THE EGYPTIAN ARCH-GNOSIS
AND ITS CALL IN THE ETERNAL PRESENT

NEWLY PROCLAIMED AND EXPLAINED FROM

THE TABULA SMARAGDINA AND CORPUS HERMETICUM

OF HERMES TRISMEGISTUS

BY

J. VAN RIJCKENBORGH

Part 3

2018

ROZEKRUIS PERS HAARLEM – THE NETHERLANDS

International School of the Golden Rosycross
Lectorium Rosicrucianum
Bakenessergracht 11-15, Haarlem, The Netherlands

Translated from the Dutch second revised edition 1985

Original title:

De Egyptische Oergnosis en haar roep in het eeuwige nu

ISBN paper version 9789067321204
ISBN electronic version 9789067326919

© 1994 Rozekruis Pers:

Haarlem, The Netherlands – London, U.K. – Bakersfield, U.S.A.

The Gate of Saturn

Saturn is the ruler of matter and the cause of all processes of crystallisation. As such he is the power of obstruction, deterioration and decline.

It is also Saturn’s task to reveal everything the human being has created. That is why he is sometimes depicted as the man with the sickle and the hour-glass, as the hierophant of death. For he brings all the values of dialectical and satanic man, all the results of selfishness and the rampant lover life into the light of day, at a psychological moment. Saturn is Father Time, Chronos, who orders: Thus far and no further’.

But Saturn is also the one who initiates. Those who walk the path of life-renewal to live again in harmony with the great, universal law of life, will meet Saturn as the one who reveals everything that has become new: the imperishable values secured within the soul. Saturn, the envoy of death in transient nature then becomes the herald of the resurrected, immortal man.

The first edition of this book appeared in 1962, a Saturn year in which mankind was placed before a clear choice: either to go on following the path of the old Saturn, which leads to grinding and death or, aided by the light-forces of the universal Gnosis, to walk the path of liberation, which leads through the gate towards the new life, the Golden City, the new Jerusalem.

Preface

Mankind’s path of development, which for earthly humanity with its unholy self-will has once more become a fatal course, is demonstrating yet again the inviolability of its laws: The tree is known by its fruits’, and As you sow, you shall reap’!

For the present-day world, with its menace and blood-red hate, its shameful degeneration and madness, the picture is one of destruction and judgement, accentuated by the approaching end of this day of manifestation.

There are many who perceive all this and are deeply shaken by what has been created by our so highly prized human talents. Such people are seeking, whether consciously or unconsciously, for a way to alleviate their growing sense of guilt with respect to the hopelessness of things. They are looking for a method that will offer not only liberating insight but also a means of achieving a concrete way of living that will make possible inner reconciliation with the one fount of life.

The third volume of The Egyptian Arch Gnosis and Its Call in the Eternal Present explains about the Only Good, which can only be found with God, in the deepest deep of the human being, beyond the senses and the lower mentality. The Only Good offers the key to a liberating way of life via the path of soul-rebirth. Those who, amid the darkness of the approaching night, are truly seeking the light, are shown in this book the practical significance of Christ’s words: ‘Seek first the kingdom and its righteousness’. And the practical application of these words is explained by the

hermetic law: ‘Receive all things, relinquish all things, and thereby renew all things’.

May there, even now, be many seekers who hear the call of the Gnosis to self-realisation, and prepare themselves to use the key to liberation, for their eternal salvation and that of all mankind.

J. VAN RIJCKENBORGH

The Tenth Book
That The Good is to be Found in God Alone and Nowhere Else

1 The Good, Aesclepius, is exclusively in God, or rather: God is The Good, in all eternity. That is why The Good is necessarily the cause and essence of all motion and of all genesis: nothing exists that is without The Good. The Good, in perfect equilibrium, is surrounded by a static force of manifestation: it is the entire plenitude, the primordial fount, the origin of all things. When 1 call that which sustains everything good, I mean The Good, which is absolute and eternal.

2 This attribute belongs only to God, for there is nothing He lacks, so that no desire for possession can make him evil. There is nothing He might lose and at the Toss of which He might be grieved, because sorrow and grief are part of evil. There is nothing stronger than He that might be able to wage war against him, nor is it in keeping with his nature that indignity might be brought upon him. Nothing excels him in beauty and thus arouses him to the love of the senses. Nothing can deny him obedience and thus move him to anger. There is nothing wiser than He which could thus arouse his covetousness.

