I don’t have enough = God is withholding good from me, doesn’t want me to have it.

Fear (100) = I am in danger = God is punishing me.

Sadness (75) = I am losing something important to me = God is abandoning me.

Apathy (50) = There is no way out for me. It is hopeless = God condemns me.

Guilt (30) = I deserve punishment = God is unforgiving.

Shame (20) = I am not worthy of love = God despises me.

So much for the concept of consciousness developed by Dr Hawkins.

What can this mean for a person who is searching for inner fulfilment, for profound transformation?

The driving force, the linchpin of inner development, is courage. Courage is not an emotion in the true sense of the word. It is rather a quality related to the classical Greek concept of virtue: bravery.

If we take a closer look at courage, we can see that it is often not there when it is needed most. That is why the apocryphal Gospel of Mary says: ‘Take courage! And if you are now discouraged, take courage nonetheless!’

Courage is something that is often latent and can be consciously “revived”. Yes, it always involves overcoming something that we shy away from with a large part of our being.

But what are we retreating from, and where do we want to go? Why have courage?

If we think big at this point and disregard our everyday struggles, which of course also have their appropriate significance – what is it that we fear most and what requires the utmost courage?

The greatest fear we have (even if we are rarely aware of it) is probably the fear of death. It accompanies us for most of our lives. Are we afraid of not being, of no longer existing? Or, if we assume a transformation, are we afraid of what awaits us?

The greatest and deepest longing that lives within us (even if it usually remains unconscious) is the longing to reconnect with the divine, with divine unity. But, like death, we cannot comprehend what will really happen when this longing is fulfilled. Would it also be a state of no longer being? Or does a far-reaching transformation await us, in which our previous existence dissolves? The divine cannot be known. We cannot integrate it into our old system of perception and processing, just as a river cannot contain the sea.

It can only be the other way around: our ego consciousness must be integrated, must be known and processed by the divine spirit. The sea can easily absorb the river.

Krishnamurti said: ‘You are never afraid of the unknown; you are afraid of the end of the known.’

So deep down, we also feel a fear of what we long for as fulfilment. Will ‘we’ still exist then?

Only courage can carry us forward.

The courage to let go of the familiar, to let the unknown into our lives. We must let go of ourselves to enable a new stage of becoming.

Jesus said: ‘For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it’ (Matthew 16:25).

How much of our lifetime are we preoccupied with emotions that limit and depress us? And the corresponding thought patterns, physical sensations and the accompanying, mostly unconscious negative self-images and images of God.

At the same time, there is always the possibility to give ourselves an inner push, to turn away from the closed world in which we are stuck and to face the open world, the ‘whole’ that means freedom and transformation. We therefore have a choice between two completely different states of heart.

As a rule, we live in a closed space of perception – a closed system that confirms itself. Our beliefs, experiences and thoughts circle in familiar patterns, reinforcing each other and creating an apparent certainty: this is how the world is. This is who I am.

Hawkins’ energy-sapping, enslaving levels of consciousness can be seen as smaller units, as interchangeable perception compartments within a perception space, each with its own plausible narrative. But precisely because of their painful and limiting nature, they can also be helpful. They can stimulate the longing for openness, so that we seek a way out – not just from a negative state of mind, but from our fundamental existential dilemma.

All these spaces are like a prison for our souls. They largely filter out the new, the foreign, the unknown. They protect, but they also constrain and hold us back. Closure preserves stability, but it prevents change.

This contrasts with the open – the risk of breaking away from habits, allowing new perspectives, enduring uncertainty, perceiving attachments as shackles. It is the step into the unknown that penetrates the old walls and opens up to the unlimited, whole life, to eternity.

Leonard Cohen expressed a profound truth about human existence in his hymn Anthem:

‘There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’

Sooner or later, every person feels this crack within themselves – a fragility that is unsettling. It can be a loss, an inner turmoil, the sudden feeling that the life you are used to no longer holds you up.

The crack tears open uncertainties and shatters the plausibility of the closed system.

But Cohen shows that this is precisely where opportunity lies. Only when the old breaks down can something new shine through. The crack is not the end – it can be the beginning of a great development. Towards what we long for in the depths of our hearts. Towards what promises us real fulfilment, peace and vitality.

