The Absolute Truth Lying in the Center of the Mystery

CarpeDiem

Jedi Council Member
Karl Von Eckartshausen The Absolute Truth Lying in the Center of the Mystery

From Cloud Upon the Sanctuary

THIRD LETTER

The absolute truth lying in the centre of Mystery is like the sun, it blinds ordinary sight and man sees only the shadow. The eagle alone can gaze at the dazzling light, and only the prepared soul can bear the arcane lustre. Nevertheless, the great Something which is the inmost of the Holy Mysteries has never been hidden from the piercing gaze of him who can bear the light.

God and nature have no mysteries for their children. Mystery is caused by the weakness of our own nature, unable to support light, because it is not yet organised to bear the chaste sight of unveiled truth.

This weakness is the Cloud that covers the Sanctuary; it is the curtain which veils the Holy of Holies.

But in order that man might recover the lost light, strength and dignity, loving Divinity bent to the weakness of its creatures, and wrote the truth that is interior and eternal mystery on the outside of things, so that man can transport himself through this to their spirit.

These letters are the ceremonies or the externals of religion, which lead to the interior spirit - active and full of life - of union with God.

Among these letters there are also hieroglyphics of the Mysteries—the sketches and outlines of interior and holy truths which emblazon the curtain drawn before the Sanctuary.

Religion and the Mysteries go hand in hand to lead our brethren to truth; both have for object the reversing and renewing of our natures; both have for their end the re-building of a temple wherein Wisdom dwells with Love, or God with man.

But religion and the Mysteries would be useless phenomena if Divinity had not also accorded means to attain their great ends.

Now, these means have been always in the innermost sanctuary. The Mysteries are destined to build a temple to religion, and religion is required to unite Man with God.

Such is the greatness of religion, and such the exalted dignity of the Mysteries from all time.

It would be unjust to you, beloved brothers, that we should think that you have never regarded the Holy Mysteries in this real aspect, the one which shows them as the only means able to preserve in purity and integrity the doctrine of the important truths concerning God, nature and man. This doctrine was couched in holy symbolic language, and the truths which it contained, having been gradually translated among the outer circle into the ordinary languages of man, became in consequence more obscure and unintelligible.

The Mysteries, as you know, beloved brothers, promise things which are and which will remain always the heritage of but a small number of men; these are the secret things which can neither be taught nor sold publicly, which can be only acquired by a heart that has attained to wisdom and love.

He in whom this holy flame has been awakened lives in true happiness, content with everything, even in slavery, and in everything free. He sees the cause of human corruption and knows that it is inevitable. He hates no criminal, he pities him, he seeks to raise him who has fallen, and to lead back him who has strayed, because he feels, notwithstanding all the corruption, that in the whole there is no taint.

He sees with a clear eye the underlying truth in the foundation of all religion; he knows the sources of superstition and of incredulity - knows that they are modifications of truth, which has not attained perfect equilibrium.

We are assured, my esteemed brothers, that you consider the true Mystic from this aspect, and that you will not attribute to his royal art, that which the misdirected energy of some isolated individuals has made of this art.
It is, therefore, with these views, which accord exactly with ours, that you will compare religion, and the mysteries of the holy schools of Wisdom, to loving sisters who have watched, hand in hand, over the good of mankind since the necessity of our birth.

Religion divides itself into exterior and interior religion—exterior signifying ceremony, and interior the worship in spirit and in truth. The schools of wisdom are also within and without; the outer schools possessing the letter and the symbol, the inner reserving the spirit and meaning. External religion is united to the inner by ceremonies, and the outer schools of the mysteries are linked with the inner by symbol. Yet a little while, and the spirit will restore the living letter, the Cloud will be lifted from the Sanctuary, symbols will pass into vision and words into true understanding. He who reveres the Holy Mysteries will make himself understood no longer by speech and the outward sign, but by the spirit of language and the truth of signs.

Thus religion will be no longer an external ceremony, but hidden and holy mysteries will penetrate through symbol into the outer worship, to prepare men for the worship of God in spirit and in truth.

