The desire for knowledge has many faces. There is our physical (environmental) world, which raises fundamental unanswered questions, despite the everyday reality that makes things look familiar and controllable. Our own body, on closer inspection, is much less known and aware to us than we usually think. Inside and outside we encounter the same questions of essence and meaning; we could also say that the microcosm is as little known to us as the macrocosm. Since man lost his intuitive knowledge, which connected him with all things and beings and which localized him in the world, he has become an explorer.
Searching and Exploring
Those who begin to explore the nature of matter find that what they would like to think of as material seems to begin to dissolve in the depths of the subatomic into the subtle, into unknown additional dimensions? Physics has not yet promulgated a generally accepted answer to this question. The situation is similar if one looks into the vastness of the universe. The universe has been expanding uniformly in all directions for about 14 billion years. This expansion proceeds so fast that we will never get to see certain remote areas of the universe because they move away from us with superluminal speed. Since, according to the special relativity theory, nothing[1] may move faster than light, the physicists help themselves here with the basic assumption that this speed refers to space itself expanding. With such thoughts, one might feel lost and spontaneously wish that the universe were smaller and more directly perceptible. Paradoxically, the inscrutability of its depths is just as unpleasant as the assumption that one day the universe could be as known and mapped as our “global village” is today. Our thinking reaches a particular limit here. It is the horizon that we want to keep pushing; the journey should never end. For this way of thinking both is unsatisfactory: its own limitedness as well as the thought that in a limited physical universe one day there might be nothing left to explore. Here a fundamental question arises. Could it be possible that behind our restless urge for ever more knowledge, an impulse is working from a sphere in which there is a conscious and eternal development in connectedness?
Our research extends to all planes of being.
Behind the material plane lie the subtle spheres of will (ether, the prima materia of our cosmos), feelings (astral world), and thoughts (mental world). They belong to our human being as well as to the “body” of the world as a whole. To most people these realms appear ephemeral, fleeting, non-substantial. Those who are clairvoyant or clairsentient can clearly perceive these spheres, but are prevented by their own subjectivity from seeing them without deception.
What drives us?
If we want to know what drives other people and who they really are, we largely have to rely on assumptions. But we know just as little about ourselves. Do we perceive how our thoughts, feelings and intentions arise? No, because we identify with them. They are simply there. Not only is the saying “I think, therefore I am ( myself)” true, but the sentiment,”I feel this way, therefore I react this way, it cannot be otherwise” is also true. Anyone who has ever tried to fight a strong feeling and silence it knows that this is almost impossible. It awakens again and again. But how thoughts, feelings and will arise in us, only a very few people ask themselves. One can answer these questions, among other things, with reference to karma, which brings us together with certain people and situations on our life’s path and which also makes us react to things the way we do. Behind these encounters are learning tasks that we cannot avoid indefinitely. Another task lies in the limitations of our cognitive faculty. We cannot escape it, but must first understand from within how much our self-centeredness corresponds to this narrowness.
Even if we find answers in books, which bring us closer to a more comprehensive view of our life or the events of the world, this understanding remains theoretical until we conquer the knowledge concretely and practically. For this undertaking, we do not need a determined expansion of our own knowledge; rather, we need something completely different. We need the successive return of man to unity with his microcosm, with the macrocosm and with his divine source. One could equally describe this journey as becoming aware of the unity with one’s own true being, the divine field of life and finally with one’s creator.
The veil is the layer on which reality is projected
Often we would like to push aside the veil of subjectivity in order to see THE REALITY. But the veil is at the same time also the layer on which that part of reality is projected which we are supposed to see now. What we think, feel, see before us now, however subjective, it is our present. It is the task that lies before us. It is the veil that we ourselves are and in which the world encounters us. We can accept these encounters, whatever they bring. Anyway, we are one with everything we encounter.[2] For what is there, we can deny or repress at first, but it cannot be pushed away permanently.