3 As none of these emotions is to be found in the All-Being, there is nothing in him other than The Good. And just as none of the other characteristics can occur in such a being, likewise The Good cannot be found in anyone else.

4 All the other qualities occur in all beings, in the smalt as well as in the large, in each of them in a specific way, and even in the world, the greatest and most powerful in all manifested life: for all that has been created is full of suffering,¹ because genesis itself involves suffering.

Where there is suffering, The Good is certainly absent. Where The Good is, there is certainly no suffering whatsoever. Wherever day is, there is no night, and wherever night is, there is no day. That is why The Good cannot dwell in what has been created, but only in the non-created.

But since all matter participates in the non-created, it is also part of The Good. In this sense the world is good: insofar as it likewise brings forth all things it is, as such, good. But in all other respects it is not good, being also subject to suffering, and changeable, and the mother of creatures subject to suffering.

5 Human standards of goodness are obtained by comparison with evil. What is not evil beyond measure is here considered to be good, and what here is held to be good is the smallest part of evil. Therefore, it is impossible, here, for what is good to be free from contamination by evil. What is good, here, is affected by evil and ceases to be good. Thus, this good deteriorates into evil. That is why The Good is in God alone; yes, God is The Good.

6 In men, Aesclepius, The Good can be found only in name but nowhere as a reality. In fact, that is impossible, for The Good cannot find a place in a material body which on all sides is stifled by afflictions and arduous exertion, grief and desire, passion and delusion, and images of the senses.

7 However, worst of all, Aesclepius, is that everything to which man is driven by what 1 have mentioned is here considered to be the greatest good, instead of an extraordinary evil. The passionate desire of the belly, the instigator of all malice, is the error which keeps us here remote from The Good.

8 Therefore, I thank God for what He has revealed to my consciousness with regard to knowledge of The Good, which is not to be found in the world. The world is saturated with evil, just as God is filled with the fullness of The Good, or The Good with the fullness of God.

9 Around the divine being radiates beauty, which indeed dwells in God in supreme, flawless purity. Let us dare to say it, Aesclepius: the essential being of God, if one may speak of it thus, is The Beautiful and The Good.

10 The Beautiful and The Good are not to be found within those who are of the world. All things perceptible to the eyes are chimera, resembling shadows. But that which transcends the senses approaches most closely the essence of the Beautiful and The Good. And the eyes are no more capable of seeing God than they are capable of beholding The Beautiful and

The Good. These are entirely part of God; they belong to him and him alone, being inseparable from his essence and expressions of the highest love of God and for God.

11 1f you can comprehend God, you will also comprehend The Beautiful and The Good in their supreme, radiant magnificence, entirely illuminated by God. That beauty is incomparable, that goodness inimitable, as God himself is inimitable. To the extent that you comprehend God, you will also comprehend The Beautiful and The Good. They cannot be conveyed to other beings for they cannot be separated from God.

12 1f you are seeking God, you are also seeking The Beautiful, for there is only one road that leads from here to The Beautiful: a God-serving life of action, guided by the Gnosis.

13 That is why Chose who are without Gnosis and do not walk on the path of godliness dare proclaim man beautiful and good; man who has never, even in his dreams, seen what The Good is and is in the grip of all kinds of evil, who considers evil to be good and thus assimilates evil without ever becoming satiated with it, fearing to be deprived of it and striving with all his might not only to keep it, but even to increase it.

14 Thus it is, Aesclepius, with regard to human goodness and human beauty. And we can neither escape nor hate them, for the hardest thing of all is that we need them and cannot live without them.

II
The Mystery of The Good

You probably know the gospel story of the rich young man; the tale of the man who came to Jesus the Lord with the question: ‘Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Before answering the question, Jesus replied: Why do you call me good? No-one is good except God alone.’

When we look at the tenth book of Hermes Trismegistus we notice that these words from the gospel are a quotation from the hermetic philosophy. One can state this quite certainly because the hermetic philosophy existed thousands of years before the Christian gospel. In the very first verse we read:

The Good is exclusively in God, or rather: God is The Good, in all eternity.

These words make clear straight away that for us The Good is an unknowable reality: an allusion to a state we ourselves are unable to approach.

