Excerpts taken from Boris Mouravieff's book 'Gnosis' Vol.2 Chap 6:
If there are still grounds for hope, is it not possible to determine the conditions for realizing our hope? In the first epistle to the Corinthians, St Paul indicates the best Way and the best gifts: Faith, Hope and Love.
The path that human beings and, finally, adamic humanity as a whole must follow on this Earth, is that which leads from the Love of the Absolute III, that RESIDUE of celestial Love,
to the Love of the Absolute II. This is the general requirement for Salvation.
This concerns the Way which leads to the resurrection or second Birth. But to be reborn the final test that man must pass is that of true Love. Only he who has mastered his Personality and burns with this Love can cross the second Threshold. And before he reaches this point the faithful, upheld by the ardent desire for Salvation, must pass through the intermediate stages. He must give proof of his Faith, then of Strength nourished by Hope. Before he attains Love, the novice must first acquire Discernment, and he cannot do this without having attained Knowledge. It is to this gnosis that St Paul refers when he describes the process in which each stage envelops and absorbs the stage or stages which precede it, and when he specifies that the passage from Hope to Love is marked by the renewal of the mind (intelligence), that is to say, by Knowledge.
This stage of gnosis would have been fully attained today, at the end of the Cycle of the Son, if Christ's mission, as it was first conceived and without the substitution formula, had not failed for the reasons explained in the previous chapter.
Jesus message had been timed for the beginning of the Cycle to which it was adapted. The Old Testament only spoke of Hope in terms of the Mystery of the Promise, revealed only to the initiated. Jesus, repeating the words of the Forerunner, announced the approach of the Kingdom of Heaven and addressed the Gospel of the Kingdom to the whole world.
The spread of the Word had the aim of facilitating the selection of interior men, to whom it was said: to you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but for the otbers, the exterior men, all is in parables. These interior men were to open the ways of the New Era. It is certainly true that the exterior men did not grasp the profound meaning of the parables. Jesus propounded to them and that, loving the praise of men more than the praise of God, they prevailed over the small nucleus of the new elite.
The hostility of the public authorities forced the Apostles and disciples to make unheard-of sacrifices, which they willingly accepted following in the steps of their Master, and at this cost the Word was propagated so that the darkness was not able to engulf it.
But the obstacles and delays to the spread of the Message created a particularly dangerous situation for humanity, because all that must be accomplished by terrestrial man in the Universe must be done within a specific time-limit. The irreversibility of Time applies even in the esoteric domain.
Instead of marching on from one spiritual victory to another on the way mapped out by Jesus, humanity underwent a fall. It became the victim of lower types of human mentality: of the calculation and (self-)interest which it eventually placed at the top of the scale of human values. Thus the gulf between moral and material progress gradually widened, a gulf which was
to become a grave obstacle to the practical application of the Gospel principles.
[...] There is only one sin which will not be forgiven, neither in this world neither in the world to come: it is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. In our times, this warning acquires a burning immediacy and we must pause to consider it attentively. If we glance backwards we will see that at the end of the Cycle of the Father, man had not redeemed the consequences of the first fall to the required measure, since the Son of Man came to save that which was lost. It is only too evident that the Cycle of the Son has not been a Christian cycle: the basic principles of Christianity: the love of God and the love of God in man, including our enemies, have never been applied except in a very limited way. This cycle is a tragic testimony of the unequal struggle in each of us between light and darkness. Yet with the passage of time, cycle by cycle, the degree of truth demanded of man continues to increase. We will soon return to this point. But even now we should ask the question: is humanity ready to face the passage to the Cycle of the Holy Spirit? Is there a ruling class and an elite-the distinction is essential - capable of leading it through this passage?
This is an agonizing question for all who are conscious of its urgency. Many of us can feel its urgency yet prefer to turn back towards the past. Basing our judgement on what has gone before, we continue to count on the forbearance God showed us on the occasion of the two previous falls. This is an error. Humanity has exhausted its credit. Its actions today must fulfil divine expectations.
