“He who has just begun to follow a holy way of life, and has received instruction about how to act righteously, devotes himself wholly to the practice of the virtues in all obedience and faith, nourishing himself, as if on meat, on their manifest aspects. The inner principles of the commandments, which constitute the knowledge of the perfect, in his faith he leaves to God, for he cannot yet embrace their full magnitude.

“The perfect person, who has passed beyond the category not only of beginners but also of those who are advanced, is not ignorant of the inner principles of the actions he performs. … On the contrary, he first spiritually imbibes those principles and then by means of his actions feeds upon the whole body of the virtues. In this way, he transposes to the plane of spiritual knowledge actions which take place in the sensible realm.

“The Lord said, ‘First seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt 6:33). That is, seek the knowledge of Truth before all things, and therefore seek training in appropriate methods of attaining it.” ~The Philokalia

The Beginner

One thing that some beginning spiritual students find difficult to accept, especially in this age of instant everything, is that spiritual truth and spiritual development techniques must be revealed to the student gradually. This is for the benefit of all, but especially for the benefit of the student. If you try to give a new student advanced teachings, they may be misunderstood and misused. The student may become disappointed and quit studying. So the teacher or master teaches only as much as the student is ready to understand, and can use safely.

Practice of Virtues

The practice of spiritual development methods is required for spiritual growth, but that involves more than just practicing the virtues. Most spiritual masters know this but are reluctant to say it in a publication available to the general public. Some spiritual knowledge must be protected from those who would misuse it and harm others or themselves. And some would try to use such knowledge for material purposes which can also cause serious problems. Hitler and the Roman Emperor Nero are examples of people who gained such knowledge and used it improperly. Eventually, they lost those powers, as always happens to those who misuse them.

Leaves it to God

While I can partially agree with the author that there are things we should leave to god and have faith that they will happen, I think that in most cases, if not all, God wants us to do what we can along with Him. We are, after all, meant to be co-creators with God.

Not Ignorant of Inner Principles

The Spiritual Master is indeed not ignorant of the inner principles and of the effects of their deeds and thoughts. The Master knows that his deeds affect not just himself and those in the immediate vicinity, but also the rest of the world. For example, what foods you buy helps determine what farmers will grow. But probably even more important is our thoughts. Thoughts are energy and energy does work. When you are filled with thoughts of hatred, jealousy, or fear, what work do you think those thoughts are doing? They affect the behavior of other people, animals, and even the weather. Most significantly, thoughts reach the sun and are reflected back to us amplified. If we are mainly sending negative thoughts, that is what will reflect back to us. So the Spiritual Master makes the effort to avoid negative thinking. It isn’t that difficult for such men and women since they understand what causes people to have angry and negative thoughts and animals to behave aggressively. They know that if all negative thoughts stopped, all animals would soon be friendly and there would be no poisonous plants.

Seek God, Seek Truth

The fact is, if you want to find Truth, you must seek to awaken and develop your connection with God and Heaven. And if you want to know God, you must seek universal Truth by going to the source, which is God. You won’t find God by clinging to beliefs that have been passed on for generations but nonetheless are either totally false or only partially true. And the lantern we hold to seek Truth is the Light of the Spiritual Sun that awakens our spirit and Soul.

“Sweetly, it is true, the illuminated mystic may live; but not, as some think, placidly. Enlightenment is a symptom of growth; and growth is a living process, which knows no rest. The spirit, indeed, is invaded by a heavenly peace; but it is the peace, not of idleness, but of ordered activity. ‘A rest most busy,’ in Hilton’s words: a progressive appropriation of the Divine. The urgent push of an indwelling spirit, aspiring to its home in the heart of Reality, is felt more and more, as the invasion of the normal consciousness by the transcendental personality—the growth of the New Person—proceeds towards its term.

“Therefore, the great seekers for reality are not as a rule long delayed by the exalted joy of illumination. Intensely aware now of the Absolute Whom they adore, they are aware too that though known He is unachieved. Even while they enjoy the rapture of the Divine Presence—of life in a divine, ideal world—something, they feel makes default. Sol voglio Te, O dolce Amore. Hence for them that which they now enjoy, and which passes the understanding of other men, is not a static condition; often it coexists with the travail of the heart that Tauler has called ‘stormy love.’ The greater the mystic, the sooner they realize that the Heavenly Manna which has been administered to them, is not yet that with which the Angels are fully fed. Nothing less will do.” ~Evelyn Underhill

Enlightenment Requires Constant Growth

Spiritual Awakening and Enlightenment is not an instant affair. It takes time to achieve some level of consciousness that could be truly considered enlightenment. Yet even then, the job is not done. Nothing will suffice for the awakened Soul except complete unity with God and the All. That takes continuous effort to grow.