Very soon the night of symbol will disappear, the light will bring forth the day and the holy obscurity of mysteries no longer veiled will manifest in the splendor of full truth.

The ways of light are prepared for the elect, for all who can walk therein. The vestibule of nature, the temple of reason and the sanctuary of Revelation will form but one Temple. Thus the great edifice will be completed—that edifice which consists in the re-union of man with nature and God.

A perfect knowledge of man, of nature and of God will be the lights which will enable the leaders of humanity to bring back from every side their wandering brothers, those who are led by the prejudices of reason, by the turbulence of passion, to the ways of peace and knowledge. The crown of those who rule the world will be pure reason, their scepter native love, and the Sanctuary will impart to them that unction, even that force, by which the minds of the people will be emancipated and their physical condition relieved.

We are approaching the period of light, and the reign of wisdom and love—that of God, Who is the source of light. Brothers of light, there is but one religion, whose simple truth spreads in all religions, as in branches, returning through multiplicity into the unity of the tree.

Sons of truth, there is but one order, but one Brotherhood, but one association of men who are agreed in the sole object of acquiring the light. From this centre misunderstanding has brought forth innumerable Orders, but all will return, from the multiplicity of opinions, to the only truth and to the true Order—the association of those who are able to receive the light, the Community of the Elect.

With this measure all religions and all orders of man must be measured. Multiplicity is in the ceremony of the exterior; truth is but one in the interior. The multiplication of fraternities is in the manifold interpretation of the symbols caused by the lapse of time, needs of the day, and other circumstances. The true Community of Light can be only one.

The exterior symbol is only the sheath which holds the inner; it may change and multiply, but it can never weaken the truth of the interior; more¬over, the letter was necessary; we ought to seek and try to decipher it—so to discover the interior sense.

All errors, divisions, all misunderstandings, all which in religions and in secret societies tends to divagation can only concern the letter—the outer veil of symbol, ceremony and rite. What rests behind remains always pure and holy.
Soon the time for those who seek the light will be accomplished, for the day comes when the old will be united to the new, the outer to the inner,

the high with the low, the heart with the brain, man with God, and this epoch is destined for the present age. Do not ask, beloved brothers, why for the present age? Everything has its time with those who are limited by time and space. It is in such wise according to the unvarying law of the Wisdom of God, Who has co-ordinated all in harmony and perfection.

The elect should first labour to acquire both wisdom and love, in order to earn the gift of power, which unchangeable Divinity gives only to those who know and those who love.

Morning follows night, the sun rises, and all moves on to full mid-day, where shadows disappear in the vertical splendour. The letter of truth must exist in the first place; then comes the practical explanation, then the truth itself; and it is only thereafter that the Spirit of Truth can descend Which testifies to truth, and sets the seals closing the light. He who can receive the truth will understand. It is to you, much-loved brothers, you who labour to reach truth, you who have so faithfully preserved the glyph of the holy mysteries in your temple, it is to you that the first ray of truth will be directed; this ray will pierce through the cloud of mystery, and will announce the full day and the treasure which it brings.

Do not ask who those are who write to you; look at the spirit, not the letter - the thing, not at persons.

Neither pride, self-seeking, nor any unworthy motive can exist in our retreats; we know the object and the destination of man, and the light which lights us works in all our actions.

We are especially called to write to you, dear brothers in the light; and that which gives power to our commission is the truth which we possess, which also we will pass on to you at the least sign, and according to the measure of the capacity of each.

Light is apt for communication, where there is reception and capacity, but it constrains no one, and waits its reception tranquilly.

Our desire, our aim, our office is to revivify the dead letter and to spiritualize the symbols, turning the passive into the active and death into life; but this we cannot do by ourselves, only through His spirit of light Who is Wisdom, Love and the Light of the world until the present time the Inner Sanctuary has been separated from the Temple, and the Temple beset with those who belong only to the precincts; but the day is coming when the Innermost will be re-united with the Temple, in order that those who are in the Temple can influence those who are in the outer courts, so that the outer may pass in.