However, many of our efforts, both individual and collective, are aimed at using every trick and sophistication to patch up the cracks that appear, to make them invisible or to cover them up. Constant busyness, media distractions, addictions of all kinds, medication, belief in salvation from outside through technological progress, politicians or great heroes on the world stage, and perhaps even some therapies or esoteric practices fulfil this purpose more or less unconsciously. From a global perspective, the increase in control and surveillance plays a significant role here.

Especially in view of current world events, it is astonishing how large such cracks can become without the collective consciousness of humanity developing deeper insights and questioning the narratives and worldviews that have been handed down to us.

And now the question again: Why is courage needed in this context?

Surely, first and foremost, an awakened, yearning heart must have developed within the individual. And then a crack in one’s own familiar world has become visible, and it is impossible to ignore. Now an insight can develop that not just a small change or adjustment in one’s behaviour is necessary, but a profound reversal of one’s life. What has been is viewed in a completely new light and fundamentally questioned. The old concept of life no longer holds. The realisation arises that a new power must come into effect, one that goes beyond our own abilities and exceeds our possibilities. This requires the courage to admit our own structural inability and to develop the willingness to turn to a higher power. Ultimately, it is also a matter of being fundamentally prepared to submit to a higher order of being and to take our place in it.

It is humility.

It is the insight: ‘Without me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5).

This insight opens us up to faith. Faith here has nothing to do with believing in dogmas. Faith is the ability of human beings to connect with higher realms of development that they cannot grasp or comprehend by aligning their hearts. It requires an act of faith, the assumption of SOMETHING beyond our conscious mind, which is much more than we could ever be with our old nature. SOMETHING that receives and accepts us at any time, however and wherever we are. SOMETHING from which help and guidance emanate. This SOMETHING is NOTHING to us. And it takes courage to entrust ourselves completely to this NOTHING and let go of what we possess. Faith ignites the potential of God within us. Otherwise, there is nothing else to which we can turn our hearts. We begin to sense, and increasingly know with certainty, that the crack in our own world is a path to freedom, that behind it lies ‘true life’ and our ‘real self.’ The connection with the open space gives us new strength and new courage to take the next step. An ever-stronger longing arises for what wants to emerge from behind the crack.

It is the courage to believe.

The promise resounds: ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you’ (Matthew 7:7).

Insight and faith are followed by action. Action is NOT following old ego strategies and patterns. It is a surrender of ego-consciousness to the broken reality as it is right now and a surrender to the flow of life, giving oneself away to the numinous, to the nameless unknown.

It is the radical acceptance of what is happening at this very moment. It is at the same time a trust and the concrete experience that this NOTHING is sustainable, that it gives us an unshakeable foothold. According to the world, this is not a noteworthy deed. In a spiritual sense, it is the greatest thing a human being can do. It is a complete and conscious acceptance of the rift in life. And much more: it becomes a connection, a becoming one with it – and with the light that shines through it. The rift can then change us profoundly and structurally. Through it, an effectiveness is set in motion that gradually reconnects us with our divine origin, with our spiritual and emotional home. The crack is now allowed to expand as part of a process and bring new light into the old world. Like John of Patmos, we see a new heaven and a new earth opening up. In the process, we become different. Yes, we become the person who is laid out in the depths of our hearts and who we were meant to be from the beginning.

It is the courage to act.

It is self-surrender: ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ (John 3:30).

This process ultimately leads to the request rising from the heart:

‘Thy will be done!’

Courage is the turning point of our consciousness. We have not linked this reflection to the goal of climbing a series of points on the consciousness scale. We have opened up a broader panorama. This is about the turning point from a horizontal to a vertical orientation, from the closed to the open. It is about a profound rebellion against life, which we can carry out again and again at any moment, wherever we happen to be in terms of consciousness.

Of course, this shift from the closed to the open also affects our state of mind. Through the secure footing we are increasingly experiencing in the new reality of life, which is ‘not of this world,’ we can also surrender internally to emotions such as guilt, grief, fear and anger. We no longer resist them. Unconscious shadow aspects can thus reveal themselves and, with the help of the new forces of light, be integrated into our consciousness. In this way, they can lose their terror and gradually ‘swing out’. C.G. Jung’s concept of the individuation of the human being can thus find its spiritual realisation within us.

