Shifting The Seat Of Desire

[QUOTING]

The Spiritual School does not help with a 'come with us and everything will be alright'. Every pupil must begin by helping himself and to this end the School shows him the Path. Only when one really and truly goes this Path does one receive the power, the radiation and the help of the Gnosis. The key to the Path of Liberation lies in the possibility to give a different direction to the astral consciousness. No other key will fit the door of The Path.

The astral self will not change when you have been taken along to the Spiritual School by your father or mother, or by a friend or acquaintance, or because one makes an appeal to you or sympathizes with you. Your astral self must spontaneously, out of necessity, seek this Path and behave accordingly. We are not in need of people who simply seek but of people who, after having found, behave themselves accordingly.

The majority of people live from the liver-spleen system, from their ordinary needs and instincts. The astral self is established in this system, especially in the solar plexus. The functions of the heart and the head are entirely subjected to it.

The heart and the head can be extraordinarily well-cultivated; the heart, for example, as to fine taste and feeling, and the head with respect to intellectual understanding. Yet, as long as the astral self lies imprisoned in the solar plexus and man, as a result, is one mass of self-maintenance, of I-centrality and is completely earthly-inclined, the pupilship of the gnostic Spiritual School is useless. The School can only meet a person, can only give a helping hand when this person gives evidence of freeing the astral self from the solar plexus to draw it up into the heart.

When one is engaged in doing this -- one cannot will this, the time must be right for it -- he proves that he has reached a dead-end as far as nature is concerned; that he realizes that duality is without prospects. He then begins to rise above his instincts, which have made him so happy and which are so completely one with nature.

When one is engaged in drawing the astral self up into the heart, where it in fact belongs, he will make a strange discovery Now that he views the world, not from the solar plexus, but from the heart, he finds corroborated what he perhaps subconsciously suspected: the absolute lack of prospects of the nature-of-death. You can repeat this or hear somebody else say it, but you will discover it for yourself as soon as you begin to draw the astral consciousness up into the heart. Then you will not establish it on the basis of some faith or other, or on philosophical  reflection, no, then you will know it.

The consciousness can be deluded by the astral sphere and its almost unlimited faculty of projection as long as it lies anchored in the liver-spleen system. However, if the consciousness draws itself up into the heart, the delusion is over. Since the astral consciousness always desires, is always directed upon some form of attainment, a new desire will develop -- the yearning for salvation.

Yearning for salvation from the solar plexus is nonsense, it is always a label. In reality, it expresses the continual desire for gratification of the "I" at the expense of others. The true yearning for salvation awakens in the heart sanctuary; a desire, unknown until that moment, born on the basis of rejection of duality. Only then is a new direction given to the astral consciousness.

The astral sphere of duality can always answer a person and satisfy him as long as his desires do not rise above the level of the "I". However, if one frees oneself from that level, then deliverance is in sight, then the Gnosis comes to meet that one on The Path. Then, the very first task is to purify the heart.

However, as we said before, the heart sanctuary, and no less the head sanctuary, have been so much abused that when astral consciousness is drawn up into a sanctuary that is extremely damaged and decayed, it must be conscientiously restored and purified.

From "Escape From Astral Bondage - The Egyptian Arch-Gnosis, Vol. 1 - Jan van Rijckenborgh

[END QUOTING]

One must have reached a dead-end to nature, one must be through with what the natural world-order has to offer, before he can begin the process of drawing the astral self up into the heart sanctuary. Every part of duality must be unmasked, seen for what it is not and then rejected. If one attempts to hold on to anything of this dualistic nature-order -- even the so-called "good" aspects -- it will be difficult to undertake the journey back to the Original Nature-Order, the Divine Kingdom.

As Man cannot serve two masters, nor can the candidate on the Path of Return partake of two nature-orders. Those who seek Liberation are presented with an "either-or" choice. There is no middle-ground.

~ g
.