Heavenly Peace

As Ms. Underhill notes, the Heavenly peace achieved by the mystic or spiritual adept is not a peace of idleness but continuous activity. The mountain climber is happy upon reaching the top of the mountain, but next week will climb another, probably higher, or otherwise more difficult. To achieve real Spiritual Enlightenment, we must be like that mountain climber. We may be happy with what we have achieved, but we want to continue the process until we reach the ultimate: union with God.

Intensely Aware of the Absolute

Those who are truly awakened spiritually are intensely aware of the absolute. They don’t theorize about what it is. They don’t accept what is written in books as the final word on God, no matter how holy the book is. They know through a direct connection with the absolute, and therefore this awareness is Knowledge, not simply theory or belief.

Sol voglio Te, O dolce Amore

I cannot find a complete translation for this Latin phrase, but the latter half means “O sweet love”. So what Underhill is saying here, is that when one becomes in full contact with the All, with God, they feel an intense Love for God and an intense love coming from God. Love for all is the most important thing we all must learn. This doesn’t mean we have to accept all the horrors of the material world, as some would have you believe. It means we can love the spirit and soul created by God, while not liking the actions of the body and mind. But as Ms. Underhill reminds us, the spirit and soul are active also. We must engage in spiritual development techniques regularly, preferably, daily. We must act on the spiritual level to fix our fallen world, and that means loving it. O dolce amore.

“As a spirit, you are a part of God or the InfiniteForce or Spirit of Good. As such, you are an ever-growing power that can never lessen, and must always increase. … Every struggle of the mind—be it struggle against pain, struggle against appetite, struggle for more skill in doing in the doing of anything, struggle for advance in any art or calling, struggle and dissatisfaction with your failings and defects—is an actual pushing of the spirit to greater power, and a greater relative completion of yourself,—and with such completion, happiness.

“There is more of you today, and more of every desirable mental quality belonging to you, than ever before. The very dissatisfaction and discontent you may feel concerning your failings is proof of this. If your mind was not as clear as it is, it could not see those failings. Only now, in looking at yourself, you may have swung too far in the opposite direction; and, because your eyes have opened to certain faults, you may think these faults are increasing.

“They are not. The God in yourself—the ever-growing power in yourself—has made you see an incompleteness in your character, yet that incompleteness was never so near a relative completion as now.

“You may have discovered under your house a cavity full of vermin and bad air. You were much worse off before the cavity was found, repulsive as it may be to you; because now that it is found, you will make sure it is cleansed.” ~Prentice Mulford

Part of God

Prentice Mulford was more a teacher of the mind than one of the spirit, yet much of what he says applies to spiritual development as well. His saying that we are part of God is a good example of that. It is not our physical bodies or even our minds that are from God and therefore part of God, it is our spirit. That is why awakening the spirit and soul is so important in spiritual development. One thing that some people forget in reading that however, is that a PART of God is not the same thing as saying we are God. A break pad may be part of a car, but without the thousands of other parts, it isn’t a car, and would never claim that it is as such a claim is egotism at its worst.

Ever Growing Power

Here, I must disagree with Mulford. While in our youth, we are constantly learning and therefore growing mentally, as we age, we can lose much of that. It is why doctors and therapists today recommend the elderly do things like working word puzzles or trying to solve riddles. Such activities slow, or even stop, the deterioration of our mental faculties.

Second, on the spiritual side of it, most are not growing at all. The vast majority have spirits that remain in a dormant state as they have made no effort to awaken them, or have only used ineffective methods to awaken them. And even those who have been in spiritual development for years can backslide, or be completely turned away from the spiritual by the Forces of darkness. It is why we must always be vigilant once we start on the path of spiritual growth, and why being part of a spiritual community is so helpful. In a community, we can help each other, and protect each other, from the manipulations of the dark ones.

Disatisfaction and Discontent

It is true that dissatisfaction and discontent with where you currently are, mentally or spiritually, is actually a sign of growth, of learning. The person who is never dissatisfied never grows. It is an unfortunate part of human nature that we only make an effort to change when we are not comfortable with where we are. People who never question their own actions, beliefs, and thoughts never grow. Those who don’t accept the need for any kind of spiritual development while living in the physical world never grow spiritually, in this world or the next.