Every crack that becomes visible in our reality is a call from our complete true individuality to us. Like a bird that, when it is ready, breaks out of its protective shell by pecking it from the inside, every human being will, in time, develop the courage to follow their true destiny.

The American poet Walt Whitman lived from 1819 to 1892. During his lifetime, he was known as “the good grey poet” and “the saint of Camden.” Later authors described him as a religious teacher, visionary, “prophet of a new era,” “man with a cosmic consciousness,” and one of the great heralds of the path to liberation.*

He collected his incredibly direct poems in his influential, poetry-revolutionising collection Leaves of Grass. A volume that grew more extensive with each new edition during his lifetime.

The “Leaves of Grass” poems have accompanied and inspired me since my youth. Especially in difficult times, individual poems from it were like beacons for me, with a power that I could draw on to lift myself up.

It is as if Walt Whitman takes me (and his readers in general) by the hand and leads us to a high perspective on the world, on life, on human beings.

He is like a friend who shares his deepest thoughts with you completely openly, a “camerado”, a soul companion and soul guide, someone who knows the great liberating jubilation of existence.

Walt Whitman is certainly one of the greatest sources of encouragement among the poets and thinkers. At the same time, he is a huge challenge. For what are we to make of a man who writes:

I praise with electric voice,
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe,
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.
Song at Sunset

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then.
Song of Myself, No. 48

Do I contradict myselt?
Very well then I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Song of Myself, No. 51

There is that in me – I do not know what it is – but I know it is in me. […]
I do not know it – it is without name – it is a word unsaid,
Song of Myself, No. 50

This poem is testimony to a deep self-knowledge.

A human who can write such words from his own experience is no longer a seeker. He has found.

He has explored his inner self and made contact with its innermost being. He possesses first-hand knowledge; with his inner senses, he has discovered “something” within himself and is interacting with it.

He is therefore very aware of what it means to be human, namely to have a direct share in something wonderful within himself, in his own being.

I imagine what it would be like to be permanently in this state of bliss. How would I perceive the world?

For me, Whitman is a hermetic poet because he sees through things and events to the forces at work to bring the “divine plan” to fulfilment. He writes:

To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for travelling souls.
All parts away for the progress of souls.
Song of the Open Road, No. 13

It is this big, all-encompassing, nothing-excluding “yes” to life as a whole that Whitman sings about like a hymn of praise. In doing so, the wise bard never excludes “evil” or “the rejected.” Everything has its place.

Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you.
Autumn Rivulets, To a Common Prostitute

His universal love spread throughout the world. In a society where slavery and women’s rights were still a thing of the future, gender and racial equality were completely natural to him.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the arguments of the earth, […]

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of creation is love.
Song of Myself, No. 5

Even death, one of his favourite themes, is for him only a stop on the journey back to God.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward to life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Song of Myself, No. 6

And so Walt Whitman celebrates a dynamic universe in which everything exists for the development of souls.
He also encourages us in our turbulent apocalyptic times with statements such as the following:

There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage,
Song of Myself, No. 45

For spiritual seekers, Whitman is a true spiritual guide who repeatedly points to the spiritual treasure hidden within every human being. It is the responsibility of each individual to lift it up and use it in the service of humanity:

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.
Song of Myself, No. 46

You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.
Song of Myself, No. 46

None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you, […]
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.
(To You)

Whitman identifies human beings with their immortal souls. And he never stops celebrating the song of the soul’s liberation. He encourages us to dare everything on our way home to unity in God. Like an eagle that pushes its young (us!) out of the safe but narrow eagle’s nest so that they (we: you and I!) – trusting in their innermost powers – can fly themselves, conquer the vastness of life, the world beyond the “I”, and experience the field of life of the soul itself.

Darest thou now, O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?

No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

I know it not O soul,
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,
All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.

Till when the ties loosen
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.