Steps of Transformation
Those who open themselves to the present find that things change through acceptance. In so doing, we open our thinking, feeling and willing. Our being comes to silence. Our ego stops drawing boundaries. Through acceptance, real acceptance, understanding arises. For what we are becoming one with, we get to know; it cannot be otherwise. Most of the steps on this path of becoming one are probably challenges, because they bring corrections, confrontation, illness, loss. We go through the fire of divergence and conflict. Therein develops a purification, but also a change of standpoint, which is tantamount to a successive surrender of the ego. Perhaps we initially want to tighten the boundaries of our ego in order to secure ourselves and keep the supposed opponents outside. However, it becomes more and more apparent along the way that we are being called upon to undergo a transformation, an upheaval in our own being, as it were, through which the true self will emerge.
The path of acceptance is a path of initiation and enlightenment.
One must literally consecrate oneself tooth and nail to what reality has in store. To let reality work, applied to the essential events of life, means that karma does not act on us to reward or punish us. It grants us opportunities to become aware. This is a path of initiation in daily life that can be walked without a religious concept. Spiritual teachings provide us with maps for this purpose. As we walk, we recognize the landscape, but also discover its fullness and depth.
The thought that our ego is not the eternal self is one such landmark. That the true self is universal, that is, all-embracing, is another. This thought can touch a point within us where we can open up to this inner universal. Trust can arise. This trust is then the solid ground on which we can walk and gradually discover the universal self within us and allow it to become active within ourselves.
We are the projection of a universal self
The tunnel of our subjectivity may then (and perhaps especially then) time and again appear narrow and dark. But this very narrowness and darkness can also become motivations to surrender the shell of the ego. We are ourselves this tunnel; we are the projection of a universal self into a single being and into space and time. A paradoxical struggle takes place in the person who recognizes this. The desire for enlightenment and for the universal stands against the desire to remain as an individual being in the concrete and tangible. It stands against the fear of losing oneself in the universal. In the end, one can only accept this opposition and persevere in the process of maturing. The person who consecrates himself or herself to this path experiences how he or she attains inner knowledge through acceptance.
As in the small, so in the large
How does this relate to the great lines of global events? The way to the realization of the higher plan of things goes via the clarification in one’s own internal being. It leads through self-knowledge to the knowledge of the world. That means: my motives for acting become recognizable also in all other people. Each person has (potentially) all good and all evil in himself or herself. Everyone is in their own tunnel, with their own fears, desires and goals. The urge for recognition and love, the desire for power and security operate in all people – before they embark on a spiritual path, and even long after. The look into the world is also always a look into one’s own inner self. As in one’s own life, karmic forces are also at work in global crises, confronting humanity with its learning tasks.
Diving into the depth of the innermost universal
On both the large and small scale, there are goals related to the self, spiritual developments and evasive movements. There is the path of the ego and the path to the liberation of the universal self. Crises are above all turning points. If we can recognize them as such and use the cracks in the surface to dive into the depth of the innermost universal, we do the most essential thing. This turning point leads to freedom. Only in this freedom a consciousness arises that recognizes and penetrates all that is mundane.
Just as the battle between time and eternity, between the ego and the true self, is being fought within every human being, so too the world is struggling in the birthing pains of a new consciousness and being that is coming forth from the eternal source. Most people are unsettled by this change, many cling to outworn views and simple truths that cannot be found in the outer world. Those who courageously take the path to freedom discard fears, desires, separations and conceptions of enemies with the “old self”. Clarity slowly emerges. Its core can never be put into words.
Whoever accepts this path is touched by freedom. The path leads through the tunnel of subjectivity and temporality, and at the same time it lies in the all-embracing light.
[1] at least nothing that possesses a gravitational mass
[2] This “oneness” contradicts the way of thinking that is based on I and Thou, on “inner world” and “outer world”. The psychic experience is able to perceive the unity in the encounters and events and to recognize in which way I and world are transformatively interwoven.