Cavity of Vermin

Mulford is also correct in saying that we are better off knowing and recognizing a cavity of vermin under our house as we can then do something about it. Psychiatrists say that when one recognizes that they have a mental problem, they have made the first step in curing it. The same is true of mental and spiritual development. We are held back by the vermin of false beliefs and practices. To really grow in those areas, we must be able to push aside all preconceived notions, and see what the actual truth is. Of course, when it comes to the spiritual, we must first awaken the spiritual faculties with the Light of the Spiritual Sun.

“When the inward and God-seeing man has attained to his Eternal Image, and in this clearness, through the Son, has entered into the bosom of the Father; then he is enlightened by Divine truth, and he receives anew, every moment, the Eternal Birth, and he goes forth according to the way of the Light, in a Divine contemplation. And here [is where] our highest blessedness consists.

“You should know that the heavenly Father, as a living ground, with all that lives in Him, is actively turned towards His Son, as to His own Eternal Wisdom. That same Wisdom, with all that lives in it, is actively turned back to the Father, that is, towards the very ground from which it came forth. … But where this wonder is understood and tasted without amazement, there the spirit dwells above itself, and is one with the Spirit of God; and tastes and sees without measure, even as God, the riches which are the Spirit itself in the unity of the living ground, where it possesses itself according to the Way of the uncreated essence.” ~John of Ruysbroeck

Man’s Eternal Image

Why would Ruysbroeck say that something happens when “man has attained to his Eternal Image”? He says that because our Eternal Image is our soul, not our physical body. So when the Bible says that we were created in God’s Image, it has two meanings. One is that it is our soul which is in the Image of God, not our body, and two, created in His image is also a way of saying that God creates everything by forming an image of it in His mind. It is the same way we, as God’s children, create. The difference is that when God creates an image of something in His mind, that thing now exists, whereas, when we create, say a statue in our mind, we still have to go throw the process of carving the statue. So when Ruysbroeck writes of one who has “attained his Eternal Image,” he means a person who has awakened their spirit and developed it into a conscious soul.

Divine Truth

One who has fully developed his or her spiritual faculties does know Divine Truth. This is not found by reading any book or listening to any person speak. It comes from oneness with God and oneness with the All. Such people don’t have to guess at what is true and what is false, they know. This is the Knowing that the Gnostics call Gnosis.

Way of Light

Ruysbroeck says that we achieve this Eternal Oneness and Enlightenment by “going forth according to the Way of the Light.” He is correct that this is the way to spiritual awakening, and eventually full enlightenment, but how does one go forth “according to the Way of Light”? Ruysbroeck couldn’t be specific because of restrictions in his time, but today we can say that this Way of Light is to practice Spiritual Sun-gazing with the Spiritual Sun, which requires instruction from a knowledgeable teacher. It also requires one to be fully devoted to God.

Sees Without Measure

Ruysbroeck adds that one who has achieved this level of enlightenment “ tastes and sees without measure, even as God”. This is possible because when we have achieved oneness with God, then naturally we see, hear, and know everything that God does.

The sun becomes two; left looks to the right; the suns come together as two become one.

The sun becomes two; right looks to the left; the suns come together as two become one.

Look to the North; the suns come together.

Look to the South; the suns come together.

Look to the East; the suns come together.

Look to the West; the suns come together.

Back to the Source, the suns come together.

Two become One, as the suns come together.

This poem was contributed by consociate Bruce KLanzelmeyer

“All the Christian Kabalists understood well the Eastern root idea: The active Power, the ‘Perpetual motion of the great Breath’ only awakens Cosmos at the dawn of every new period, setting it into motion by means of the two contrary forces, and thus causing it to become objective on the plane of illusion. In other words, that dual motion transfers Cosmos from the Eternal Idea into that of finite Manifestation, or from the Noumenal to the Phenomenal plane. Everything that is, was and will be, eternally IS, even the countless forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, not in their Ideal form. They existed as Ideas, in the Eternity, and when they pass away, will exist as reflections. Neither the form of Man, nor that of any animal, plant, or stone has ever been created only on this plane of ours. It expanded from the sublimated and supersensual essence into its grossest appearance. Therefore, our human form has existed in the Eternity as astral or ethereal prototypes; according to which models, the Spiritual Beings (or gods) whose duty it was to bring them into objective being and terrestrial life, evolved the protoplasmic forms of the finite Egos from their own essence.” ~H. P. Blavatsky

Perpetual Motion

The only motion that can truly be considered perpetual is the motion that happens on the spiritual level since only the spiritual is eternal. No matter how hard you try to make a physical object have perpetual movement, you can never be totally successful because the object itself will eventually decay or somehow be destroyed. So what Blavatsky is calling the “perpetual motion of the Great Breath” refers to the breath of God, which isn’t breath in the physical sense, but a spiritual kind of breath, namely the constant flow of Divine Light from God that gives life to everything spiritual.