 Then we burst forth, we float,
in Time and Space, O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.
Whispers of Heavenly Death, Darest Thou Now O Soul

 

Literature used and recommended:

– Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass

– Richard Maurice Bucke: Cosmic Consciousness – A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind chapter Walt Whitman

– William Norman Guthrie: Walt Whitman (The Camden Sage) as religious and moral teacher, Cincinnati, The Robert Clarke Company, 1897

– Roland D. Sawyer: Walt Whitman The Prophet-Poet, Boston, The Four Seas Company, 1918

– Michael D. Sowder: Walt Whitman, the Apostle, Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 1999

– Jan van Rijckenborgh, Catharose de Petri: The Universal Gnosis, Rozekruis Pers, Haarlem, NL, 1981. The authors place Walt Whitman alongside Dante, Shakespeare, Jacob Böhme and Johannes of the Cross in his significance as a witness to the path of liberation.

– Zweig, Paul: Walt Whitman: The Making of the Poet, New York, Basic Books, 1984.

He went looking for peace,
leaning on an iron will.

Personal effort pushed to the edge,
yet war kept returning.

Small or great,
a fight would come without warning,
hurling him back into the fray.

His will alone proved powerless,
and at last he faltered.

Though reason kept insisting,
his heart betrayed him;
he watched the world from a distance,
wary.

Still, he kept asking why wars begin —
why suffering spares no one
in the madness of the world.

Spent from so much thinking,
he sank into gloom,
facing so much pain
and hopelessness.

Until he turned straight inward,
into self‑inquiry,
and an inner clarity arose.

In that split second
he felt relief:
he sensed he was not alone.

But who could be so near?

It wasn’t anyone outside him.
He was wrapped in an uncommon peace,
a peace that made him kin to everyone —
to the whole world —
even to the quick‑tempered
and the fiercely afraid.

From that inner link with the universal,
the peace he felt was not his to own;
and because it wasn’t,
it spoke through a single verb,
rising from nadir
to the highest heavens.

Yes —
a force
flooding the center of his heart,
rising to the center of his soul,
which yielded at once.

Then it was a final peace,
beyond good and evil,
free, timeless, available.

It would be open to all —
yes, only a matter of time,
time for consciousness to ripen.

I wish this, intensely, for the world,
certain that such peace will reach
every one of us.

We are interwoven into a great unfolding that has led our universe from light and energy, through matter, to life and consciousness. And every blossom of this stream of life is beautiful.

There is an orchid on the windowsill in front of me. It was a gift from a friend a few years ago. For a long time it stood there inconspicuously with its flat leaves. Until a few days ago, purple buds appeared on it. They have now blossomed into a large, wide-open flower. Shaped like a butterfly, you can also see the shape of a five-pointed star in it. The purple on the petals, a delicate white running towards the centre, a light yellow at the centre and the same purple towards the inside of the flower as on the outer edges of the petals. The beauty of the flowers casts a spell over the room and our minds. Suddenly, unexpectedly, they have unfolded. Beyond my control. This is another reason why the sight is so exhilarating. Beauty happens to us. The flower has given birth to itself with the power of life. At the same time, the whole cosmos dances in it. The plant draws sustenance from the small amount of soil in the pot. It has absorbed the light of the sun, the water that I gave it and which nourishes it. And many other forces and interrelations have led to this moment, at the end of winter, being the right time to blossom. As a harbinger of spring, the time of burgeoning life.

I find the sight of the blossoms beautiful. In blooming flowers we all feel the breath of beauty. It is the form and colour that enchants us. And at the same time, it is the act, the happening, the event of blossoming itself. When a plant blossoms, it is as if the essence, the unique expression of this life becomes visible. We also feel the elemental power of life itself, which pushes towards blossoming, towards perfection.

When I look at the orchid for some time, I enter into a field of resonance. Its blossoming becomes a tender and awakening memory of the possibility of my blossoming. I feel that this awakening power of life is also at work in me. And with it, beauty.

The blossoming of this plant fulfils an ancient law of the living, an eternal principle that is inscribed in life itself: life wants to flourish. Then the plant is not an object that I look at or even admire from the outside, but a developing form vibrates in it, which I also feel within me. As a human being, I too am an evolving being and strive towards blossoming. In a blossoming life I find the space, the environment, the will to allow the gifts, talents and creative impulses that lie within me to flourish, to allow the buds of the soul to blossom. A person who blossoms in this way is a beautiful person, because life in him or her has been able to find a perfection that is not a conclusion, but rather an opening to the whole, to what is still possible. A blossom that gives itself to all life.

