mani’s guideline

Countless people are convinced that a higher power exists, an invisible power, a deity, by whom man and world were created. Believing in such a higher power implies that, in view of his original descent and apart from a mortal body, every human being also possesses some kind of immortal aspect.

In a time in which the more traditional religious ideas are losing their attraction and many people are striving for new forms of religiosity, this is a fascinating topic.

The intensity of this interest obviously strongly varies. We can draw this conclusion just like that, or we can focus on it very deliberately, and attempt to practise everything we consider valuable in it in our daily lives. And there is a large group that no longer wants to be bound again and to follow absolute truths or authorities: I myself will decide with what I occupy myself, and how I will fit it into my life.

It is not always clear to what extent we are being obstructed. Gaining insight into other religious beliefs in an uninhibited way is difficult, if we first have to remove the established ideas about God, the biblical figures and the content of the texts from the Bible, regardless whether we have a church background or not. Ecclesiastical religious ideas are rather strongly anchored in western culture.

The serious seeker also experiences the wide range of ‘schools of thought’ within the non-church religious beliefs, the new forms of spirituality, as a problem. The field is complex, just as with the established forms of religion. Moreover, the leading figures of new spiritual schools of thought usually also experience a development themselves, due to their contacts with interested people. They broaden their views, and adapt them.

Therefore, an orientation into the way in which the unity between this higher power or the Light and the immortal aspect of the human being can be restored, is a quest, during which we will have to revise earlier ideas more than once. We will have to undertake this quest wholly independently. Only our own inner being can be the point of departure. Our own inner being is the place, where we, as human beings, can experience the divine aspect. Only this aspect, this element, is able to recognise the truth about God and its relationship with the human being. This is, therefore, the essential aspect of the human being, the nucleus, the soul.

Psychology only gives a few hints about what the soul is exactly. This science only outlines objectively knowable expressions of the human being (thinking, feeling, behaviour). For knowledge of the soul, we need other sources. The Bhagavad Gita, for example, speaks in the ‘Eighth conversation between Krishna and Arjuna’ about ‘the soul’ that is present in a human being apart from his I. And the inner essence of the soul is God.

In the sixteenth book of the Corpus Hermeticum, ‘Hermes to Ammon: About the Soul’, Hermes expresses the same idea. ‘The soul’ is a divine power, dwelling in the body, apart from ‘a human soul’, the personality.

In The Coming New Man, J van Rijckenborgh speaks about ‘the original soul’, created by the divine spirit from primordial matter, and about ‘the mortal soul’, stemming from the perishable world. Both are present in the human being.

From the three mentioned sources, it is clear that there is an all-encompassing ‘creator’, lying outside the human being, but at the same time present in the human being. The statement ‘the kingdom of God is within you’ has, therefore, a radical meaning: two voices are ‘speaking’ in every human being, the divine one and the human, physical one. The obvious question is how we are able to distinguish these two ‘voices’, so that we will find a basis for our striving for the union of the most sublime, God, with the divine-human essence.

Here, theory does not help us. After all, God is the highest reality. And this choice can, therefore, not be a theoretical activity, dissociated from our thinking, feeling and behaviour. Therefore, when we, in our quest for a new basis, become acquainted with any religious idea and try to use this knowledge in our daily lives, we are actually testing ‘what touches us inwardly’ or ‘what appeals to our innermost being’. What matters in our quest is our striving for the unity of what is most sublime, and because of which we expect, fear or know that a change of the human being as to thinking, feeling and acting will be imperative. After all, the human being did not yet achieve this union. Therefore, the test is in doing it.

The description Mani (216-274) gave of the properties of ‘the Light soul’ and of the ‘physical soul’ is of an ultimate purity of argument, and may in this context form a practical guideline. To the founder of a Christian, gnostic religion, these two were fundamentally different. The Light soul originates from the powers of the kingdom of the Light and the soul of the body from the same dark matter as that from which the perishable world also originated. However, both souls have the same properties, but how these properties work out in practice differs fundamentally. The properties concerned are: consideration, thought, intellect, intuition, decision. The results demonstrate the fundamental difference between both souls. In the soul of the body, the following properties result: wrath, lack of faith, desire, hatred, stupidity. In the Light soul, they generate: patience, faith, perfection, love, wisdom!

Therefore, as human beings, who want to restore the unity of God with the inner divine element on the basis of thinking, feeling and acting, we can distinguish from which soul we are living and acting. Mani wrote the following about this in one of his hymns.

What should I do, o Light, so that I may truly live?

Give your hands rest, and clothe yourself with the pure truth.

Give your consciousness love, give your mind faith,
give your thoughts perfection,
give your decision durability,
and your considerations wisdom.

Make room within you for the white-winged dove,
do not place a serpent next to her.

Do not make room for sadness or anger.

Conquer desire,
overcome self-elevation and arrogance,
do not desist in your Love to God.

With perfection, you become perfect.

With patience, you will bear everything.

With the Gnosis, you will understand everything.

Keep to the inner law.

Perfect your deeds.

Remain unbreakably faithful to these things, for ever.

And you will live, my soul.

 © Lectorium Rosicrucianum 2009.

Article from Pentagram No 6, 2009