Spiritual attainment

In the Medicina Catholica (1629—31) Fludd explained that the way to conserve or restore health was through a righteous, prayerful life. The highest level of spiritual health was attainable through penitence and humility, virtues that were sacramental and granted supercelestial health. The apostles had cured the sick and had even raised the dead in the Name of Christ because the Name contained in itself all other kabbalistic names of God Ehieh, lah, Elohim, El, Sadai, Adonai. Jesus is a personal name, but Christ is invoked... 

One of the purposes for attaining the Stone of the Wise enshrined in the Mercury center (astrologically, Mercury rules communication) is to produce a receptor capable of receiving the more rarefied spiritual influences and an organism capable of transmitting them. Selfish salvation there is none. It is for all others, as well as for ourselves, that we undertake the Work. Likewise, in Mahayana Buddhism, all rituals and meditations end with the dedication that Whatever benefits are accrued may help all beings to reach Enlightenment. ... 

This book is a manual to the science of Hermes, the Thrice-Great, and a true guide to that Sacred and Royal Art. It presents the specific teachings and guided practices that will enable the sincere aspirant to attain to the secret of all spiritual works that can culminate in the completion, the Great Work. For this work is theurgy— Divine work —the true Alchemy that is the practical application of the holy Qabalah. It leads to the attainment of the Philosopher s Stone, whereby the personal consciousness and the Primordial consciousness unite as one. That Stone—the Jewel of Eternity—overcomes all limitation, heals all disease, and brings an end to the need for death itself. 

My purpose in comparing Alchemy and Tibetan Buddhist Yoga is twofold. First, the old European alchemists refered to their melancholia, meaning the depression that besets till spiritual practitioners from time to time. In Alchemy this depression is pronounced and common, because its practitioners, more often than not, work in isolation and in a nonsupportive culture. Tibetan Buddhism on the other hand, has a continuous lineage of practitioners who have attained signs of accomplishment, thereby giving assurance to others that the Goal is attainable. Tibet also has a culture where the fruits of the spirit are valued above all else. 

And even before their ultimate ascension, his true disciples had the capacity to rid themselves of the taint of original sin and reach toward spiritual perfection and eternal life. But to attain such moral purity, they must be prepared to overcome terrible ordeals that would be strewn in their path. Only seventy-two Masons could achieve the first grade, forty-eight the second, and so on up to the final grade, where a dozen immortals would eventually reign forever as spiritual rulers of the world. Masons must realize, however, that the devils necromancers were constantly at work to divert them from this true path with temptations—earthly greed and cupidity. As a rule of thumb, they should trust spirits whose names ended in er, and shun those whose names ended in el. ... 

As a painter, speaking to other painters (like Duchamp), Kandinsky was naturally quite explicit in suggesting the preferred compositional means of pictorially attaining the non-material strivings of the soul. Often Kandinsky s artistic-spiritual prescriptions are specific ... 

Modern man seeks pleasure without happiness, happiness without knowledge, knowledge without wisdom. In order to attain mastery, said the sages of the ancient age, man needs a total remolding of his physical, moral, and spiritual being. Only then can he say that he has conquered fate and that here on earth has acquired his divine freedom. 

Once Nature has been transcended, then, says Steiner (just as did Kandinsky ), for the first time, large numbers of people will feel spiritual life to be a vital necessity, when [through Art] spiritual life and practical life are finally brought into direct connection with each other. Because [only] Spiritual-Occult Science [die geheime Wissensdwft, or Secret Science ] is able to throw light on the nature of matter, so will Art, which is bom of Spiritual-Occult Science, attain to the power of giving direct form to every chair, every table, to every man-created object. 

These views are based on anthroposophy, a multifarious worldview, inspired by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) with the core opinion that any thing, any occurrence in the world has its cause in a spiritual world that is actually present and can fundamentally be an object of human awareness. Anthroposophy, insofar as it concerns the perception of nature, understands itself as giving an additional dimension, the spiritual one, which in no case would replace or deny any basic natural law. The way to develop the ability to attain knowledge of this spiritual world... 

But we do not live in such a state of consciousness. Few people ever attain it, and even to them it is a transient experience, though of supreme importance. All the spiritual systems 128 that have this realization of a transcendence of duality as an experiential basis teach that in the ordinary d-SoC (and in many d-ASCs) duality is a basic principle governing the manifestation of consciousness. Thus pleasure cannot exist without pain, hope cannot exist without despair, courage cannot exist without fear, up cannot exist without down. The state of mystical unity, of void consciousness, seems to be the experience of pure awareness, transcending all opposites, like the pure energy state, while consciousness, the condition of awareness deeply intermeshed with and modified by the structures of the mind and brain, is a realm of duality, the analog of the matter state. This seems to be a manifestation of the principle of duality in he psychological realm. 

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