Dawn of a New Period

Blavatsky says, quoting, I think from some ancient source, that this Perpetual breath only awakens the Cosmos at the dawn of a new Period. That is a vague way to put it since a period can be anything from a second to a billion years. Most spiritual writers would say “Ages” rather than “Periods” so people understand that we are dealing with a long period of time. In Cosolargy, we call these Ages “Suns”.

So what Blavatsky is saying is that the spiritual energy from the Breath of God changes the Cosmos at the beginning of each age. The breath of God, or Divine Light, is there always, but how much of it reaches us through the sun varies with each age. We are now fortunate enough to have the promised Sun of Righteousness shining down upon us as we are at the beginning of a new age.

Contrary Forces on the Plane of Illusion

The Plane of Illusion is the physical world where things are never quite what they appear to be. It is the level of duality, and therefore contrary (or opposite) forces such as hot and cold, male and female, light and dark, etc.

Everything Eternally Is

This is true only on a spiritual level. We all know that physical things change, decay, and die or rot away. I don’t know what point Blavatsky is trying to make by saying that everything “eternally is,” but to those who care only about the physical (or the phenomenal as Blavatsky calls it), nothing is eternal. The important thing to understand is that we humans have the unique ability to awaken our spiritual faculties while still living in physical form and uniting the physical, mental, and spiritual Self into one whole. Then, and only then, do we become truly immortal.

Existed as Ideas

It is also true that everything that God created existed first as ideas in God’s thought. Some say that God’s thought is all that really does exist. In any case, it is no different for other beings given the creative ability of God. The Demiurge could not have created the realm of matter without first forming the ideas mentally. Likewise, humans don’t create without first forming ideas in the mind. Most of us understand that, but what we don’t realize is that we create far more of the world around us than we usually think (though probably less than those who are fans of manifesting). Our thoughts, combined with the thoughts of all the other people on earth, are largely responsible for the environment we live in here. If we are sending out mostly thoughts of anger, greed, jealousy, etc. we will have a world that reflects that. If we learn to send out thoughts of peace, joy, harmony, etc., then we will get a world that reflects that. Let’s hope that happens soon.

Jesus said, “Come here so I can teach you what no person has ever seen, for there exists a great and boundless realm whose horizons not even a generation of angels has looked upon. And therein is the great invisible spirit, which no eye of an angel has ever seen, no thought of the heart has ever comprehended, and it was never called by any name.

“ Then a luminous cloud of light appeared. The spirit said, ‘Let an angel come into being and he will become my attendant.’ A great angel, the enlightened divine self-generated, emerged from the cloud. Because of him, four other angels came into existence from another cloud, and they became attendants for the angel, the self-generated angel, who said, Let Adamas come into being,’ and Adamas emerged into being.

“Adamas was in the first luminous cloud that no angel has ever seen among all those who are called ‘god.’ He was after the image and after the likeness of the angel. He made the incorruptible generation of Seth appear to the twelve luminaries, twenty-four of them. He made seventy-two luminaries appear in the incorruptible generation in accordance with the spirit’s will. Then the seventy-two luminaries”

“The worldly multitude of those immortals is called the cosmos—corruption, inviting decay—made by the father and the seventy-two luminaries who are with the self-generated and his seventy-two aeons. In the cosmos appeared the first human with his incorruptible powers. And the aeon who appeared with his generation, the aeon in whom are the cloud of knowledge” ~The gospel of Judas

A Great and Boundless Realm

The Great and Boundless Realm is the Realm of spirit. It is boundless because it exists outside of the limits of space and time. It has no size, no beginning and no end. It is great because, in that realm, there is no death, no disease, no old age, and no suffering. It is the place the soul yearns for and seeks to return to once it is awakened. It is not possible for the mind to know this realm except in vague generalities. It can be truly known only by the soul. I think Judas is wrong, however, in saying that no angel has looked upon this realm.