Birth, an

Opening from afar

Bestows me near

With the essence of time

Becoming to be

Speaks your voice

Transforms me to go home

Life is one and blossoms

Whatever is

The eternal breath

In the beautiful flower, we touch an eternal principle of life that transcends our limited and temporal existence. When we perceive something as beautiful, we feel the breath of comprehensive laws and forces. Something eternal touches us. That is why beauty can give us such orientation in the midst of a world of insecurity, destruction, conflict and upheaval.

The sight of beauty in nature, in art, in humanity and in interpersonal relationships, in ethical action reminds us that we live in a world that wants to flourish out of itself. The miracle is that the world is beautiful, even if there is a lot of ugliness and darkness in it. Beauty exists. And our soul longs for it. We seek contact with this transcendent power and presence. Even if our culture presents us with many superficial pleasures, the urge for true beauty remains.

True beauty blossoms out of life itself, as life itself. That is why no ‘cosmetic’ surgery can match true beauty. It is only external manipulation. No amount of smoothing or prettifying can replace true beauty. An old person who is dying and whose face is illuminated by a fulfilled life radiates such a lustre of life. In contrast, made-up, smoothed, standardised bodies are only a façade.

True beauty always unfolds from within, because a being, a person, a life, a work of art, a society follows the harmony of the living from within and gives it expression. That is why the eternal radiance of beauty is so unifying. The great works of art of every culture, music, poetry, may be foreign to us in their form, language or sound, but we can still feel the breath of beauty in them. Beauty can connect us. As human beings, we are all drawn to it, regardless of our culture. And in experiences of beauty, such as looking at a flower, which is perceived as beautiful in all cultures, we become aware of our interconnection with the whole of life. We always flourish as one, as ONE life.

Completely

Awake

Born into

The moving light

Creation happens

When we grow

And go beyond ourselves

Into the open gaze

That gives us

What is possible

And looks at us

A great unfolding

Beauty arises from life. It is the breath of the living. The power of creativity pulses within it, and this power also resides in us. We are interwoven into a great unfolding that has led our universe from light and energy, through matter, to life and consciousness. And every blossom of this stream of life is beautiful. The galaxies that we see through our telescopes, the plants, animals, landscapes, the human being in his artistic creation, in his life-affirming impulses of compassion and connection, in his striving for knowledge of the world and his inner self. Beauty pulses through this process from within. When something is beautiful, the creative power and harmony of the living is expressed in it. When something is ugly, the flow of life is interrupted, deadened, frozen.

In our creative being, we visualise beauty. When we consciously align ourselves with this blossoming power, feel it from within and express it in the world, we poetise our existence. Poetry lives in creating from the beautiful. The poetic, understood more comprehensively as a way of being in the world, lives in resonance with the beautiful. Every poetic work, every poetic act seeks to bring our connection to the greater life into experience and to realise it. Poetry takes the path of aesthetic attunement.

When I write a poem, something in the world touches me. I am moved. I resonate with what is. And express it. Find words, images, metaphors that express my state of mind. Even when I write about a loss or pain, beauty can be felt just by expressing a touch. By revealing a connection. When we are attuned to life in all its complexity, with the beautiful and the painful, life finds expression. And we correspond to our true nature as creative actors, as co-creators of an unfolding cosmos, as co-creators of life who are becoming aware, as poets in the great poem of creation.

Breath comes to us

Moves me from within

The ebb and flow of your being

I am the instrument

Of Your music

Filling the earth and sky

And giving us the space in between

Transforming our togetherness

When we follow beauty, our togetherness can also be transformed from within. Beauty is a whole in which the different parts find a dynamic harmony that remains in motion. In the form of this whole, the inherent connectedness of life is realised. Relationships become beautiful when our own blossoming finds space in them and when the relationship itself becomes a flower that we nurture together and transform again and again. It nourishes us. It reminds us that we are not separate islands in an empty cosmos, but interwoven with everything.

A society, a human community, can also become a space for blossoming. Then every person is given the space to develop freely. To be formed from within. To be shaped in one’s true nature is spiritual blossoming. That is why learning spaces, places of true inner development and strengthening of the heart, are the social energy centres of a community and society.

