Who is it that moves the waves that surround me, wash over me, want to take me up into their rhythm?
Who is calling me and asking me to let myself in, to entrust myself to him? How much patience did this invisible, shapeless one have to exercise? How many epochs of time did he have to endure before I could even vaguely suspect his existence, his presence!
There is always something to do, to feel, to think, to perceive. What drives me? What moves me? Can I take a break? Step down from the stage, enter into “not being”?
A poem begins with the words: “Serenely the night came ashore.” [1] Of course, here is the way out. Sleep, dream – and then deep sleep. The night takes me away; calmly, quietly it dissolves me in its waves and washes me again to the shore. My consciousness is reassembled in the morning. Does that happen by itself? Who brings my ego to light again – and a little differently every day? How different all my days and stages of life are! And yet I always feel the same, the same individuality. How is that possible? Who is it that is the same through all my changes?
“I love the dark hours of my being, in which my senses deepen.” [2] Poetic words guide us into the depths. Looking, listening … into a nothingness. Once I was given the advice: “Keep your feet on the ground.” But too numerous were the indications that pointed to a completely different “ground”. Everywhere it shines through in nature, and good writings tell of it. Years went by, years of searching, researching, reflecting. And then …, then it emerged out of the apparent nothingness. Something became perceptible: a hearing, a looking, an embracing. I am heard, looked at, embraced, “addressed”.
“That which is uncreated […] dwells in you,” says the Voice of Silence by H.P. Blavatsky. [3] The booklet tells of a “silent speaker”. And here he is. What does the “silent speaker” say? Does he give me the possibility to understand him? “We can walk together” is how I translate his impulse. Waves emanate from him – do they want to become “land” in me? Are they even his “blood” that I am to drink? A breath touches me. Am I ready to let myself be breathed in? Do we even fit together?
“I was naked and you gave me clothes.” [4] The scales fall from my eyes. A shapeless one wants to take shape. A keynote wants to become melody. But, if I am to sound – are we then in harmony with each other?
A dizziness seizes me. Who is it that moves the waves that surround me, wash over me, want to take me up into their rhythm? Who is calling me and asking me to let myself in, to entrust myself to him?
How much patience did this invisible, shapeless one have to exercise? How many epochs of time did he have to endure before I could even vaguely suspect his existence, his presence? Obviously I resemble rocky land, stubborn material, I am resistance, contradiction, ego. How manifold are the values – I now realise – that have flowed to me, that he has given me! I have accepted them, adorned myself with them, made myself stand out. They have made me “someone“.
And in spite of all that one day it was possible. Perhaps failure and bitter experiences contributed to it. He could reveal himself. The invisible one came before my eyes, before the eyes he made grow in me. His dimensions shook the foundations of my existence, even brought them down. And it was precisely here that it became apparent that he holds me “infinitely gently in his hands”. [5]
I listen to the wind, let the approaching waves enter me. The sea sounds in the shell. Do I understand its language? I lived turned away from it, moving in small windings, pulled along on the paths of the crowd. “A dream, a dream is our life on earth here. Like shadows on the waves we float and fade.” [6]
Life is a dream. Everything that happens disappears like a phantom-like apparition. Where does it go? Who is the dreamer, who is receiving the contents of our life?
A poet said, “We are the bees of the invisible.”[7] The abysmal deep one receives what we do, what we live. All our desires, fears, imaginings glide towards him. And what happens to them? Yes, he harvests us, and yet … we do not fit together properly, we are not yet the right couple for eternity. Imperfection does not go with perfection, illusion does not match with reality. And so we receive ourselves back, again and again, every moment. He breathes us in – and breathes us out again. And with his every exhalation something of him flows into us. Barely perceptible, we receive ourselves back a little transformed at every moment. And one day … there is maturity, insight, intuition, openness.
I ask the question anew: Why do I have this ego? Why am I this ego that lives in its own walls and defends them? Could it be that this has to do with the world order to which I belong to? With the peculiarity of his dream? And a further question, an anxious conjecture joins in: Did the silent one, the formless one, the cosmic one have a wish, a conception, that could only be realised in this way? Did he have to fall asleep and dream a world in order to recognise what his imagination, his wish, was all about?
The idea of an independent life, an independent self? A wish that does not fit in with the divine reality?
I belong to the products of the dream, live through the concept of dreaming gods. Does the concept turn out to be a nightmare for them? A poet admonishes:
„Now would be the time for gods to step out of inhabited things …
And that they should knock down every wall in my house. […]
a new breathing field. Oh gods, gods!
O ye that have so often come, sleepers in things, who cheerfully rise […]
Once more be it your morning, gods.
