THE HUMAN DESCENDS INTO THE WORLD OF NATURE

“Then the primal person, who possessed all authority over the world of mortal creatures and irrational animals, leaned down through the harmony and, having broken the vault, showed lower nature the beautiful form of God. When nature saw the beautiful form of God, it smiled on the human with love, for it had seen the wondrous beauty of the human reflected in the water and its shadow on the earth. And the human too, on seeing this form, a form similar to his own reflected in the water, loved it and wanted to live in it. And his wish was immediately realized, and he began to inhabit a form devoid of reason. And nature received its loved one, embraced him, and they mingled, for they were lovers.”

HUMANKIND IS MORTAL AND IMMORTAL

“And this is why the human, of all creatures on the earth, is twofold: mortal in his body but immortal through the eternal human. Though he is immortal and has power over all things, he also suffers mortality, since he is subject to destiny. Though above the world of the spheres, he is a slave of destiny. Though he is male and female, being born of a father who contains male and female, and is sleepless as his father is sleepless, he is vanquished by love and oblivion.”

SEVEN EARTHLY HUMANS ARE BORN

“And after this I said, ‘O mind, tell me the rest. I too love your teaching.’ And Poimandres answered, ‘Here is the mystery that has been hidden until this day. Nature, intimately mingled with the primal person, produced a most wondrous miracle. The human had in himself the world of spheres of the seven rulers, which, as I told you, was made of fire and air. Nature immediately made seven humans corresponding to the natures of the seven rulers, and they were androgynous and sublime.” ~Poimanders

Man Descends Into Nature

What Poimanders means by saying that Man descended into the world of nature is that Man, being originally pure spirit as created by God, descended into the realm of matter that was created by the Demiurge, meaning that we took on a physical body. Exactly how we ended up here is open to conjecture. The story of Adam and Eve is one variation, but we must remember that most stories in scripture are allegorical, and the story of the fall of Adam and Eve is no exception. The most important allegorical reference in that story is that of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that Eve ate from and then convinced Adam to do the same. The result of their action was that they “fell” into the lower-level realm of matter.

Form of God

Nature looked upon Man and saw the beautiful form of God. That is because it was looking at man in the original form as a spirit, not a material being. That nature “ached for Man” and loved his form is definitely an allegory. Poimanders makes it sound as if Nature grabbed Man and pulled humanity down into matter, thereby releasing Man of all blame for what happened. Most other tales of The Fall, however, have Man sharing, along with Satan, much of the responsibility for what happened to them. The Bible tells us that when man gained a certain type of intelligence through the fall, Adam and Eve realized they were naked and covered themselves with fig leaves. Most paintings and drawings of this even have Adam and Eve hiding only the sex organs with the fig leaves. This idea is based on a later concept that sex was somehow evil, even though it is necessary for the procreation of most physical beings. If you read the Gnostic “First Book of Adam and Eve,” also known as the “Conflict of Adam and Eve,” you will read that they were not embarrassed about having their sex organ uncovered, but about having a physical body, period. It was the entire physical body they found embarrassing, if not outright disgusting, not because of its shape or form, but because it was dense matter and they were used to being in bodies of Spiritual Light. So the paintings like this one have it wrong:

The reality was more like this one, where they are hiding as much of their physical bodies as possible:

Mortal and Immortal

Humans are mortal and immortal because we have an immortal spirit in a mortal physical body and mind. In order for us to become truly immortal beings, we must awaken our spirits while we are still alive on the mortal plane and become one with it. Then that which we think of as our Self will survive physical death.

From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette

“‘But what kind of sin do the ignorant commit that they should be deprived of immortality?’ I asked. ‘You do not seem to have thought about what I told you. Did I not tell you to pay attention?’ ‘I understand and remember, and at the same time I thank you.’ ‘If you understand, tell me why those who are ignorant deserve death.’ ‘Because the material body has its source in the abhorrent darkness, from which came the watery substance of which the body is composed in the sensible world, and from this body, death slakes its thirst.’ ‘You have understood correctly. But why is it, as the word of God has it, that whoever recognizes and knows himself enters into the good?’ I answered, ‘Because the father of all consists of light and life, and from him human beings were born.’ ‘You are right. Light and life are God and father, out of which humans came. And if you learn that you are also made of light and life, you will return to light and life.’” ~Poimandres