If you think about this idea, you will realise that your good, what you are accustomed to calling ‘good’, has to do with something entirely different. It is a relative concept, of value to the I-being for a limited period only. And you know that what you call good, someone else will sometimes find utterly bad or reprehensible. What one person prizes as the most noble, is rejected by another as the most terrible.

There are as many standards of good and evil as there are human beings. In general, you find good those things which strike you as pleasant or agreeable, or which are in keeping with your insight into life. The opposite you consider evil. The result is an appalling chaos, since in our field of life there are no genuinely good people, any more than The Good, the Only Good, can be found in our life-field.

Dialectical criteria of good and evil provide no basis; they cannot be standards upon which a liberating philosophy can be built. In fact, a deliberate deception prevails in relation to these things. Every nation, every race, every group, every movement is established on a foundation of so-called goodness. People say: ‘Good is as we see it, as we do it, so follow our example!’ But it is senseless to say such things, and dangerous, too, for those who indulge in such self-adulation will always be disillusioned and brought back to reality by the law of antitheses.

No-one objects to the fact that mankind tries, and will go on trying, to solve its problems in the best possible way; indeed there are countless people who are wholeheartedly willing to help it do so. However, do not expect anything essential from such efforts. Do not expect The Good. What is called ‘good’ in our field of existence is a deception or an error. This was already established with certainty thousands of years ago.

A great deal of philosophising has been done on the subject. For example, think of Nietzsche, who rightly considered as unrealistic the difference between the concepts of good and evil. Such philosophers as Kant, too, have realised that good and evil are dependent on human interpretation. What you think good is good for you; someone else may disagree with you entirely. Those who go no further than this level, then, will never reach a solution. How many discussions have you perhaps had, quite pointless discussions, about your often so very divergent insights into good and evil?

Neither do we intend to bore you with our insights into good and evil. No, our aim is to free you from all this and to direct your attention to the one genuine Good, which exists in God alone.

Verse 14, at the end of the tenth book, speaks about man’s dilemma with respect to good and evil:

Thus it is with regard to human goodness and human beauty. And we can neither escape nor hate them, for the hardest thing of all is that we need them and cannot live without them.

Our aim is to raise you, if possible, to the hermetic perspective. If you consider all the fuss about goodness made by human beings in various groups the world over, if you become involved in all this turmoil, you will surely not find it in you to love it, if you are a genuine seeker of truth. Certainly, in many respects, you may see in it elements of practical value. Sometimes it may also be agreeable. But if you view it in the light of hermetic philosophy you will immediately realise its inadequacy, its hopelessness, and it will not be possible for you to love such attempts at goodness. The same applies to love as applies to goodness. Just as The Good is in God alone, so love, too, is only in God. Neither are found in human beings bom of nature. Seekers of truth, then, ought not to try to find them where they do not exist.

But neither ought you to hate human goodness and human beauty, for hate burns, destroys. Love, too, is a fire. Love is an astral force which has to do with the heart. When a person who seeks love is disillusioned, he always undergoes a purification and his hunger for the One Thing Necessary becomes that much purer and more urgent. But the fire of hate, which is also an astral radiation in the heart sanctuary, destroys and withers the heart. For the person who hates, nothing is left.

However, there is a third attitude, in which one neither expects nor seeks what is impossible. Instead, one adopts a purely objective standpoint with respect to these things, and in this way maintains a kind of neutral goodwill, in which one simply accepts things as they are. That is why Hermes says:

We can neither escape nor hate human goodness and human beauty, for the hardest thing of all is that we need them and cannot live without them.

For as long as you are obliged to live the life of nature, you will need that life and its attributes. That is why the advice is given neither to harbour hate on account of life in nature, nor to try to escape it.

But what then? Well, if you neither love nor hate human beauty and goodness, and neither do you try to escape them, your position with respect to dialectical nature will be that of detachment. There will then be nothing that binds you to it, and nothing that can hold you back. You will do your daily duty without grumbling, without sighing, without feelings of vengeance and without rebellious actions.

You are passing through the dismal life of the nature of death as the result of a law which compels you to do so. You cannot deny your birth in the nature of death. So do your duty, because that is what you have to do at this moment, and do it with your head held high – without hate, without running away, without attachment. And if, on life’s paths, you meet a fellow seeker of truth, content yourself with an understanding wink.

