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The new soul is the mediator between the Spirit (with which she connects when she is mature) and the personality of the fleshly man. Its symbol is Sarah in the parable. The name Sarah translates as “Princess”, “Lady”, “Noble woman”. The second translation comes from the Aramaic root “sar” which means “to turn the head.” Sarah with her beauty made all heads turn in her direction. On an inner level, this means that our will and the mental aspect of our being turns away from the egocentrism of ordinary earthly nature and focuses on the beauty of the noble divine principle that we carry within us. The seven husbands that Sarah had but who were killed by Asmodeus (“Destroyer” from the verb “shamad” to destroy) can be understood either as the Seven Rays of the Spirit, with which the soul could not yet connect because she had not been fully developed, or they can symbolize seven chakras that had not yet been transformed by a process of gnostic transformation called transfiguration. This interpretative dualism corresponds very well with the role of the soul as an intermediary between what is divine and what is human.
We can also understand the aspect of Sarah as a cleansed heart and Tobit ⁄ Tobias as a cleansed head. When the heart and the head pray for the same, when they are filled with one intention, one deep desire to connect with God, to become one, love, light, instrument of the Spirit, then the Gnostic miracles happen. “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”[1]
In fact, whether we realize it or not, we pray constantly in our lives. Each of our words, thoughts, emotions, feelings or actions is a kind of prayer; it is the radiating energy that has certain consequences. Jakob Boehme, the great mystic of Goerlitz, wrote about prayer:
“If you will pray to God, then call upon God (your Heavenly Father) in the Name of his Son Jesus Christ, desiring that he would forgive you your Sins, for the Sake of his Sufferings and Death: and give you what is good for you, and may further your Salvation. Give up and yield all whatsoever is earthly, to his Pleasure and Will; for we know not what we should desire and pray for, but the Holy Spirit helps us in Christ Jesus, before his heavenly Father. Therefore there is no Need of many Words or long Prayers; but a believing Soul, which with its whole earnest resolved purpose yields itself up into the Mercy of God, to live in his Will, in the Body of Jesus Christ: and continues constant; then he is sure and safe from the Devil.”[2]
These words highlight a very important aspect of the Path of liberation from “I”, which is doing not our own will, but the will of an inner divine principle, God who grows in us.
An earthly man with a natural soul prays differently, and a new soul prays differently. The prayer of the earthly man is most often motivated by fear and some form of egocentricity. The highest form of prayer that we can afford, as beings with “I” consciousness, is gratitude or a request to the divine powers to help us calm down and surrender to the inner God and that all people experience this surrender to the highest principle in themselves. Such a prayer, as we can deduce from the parable, has great power. Thanks to this we attract to ourselves the helpful divine forces.
Praying that a problem that bothers us will be resolved according to our expectations is not an attitude of submission to God’s will. It happens that solutions that are not to our liking as personalities are beneficial for the development of a new soul. Nevertheless, when we are truly focused on listening to and following this sacred, non-egocentric element within us, everything in our life begins to fall into harmony. And when there are storms, it is only so that the sun that comes out after them can shine even brighter.
The new soul prays without words. She prays with her radiation, which can be compared to the aroma of fragrant incense rising from an altar, or to the fragrance of a flower. It is a prayer from the level of oneness and silence. Sometimes what is appropriate and desirable at a lower level of development is inadvisable and harmful to another. When man has largely realized his or her new soul, praying with words may not be advisable. For it takes us back to the state of a natural soul, operating out of separation. Paradoxically, it can strengthen the ego, instead of silencing it. The Bogomils knew about it. One of the three sacraments they recognized was the sacrament of prayer. It was a mystery consisting in joining the candidates with the forces expressed in the words of the “Lord’s Prayer”. Those initiated into this sacrament were to pray not with words, but with the silence of the soul. While those who had not yet received this initiation were not to use the words of this prayer because, as natural beings, they were still connected to the forces of nature, and not to the forces of Christ, the Logos of our universe.[3]
As we wrote above, the fervent prayer that flows from the fire of a new soul makes miracles happen. In the parable of Sarah and Tobias, this miracle occurred through the Archangel Raphael (“God heals”), a messenger sent by the Most High. An angel reveals himself to the son of Tobit when he is sent by his father to fetch money that his friend Gabael keeps for him in Media. Raphael appears to Tobias in the form of a relative of Azariah (“Jehovah helped”). Thanks to his guidance, Tobias is on the right path all the time, safely reaches his destination, picks up money and gains happiness for himself and the whole family. While they are on their way, Rafael helps him defeat the mighty fish. Tobias kills it and, on Raphael’s advice, preserves its liver, heart, and bile: “For gall and heart and liver have curative properties.”[4] The angel claims that the heart and liver of the fish help to free the possessed persons from the demons tormenting them. Bile, on the other hand, removes the white spots from someone’s eyes. As we may have already guessed, Tobias heals Sarah, who turns out to be the daughter of Gabael, from the malicious demon Asmodeus, and takes her as his wife. He returns with the money to his father, removes the white spots from his eyes and the whole family lives happily ever after.