[...] It is essential that all those who are preoccupied with the evolution of humanity, in the esoteric meaning of the word evolution, be vigilant. For it is from amongst them that the new elite must be recruited, collectively able to play a preparatory role analogous to that of the Forerunner. They must therefore watch to frustrate the actions of those who, consciously or unconsciously, serve the forces which wish to set back the progress of man. The Scriptures draw our attention to the need for such vigilance. We will have noticed that the Gospels of St Matthew and St Mark relate with precision the circumstances which led to the execution of John the Baptist. No detail in these reports is superfluous. Every detail is meant to show the powerful effects that human passions can have on esoteric work, and show how hidden forces know how to use, for their own ends, the full keyboard from the ambition of a Herodias to the charm of a Salome and the concupiscence she awakens. These texts are simultaneously a tale, a teaching, and a warning that we cannot afford to neglect.
[...] To free himself from that slavery in which the exterior man lives is a difficult task for him as he has not recovered from the first or second fall. Dominated by the 'A' influences, which he obstinately takes for Reality, he confuses the '1' of his Personality with his real 'I'. The Personality, which in fact clings to the 'F of the body, is most often ruled by the latter, particularly in the sexual domain. Those who must lead others do not generally escape from the rule of subjection to an undeveloped Personality. That is why one of the most urgent tasks is the formation of an elite capable of overturning the false scale of values established by the deified Personality.
On the other hand we must note that humanity today is in a situation even more critical than on the eve of the first or second fall. We have already specified that a decisive test awaits: the complete elimination of lying. The Era of the Holy Spirit excludes all compromise with Anti-Truth. Lying, in any form whatever, would be an unforgivable blasphemy which would automatically bring about a third fall. The outcome would be fatal, as already indicated in our analysis of the second epistle of the Apostle Peter, of which the following verse should be quoted once again:
The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens sball pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be felt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
We will still have reason for hope only if the forerunners of the coming Era are in a position to accomplish their work. As we said, the danger is greater today than it was on the eve of the second fall; on the other hand, the risks of a check to the forerunners seem to be less than those that threatened John the Baptist, for he had to fulfil his task alone. Today the work of the forerunners is a collective work, and this very fact allows us to think that it might lead to a successful outcome. But we cannot deny that it will be an arduous task. It must be carried out in a mileu where conditions are, so to say, inverted with regard to what they were at the time of the first Coming: the chosen people then refused to render unto Ceasar what they thought belonged to God. Today, man does not want to render unto God what he thinks belongs to the Cxsar of our times, that is to say, to the deified human Personality. The deification of the Personality has acquired, one might also say, a universal character that is still more dangerous in its unacknowledged forms. Whether they belong to the capitalist or communist world, people today are unanimous in glorifying the human Personality. This is the major obstacle that the forerunners of today must surmount.
According to St Paul, before reaching the stage of Love, the very nature of the Cycle of the Holy Spirit, Faith, the essence of the Cycle of the Father, and Hope, the sign of the Cycle of the Son, must dissolve in gtiosis, in Knowledge (Connaisance): the gateway to Love. Knowledge reestablishes the true scale of values, and the result is that it subordinates the Personality to the real 'I'.
At the same time, the acquisition of Knowledge is not without danger, It can make pride swell in the feeble heart of man, and this pride makes all esoteric evolution impossible. The track leading to Knowledge is narrow and runs along a precipice.
Only Personalities magnetized by a sufficiently developed magnetic centre can start forward on this way without great risk, because here the law expressed by Jesus applies in its full force: For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.
Knowledge is only a temporary or intermediate stage: it cannot be deified. Only Love reveals the divine nature: it springs from God, for God is Love. Gnosis is an outer staircase that leads the faithful to Christ's Palace: to the Kingdom of God. In that sense, it is the Forerunner-Spirit which presides over the esoteric work of the faithful, the work which must open the gates to the Era of the Holy Spirit just as John the Baptist's work should have made strait the ways leading to Cycle of the Son.