Ignorant Sin

Some spiritual teachers say that only ignorant people commit sin because only the ignorant don’t know that the one they hurt the most when they do so is themselves. Of course, there is also the problem of knowing what is sin and what isn’t. Some things are obvious, like murder is always a sin. Some are not so obvious; and different religions, and even different churches or sects within the same religion have different teachings about them. In the Catholic Church, it is a sin to fail to attend their church service (mass) every Sunday. At one time, they also said it was a sin for a woman to attend mass without a hat or other type of head covering, but that rule was dropped due to changes in the roles of women in society as a whole. I know an Evangelical Christian who thought it was a serious sin that women were wearing workout suits at the gym that showed their naval. Most other churches laugh at that idea.

The one way to truly know is to awaken your spiritual faculties and end your spiritual ignorance. Without spiritual ignorance, you no longer sin because you know what God wants, and you want to please God once you are spiritually awake.

The Ignorant Deserve Death

Poimandres tells the student asking him questions that the ignorant “deserve death.” There are two reasons why he says this. One is that the spiritually ignorant, which is the type of ignorance he is talking about, think only of the physical body as life. Since the physical body is temporary and must die, to those people, that loss means death. The other reason is that those who fail to make use of their time on earth to awaken and develop their spiritual faculties will be as good as dead also, even though they have an eternal spirit.

Know Yourself

When Poimandres adds that those who know themselves “enter into the good,” he is saying that those who have awakened and developed their spiritual Self will, after physical death, keep climbing to higher and higher levels of reality or levels of consciousness until they reach the highest level that most call Heaven, the place of the Good, the place where we know God and we know all of creation.

Light and Life

God is not just the creator of Light and Life, God is Light and Life. The form of God is Light; the Being of God is Life. We can access that Great Light to a limited degree while on earth and in a physical body. We do it by practicing spiritual sun gazing, which means not only gazing at the spiritual sun rather than the physical (never stare at the physical sun!) but also doing it with humility and right thinking; in other words, doing it with the guidance of teachers from a reputable spiritual school like Cosolargy.

From the SUN TALK collection by Harold Boulette

Advancing the Evidence for Survival of Consciousness
Arnaud Delorme, Dean Radin, Helané Wahbeh
Institute of Noetic Sciences Petaluma, CA 94952 USA

ABSTRACT
Throughout history and across all cultures, many people have believed in some sort of afterlife. Recent surveys show that 60{1fa2ef75e2e78439128d99df03acfe1d8ee3047374abe3d4676fe3470ff8b909} to 70{1fa2ef75e2e78439128d99df03acfe1d8ee3047374abe3d4676fe3470ff8b909} of adults in the United States believe they will survive after bodily death. Such beliefs are often motivated by the loss of a loved one, cultural expectations, religious faith, or existential angst. However, the strongest reason for belief in survival after bodily death is based on personal experience, like a near-death experience or afterdeath communication. Those who do not believe, roughly 40{1fa2ef75e2e78439128d99df03acfe1d8ee3047374abe3d4676fe3470ff8b909} of the population, either have not had such experiences or they are not concerned about the question of an afterlife. These people would require persuasive evidence to shift their skepticism. To assess the existing evidence, we adapted a method used in medical research to gauge whether a drug or treatment is effective. We established credibility criteria and then applied the criteria to assign a letter grade, from A to F, to each of nine main categories of evidence suggestive of survival. That exercise found that none of the categories achieved an A level, which is undoubtedly why the question of survival remains unresolved for many. Then we proposed ten new experiments and surveyed over 400 academic scientists and scholars to see which of those studies, if successful, they would find most persuasive. The most frequently selected study was a controlled, prospective experiment that would result in veridical out-of-body perceptions during a near-death experience, followed by experiments involving mediumship and reincarnation. We discuss the implications of these choices and conclude with some thoughts about why improved evidence for survival is important and could benefit individuals and society.

Read the entire essay online here.