To kill a fish is to defeat the animal unconscious forces that govern us out of hiding and interfere with the development of a new soul. It is done by all our emotions, conflicts, critical thoughts, worldly desires and ambitions, fear and the ego’s identification with various “masks”. The liver is an organ in our body that has to do with the type of spiritual forces we live on. When our liver becomes able to absorb the gnostic astral radiation necessary for, among other things, purifying the blood, our emotional blindness disappears, the soul cleanses herself and receives new energies for further development.
In the biblical Song of Songs, we find the following words:
Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death.[5]
They are spoken by the “Bride” or a new soul. These words refer to the purification of desires present in the heart, which will entail the purification of deeds (symbolized by the arm). This can only be done with the force of the love of the new soul, which is “as strong as death“. The more we manage to “kill” ourselves, the more space we make for God who lives in us. This process has nothing to do with violence, psychological self-abuse, self-extortion, or suppression of those instincts of our nature that still need to “express themselves”. It has nothing to do with condemnation, guilt and punishment, asceticism, or imposing on ourselves a saintly attitude that we have not yet grown up to. We follow this path step by step, every day, every moment trying to listen to the voice of our inner guide. This orientation is a prayer that draws the forces of the divine field to us. They help us overcome subsequent parts of the body of the natural being that lives in us. The more we listen to our inner self, the more clearly we see how patient and loving the “womb” that carries us is. God is a wonderful “listener.” He listens with love, peace and silence to all our words, actions, thoughts and desires. It is a mighty force that can accept even the greatest cruelty that comes to the minds of earthly creatures. The words spoken by Jesus, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”[6] indicate that every self-centered act of ours wounds in some way the living body of God. Nevertheless, he gives us space for it, patiently waiting for the results of such behavior to come back to us to teach us love. The love of God that envelops us is extremely touching, beautiful, amazing, the dearest in the world.
It gives strength to the highest altruism, beyond the capabilities of the earthly man. It was thanks to it that a group of about 200 Cathars in 1244 chose to die at the stake instead of denying their connection with God. The peace and dignity displayed by these people as they walked into the flames deeply touched all those who watched this event and touch us deeply to this day. Their deed meant that the image of true Humanity was recorded in the ethereal layers of our planet. Not the self-centered, fearful one that prompted Peter to the threefold denial of the judged Jesus, which is natural for earthly man. But the one who “lays down one’s life for one’s friends“.[7] Thanks to the Cathar love, all those who now follow the gnostic path benefit from the powerful Light Force that these extraordinary people left behind.
In order to be able to accept a death sentence with peace, one must first die internally. With the death of natural, egocentric consciousness, fear goes away and a light body is born in us, woven out of love. From the ashes of old nature, the Phoenix rises, the fiery bird of freedom and overcoming, independent of the physical body, belonging to Eternity.
Nowadays, we don’t have to give our lives for our faith, at least not in the literal sense. The gnostic path leads us each day, step by step, to a complete reevaluation of our purpose in life. The new soul that develops in us frees us from fear of what may happen to us from the physical world. We begin to see this world as an illusion and we become part of God’s real Plan.
We are in this world, but not of this world anymore. We become a pillar of light that connects the earth with heaven, a constant prayer for our brothers and sisters, for all suffering humanity.
[1] Lucas 11, 9- 10
[2] Extract from Jacob Boehme’s “Three Principles of the Divine Essence”, in: “The Works of Jacob Behmen, The Teutonic Theosopher”, printed for M. Richardson, in Pater-noster Row. Chapter 25: Paragraph 85.
[3] The Spiritual Heritage of Bulgaria: (2) The Spiritual Heritage of Bulgaria – YouTube [16.04.2021]
[4] Tobit 6, 5
[5] Song of Songs 8, 6
[6] Matthew 25, 40
[7] John 15, 13