In our sanctuary all the hidden mysteries are preserved intact; they have never been profaned by the uninitiated or soiled by the impure.

This sanctuary is invisible, as is a force which is only known through its action.

By this short description, my dear brothers, you can tell who we are, and it will be superfluous to assure you that we do not belong to those restless natures who seek to build in this common life an ideal after their own fantastic imaginations. Neither do we belong to those who wish to play a great part in the world, and who promise miracles that they themselves do not understand. We do not represent either that class of malcontents who would like to take vengeance on certain ranks in life, who have no better object than the desire of dominating others, the passion for adventure and things extravagant.

We can also assure you that we belong to no sect or association save the one true and great company of all those who are able to receive the light. We do not confess to prejudgments, of what kind soever; we are not of those who think it their right to mould all after their own model, who seek arrogantly to remodel all other societies; we assure you faithfully that we know exactly the innermost of religion and of the Holy Mysteries; that we possess with absolute certainty all that has been surmised to be in the Adytum; and that this same possession gives us the strength to justify our commission, imparting to the dead letter and hieroglyphic everywhere both spirit and life. The treasures in our sanctuary are many; we understand the spirit and meaning of all symbols and all ceremony which have existed since the day of Creation to the present time, as well as the most interior truths of the Holy Books, with the laws which govern the rites practised by primitive peoples.

We possess a light by which we are anointed, and by means of which we read the hidden and secret things of nature.
We possess a fire which feeds us, which gives us the power to act upon everything in nature. We possess a key to open the gate of mystery, and a key to shut nature's laboratory. We know of a bond which will unite us to the Upper Worlds, and will reveal to us their sights and their sounds. All the marvels of nature are subordinate to the power of our will, and this will is united with Divinity.

We have mastered the science which draws directly from nature, wherein there is no error, but there are truth and light only.

In our School we are instructed in all things, because our Master is the Light itself and its essence. The plenitude of our scholarship is the knowledge of the bond between the divine and spiritual worlds, between the spiritual world and the elementary, between the elementary, in fine, and the material world.

By these knowledges we are in condition to coordinate the spirits of nature and the heart of man.

Our science is the inheritance promised to the Elect—otherwise, to those who are duly prepared for receiving the light—and the practice of our science is the plenitude of Divine Alliance with the children of men.

We could often tell you, beloved brothers, of marvels, relating to the hidden things in the treasury of the Sanctuary, and these would amaze and astonish you; we could speak to you about things from which the profoundest philosophy is as far removed as the earth from the sun, but to which we are near as the inmost light to Him who is innermost of all.

Only inward persuasion and thirst after the good of our brethren should actuate one who is capable of receiving light even from the source of light - at that source where the thirst for wisdom can be satiated and the hunger after love satisfied. Wisdom and love dwell in our retreats; the stimulus of their reality and of their truth is our magical power.
We assure you that our treasures, though of infinite value, are concealed in so simple a manner that they entirely baffle the researches of opinionated science; these treasures would bring to carnal minds both madness and sorrow, but they are and they ever remain to us the pearls without price of the highest wisdom.

My best blessing upon you, О my brothers, if you understand these great truths. The recovery of the triple word and of its power will be your reward. Your happiness will be in helping to reunite man with man, with nature and with God which is the real work of every craftsman who has not rejected the Corner Stone.

Now we have fulfilled our trust; we have announced the approach of high noon, and the joining of the inner Sanctuary with the Temple; we leave the rest to your own free will.

We know well, to our bitter grief, that even as the Saviour was not understood in His personality, but was ridiculed and condemned in His humility, so also His Spirit, when it shall appear in glory, will be rejected and despised by many. Nevertheless the coming of His Spirit must be announced in the Temples, that it may be fulfilled, even as it is written: "I have knocked at your doors and you have not opened them to Me; I have called and you have not listened to My voice; I have invited you to the wedding, but you were busy with other things."

May Peace and the light of the Spirit be with you!
 
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