Read or download a PDF of the entire essay here.

link submitted by Michael McIntyre

“When the darkness stirred, the light of the spirit appeared to him. When he saw it he was astonished. He did not know that another power was above him. And when he saw that his likeness was dark compared with the spirit, he felt hurt. And in his pain he lifted up, above the height of the members of darkness, his mind, which was the eye of the bitterness of evil. He caused his mind to take shape in a member of the portions of the spirit, thinking that, by staring down at his evil, he would be able to equal the spirit. But he was not able, for he wanted to do an impossible thing, and it did not take place. But in order that the mind of darkness, which is the eye of the bitterness of evil, might not be destroyed, since he was made partially similar, he arose and shone with a fiery light upon all of Hades, that the equality of the faultless light might become apparent. For the spirit benefited from every form of darkness because he appeared in his majesty. “And the exalted, infinite light appeared, for he was very joyful. He wished to reveal himself to the spirit. And the likeness of the exalted light appeared to the unconceived spirit.” ~Paraphrase of Shem

When Darkness Stirred

This is an allegorical tale. The Darkness is the egotism that infected a few angels who became the Fallen, the Darkness, or the Demiurge in Gnostic terms. It wasn’t so much that the light of Spirit appeared to them—it was always there—but that they noticed it and, in their egotism, decided they were as great as God and could create a realm of Darkness as God had created the realm of Light.

He Did Not Know

Shem says that the Dark One, the Demiurge “did not know that another power was above him.” This cannot possibly be true! It is only because the Demiurge, full of egotism, became jealous of God, that the Demiurge decided to create a universe of Darkness, a universe where he would rule by pretending to be God. He (or they, as the Demiurge represents all the fallen angels) succeeded by turning a large amount of spirit into the Darkness called matter. This doesn’t make the material universe something evil that must be destroyed, but it is something created in error that must be repaired.

Shone With a Fiery Light

Lucifer, Satan, and other Dark Beings are capable of shining with a light that is nonetheless Darkness when compared with the overwhelmingly bright and loving Light of God. Over the centuries, many have been tricked into believing that this shining of a Dark Being meant that it was an angel of God, or God Himself. As a result, they listened too and did what these beings asked. This is why Earth is such a mess.

Exalted Infinite Light

The Exalted Infinite Light which is the Light of God did appear in the world of matter. God took pity on the material beings created by the Demiurge and gave us humans a Divine Soul of Light that, when awakened, can help us escape from the Darkness of matter and help in the Great Plan to turn the realm of matter back into spirit. Fortunately for us, we live in the time when the promised Sun of Righteousness is now shining down on us. This special Spiritual Sun shines down on us with a much greater amount of God’s Light than previously. This makes it easier for us to tap into the Spiritual Light and awaken our dormant spiritual faculties. But we still have to make the effort to do so.

From the SOLAR WIND collection by Harold Boulette

“History records the existence of stones which, when struck, threw all who heard the sound into a state of ecstasy. There were also echoing images which whispered for hours after the room itself had become silent, and musical stones productive of the sweetest harmonies. In recognition of the sanctity which the Greeks and Latins ascribed to stones, they placed their hands upon certain consecrated pillars when taking an oath. …

“Divination by stones was often resorted to by the Greeks, and Helena is said to have foretold by lithomancy the destruction of Troy. Many popular superstitions about stones survived the so-called Dark Ages. Chief among these is the one concerning the famous black stone in the seat of the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, which is declared to be the actual rock used by Jacob as a pillow. The black stone also appears several times in religious symbolism. … The black stone in the Kaaba at Mecca is still revered throughout the Mohammedan world. It is said to have been white originally and of such brilliancy that it could be seen many days’ journey from Mecca, but as ages passed it became blackened by the tears of pilgrims and the sins of the world.” ~Manly P. Hall

Musical Stone Circles

There have been many theories about the stone formation in England known as Stonehenge. One of the newest is that the stones were struck with hammers during certain ceremonies to create a ringing sound that produced the type of ecstasy Hall is talking about. And Stonehenge is by no means the only ancient circle of stones found in the British Isles and elsewhere. It is possible that in many of them, the stones were used to produce sounds, as well as for other things like marking solar positions.

Modern Musical Stones

While it may have been true that the stones in some stone circles were used to produce a kind of music, no one seems to be doing that today. There is a modern variation, however: crystal bowls. Crystal singing bowls are made of quartz crystal and are played by rubbing a hard rubber striker around the edge or along the sides. This produces a vibrational sound that is very powerful.

