Thoreau once said: “the universe is wider than our views of it”. And, similarly, we, our selves, are wider than our views of ourselves. We think we are separate beings. We identify ourselves with a particular set of qualities, vices and virtues, views, emotions, reactions, roles that we perform and that make up our earthly personality. We do not realize that we are someone much bigger, higher and more perfect. At the level of the spiritual soul, we are one with everything that exists and one with the highest divine principle, called Nun and Re in Egypt.
At the present level of consciousness, we cannot feel this unity, live out of it and, by taking decisions, guide ourselves by its goodness, because we do not have a spiritual soul. Our consciousness is egocentric. This egocentricity is a feature of our snake fire, and that is why each of us remains focused on himself, seeing himself as the navel of the world. This is even the case with people who consider themselves altruistic humanists, dedicated to humanity, working for the wronged, the weak and the sick. If we cannot see our egocentricity, it is only because we have not known ourselves sufficiently.
This truth is not conveyed with the intention of moralizing and condemning, but of bringing neutral information. This is what we are now – deprived of the light of knowledge that comes from a properly functioning pineal chakra. That’s why Jesus, dying on the cross, spoke with empathy: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”.
The Egyptians called the consciousness of modern man immersed in matter – Nephthys. Her name means “end, border”, which, as Plutarch writes, means that she “reaches the farthest ends of the earth” and “has in her particular possession the power to destroy”. This means that this consciousness submerges as much as it can into the world of matter, which involves a huge slowdown in vibration and pollution. Therefore, like Gorgon, she destroys and defiles divine harmony and order.
Nephthys was Typhon’s daughter and wife, which means that she was born of an element of darkness, chaos, ignorance, spiritual anarchy and evil. As the wife of this principle, she remained infertile. This reminds us of the infertility of Biblical Elizabeth. Both of these characters symbolize the fact that the pursuit of earthly consciousness for divine perfection is, in advance, doomed to failure.
However, the name “Nephthys” also means “victory”. When our personality realizes its own imperfection, incompleteness and confusion, and turns to the matters of Spirit, only then will it be possible for it to begin real spiral development. The symbol of this development is the love connection between Nephthys and Osiris, the fruit of which is Anubis. This god was represented with the head of a dog or jackal. The head of the dog symbolized the ability to see properly day and night. The jackal, on the other hand, as an animal that devours corpses, was associated with mystical death and rebirth. Anubis, the fruit of Nephthys and Osiris, was the master of the underground world, who helped Osiris in his rebirth. This means that he was considered to be the aspect of the earthly personality that allows us to know ourselves, our darkness and gloom. He was also a symbol of the power to discern and annihilate what is old, deadly, and not serving the divinity developing within us.
In our heart there is a nucleus of a consciousness different from the present earthly consciousness. This nucleus is the only immortal “atom” in us, the only relic of our former divinity. This atom in many people remains dormant. It awakens when our consciousness, after going through many incarnations and experiences, finally realizes its own infertility and aridity. When it feels that despite so many attempts to achieve happiness, despite having achieved so many goals, it still feels emptiness and a strange longing for another world, for God, and then it feels its own helplessness, powerlessness and inability to realize its divinity by itself. The radiation of the Aquarius Era also serves to awaken this consciousness, but no one is able to determine when it will happen in a given person. “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit”, as Jesus says to Nicodemus.
When this element is awakened and our consciousness is directed to the matters of the Spirit, when the connection with God becomes our greatest desire, then we will become like Nephthys, or Elizabeth of the Bible – a fertile land capable of bearing fruit. We will begin to realize that we are more than our little self. We will begin to listen to the heart from which the voice of “The Other One” comes.
The Greek myth says that it was impossible to kill Gorgon without divine help. Gorgon was defeated by Perseus, with the help of Graeae and Athena. We, modern “heroes”, who want to defeat our own egotistical consciousness, also need divine help. It is offered to us by the Bodhisattvas, a luminous Brotherhood, living in the Vacuum of Shambala.
Perseus killed Gorgon by standing back to her and watched her reflection in the copper shield that Athena herself held for him. Then, with winged sandals (an attribute of Hermes/Mercury), he raised up and cut the monster’s head off. We, also, need to observe our ego in the light of divine love and wisdom, symbolized by Athena’s copper shield. Turning our backs means that we no longer identify ourselves with our little self. Thanks to Mercury’s strength, thanks to the Gnostic Light, we are able to raise our vibrations and cut the snake head with the sword of recognition.
This beheading means that we are no longer trying to improve our earthly personality. For we know that it cannot be improved. Our old consciousness must be “devoured by Anubis”. There should be no separate pilgrim on the path. He is to dissolve. He is to become one with all-permeating God’s love. So, we are not to become a “great man”, “grand master”, “guru”, “example to others”, “saint”, etc. We are to become the Silence. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth,” that is to say, they shall tame their personality and subdue it to God.
Sometimes our desire to develop becomes, paradoxically, a desire that separates us from God. This is what happens when we unconsciously desire glory for ourselves. When we think of ourselves as spiritual, holy, good, better, then we develop the so-called “spiritual ego”.
The key to the path is acceptance. Accepting everything without resistance, without rebellion, without judgment. It is one thing to judge yourself, and another to be able to distinguish. We are to see what is light in us and what is darkness, which desires belong to the earthly world and which are directed to God. And what is darkness in us is to be extinguished, given to Anubis to devour. But we are not to condemn and judge ourselves. We need gentleness and patience for ourselves and others. When we judge ourselves or others, we create noise, we increase the number of snakes in our heads, create additional ideas about who we are. “Our mind is the killer of reality” and “the disciple must kill the killer.”
The concepts flowing out of the mind are the beaten paths of thought, the maze in which we have been trapped for so long. These beaten paths made us recycle our own experiences. We can free ourselves from the vicious circle of our own destiny, break the chain of continuous incarnations. We can free ourselves from our “normality”, about which Van Gogh said: “Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk it but no flowers grow on it”.
“Flowers” are born of the Silence. From the Silence emerges a path that no one has ever followed before. This path is God, reborn in everyone who kills, silences, extinguishes his little self every day step by step.
Therefore, “let us not walk the path, but be the path”.
God expects answers for the flowers he sends us,
not for the sun and the earth.
Do not linger to gather flowers to keep them,
but walk on, for flowers will keep themselves
blooming all your way.
Dark clouds become heaven’s flowers
when kissed by light.
The water in a vessel is sparkling;
the water in the sea is dark.
The small truth has words that are clear;
the great truth has great silence.
The dust of dead words clings to thee.
Wash thy soul in silence.[1]
[1] Rabindranath Tagore, “Stray Birds”, verses 26, 102, 249, 176, 147.