A person becomes beautiful when the abilities inherent in them – thinking, feeling and willing, embodiment, imagination and agency – find a flexible harmony. They become a process that fulfils itself in its unfolding. Then the whole of life becomes a creative space for that which is possible. The fact that our life itself is open to the horizon of the possible gives our being creative power and an unconditional confidence. A more beautiful, fairer, more life-serving and regenerative world is possible. That which we have in mind, which we sense, exercises a pull in our hearts that calls us to itself. This is a hope that is not directed towards a specific goal, but lives from the fact that our being and doing is permeated by the developing energy of life, which shows itself in our ability to follow a deep meaning. The flower that we could be calls us.

This is the beautiful call from the depths of life, in which truth and goodness are also embraced and sheltered. The true, the good and the beautiful open up the space of the sacred for us as the ultimately essential dimension of our existence. In the sacred, the wholeness of being is revealed, from which we can never fall away, and an absolute depth of meaning, in which we experience that we are woven into an incomprehensible mystery of life. We marvel. We feel awe. Beauty vibrates and reveals itself in mystery, wonder and awe. We come close to the unknowable ground of our being, which is more intimate to us than all the characteristics that determine our individuality. At the same time, we are a unique expression of this all-encompassing whole. A blossom of great life. This is the creative beauty that we are and seek.

Because we can see the beautiful, be moved by it, fall in awe into the silence, look with reverence, we partake in the beautiful. The aesthetic sense is within us and in it we are one with the beautiful that shows itself to us. An aesthetic life is touchable, it is a sentient, perceptive, poetic existence. It rejects the anaesthesia, the insensitivity, the numbness of a culture that does not want to feel what it is and does. Through beauty, we can awaken to our humanity. And we can poetise our world.

My eyes return to the orchid at the window, which has helped write this text. Like every flower, it calls us inside into the creative force field of blossoming, from which we can re-enchant our life, our relationships, our thinking and feeling, our being and doing.

Let us look at each other

In the sparkle of the encounter

The horizon opens up

A shared present

We feel freely sent

Together we are carried

And create the land

Future

It blossoms

Now

Mike Kauschke (*1972) is an author, poet, translator, editor and dialogue facilitator. He practised Zen Buddhism and has been exploring an integral, meta-modern spirituality for many years. After training as a nurse, he worked in naturopathic and anthroposophic clinics and in hospices in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt. He then turned to writing, initially as a translator, then as a senior editor of the magazine evolve, a freelance contributor to the online magazine Ethik heute and an author of books on Poetic Art of Living. For many years he has been involved in the community of ‘evolve World’. Publications, among others: Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Welt (In Search of the Lost World, 2022), Im Gespräch mit der lebendigen Welt (In Conversation with the Living World, 2024).

Aktuelles | Mike Kauschke | Portfolio

Evolve Magazin

The image of a threshold recurs throughout spiritual traditions. A doorway between two rooms, the first light of dawn before the sun rises, the pause before a journey begins — all suggest the same experience: the moment between two states of being.

A threshold is not yet the new life, but it signals that a transition has become possible. Something in the old situation no longer feels complete, yet the next step has not fully revealed itself.

In many ways, the Threshold is a place of heightened awareness. We begin to sense that the familiar patterns of life do not entirely satisfy the deeper questions within us. At the same time, we may not yet know what lies beyond.

In the Rosicrucian narrative of The Alchemical Wedding of Christian Rosycross, the seeker repeatedly encounters gates and thresholds that cannot be passed through by effort alone. Entry becomes possible only when the moment of readiness has arrived. Recognition must precede the crossing. The Threshold, therefore, represents a subtle but decisive moment in the human journey — the awakening of an inner awareness that something new is calling.

The Light of Awareness

What makes such a moment possible is the emergence of a new kind of awareness.
Spiritual traditions often speak of a quiet radiation that surrounds human life, even when it is not yet recognised. It does not intrude upon our freedom or compel belief. Instead, it remains present as a gentle invitation.

This presence may reveal itself in many ways: as a sudden insight, as a deep longing for truth, or as the quiet sense that life holds a meaning that cannot be reduced to outward success or failure.

At first, this awareness may seem distant or uncertain, like the faint light on the horizon before sunrise. Yet once noticed, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.

It is this growing awareness that reveals the Threshold. We begin to sense that another dimension of life exists — one that invites us to look beyond the surface of things.