Divination by Stones

I had not heard of lithomancy until I read the quote from Hall. Apparently, this involved putting stones of different colors in a bag and pulling one out to get an answer to a question or to determine if an accused criminal was guilty. While this is not done today, many do use crystals and gems, which are a special kind of stone, for divination and other spiritual purposes. Crystals can be used to help charge weak energy centers. For that purpose, you usually use a crystal or gem with the same color as the energy center you want to charge. They can also be programmed to protect you from malevolent beings and forces. We can’t be awake and alert all day and night, but the crystals can be programmed to protect us when we are asleep or not on guard.

Black Stone in Westminster Abbey

The black stone that was considered the coronation stone for the Kings of Scotland was called the stone of destiny. Many historians today say the stone that is currently there is a different one substituted in the thirteenth century. The legend doesn’t say what effect, if any, this stone had on the king being coronated.

Black Stone in the Kaaba

The Black Stone in the Kaaba is a real thing also. It was claimed by some to have originally been given to Adam and Eve to use as a guide to building an altar.

From the SOLAR WIND collection by Harold Boulette

“The true joy of a person is to do that which properly belongs to a person. That which is most proper is, first, to be kindly affected towards them that are of the same kind and nature as he himself, to condemn all sensual motions and appetites, to discern rightly all plausible fancies and imaginations, to contemplate the nature of the universe; both it and things that are done in it. In this kind of contemplation, three separate relations are to be observed. The first, to the apparent secondary cause. The second, to the first original cause, God, from whom proceeds whatever happens in the world. The third and last, to them that we live and converse with: what use may be made of it, to their use and benefit.

“Wipe off all idle fancies, and say to thyself incessantly; now if I will, it is in my power to keep out of this my soul all wickedness, all lusts, all trouble, and confusions. But on the contrary to behold and consider all things according to their true nature, and to carry myself towards everything according to its true worth. Remember this thy power that nature has given thee.”[1] ~Marcus Aurelius

Do What is Proper

It makes sense that we should do what is proper in all circumstances, but it isn’t done as simply as it is said. First, we do not always know what is the right thing to do in all circumstances, and second, even when we do, there is a part of us that wants us to do otherwise, and sometimes that part wins out. It is unlikely that we will always do what is proper, but we can, at the end of each day, evaluate our actions for the day, and when we did something improper, vow to do better the next time. As humans, we have both an angelic and an animalistic nature and we can’t simply shut down the animal nature. What we need to do is awaken the Soul so it can control the ego which is the driving force through which our animal nature works. That doesn’t mean we destroy the ego. The ego is a needed part of us in order to function in the physical world. It is to be controlled, not destroyed.

Be Kind

Aurelius is certainly correct in saying that the first thing that is proper behavior for a person is to be kind, or, as he words it, “be kindly affected.” Most of us will probably say that we are kind, but the question to follow up with is, “To whom and under what circumstances?” Few of us are kind to everyone, even fewer are kind to everyone under all circumstances. Unfortunately, we live in a materialistic world that wants us all to function as competitors. We are led to believe there is not enough to go around of just about anything, so we need to compete for it. This competitive attitude gives the greedy people the edge, and they often grab far more than they need, or can even use. The result is artificial shortages created by the greedy. But this insane way of living is beginning to be exposed as a failed paradigm, and people are learning that cooperation in which we all get a fair share works better, is less stressful and less violent, and does allow us to be kind to everyone. We can even be kind to former competitors as we now see them as people with similar needs rather than the competition.

Nature of the Universe

Aurelius also advises us to contemplate the nature of the universe, and apparently behave accordingly. But to do that properly, we must be aware that there are at least two different universes, one physical and one spiritual. In the physical universes, it is easy to get the impression that it is a dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself kind of environment. While that is true, it is only part of the story. There are plenty of people, animals, and plants that do not behave in that way, or at least not very often, and still succeed. On the other hand, there are those who constantly act as if everything must be fought for at any cost, yet they are not really doing well at all. This may be because the physical universe and the spiritual one occupy the same space and affect each other. Thus, a spiritual being that follows God’s Law may see great success on both the spiritual and physical levels, even though he is kind and non-competitive in the physical world. In fact, while some who choose to develop their spiritual self over the physical self live in physical poverty, others live in reasonable comfort without being greedy. Awakening our spiritual faculties helps us understand both universes better, and with knowledge and understanding comes real success, spiritual success, and success that isn’t greed.