Where, then, is the seeker of truth heading? He is on his way back to the foundation of things, to the ground of all genesis.

The truth-seeker is returning to the Only Good. Only in God is The Good to be found. And he who finds God, he who gains participation in The Good, is from then on no longer of this world. When you have found God, you will exist with the other brothers and sisters in the new life-field, in the soul-world.

But remember that, although man can participate in The Good, he cannot be The Good, as Hermes says. The Good will always remain distinct from man. In that sense, no-one is good, not even one.

That is why we need to examine what The Good is and to what extent a human being can participate in it. In addition, we will need to understand clearly what kind of living being nature-born man is in actual fact. Between the nature-born human being and The Good lies a path, the path to participation in The Good. Anyone who wishes to walk that path will have to begin by becoming non-attached in the sense we have described. Only when you are no longer attached to the nature in which you were born and bred, neither by love nor by hate, will you be able to travel with the soul from Bethlehem to Golgotha. Then you will walk the path to divine unity, to the Only Good.

So let us place ourselves now, as yearning travellers, before the mystery of The Good. Let us try to unveil this mystery.

III
The Path of Self-Surrender

The Good is exclusively in God, or rather: God is The Good, in all eternity. That is why The Good is necessarily the cause and essence of all motion and of all genesis: nothing exists that is without The Good. The Good, in perfect equilibrium, ie surrounded by a static force of manifestation: it is the entire plenitude, the primordial fount, the origin of all things. When 1 call that which sustains everything ‘good’, I mean The Good, which is absolute and eternal.

This attribute belongs only to God, for there is nothing He lacks, so that no desire for possession can make him evil. There is nothing He might lose and at the toss of which He might be grieved, because sorrow and grief are part of evil. There is nothing stronger than He that might be able to wage war against Him, nor is it in keeping with his nature that indignity might be brought upon him. Nothing excels him in beauty and thus arouses him to the love of the senses. Nothing can deny him obedience and thus move Him to anger. There is nothing wiser than He which could thus arouse his covetousness.

Let us take a closer look at these words from the tenth book of Hermes. They show that in hermetic philosophy, the concept of God proceeds from the certainty that there is one autonomous, immutable Godhead. They also make us realise how much the hermetic teachings have filtered into the doctrines of virtually all major religious groups, despite all the distortions people have made of them.

Imagine for a moment the seven cosmic domains, which are not situated one underneath the other or one beside the other, but concentrically, one within the other. This whole system of creation, this creative plenitude of the seven cosmic domains, with its motion and its activity, is not the Godhead, but finds its foundation and essence in the Godhead. God, the unknowable, The Good, is surrounded by a static power of manifestation, which is the primordial fount, the origin of all things.

The Good, which is absolute and etemal and sustains everything, is an attribute of God alone. There is nothing He lacks. He is everything in himself. From this one, unknowable being emanates a mighty, all-fulfilling radiation. Through this mighty radiation of the one Godhead, which fills the entire All and so is omnipresent, everything has been created and is kept in existence. So on the one hand there is God, the Only Good, and on the other hand creation and creatures in a boundless complexity.

If you can hold onto this as an idea, as a starting point for an attitude to life, if you can reach an understanding of all this, you will at some point be moved to ask why Hermes told all this to Aesclepius. Was it intended to be a lesson in dogma? No, Aesclepius had to become a healer, a priestly human being, so he first had to heal himself, obviously. Aesclepius had to ascend to his highest goal as a creature, a goal which lay exclusively in the Only Good.

But at that moment, Aesclepius still finds himself faced with the boundless complexity of creation and its creatures. After all, there are millions who, strictly speaking, are our fellow creatures. And among all these companions of race and fate there are many who take a certain standpoint with respect to others. Think of the many authorities to be found in the world, who say to you: ’This is what we say; listen to us. We know all about it; we can do it. Take such and such a course; this is what you must do. ‘Indeed, there have often been times in which those in authority have exercised compulsion, posing a threat to life and liberty. The brothers and sisters of the Tri-Unity of the Light, of Grail, Cathar and Cross with Roses, could tell a tale about that!