An Inner Turning

When this awareness awakens, something within us begins to change. The questions that arise are no longer abstract ideas but personal realities. We begin to reflect more deeply on the direction of our lives and the meaning behind our experiences.

At such moments, the Threshold becomes real. We recognise that life is not merely a sequence of external events but a process in which the inner life gradually awakens.

The Rosicrucian tradition often describes this stage as the beginning of a new orientation. The seeker does not yet see the full path ahead, yet something within has shifted. The certainty of the past begins to give way to a deeper search for truth.

This awakening is rarely dramatic. More often, it is quiet and almost fragile, like the first light appearing at the horizon before sunrise. Yet it carries a profound significance, because it marks the beginning of a conscious response to the deeper possibilities of life.

Living on the Threshold

Once this awareness has emerged, life rarely continues in quite the same way as before. Outwardly, the familiar patterns of daily life may remain unchanged, yet inwardly a new sensitivity has begun to develop. We become more attentive to the deeper movements of the heart and more aware of the questions that shape our inner life.

This is what it means to live on the Threshold.

The Threshold is not yet the new life, but neither is it the old life we once knew so unquestioningly. It is a place between two worlds — a moment of quiet tension in which something within us has begun to listen more deeply.

Often, this state brings a heightened sensitivity. Questions arise that cannot easily be dismissed. The meaning of our actions, the direction of our lives, and the purpose behind our experiences begin to take on a new significance.

Yet the Threshold is not only a place of uncertainty. It is also a place of attentiveness. To live on the Threshold is to remain aware of the deeper call that has revealed itself, even if its full meaning is not yet understood.

Crossing the Threshold

The movement beyond the Threshold rarely arrives as a sudden event. More often, it unfolds gradually, as the human being begins to respond to the awareness that has awakened within.

At first, this response may be little more than a change in attention. What once seemed unimportant now becomes meaningful. The inner life, which the demands of daily activity may have previously overshadowed, begins to take on a new significance.

The person who has sensed this deeper call finds it increasingly difficult to ignore it. Questions that once seemed distant now become deeply personal.

For once, the Threshold has been recognised, the journey toward a new understanding of life has already begun.

In this way, the Threshold gradually becomes a passage. Step by step, the human being begins to enter into a new relationship with life — one in which the deeper dimension of existence can illuminate the path ahead.

Dostoyevsky’s Novel The Idiot

‘Is it true, Prince, that you once said that the world will be redeemed by beauty?’ This question is posed by a young friend to Prince Myshkin, who is the essential figure in Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot. When the Prince remains silent, his friend asks again: ‘What kind of beauty will redeem the world?’ The Prince looks at him penetratingly, but does not answer.*1

However, from now on he will remain at the side of his consumptive young friend with boundless compassion, for he knows that his friend is close to death. He remembers only too well the face of death, which he once faced as a young man. It seems as if he wants to tell his friend with his silence that he will share his pain with him in love and that this will make their souls shine with a beauty that will conquer death and one day redeem the world.

A mock execution

Dostoyevsky himself was 27 years old when he was sentenced to death in St. Petersburg along with a small group of friends for anti-regime, socialist thinking. In a letter to his brother, he writes: ‘Today, 22 December, we were all taken to Semyonovsky Square.’ When they were lined up on either side of the scaffold, the auditor stepped into the centre of the execution ground and read out the death sentence: ‘sentenced to death by firing squad’. Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds. And Dostoyevsky said: It cannot be that we are being executed …

The delinquents are thrown over the white death gowns, the swords are broken over their heads. They are tied to the posts and the hoods are pulled over their eyes, the soldiers hold the rifles ready to fire, then a drum roll. The hoods are torn from the heads of those doomed to die, and they are untied from the poles. A tsar’s messenger announces the reprieve. The death penalty has been commuted to hard labour! A few days later, Dostoyevsky is deported to Siberia with many others. They will learn later that the tsar had been planning this show trial for some time.*2

That one moment of ‘neither death nor life’ which is suddenly bathed in sunlight, lets Dostoyevsky later say:

It is amazing what a single ray of sunshine does to a person’s soul. And also: I can see the sun, […] and knowing that the sun is there, that is life.*3

Stefan Zweig describes this moment in his poem Heroischer Augenblick (Heroic Moment):

Death creeps reluctantly from the frozen joints.