[1]    I have taken the liberty of modernizing some of the language in the quote to make it more readable.

From the SOLAR WIND collection by Harold Boulette

“The law of the Old Testament through practical philosophy cleanses human nature of all defilements. The law of the New Testament, through initiation into the mysteries of contemplation, raises the intellect by means of spiritual knowledge from the sight of material things to the vision of spiritual realities.

“Those who are beginners and stand at the gate of the divine court of the virtues are called ‘God fearing’ by Scripture (cf. Acts 10:2, 13:16, 26). Those who with some measure of stability have acquired the principles and qualities of the virtues, it describes as ‘advancing’. … Thus those who have abandoned their former passion-dominated way of life will lack none of the blessings which are appropriate to beginners, even though they have not yet acquired stability in the practice of the virtues or come to share in the Wisdom spoken among those who are perfect. And those who are advancing will not lack any of the blessings which belong to their degree, even though they have not acquired the transcendent knowledge of divine realities possessed by the perfect. For the perfect have already been initiated mystically into contemplative theology: having purified their intellects of every material fantasy and bearing always the stamp of the image of divine beauty in all its fullness, they manifest the Divine Love present in their hearts.” ~The Philokalia

The Old Testament

Some think that the Old Testament of the Bible should be completely ignored, while others who consider themselves Christians give it more say in their beliefs and behavior than the New Testament. As is usual in such cases, the truth lies somewhere between those two. The Old Testament does contain useful spiritual instruction, but when it is contradicted by the New Testament, Christians should go with the New Testament. We also must remember with all of the Bible, and most other scripture, that much of it is written as an allegory, so a literal understanding produces nonsense. You have to learn the language of the mystics and be able to glean the intended meaning from the allegorical words.

The Philokalia says the Old Testament teaches practical philosophy. I think a better way to put it is to say that most of the Old Testament teaches proper behavior in the material world, while the New Testament is all about going beyond the material and reaching out to the spiritual.

The New Testament

The Philokalia says the New Testament is more about the spiritual rather than the physical, and that is true. It says the New Testament takes us into the “mysteries of contemplation.” That is true if we have the key to understanding the allegorical meanings behind the written words. We must also be aware that not all of the New Testament was written by the apostles and disciples of Jesus who spoke with him directly. In truth, most of it was written at least a century after Jesus left the world. It is unreasonable to think that the stories passed from generation to generation verbally for all that time remained in their original state. In addition, some of it was written based more on the teachings of Paul rather than those of Jesus.

Fearing and Advancing

Those who follow God’s Law out of fear are the beginners on the path of enlightenment. It is not God that we should fear, but the dark beings and forces that control the realm of matter. When we live in fear of God, we don’t advance. We need to let go of fear and realize that God loves us and wants all of us to be redeemed. When you live in fear of God, you don’t try to get closer to God. Those who advance spiritually do move closer to God because they know that God is not to be feared.

From the SOLAR WIND collection by Harold Boulette

“The writings of old declare the wisdom of our forefathers, which is the treasure trove of man and the inheritance of our days. Thus it is written:

“All things on Earth are compounded of two flowing powers, the right hand power and the left hand power; the first predominates in men and the second in women. Where they fall nearly equal, the being is neither wholly man nor wholly women.

“The Spirit of Life resides in the air men breathe and is shared with the beasts, the trees, the things that crawl, the birds, the fishes, the herbs and the grass. It quickens the living hearts of men and is diffused through the blood of the body.

“Man sleeps when his spirit departs for refreshment at the fount of its being. Even as the mortal body must sustain itself with things of the earth, so must our spirit seek sustenance in the place of its being. … There, by the underground river, the good are separated from the wicked, but the river is not a river of water. In there, all things are made known, and the river is the River of Life. …

“There is a fine, unbreakable thread, one end of which is secured in the Spirit Center, wherein dwells the Everlasting Being, the Eternal One. The other end is fastened to matter, and between the two is the web of creation.” ~The Kolbrin Bible (Man:17:2-8)

Wisdom of our Forefathers

The authors of the Kolbrin Bible recognized that their forefathers had a wisdom that they should listen to. Today most people ignore the ancient writings, even if they are spiritual students. They instead listen to a few popular spiritual writers of today, not realizing that those writers are usually simply quoting things found in the ancient books, or simplifying them for the new generation that wants instant everything, not realizing that spiritual development cannot be hurried or simplified.