These efforts accomplished under the sign of Knowledge must fun two essential conditions.
The first is that they must be correctly oriented. For this esoteric work must lead to a liberation from lying.
Without this there is no possible access to the Era of the Holy Spirit. The forerunners should not fail in that area, where the rule formulated by Jesus is applied in all its severity,: whoever puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God If this condition is not fulfilled, if the forerunners allow themselves once again to be attracted by the illusions of the 'World' and the Personality, they would not be true precursors, and their efforts would necessarily be doomed to failure.
The second condition is that the preparatory work must be fertilized by the gifts of Faith and Hope so that it can develop to the accomplishment of Knowledge. It is easy to understand that Faith and Hope must animate those who now devote themselves to or will devote themselves to this work of preparation. But for their work to be crowned with success within the allotted time, each of these workers and all of them together must be impregnated with Hope and burning with Love. Only in such a state is It possible for them to come to this Knowledge (Connaisance) and to give it the disinterested character which opens the ways of Love as it expresses Itself on a higher plane. For Faith and Hope are the first fruits and qualities of Love, which 'believeth all things and hopeth all things.
In the third part of this Volume we shall specify exactly the esoteric meaning of both these words, Faith and Hope, in their positive aspect. From a negative point of view the absence of faith generates suspicion and cuts off any zeal; while a lack of hope chains us to the present and prevents any expansion of thought and heart.
[...] We may hope that this development of Knowledge, if it occurs, will pass beyond limited esoteric circles and have an influence on man's major decisions, decisions oriented toward cosmic interests. To be more exact, let us say that esoteric work tends to facilitate the task of humanity in two essential aspects: in the first place, the Accoivplishment in the Cycle of the Holy Spirit, by attaining the deuterocosmic form of Love; in the second place, the conscious participation of humanity - at first limited to an elite but then extended to everyone - in developing the Ray of Creation. The divine action favours the attainment of these aims: it works in the depths at certain points from which it radiates to reach the whole of humanity. For this it uses Revelation, which gives man the possibility of penetrating further and further into himself, towards the Real, by developing his Personality to the second Birth. History testifies that the Word is spread by the mediation of those who have reached the level of interior man. From Palestine, the Gospel spread to the Greek world, to Asia Minor, then to the Gentiles of the Roman Empire and through them to Europe and North Africa. No matter what judgement we may bring on the hegemony of Europe during recent centuries, the expansion which accompanied it has allowed Christ's message to be spread over all the earth. The techniques it has introduced or developed have realized many of the conditions necessary for the Accomplishment, such as the newborn planetary consciousness, the growth of population, etc. The Divinity uses man's ambitions and passions for His own aims, but the realization of His ends often seems to be merely a by-product of the most un-idealistic human actions.
[...] All today's problems are on a planetary scale. There is no human action, at any point of the globe, that does not have world-wide repercussions. Things that only recently would have been considered as a serious attitude in political or social domains now seem to be dangerously frivolous. In relations between peoples, it has become criminal - the word is not too strong - to use formulx that were appropriate during the Cycle of the Father or even that of the Son. To continue obstinately in this way would lead humanity to the third fall with its disastrous consequences.
The responsibility of those in public authority is great since, as in Jesus' time, their attitude will be decisive. When the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, the intermediate period in which we live will come to an end and we will have to choose. For the time being we can only say that the great controversies of our time, whether in political, economic or social realms, are imperceptibly losing their significance. These are already the quarrels of the old order, the notions of 'right' and 'left', of capitalism and communism, are already outmoded in principle. Soon they will be History. We cannot predict what decision will be taken by the men in office at that dreadful hour. But that decision cannot ensure the salvation of humanity unless those responsible are at that moment conscious of the cosmic role the human being is called upon to play in the divine plan.