And the eyes, still veiled in darkness, sense

that they receive a greeting from eternal light […]

Because he feels that, only since

he had touched the bitter lips of death,

his heart senses the sweetness of life.

Epilepsy as a metaphor

Dostoyevsky was deeply affected by the unspeakable humiliation he suffered at the hands of the state authorities who had sentenced him to death and then spared his life at the last moment. This shock triggered chronic epilepsy in him. The one crucial moment, when the sunlight penetrating his soul saved him from death in a higher sense and awakened him to new life, will remain in Dostoyevsky’s soul as a lasting experience during his epileptic seizures, which he processes in the character of Prince Myshkin in his novel The Idiot. In this ambivalence, every epileptic seizure of the prince is an attempt by his soul to integrate the contradictions of death and birth and experience them as a unity in human life. Prince Myshkin is a kind of alter ego of Dostoyevsky.

The prince, who in his own misfortune receives the vision of the interconnectedness of all human life, leads a truly humble life. However, the people around him cannot understand him. They live in a false reality of self-love, mock his noble and compassionate soul and call him an idiot.

A parallel between Prince Myshkin and Jesus

In his Thoughts on Dostoyevsky’s ‘The Idiot’ Hermann Hesse compares Prince Myshkin with Jesus.*5

The parallel between the two is the thought of the moment when Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane drinks the last cup of loneliness […]. It is the moment of incredible, total isolation, of the tragic loneliness of the Idiot: On the one side, society, the elegant, the worldly, the rich, the powerful and the conservative; on the other, the angry youth, implacable, knowing nothing but rebellion, wild, savage, namelessly stupid … – and between the two parties, the prince alone, exposed, critically observed from both sides and with the utmost tension. And how does the situation end? It ends with Myshkin behaving entirely in accordance with his good, tender, childlike nature, […] responding with selflessness to the most outrageous […] and thus being completely rejected and despised […] Everyone turns away from him […], for a moment the most extreme contrasts in society, age, and attitude are completely erased, and everyone is united, completely united, in turning away with disgust from the one who is the only pure one among them. So what is the reason for this idiot’s impossibility in the world of others? It is because the idiot thinks differently from the others. His thinking is what I call ‘magical’ thinking.*6

Prince Myshkin once stood on the magical border during the execution process, where he had to accept everything, the thought of death and its opposite, life. He realised that there is no law, no culture, no morality and no formation that is true from any other point of view than that of one pole – and that every pole has its opposite pole. He thus denied the whole world and reality of others, and the fact that he appeared as a lovable, selfless person made people helpless. He had experienced the true unity and law of human existence in the light and warming love of the sunbeam that once called him to new life.

The law of compassion

‘Compassion is, after all, the most important and perhaps the only law of existence for all of humanity,’ said Dostoyevsky. When we share pain with our neighbours, we embrace all people in our hearts. At the same time, we connect with our common divine source of life, which is the place where the original beauty of God’s love radiates.*7

This is the secret of beauty: it radiates a splendour that expresses the glory of God in all his creation and will redeem the world.

With his complete modesty, even humility, Prince Myshkin is completely unapproachable, and his life radiates an order centred on his own solitude, mature to the point of disappearance. This is indeed a very strange thing: All events, however distant they may be from him, have a gravitational pull towards him and this gravitating of all things and people towards the One constitutes the content of the book.

Walter Benjamin

From Stefan Zweig’s poem Heroischer Augenblick (Heroic Moment):

And it becomes clear to him

that in this one second

he was the one

who stood at the cross a thousand years ago,

and that he, like him,

since that burning kiss of death,

must love life because of its suffering.

 

References:

1 Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky, Der Idiot (The Idiot), Munich 1997, p. 588

2 Dostoyevsky-eu Execution

3 Quote from Aphorismen, Sprüche und Gedichte – Aphorismen.de

4 Stefan Zweig, Sternstunden der Menschheit, Heroischer Augenblick, Projekt Gutenberg-de

5 Hermann Hesse, Thoughts on Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, https://hesse.projects-gss.ucsb.edu

6 Ibid.

7 Then beauty realises the significance of its Sanskrit origin: Bet-El-Za, which means ‘the place where God shines’.

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.