We repeat. You alone are the origin.
The world rises with you, and beginning shines
at all the breaking points of our failure.” [8]
Dreaming Gods. We are their images, spooky, distorted as it is in dreams. We wage wars against each other. But one day … the gods awaken. And what happens to their images then? They are challenged to understand. We are built for transformation. The awakening transfers something of himself to “his human being”. He is attached to me, we are connected, he needs me to express himself, also in the tremendous process that is about to take place. So he asks me, wordlessly, silently, to depict his awakening and thus make it possible. A new head is called for and a new heart and new limbs, attuned to him, invisible like him. For they are carriers in the limitless. And all this becomes possible because he lets me share in his awakening.
My previous thinking, feeling, wanting and acting come before my eyes. Everything that I have done and am doing with my previous consciousness is kind of a shadowy play, part of the divine dream and the acts of my ego. I have received soul aspects from him and have used them for myself. With them I continue to spin the dream, yes, want to do so, even when awakening sets in. An inner struggle begins. Isn’t it beautiful, the separated, independent existence? Even though I have been given the part of an actor, I can write parts of the script myself and invent myself. I have a mind. What a magician he is, what a wizard! I look at the mind with new eyes, with a new evolving awareness and observe how it makes things real. How it pretends that what we do and what we encounter is reality. I observe how it holds me, how it holds itself captive in its magic.
The dreaming God takes all of this into himself. Is it more for him than a film? He witnesses how we want to realise the fundamental principle of his dream and how we fail and become entangled and wounded. When gods dream, however, it is different from when we do. It happens in the divine reality, a reality that we do not possess. And from it something always pours into the dreamed. We receive forces from the real and use them, develop cultures and religions with them, gild the illusory reality with them. But they also let us dream of something higher. They are threads of higher dimensions, golden threads that we weave into our shadowy structures. And they are the ones that one day make us reflect, make us pause. In the midst of appearances, truth shines forth.
Waves of consciousness from the universe take hold of the dreaming god and urge him to awaken. A cosmic dawn, light of the All-Consciousness sets about dissolving the dream of a separated self. And the dream begins to dream itself out. In the midst of the illusionary, mortal garb, a structure forms, an etheric soul-garment, immortal reality. With this robe the god can work in the boundless, can carry and shape worlds, can dissolve old worlds and form more glorious, more mature ones.
We experience a small reflection of this. Not too much. For the old mind is still active and grasps at what is coming, to make it a reality in its world. It still possesses aspects of the soul of the dreamer – until they too dissolve and a new way of thinking and feeling takes its place.
Communication arises, creative communication with the the archetype, the inner God. I listen, look, let myself be seized. “I have the Lord always before my eyes”, says the psalmist [9]. In my devotion to the inner God, to his reality, I take everything with me, everything I perceive in the world of illusion. I take it into the new space of the heart that is being formed, into the new consciousness which arises. The new creation, the awakening, requires the taking along of others, requires the wide soul structure into which many – people, animals, plants, the earth – can enter. My perception immerses them in that which lives from the inner God in me. The awakening concerns a world order. Much of it transforms when it is immersed in the reality. The remainder dissolves, even bitterly, painfully. This is the task of time. Many helpers, many periods of time are needed for awakening and transformation.
Co.mic love unites us. It makes the miracle happen that gives a high meaning to everything afterwards. In the awakening God, the universe individualises itself, the true human self appears. Not the separated self. Creature and creator flow together in the omnipresence, in the All, in the Whole. They are dependent on each other in a great working. A two-unity arises, in deep realisation and joy, as was hardly possible before. Sons of God without number, sons of God of a new kind grow up. And that required the “non-place“, the place in the dream, in the “weakness of the flesh”, the place in which the creature can also awaken. In the realm of
illusions, in the “stable”, the manger stands for the new man.
“The mystery that has been hidden from the world and from the ages, is revealed [in us].” [10]
References:
[1] Eduard Mörike, Um Mitternacht (At Midnight)
[2] Rainer Maria Rilke, Ich liebe meines Wesens Dunkelstunden (I love the dark hours of my being)
[3] H.P. Blavatksy, The Voice of Silence, 5th German edition, Graz 1976, p. 21
[4] Matth. 25:36
[5] Rainer Maria Rilke, Herbst. Die Blätter fallen (Autumn. The Leaves are falling)
[6] Johann Gottfried Herder
[7] Rainer Maria Rilke, in the Letter to Witold von Hulewicz of 13.11.1925
[8] Rainer Maria Rilke, Jetzt wär es Zeit, dass Götter träten (Now it would be time for gods to step out)
[9] Psalm 16:8
[10] Col. 1:26