Two Flowing Powers

This is not something new. Anyone can see that the material world is a world of duality: positive and negative, male and female, hot and cold, etc. Some try to deny it, thinking that somehow that will make it go away, but they cannot change the nature of matter. It will always have death as well as life, sorrow as well as joy, poverty as well as wealth, and so on. The way to rid yourself and others of the two flowing powers is to turn away from matter to the realm of spirit and eventually to aid in the process of transforming the world of matter back into spirit. In the spiritual world, there is only Light, no Darkness, only Life, no death, only joy and abundance, no poverty or sorrow.

Nearly Equal

I find it interesting and enlightening that the people who wrote the Kolbrin Bible several hundred years ago recognized that (1) some people are born who are not really male or female, but between the two, (2) that such people should be thought of as neither male nor female, and most of all, (3) they express no condemnation of such people.

The Spirit of Life

I’m not sure if the writer here is using allegory or trying to be literal. If literal, the Spirit of Life does not actually exist “in the air.” It is an energy, not a substance. Likewise, when it enters the body, it travels through energy channels and energy centers (chakras), not the blood. Of course, if it was meant allegorically, then that makes sense. It is true that this Spirit of Life, or Spiritual Light, goes into all beings, not just humans. All beings have a spirit; all beings need to be nourished by the Spiritual Light.

Spirit Departs

The quote states that while we sleep, our spirit departs to “the fount of its being” or the spiritual realm. That may be true, but you don’t have to be asleep for your spirit to visit the higher dimensions. With proper training and a lot of practice, you can do it while awake by going through the Spiritual Sun, which is like a portal between the material and the spiritual world.

Unbreakable Thread

There is indeed an unbreakable thread that connects our spiritual self to our physical and mental self. This Thread of Life also connects us to all other spirits. It is one of the most important spiritual truths that is often overlooked in some of the modern spiritual schools. In Cosolargy, we wear a physical thread around our waist to remind us of the invisible thread that binds us all together. That is how important it is. You can’t become One with the All if you don’t have a connection to the All.

From the SOLAR WIND collection by Harold Boulette

“The holy Grail is a symbol both of the lower (or irrational) world and of the bodily nature of man, because both are receptacles for the living essences of the superior worlds. …

“The Holy Cup can be discovered only by those who have raised themselves above the limitations of sensuous existence. In his mystic poem, The Vision of Sir Launful, James Russell Lowell discloses the true nature of the Holy Grail by showing that it is visible only to a certain state of spiritual consciousness. Only upon returning from the vain pursuit of haughty ambition did the aged and broken knight see in the transformed leper’s cup the glowing chalice of his lifelong dream. Some writers trace a similarity between the Grail legend and the stories of the martyred Sun Gods whose blood, descended from heaven into the earth, was caught in the cup of matter and liberated therefrom by the initiatory rites.  The Holy Grail may also be the seed pod so frequently employed in the ancient Mysteries as an emblem of germination and resurrection, and if the cuplike shape of the Grail is derived from the flower, it signifies the regeneration and spiritualization of the generative forces in man.” ~Manly P. Hall

The Holy Grail

The Holy Grail, according to Christianity, is the cup that was used to catch the blood of Jesus while he was dying on the cross. It is also supposed to be the cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper. It is said to have various supernatural powers including immortality. But what exactly the grail is remains a mystery.

Most Christians believe the Grail story comes from the Bible, but other than simply saying that Jesus drank from a cup at the last supper, and that Joseph of Arimathea caught his blood in it while He hung on the cross, nowhere does it refer to it as a holy object or of having any divine powers. The first tale of the Grail Being something more than a simple cup comes from the French writer Chrétien de Troye, who wrote of it in the 12th century. Many other writers have added to the legend of the Grail, including Dan Brown in modern times.

The Quest for the Grail

There are probably as many stories about various persons or groups seeking the Grail as there are about those trying to find the Fountain of Youth. Some of the Crusaders went seeking the grail. According to some legends, they found it but kept it hidden. The modern Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade, built on that legend. Others have claimed to have found the Grail, others have admitted failure. It is as hard to find as the Fountain of Youth, or Eldorado, the lost city of gold. While it may not be obvious, all of these may be related and the real quest may be the same for them all. The problem is that most seekers are looking for something material while in truth the Grail is something spiritual, as is the Fountain of youth.