Today, too, there are again developments which practise coercion of the conscience, in small things as well as in major issues. In many fields of life, with all kinds of motives, coercion of the conscience is flourishing anew. Tyranny is exercised by families, for instance, and in many countries by groups. We are also thinking, here, of the inhabitants of the reflection sphere and the life-waves which populate the etheric domain, of those who dweil on other planets and of the aeons and the archons of the aeons. Among them are those who have become extremely powerful as creatures and who glorify themselves with the names of gods, or are awarded such names by others. There are also the hordes of perpetrators of the Great Game². In short, there are myriads of creatures with myriads of possibilities for betrayal, deception and coercion. And all of them are telling you: ‘We possess The Good!’

And now consider Aesclepius, the seeker, in the ocean of life, as a creature among fellow creatures. It is as if he has been sub-merged, and is being tossed to and fro by the waves.

Most of our readers, too, have been genuine seekers since their youth. You have been searching everywhere, haven’t you? And think of all the vast quantities of literature you have devoured! And isn’t it true to say that it was as if by coincidence, through a combination of circumstances beyond your control, that you came into contact with the Spiritual School of the Golden Rosycross?

What should Aesclepius do amid the fire of his seeking? Where should he go? What is being done to him? Where are the tides of life driving him? Thousands of voices ring in his ears: ‘The Good is here!’ What will become of him? For in the totality of creation evil takes many forms. That is why the observation is made in the tenth book of Hermes that what is considered good here, in the world of dialectics, is at best the smallest part of evil.

Who could distinguish the truth among all those wraithlike forms, among all those shadowy notions which present themselves to us? Who is able to see through all that pretence, all that delusion, all that nefariousness? How could one possibly make sense of all that immeasurable chaos? Who could remain standing in the midst of these wildly proliferating dangers? Surely it just not possible?

Yes, it is possible! The contents of the tenth book of Hermes are intended to help you in this, since they are directed to the person who wishes to become an Aesclepius. The fact that the Only Good is autonomous, the fact that the Only Good and its mighty radiation are completely separate from all created things, the fact that the Only Good does not share the delusive nature of creation in any way whatever, the fact that the Only Good is unique in its absolute, eternal purity and that nevertheless the Godhead irradiates the whole of creation, the whole of chaos with its mighty light and no place can be found where it is not present – that, and that alone enables the seeker, Aesclepius, to remain himself and find his way through the labyrinth.

We have already given you the necessary directions. If you wish to become a priestess or a priest of the Gnosis, if you want to be an Aesclepius, a healer of mankind, do not be attached to anything, neither by love nor especially by hate. Be purely objective, well-disposed to the last, but not attached. Do not listen to any voice, any impulse, any suggestion. Our words, too, you should not accept a priori as true. Be of goodwill, and remain unbiased until from within you discover something of the truth.

We repeat: do not listen to any voice, do not pursue the fleeting urges of your sensory organism. Stand without conceit as an autonomous creature amid the All-Manifestation. But at the same time be extremely watchful, for as soon as you begin to enter into detachment, the entire host of aeons and archons will fall upon you. Many gods of creation, many entities who have achieved great power, will take an interest in you.

Only in the way described was it possible for the School of the modern Rosycross to be born and to become what it now is: by standing in non-attachment. Those who began the work of the young gnostic Spiritual School have always maintained that there is nothing good in this world. They have held this point of view right from the beginning, even though they have always been absolutely kind and correct with respect to all things. No-one is good, not even one. Therefore, we stand in non-attachment. The Godhead, the mighty, all-fulfilling Godhead can only touch us with its radiation in this state of objectivity and non-attachment. Only in this way can its radiative plenitude transmit to us in purity the message of the All.

Since the very moment when we began the School, it is true to say that the entire host of aeons and archons has been attacking us, mentally, etherically, verbally and in writing. What allegations have not been made against the School and its workers! Of what have we not been accused in the course of the years! Yet, thanks be to God, we have been able to remain in a state of non-attachment in the face of all this, right until now.

With this example before you, do not be anxious. And let yourself be pervaded with the knowledge that, however you are at this moment, you are potentially a Pistis Sophia.³ For, and that is the mystery, the all-penetrating, omnipresent rays of the Only Good do exist. And you can enter into a link with these rays. Nothing stands between you and these rays of the Only Good! No creation, no creature, no theologian and no spiritual leader of a Spiritual School. As an autonomous creature you stand before ‘It’ and ‘It’ alone.

