Faces of God – Eyes of God – Eyes of Man[i]
There is a special force hidden in the human gaze, a magnetism in which the person is materialized in himself/herself.
When we look a loved one in the eye, suddenly the whole world is laughing. We lose ourselves in the other one. We get lost in the second sight, drawn by the force that underlies gravity and binds all things together with love that reminds us of the higher world in its resemblance.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote about the eye:
Just a sun-like eye
is able to perceive light
and if it were not for the power of God living in us,
we could not be inspired by divinity.
Goethe takes the idea of the Sun from Plato, pointing to God as a transcendent powerfulness. Something intangible is visible in the human gaze.
The eye is the window into the soul, as they say. We can “thread” the whole world through the eye, like through the eye of a needle. Behind the view there is the second-guessed dimension of the hidden half of the invisible world. Already in Ancient Greece, the eye illuminates the world and knowledge, and enlightenment occurs through the gaze of our eyes. The word ‘see’ is the Greek one for ‘know’ too.
Microcosmic Meetings
A pilgrim on the spiritual path has a different view of the world and sees that the people he meets are microcosms. It is not a normal contact, it is a meeting of microcosms. Each man is a small universe, and in each man there is a seed of divinity. We humans are, therefore, the face of God. We are its manifestation, and we harbour the divine potency, the hidden divine energy. Our dignity is given by participation in the divine.
When a divine germ can be activated, our interpersonal relationships are not only determined by sympathy and antipathy, by these dialectical forces. To that extent, as participation in the divine grows, the microcosmic consciousness, that is, the consciousness of the spiritual soul gradually awakens. And with a different higher consciousness comes a different view of the world, and in our relationships we can see ourselves and others more objectively and experience people as microcosms. In doing so, we know more deeply the nature of the manifested multiplicity of forms, as well as the shaping forces of the beginning, true Divine Love, and the Divine Wisdom of the Logos.
The Awakened Eye of Microcosm and Unification
On earth, we encounter all cultures and there are, or over time have evolved, numerous religions and philosophies.
Christian Rosycross brings all the spiritual currents together.[ii] There is no reason for strife. You just have to change your point of view and remember what happened in the beginning, at the very beginning, before the fall of microcosms into the lower level of being. Just transform your consciousness. Just let go of what we have internally and we will rebuild. As hermetic teachings put it: To accept all, to give all, and thus to transform all. Thus, man reaches the original, universal truth that is unconditioned by time and space. The universal truth, the knowledge of divine things, has been available to man since the fall of microcosms and manifests itself in the multiplicity of religions and teachings. Our entire human culture is a by-product of mankind’s strenuous and age-old quest to lift and free itself from bipolar matter. What is not permanent does not really exist.
Every microcosm has its development, and one day it wakes up from a long sleep. With the eye of awakened spiritual consciousness, we look at the world and ourselves in a fundamentally different way. That is the only cure for our problems.
If we awaken as microcosms, we experience the calling of the Soul of the World within us and the touching of the flow of Divine Wisdom and Divine Love. That is how we experience the spiritual unity, unification. We recognize and experience the many faces of God.
The Community of Love
This is aptly captured by the Cathar text of 1148 called “The Church of Love”:
It does not exist in a fixed form,
but only by the mutual agreement of persons.
It has no members except for those who feel that they belong to it.
It has no rivals because it does not nourish the spirit of competition.
It has no ambition because it only wishes to serve.
It does not have any national boundaries because love does not act this way.
If does not close itself off, as it tries to enrich all groups and religions.
It respects all the great teachers of all times who revealed the truth of love.All who belong to it, practice the truth of love with their whole being.
He, who belongs to it, knows that.It does not try to teach the other; but only tries to be and by being to give.
It lives in the knowledge that the whole earth is a living being and that we are part of it.
It knows that the time of the last return has arrived; the way of self-surrender, in free will to return to unity.
It does not make itself known by loud words, but works in the free domain of being.
It salutes all those who have enlightened the path of love and gave their lives for it.
It does not create any ranks in its midst and no elevation of anybody, because the one is no greater than the other.
It does not promise reward neither in this or in another life, yet only the joy of being in that love.Its members recognise each other by their behaviour, their way of being, by the look in their eyes and by no other external act than to embrace each other in a brotherly and sisterly way.
They know neither fear nor shame
and their witness will always be truthful in good, as in bad, times.The church of love has no secret,
has neither mystery nor initiation except for the deep knowledge of the power of love, as the world must change, if we as persons wish it so;
but only if firstly we change ourselves.All those who feel that they belong to it do indeed belong.
They belong to the church of love.
[i] This part of the article draws on a lecture by Jakub Sirovátka: Filozofické zamyšlení nad lidským pohledem. (Philosophical Reflections on Human gaze) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG2UCuUaYiE
[ii] Steiner, Rudolf (27. 9. 1911, Neuchâtel; GA 130).