Adamas in the First Luminous Cloud

Adam as the symbolic representation of the first human was created in the First Luminous Cloud” which is the realm of spirit. Adam was created in that realm, therefore Adam was spirit, not matter. It was only after the Great Fall of Adam and Eve into the lesser realm of matter that Adam and Eve took on physical forms.

Adam in the Cosmos

Adam started as a Spirit living in the spiritual world. He “fell” to the material world after he and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is to say that he ate material food and material light. As spirits, Adam and Eve were immortal. After they became physical, they became mortal. The physical can never be immortal. But they still had a soul that is immortal, however, it is necessary to awaken the soul and develop it while still in the physical world if we are to enjoy immortality in the next world.

“I, a poor unworthy creature, come before thee, o Great and Holy God, and lift up my eyes to thee. Though I am not worthy, yet Your great Mercy, and Your faithful promise in the Word, have now encourages me to lift the eyes of desire of my Soul up to You. For my Soul has now laid hold of the Word of Thy Promise, and received it into itself, and therewith come to You. And though it is but a strange child which was disobedient; and does now infold itself with its desire into that Word which became Man, which became flesh and blood, and has broken sin and death in my humanity. Which has changed the anger of God into love unto the Soul, and has deprived Death of his Power, and Hell of its victory over Soul and body; and has opened a gate for my Soul to the clear Face of Thy Strength ad Power. O Great and most Holy God, I have brought the hunger and desire of my Soul into this most Holy Word, and now I come before You, and in my hunger call unto You, the Living Fountain, through thy word. … I receive it firmly into the Desire of my Soul as my own life and I pierce into You with the Desire of my Soul through the Word in Christ.” ~Jacob Boehme

Unworthy Creature

Boehm starts his prayer by saying he is an “unworthy Creature”. This seems more than a little harsh, but it makes the point that we should approach God with humility, not as if we are the masters asking a servant to do something for us. We need to recognize that God is the greatest being that exists and individually, we humans are not as important as we like to think we are.

Faithful Promise

Again Boehm says he is not worthy but God will listen to his prayer because God has promised to do so. God listens to those who pray with humility and are seeking spiritual growth rather than material things. It is fine to ask God to help you solve your money problems, or to heal the illnesses of the body, but not to just ask him for a car or a new house simply because you want one. Those pleas will be heard by Satan, the god of matter, and he may provide what you ask, but will demand payment at a later time.

My Soul Has Received the Word

Only the awakened soul can “hear” the Word of God. Only an awakened soul can reach the high level of consciousness that allows it to communicate with God and the Angels. And the true Word of God can only come to us this way. It can’t be found in any book or scripture. It can’t be gained by intellectual development. It must be gained by the awakened and developed Soul.

Anger into Love

Boehm says that the awakened Soul that has received the Word of God, changes God’s anger into love. That isn’t exactly what happens. When the Soul becomes enlightened, it simply knows that God was never asgry with it, but always ha love for the Souls He created. God may bee disapointed when we don’t follow a path of spiritual growth, but He isn’t angry about it. It is the false God, the Demiurge, that gets angry and jealous, not the true God in Heaven that created our Spirits and Souls.

My Hunger Calls

Once the Soul is awakened, it hungers for God, it hungers for Heaven. It is never satisfied with the material world. It hungers to bathe in the waters of the Living Fountain of God. The Living Fountain of God is theLight that God sends out to us through the Spiritual Sun to awaken and nourish our spiritual faculties. Once that light awakens the Soul, it must be feed Light regularly so that it will grow and become the fully enlightened Soul that it has the potential to be. It is something that we have to work at for one time. It is the only way to become truly immortal. That is why Boehm wants us to pray in this way. It isn’t necessary to memorise his prayer and repeat it regularly. What needs to be done is to pray according to the spirit of this prayer while we take in the Light of the Spiritual Sun at dawn.

“Love, this is the first impulse of Genesis, the first impulse of life. Love is the Divine impulse. It is the nicest thing. It is the first thing that comes in life, the first thing that creates the universe.

“We all have to love God. Without love of God, we will be foreign to one another.

“There are teachers now who say, ‘Pray to the Lord and He will listen to you.’ If you pray to Him according to all rules of music, He will listen to you, but if you do not, your prayer will remain here on Earth, It won’t go to the other world. In other words, your prayer must be sent to God with Love. Without love, you cannot get the right tune.