It is possible to live and to exist out of the radiations of the Only Good. In the power of the Only Good you can occupy a position of strength with respect to all phenomena in the world of creatures, and follow your road to the goal in total freedom.

Now you might make the following observation: ‘You have said yourself that one should not bind oneself to anything. So how can one connect oneself with the rays of the Seven-Spirit? Wouldn’t this give rise to the possibility of error?’

As long as you still exist in the nature-born state, you should not connect yourself with anything. If you do, you will always be victimised. For instance, if you take the point of view that ‘I possess it, I am it, I can do it,’ you will be misled, day in and day out, by Authades, ‘the power with the lion’s head’, just as described in the gnostic gospel of the Pistis Sophia, the power and the figure that imitate the being of Christ. When a theologian preaches about Jesus the Lord and about Christ, he is nothing else than a servant of the power with the lion’s head. But when you enter into not-being and open yourself, taking care to remain detached, you will be touched by the universal radiation of the Only Good and the time will come when you know that you are linked with it.

So you must not link yourself with anything as long as you remain in the nature-born state. Otherwise you will be victimised. Then you will founder in the academic sea, as Johan Valentin Andreae⁴ called it. Then you will never reach the island of Caphar Salama, the land of peace.

That is why the process of gnostic pupilship includes a phase of preparation for union with the Only Good, a phase of devoting oneself, in autonomy, to the rose of the heart. If you dedicate yourself to the rose of the heart, accepting all the consequences and laws involved with it, you will be devoting yourself to the autonomous self par excellence. This means firstly that you will make yourself, with the seat of the I, with the head sanctuary in its nature-born state, subordinate to the heart sanctuary, in order to bring the soul, your immortal soul, to life.

In the modern Spiritual School we call this devotion of the head to the heart self-surrender. And when, as a result, the soul comes to life, the heart begins to dedicate itself to the head. For when the heart is able to open itself to the light of the Gnosis and is filled with it, the breakthrough, via the heart, to the head sanctuary will be celebrated, and evacuate everything that does not belong there. And then, while the autonomous self controls the entire intelligence and sensory perception, the radiative plenitude of the spirit will manifest itself in the head sanctuary. So the aim of self-surrender is to open the head sanctuary for Pymander, for the radiative fullness of the Only Good. And you can only put self-surrender into practice through non-attachment.

In this way, via the road from Bethlehem to Golgotha, the spirit takes up its position on the throne of the autonomous self. Then you will have reached your goal. Then you will have traversed the sea of folly. Then you will have reached the other shore.

Now, though, you may well have another question, of a practical nature: ‘When I deliberately avoid either hating or loving and enter into that so important state of negation, will I not be running the risk of ignoring the true children of God? Surely there are many who have walked the path to the Only Good, or who are engaged in doing so? Surely we shouldn’t have the idea that we need have nothing to do with anything or anyone else, and that we ourselves are the best?’

Thanks be to God, this world is undoubtedly inhabited by many of His children. But it is out of the question that you could fail to recognise them. If you are reborn as to the soul, if this process is already active within you, in your heart and in your head, you cannot possibly be mistaken about such things. From the moment when you are soul-bom, you enter into unity with every other reborn soul. Wherever in the world they may be, and whatever the circumstances, you will recognise these brothers and sisters. A soul-community does not need to be formed; it is! You only need to enter it by bringing the rose to bloom.

We sometimes hear someone in the School say: ‘It is so difficult for me to live in group unity; to enter into group unity as it is meant by the School.’ Such observations are in fact rather foolish. To say such a thing proves that one is not yet soul-born. If you are soul-borg, hbhbif one tiny spark of the new soul-state is present in you, you will no longer find unity a problem. You will even find that you are unable to resist entering into the group. Each soul is one with every other soul, existentially and absolutely. That is the splendour of the great soul-community.

So when, in the young Gnosis, it had become possible to concentrate sufficient new soul-power, a link with the great soul-community of the universal Gnostic Chain immediately came into being. We did not seek this link; we did not ask for it. No letters were exchanged on the subject: we simply met each other! And many brothers and sisters were witness to this. A soul-community does not need to be formed; it is! So….follow the path!

For the rest, bear in mind the familiar warnings in the holy language: ‘Be faithful, but trust no one. Do not believe in every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are from God,’ says John. These two pieces of advice are very hermetic. 1f you follow them, no harm will come to you. If you do not, grief and pain will assail you and go on assailing you, for grief and pain are part of evil.

