The Thread of Tao

[QUOTING]

If you think all this over carefully, you will surely sense that behind this Spiritual School there is a tremendous power. In your own way, you will surely have experienced that power. Now the most one can say about this, is that is the thread of Tao, the Thread of Ariadne. How did we get hold of that thread? We will gladly tell you.

Is the thread we hold the beginning? No, for there is no beginning! You do not see its beginning and you do not see its end. Just like you, we too searched through dualistic nature. We were able to do that because we are of this nature. With our I-being we were able to try and test everything this world had to offer. And lo and behold, everything was trouble and sorrow. We found out that this nature is a nature-of-death, and we had no desire to jubilate with the 'blessed' before the throne; neither did we want to strive to make this accursed order acceptable in any way whatsoever. After years of trying and testing, we came to the conclusion that this could not be the true meaning of existence, and that it would not be good to go on having any part in deluding people in the nature-of-death.

One can draw such conclusions, but afterwards, one has to make a decision. The time must come when one must 'govern one's present existence'. So we had no option but to fathom the Tao of antiquity, not with the aid of authorities, but objectively. Can such a thing be done? Yes, oh divine rapture, it can, although we soon found that on all sides, everything was (and is) being done to hinder these discoveries. Many sources had been ruined; others were inaccessible, because they had been locked away in deep cellars beyond human reach. The rest, without exception had been terribly mutilated.

We began with the few fragments of the holy language that had survived. From these, it became clear to us that there exists an Original Kingdom, another Order of Nature, a Realm far beyond the highest nirvanic plane, a Realm quite separate from the nature-of-death and its two spheres.

Once we had realized this, we set out to discover whether there had been people, or groups of people, who had striven to find that Other Realm, what their lives had been like, and what features distinguished them from others. We tried to find out whether such people, although widely separated from each other in space and time, had followed the same pathways. We discovered that the efforts of all these people and groups followed the same basic pattern. We hoped to make contact with those who had gone before us, and in our efforts to do so we exhausted our entire arsenal of magic capabilities -- but not one faint glimmer of the Brothers did we obtain in response.

Now we can laugh at all those attempts, for were we not seeking the image of the imageless, the form of the formless? If the Brothers had revealed themselves, they would have been de-throned. They would have been inhabitants of the reflection-sphere. But they had disappeared forever; they had not died. Countless were the invitations we received during that period, invitations from numerous brotherhoods: 'Come and join us, and give up your useless efforts'.

Then we immersed ourselves in self-freemasonry, because: he who knows the beginning of the Original has the thread of Tao in his hands.

What is the beginning -- not of the Original, but what is the Beginning that leads to the Original, the Beginning that all our predecessors had found? What else could it be but the practice of the fivefold universal Gnosis:

insight
yearning for salvation
self-surrender
the new way of life
and through it, fifthly,
revelation, the thread of Tao.

Not a communication in the personal sense, but an electromagnetic connection with the Gnosis through which the soul, the wholly Other One, is awakened and becomes conscious. That is the thread of Tao. That is what it means to be linked with the chain of the Universal Brotherhood. Anyone who holds that thread in his hands will proceed from power to power and from glory to glory, and he will be following in the footsteps of those glorious, Divine Brothers who have vanished from the earth.

Such a person will then begin to invite others to take hold of the same thread, to follow the same method, to build with him, according to the design of the Original Beginning. And together, all the companies who join in and take up the thread form a new brotherhood, a Living Body, and all bear the magnetic sign of the Son of Man on their foreheads.

The first Gift of Grace received in this state-of-being is the experience of being able to 'govern one's present existence'. Such people have been freed. They are strangers on earth, travelling to the true Fatherland. What is hidden to the 'wise and understanding' of this world is revealed to the children of God.

From "Look At Tao And You Do Not See It" - The Chinese Gnosis - Catharose de Petri, Jan van Rijckenborgh

[END QUOTING]
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