The Longing That Leads To True Life

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If your astral consciousness is drawn up into the heart, you are, consequently, the subject of interference of two worlds. The old and the new one seize you; it is a situation more difficult to endure because of the tensions it provokes. Therefore, take your cross, your rosycross, and go the Path that leads from Bethlehem to Golgotha, so that you may walk in the New Light.

To this end, it is necessary that the astral consciousness, during the hours of sleep, is not found again in the astral sphere of the nature-of-death. This is the first task. Imagine that you could free yourself for several nights from this astral sphere; you would then experience what an enormous blessing results from it.

Therefore, apply your new possibilities by living out of them, by taking them into account every hour of the day and by drawing the necessary consequences. Do not allow yourself to be dragged along in common behaviour, either as an individual, or with others, but direct yourself to The Great Aim and bring your being in harmony with it. When one is young one strives after maturity and social success. In the promising youth of gnostic pupilship, standing before the gates of the New Life, you likewise need to prepare for this Life and become mature as to the Soul-man and arrive in the Soul-world.

Of course you will still have to carry out your social tasks. We all have our duties and responsibilities which demand fulfilment and which weigh heavily. Do not neglect your duties. However, when you realize the Eternal Importance propelling the Soul-man within you to Life, then everything social, everything dualistic, however necessary to occupy yourself with for some time, will become of secondary importance. We do not mean that it does not matter any longer, only that The Great Aim will predominate in you by day and by night.

All the rest becomes spontaneously subservient. While you are occupied with whatever it may be, the Voice of the Soul will be heard and you will be able to listen to its rejoicing. When the astral self, drawn up into the heart, sends out its Longing for a New Life, all the rest will recede into the background as a matter of course. This Longing needs to resound in you by day and by night as one continuous tone. Then you will go the Way of Self-Surrender, the logical Way of Transfiguration, directly and in practice.

You know what Longing is. What have you not longed for in your life? When you look back on all those multifarious desires you know that a certain desire can be so strong that it becomes completely dominant. Well, when your longing for the Liberating Life, for the Gnosis, has that kind of depth and intensity, the astral self will become devoted, in self-surrender, to 'It', to 'Tao' to the Rose of roses, to the Gnosis. In this way, you will sing your thirteen songs of repentance, oh Pistis Sophia.

If you stand in this Process without any force of (nature-born) will, your astral self will no longer thrive, no longer breathe in the astral sphere of the nature-of-death. Then the natural astral self will die and the astral sphere of the nature-of-death will have to let you go, as a matter-of-course, because it can no longer reach you. Then, with respect to the astral self, you will have died according to nature.

From "The Road To Alienation" The Egyptian Arch-Gnosis, Vol. 1 - Jan van Rijckenborgh

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