IV
The One Path to Liberation

If you were to begin applying the autonomous method, which lies concealed in the Gnosis, you would be free from sorrow and grief during your life’s course through the nature of death. The method we have been describing can be called autonomous because it has to be carried out without help and without the supervision of authorities, and only then can it lead to success. It is the method of non-attachment, which is accompanied by gnostic soul-rebirth. You will then be able to follow your path to the end, without sorrow and without grief for, as Hermes says: Sorrow and grief are part of evil. And only by applying the one method of liberation will you be able to participate in the radiations of the Only Good.

We distinguish seven aspects in this radiative plenitude and speak of the holy Seven-Spirit. The Seven-Spirit tells us in a way that can actually be experienced of the glory of the Only Good. Neither sorrow nor grief are to be found in its radiation. Sorrow and grief always result from the activities of creatures who, not knowing the way of liberation, exploit each other from day to day, bound as they are by the laws of the nature of death.

The originators of the hermetic philosophy were able to deduce the characteristics of the Only Good from the nature of the Seven-Spirit. If you were to be struck by the radiations of the Seven-Spirit in a positive sense, you would have the same experience as Hermes Trismegistus. That is why, when speaking of the Only Good, he testifies that:

there is nothing stronger than He that might be able to vage war against Him, nor is it in keeping with His nature that indignity might be brought upon Him. Nothing excels Him in beauty and thus arouses Him to the love of the senses. Nothing can deny Him obedience and thus move Him to anger. There is nothing wiser than He which could thus arouse his covetousness.

As none of these emotions is to be found in the All-Being, there is nothing in Him other than The Good. And fust as none of the other characteristics can occur in such a Being, likewise The Good cannot be found in anyone else.

Consequently, for the seeking person who yearns for a solution, there is only one way out: to form a link with the Only Good. As concerns success for those who seek liberation, all other paths are fundamentally and absolutely closed. Understand well, that everything is freely available to you. Thousands of voices are clamouring: ‘Come with us, follow our path!’ But even should you still have the time to follow all these paths, you would eventually discover that there is but one way out, and that is to form a link with the Only Good. That is why the point of view from which we proceed as a Spiritual School has always remained in essence very simple over the years:

non-attachment,

self surrender to the rose of the heart,

rebirth of the soul and rebirth by the soul.

The Living Body of the young Gnosis is like a well-constructed ark. In the ark of which the Old Testament tells, and about which we are informed by the Egyptian mysteries, all genuine values and forces of spirit, soul and matter were to be found, secure and well-preserved. As you have been admitted as a pupil into the Living Body of the young Gnosis and know the aim towards which our ark must sail in these times, it will be clear why the modem Gnosis has to dissociate itself from everything that exists in the field of ordinary creation. If it were to take an opposite stance, this would contradict the principle of non-attachment.

There is but one path to liberation: the link with the Only Good. All other paths, however beautiful they may appear to be, are negative in their results.

People have often resented the fact of the School’s dissociation from sectarianism and scorn has been aroused. However, the School’s separatism is only maintained with respect to those people and groups who seek their salvation in the dialectical field of creation and who use the name of the Only Good solely as a flag to cover the cargo.

With respect to the absolute, separatism of course cannot be applied. That would be impossible, because anyone who walks the path to the Only Good enters into soul-birth, and the result of that is always unity with every other soul. So should there be groups of striving people who are walking the same path of liberation, they will find each other at the allotted time, without any possibility of error. Then the weak will always gladly join with the strong, in the certain knowledge that they will not be exploited.

The facts have proved over the years that the modem Spiritual School has always followed this hermetic path. And what began so modestly is now growing rapidly. We do not mean to boast by saying this. We make the observation solely because the School’s course of development proves the truth of the hermetic path. He who seeks the Only Good in a state of non-attachment will always overcome. We very much hope that you will realise clearly that the power to do so is present in the Only Good. So if, as an apparently isolated wanderer in these earthly fields, you are able to form a link with the Only Good, you will be stronger than one who conquers a city. He who seeks the Only Good in non-attachment will always overcome.

And so we state again, following the text of the tenth book: just as there is no evil in the divine being, so The Good cannot be found in any other being.