Six Theosophic Points, and Other Writings
16. So it is also with human life. As long as it imaginates after God's Spirit, it receives God's power and light, and knows God. But when it imaginates after earthliness or after the dark world's property, it receives the essence of earthliness and of the dark world, and becomes filled with the same. Then is life's mirror shut up in darkness, and loses the mirror of God, and must be born anew.
17. As we know that Adam thus made the pure mirror earthly, and lost God's power and light, which Christ, God's Son, restored again, and broke open the earthly darkness, and forcibly introduced the mirror of God.
18. Thus we recognize how the holy tree grows through all things, and out of all beings; but is apprehended by no being, save only in the mirror of purity, as in the pure life of man; which life desires that tree, and it can be apprehended in no dark life. This then is the fourth point.
THE FIFTH POINT
How A LIFE MAY PERISH IN THE TREE OF LIFE.
How IT PASSES OUT OF THE SOURCE OF LOVE
AND JOY INTO A SOURCE OF MISERY, WHICH IS
CONTRARY TO ALL OTHER LIVES.
CHAPTER VII
1. Every life is a clear gleam and mirror, and appears like a flash of a terrible aspect. But if this flash catch the light, it is transformed into gentleness and drops the terror, for then the terror unites itself to the light. And thus the light shines from the terrible flash; for the flash is the light's essence, it is its fire.
2. The flash contains the centrum naturae, being the fourth form of Nature where life rises, which in the steady fire, as in the principle, attains to perfection, but in the light is brought into another quality.
3. Now, the origin of the imagination [magical attraction] is in the first form of Nature, viz. in the desiring sourness, which carries its form through the dark world unto fire; for the first desire goes through all forms, makes also all the forms, and is carried as far as to fire. There is the dividing bound-mark of spirit, there it is born. It is now free. It may by its imagination go back againp. 76p. 77 into its mother the dark world, or, going forward, sink down through the anguish of fire into death, and bud forth in the light. That depends on its choice. Where it yields up itself, there it must be; for its fire must have substance, that it may have something to feed upon.
4. Will the spirit eat of its first mother the sourness, that is, will it give to its fire for food the fierce essentiality in the centre, or the light's essentiality in the hght -world, that is all in its own power; whatever its fire receives, in the property thereof does it burn.
5. In the dark property it burns in the dark, harsh, stern source, and sees in itself as a flash; it has only the mirror of darkness, and sees in the darkness. In the light's property it catches the gentleness of the light, in which the light-fire burns, and sees in the light-world. All is nigh unto spirit, and yet it can see in no other world or property save in that wherein its fire burns; of that world is the spirit only susceptible, it sees nothing in the other world; it has no eyes for that. It remains to it an eternal hiddenness, unless it has been in another world and gone out from thence, and given itself to another fire, f.s the devils did, who have indeed a knowledge of the light-world, but no feeling or seeing thereof ; the light-world is nigh to them, but they know it not.
6. And now we are to recognize life's perdition, which comes about in the first Principle. There is the hinge, there the will may plunge whither it will, If it set its desire upon plurality and will
p. 78
16. So it is also with human life. As long as it imaginates after God's Spirit, it receives God's power and light, and knows God. But when it imaginates after earthliness or after the dark world's property, it receives the essence of earthliness and of the dark world, and becomes filled with the same. Then is life's mirror shut up in darkness, and loses the mirror of God, and must be born anew.
17. As we know that Adam thus made the pure mirror earthly, and lost God's power and light, which Christ, God's Son, restored again, and broke open the earthly darkness, and forcibly introduced the mirror of God.
18. Thus we recognize how the holy tree grows through all things, and out of all beings; but is apprehended by no being, save only in the mirror of purity, as in the pure life of man; which life desires that tree, and it can be apprehended in no dark life. This then is the fourth point.
THE FIFTH POINT
How A LIFE MAY PERISH IN THE TREE OF LIFE.
How IT PASSES OUT OF THE SOURCE OF LOVE
AND JOY INTO A SOURCE OF MISERY, WHICH IS
CONTRARY TO ALL OTHER LIVES.
CHAPTER VII
1. Every life is a clear gleam and mirror, and appears like a flash of a terrible aspect. But if this flash catch the light, it is transformed into gentleness and drops the terror, for then the terror unites itself to the light. And thus the light shines from the terrible flash; for the flash is the light's essence, it is its fire.
2. The flash contains the centrum naturae, being the fourth form of Nature where life rises, which in the steady fire, as in the principle, attains to perfection, but in the light is brought into another quality.
3. Now, the origin of the imagination [magical attraction] is in the first form of Nature, viz. in the desiring sourness, which carries its form through the dark world unto fire; for the first desire goes through all forms, makes also all the forms, and is carried as far as to fire. There is the dividing bound-mark of spirit, there it is born. It is now free. It may by its imagination go back againp. 76p. 77 into its mother the dark world, or, going forward, sink down through the anguish of fire into death, and bud forth in the light. That depends on its choice. Where it yields up itself, there it must be; for its fire must have substance, that it may have something to feed upon.
4. Will the spirit eat of its first mother the sourness, that is, will it give to its fire for food the fierce essentiality in the centre, or the light's essentiality in the hght -world, that is all in its own power; whatever its fire receives, in the property thereof does it burn.
5. In the dark property it burns in the dark, harsh, stern source, and sees in itself as a flash; it has only the mirror of darkness, and sees in the darkness. In the light's property it catches the gentleness of the light, in which the light-fire burns, and sees in the light-world. All is nigh unto spirit, and yet it can see in no other world or property save in that wherein its fire burns; of that world is the spirit only susceptible, it sees nothing in the other world; it has no eyes for that. It remains to it an eternal hiddenness, unless it has been in another world and gone out from thence, and given itself to another fire, f.s the devils did, who have indeed a knowledge of the light-world, but no feeling or seeing thereof ; the light-world is nigh to them, but they know it not.
6. And now we are to recognize life's perdition, which comes about in the first Principle. There is the hinge, there the will may plunge whither it will, If it set its desire upon plurality and will
p. 78
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