The True Quest

The real Grail, and the quest for it, is just an allegorical reference for spiritual enlightenment. The Grail as a cup is generally depicted as being of gold, yet it is unlikely that Jesus actually drank from a cup of gold at the Last Supper. It is shown as a gold cup because gold is a symbol of God, God’s Light, and God’s grace. Gold is also a symbol for the sun, especially the Spiritual Sun.

The Legend of Eldorado was originally the City of the Golden Man, not an entire city of gold. The legend says that the Golden Man was covered in powdered gold. Again, we are talking about symbology and allegory. In this case, the Golden Man was the enlightened man, the spiritual master who was One with the All and had great spiritual power and knowledge. The tales of alchemists turning lead into gold actually is another variation of the same allegory. Here lead means the ordinary consciousness of materialistic man, and gold means the higher consciousness of the spiritually developed man.

So the true quest is for spiritual enlightenment, and the means for achieving it. A hint is found in the fact that gold refers to the Spiritual Sun as well as the Grail and the Golden Man. Some say that there are many paths to God, and to some extent, that is true, but if you want to fly from New York to Boston, a route through Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, then Boston is foolish when direct routes are available. The most direct route to spiritual enlightenment and higher levels of consciousness is by taking in the Light of the Spiritual Sun, which flows from God.

From the SOLAR WIND collection by Harold Boulette

“Mysticism, then, offers us the history, as old as civilization, of a race of adventurers who have carried to its term the process of a deliberate and active return to the divine fount of things. They have surrendered themselves to the life-movement of the universe, hence have lived with an intenser life than other men can ever know; have transcended the ‘sense-world’ in order to live on high levels the spiritual life. Therefore they witness to all that our latent spiritual consciousness, which shows itself in the ‘hunger for the Absolute,’ can be made to mean to us if we develop it; and have in this respect a unique importance for the race. It is the mystics, too, who have perfected that method of intuition, that knowledge by union, the existence of which philosophy has been driven to acknowledge. But where the metaphysician obtains at best a sidelong glance at that Being ‘unchanging yet illusive,’ whom he had so often defined but never discovered, the artist a brief and dazzling vision of the Beauty which is Truth, they gaze with confidence into the very eyes of the Beloved.” ~Evelyn Underhill

As Old as Civilization

Many people think mysticism goes back only two or three thousand years, but it is much older than that. Almost since the very beginning of the human race, there have been mystics. These are people who can communicate with God and God’s messengers. They can often see things that most of us don’t see and know things that few others know. Materialists think it is no more real than the tricks of a stage magician, but they are wrong. While there are certainly frauds who pretend to be mystics, many of them writing books these days, there have always been and always will be real mystics.

Divine Process

The mystics are adventurers in the sense that they are willing to go where few have gone before. Not in the sense of physical travel, though that may be involved for some, but spiritual travel to other dimensions of being and consciousness. They do follow a divine process for spiritual growth that is never written down, except in allegorical form, and is shared only with those who are ready for it. It isn’t basic meditation as the schools of meditation would have you believe. Meditation is very basic and you wouldn’t need years of study in a mystery school to master it. What the students learned in those schools was far more than meditation.

Latent Spiritual Consciousness

Spiritual Consciousness is latent because we enter the physical world with our spiritual faculties in a state similar to a coma. These faculties must be awakened and developed before we can truly gain Spiritual Consciousness.

Perfected Intuition

Mystics and spiritual adepts do have a better developed intuition then most of us. They also have prophetic dreams regularly. The trick is knowing how to interpret dreams, visions, and intuitive feelings. Mystics are trained to do that, and once they reach a certain level, they just know and understand the symbology used.

Beauty of Truth

The Beauty of Truth is not like the beauty of an attractive person, flower, or other object with physical beauty. The Beauty of Truth comes partly by simply knowing it is true, and not just opinions or accepted theories. Truth is also beautiful in that it is simple, yet complex enough to account for the whole universe. The truly awakened mystic can understand this and be able to be a co-creator with God. The materialist creates little except chaos.

From the SOLAR WIND collection by Harold Boulette