Gene Savoy Sr. in a crowd in Peru in the late 1990s PHOTO: Roger Weld
There are twenty-six Sayings recorded in volumes I–VI of The Image and The Word: The Secret Sayings of Jamil. The later Sayings were delivered either onboard the Feathered Serpent II, or during voyages that terminated in America or at the Sanctuary grounds. The object of the Sayings was to reveal to The Community what it must do in the world.
Volume VI, published in 1981, presents the Twenty-Second through Twenty-Fourth Sayings. It is in this volume that Reverend Ted Staver found a passage on Reverend Gene Sr’s life, described by himself, that seemed to fit the format of the “Path to Light” series. Ted suggested the passage to us, and we are posting it for you.
In the passage that follows, Bishop Savoy is presenting the story of his early life as an illustration in response to a question from one of the Companions of The Way regarding the means by which one comes to know who one really is.
“I was adopted when I was three. I lost my natural father and my mother remarried, so I was adopted. And I was raised with half-brothers and with a stepfather who fed me and took care of me and did the best he could as a father. I loved my father very, very dearly, and my brothers and my mother, of course. But my mother was the only person who really understood me. She had a kind of knowledge of me and gave me something that I needed that no one else in the world ever gave me, at least when I was a child. At the age of five I started going to church and by six years of age I was beginning to listen to sermons and getting involved in theology.
“My stepfather did not go to church. My mother was the granddaughter of a Baptist minister, and her father eventually became religious and became active in the Church, though in my own home there was no formal religion. But from the age of six on I went to various Churches: Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Pentecostal, Catholic. I had an urge to enter the ministry, an urge to be spiritual, without knowing why.
“I was different from my brothers and they never really understood me and my religious inclinations. Yet, I never understood the life that we led. Quite simply, I longed for the spiritual life even at that tender age. My mother’s sister influenced me greatly, for she was a Christian Scientist. But the motivation that drove me to worship was an inner compulsion, a driving force that no one understood, not even myself. I did not like school and formal education, not even in later years at business College and University. Like in my earlier home life, there was no spiritual environment. Even the orthodox Church environment was empty, yet it was better than nothing. Still, I longed for a spiritual life of a kind and order not known in the world. No one could instruct me in it. No one was knowledgeable in it. No one I talked to – clergy, teacher, priest, scholar – had the vaguest idea of what I was seeking. I was an alien in a hostile environment, alone, lost, empty.
“The same feeling continued as I got older – I never felt comfortable in the world or that I belonged in it. Though I continued to go to church, was baptized and planned on entering the ministry, I felt alien even to the Christian environment. Like so many, I became interested in Eastern teachings, but again I felt like an alien. I only began to feel comfortable when I discovered the beauty of the ancient religions such as Zoroastrianism and the ancient Egyptian teachings of Hermes Trismegistus. However, I did not become a great student of these religions as I continued to be more inclined toward Christianity.
“Basically, what I am trying to say is that with all my searching in the Christian Church and in the Eastern and Oriental religions, I never became comfortable with religion until I had experienced the visions, and then was able to endure the strong light of the sun. My eyes were no longer blind to the Light of Christ. The world was no longer Dark. For I saw within the light that illuminated the world a greater Light, the Light of God that illuminates the spirits of men, a Light more brilliant than the light of the stars and the moon and the sun combined. That efficacious Light put my heart and mind to rest. It taught me the meaning of religion in a flash, a rapture of spiritual joy. It instructed me in religion more than any rite or ritual, more than any book, more than any sermon. It was a living communion in which I was able to experience the divine Presence of God. I was reborn! Made spiritual, yet I was without instruction, an innocent child, a neophyte awaiting maturity as eagerly as a babe.
“I found the source of Righteousness. I had found the place where God resides, not by my own motivation, but by the vision of Light, and by the Presence within the Light. What clergyman, what Apostle, what biblical scholar had ever seen God face to face? God dwells in a place accessible only to those who are called to it by Him, it seems. And I knew that it was my destiny to serve God in the formation of this Church. I therefore awaited the birth of The Child from whom I would learn with trust, and hope and belief. I gave up all my human motivations of self; that is, pursuit of my human destiny. It was my destiny to serve God within the framework of the Church to come. God would be my Teacher and I would follow Him. My spiritual eye had been opened, and it saw a realm of spiritual beingness. Now that I had been led to it by revelation, I would devote my whole life to teaching it to others.
“Then I began to have recollections and remembrances. It did not all come at once, it came in stages. And as I had experiences and began teaching and moving about in the world, my remembrances increased by the act of working in the Church. Then, of course, when Jamil was teaching, just by looking at him I knew many things. He had the flashing eyes and the touch. He did not have to say much – all he had to do was make a gesture with His hands or look at me with a flash, and I knew. I learned from him by his presence and by looking at the sun, and by recalling and putting things together. And after a while I realized that although I was doing all the work, or so it appeared – writing, teaching, recording the words of Jamil, exploring and holding the Church together as best I could, and suffering, as it were, especially as people could not understand and were leaving – that there was a power over the Church that was outside of my control.”
—from The Image and the Word: the Secret Sayings of Jamil, Volume VI., by The Most Right Reverend Gene Savoy, pp.81-86