“Musical love must take part in the prayer. These things you do not know. You think you can get to paradise without music. No, no. You cannot get into paradise without music. A person who is not musical cannot get into paradise. He can catch a glimpse from the doorstep, but won’t be able to cross it.” ~Biensa Douno

Pray with Love

Many people pray to God, asking Him for various things, or to help them in various ways, but have no love for God. Real prayer is expressing your love for God, not begging Him to give you things. For starters, God has already given you the greatest gift He has to offer: eternal life in the spirit. He has also shared His creative power with you, although you probably don’t know how to use it wisely. In addition, asking god for material things is pointless because matter is the realm of the Demiurge, not the realm of God. If matter is what you want, talk to Satan.

Love Creates

It is true that love creates and the universe, the spiritual one anyway, was created by God’s Love. Man sometimes creates out of greed, desire, or simple need. God has no needs and no greed. He creates because for Him, creation is an act of Love.

Without Love of God

Douno says that without the love of God, we are foreign to one another. What he means is that we cannot truly know others without love and we cannot truly know ourselves if we do not love ourselves. I am not talking about the narcissist who cares only for himself. That isn’t real love. We need to have a real love for ourselves and others, and the only way to get that is to develop a true love of God. In order to have a real love for God, we must know God, we must connect with God. We do that by awakening our spiritual faculties with the Light of the Spiritual Sun. Then we continue to develop the spirit and soul until we reach the high level of consciousness known as Christ Consciousness or Universal Consciousness. When that happens, we truly know God and we will truly love God once we know Him.

“If we consider now (in the Light of Nature) of Man, the Image of God, of his beginning, and of his eternal enduring being, and then of the breaking of his body, how body and Soul part asunder, and whither the Souls go, when the spirit of their breath does break in them, and the moving in the tincture of this world does cease, then we find the ground of the Unquietness of the Soul, when it is separate from the body, being unregenerated; frow whence lamentation and desiring arise; from whence then the Babel of Confusion has risen, so that many things have therefore been invented to ransom Souls. Many of which things have no foundation in the Light of Nature, but were rather invented for covetousness, and for a filling of the belly, and for deceit, upon which the antichrist kingdom is founded. From thence is a right Babel of Confusion come to be, out of which then also the fierce, cruel enmity and hatred has arisen.” ~Jacob Boehme

Body and Soul

It seems that what Boehme is saying here is that the body and soul (or spirit) were initially a single whole, but have been separated into two different things. Exactly what caused that to happen, he doesn’t say, but we know that the answer is man’s sinking deeper and deeper on the physical level into materialism, and moving further and further away from the spiritual. Yet despite this division, the body and soul remain connected in most of us. Only when someone commits a horrendous crime such as murder does the soul completely separate itself from the body and mind, leaving the person as a kind of spiritual zombie.

The Babel of Confusion

Even without a true separation of body and soul, nearly all of us have lost the ability to listen to the soul and hear only the limited intelligence of the mind. Unscrupulous people have taken advantage of that situation to make up tales of how the soul is lost, or how it may be regained. We have all read stories or seen movies in which a person sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for fame and glory. Such tales undoubtedly originate with those who are jealous of the success that others have. Others say that if you join a specific church or religion, your soul will be saved. None of this was taught in the ancient mystery schools. It isn’t necessary for the Devil to barter for souls, he gets enough of them by default.

The ancient schools, and a few modern ones, taught that the only way to get to Heaven and get out of the Babel of Confusion is to awaken and develop the spiritual faculties. This hasn’t changed. Some new schools of spirituality think such schools were overkill, and that simply desiring to be spiritual and meditating regularly will get you to heaven. O legitimate school has ever taught such a simplistic path to enlightenment.

Enmity and Hatred Have Arisen

It is true that this loss of communication between the mind and Soul has resulted in much enmity and hatred. We wage war against our brothers and sisters (all of humanity is our brothers and sisters,) we claim ownership of things that rightfully belong only to Nature, we take what is natural and good and turn it into things that are unnatural and unhealthy. We get diseases, and spread them to others. We feel we deserve something that others have, so we attack them and take it. This is not the way God wants us to Live. It is not the way we should want to live. If we make the effort to awaken and develop our spiritual faculties, and learn to communicate with them, we will leave the Babel of Confusion, and learn how to live together in peace, health, and harmony.