The Cry, the Bridge, the Spirit

Man is dual. All gnostic and hermetic writings, which form one testimony to the great possibilities in the human being, refer to this. All gnosis teaches the human being that he is essentially a god. The reality of his life and modern science, however, make it hard for him to grasp this idea.

The modern human being only believes what he can see, measure or explain to others, supported by proof. The spiritual sciences have lost the central place that they still had at the beginning of the modern era. Despite this development, human beings are again and again fascinated to discuss what is superhuman, God, the spirit. From the frontiers of science, where scientists are confronted with the paradoxes of their systems of reasoning, new impulses penetrate scientific thinking.

   Is it a divine-spiritual aspect that drives human beings? Or is it the curiosity of the young, playful mind that sounds out the limits of its domain? The mere fact that these questions continuously occupy human beings shows that they cannot easily be answered. Apparently, the mind has its limits; there are apparently realms in which the mind is not nor can be an authority.

   Worldwide, many writings point out that the human being carries a spiritual sun in the centre of his system. Once this principle was active and even guided the human being. Nowadays, he is looking for it, or he ignores that he ever possessed it.

   The Russian philosopher Nicolai Berdyayev wrote: ‘The contrast between spirit and nature must be considered a fundamental one. […] The spirit is not a reality at all and is not ‘‘being’’ in the way in which being and reality are considered in nature.’¹

   He explains that everything belonging to the human being of this nature -- and this refers to the soul as well as to the physical body -- is of this world and is only different from the animal as to content and quality. The spiritual human being, however, the original, true essence of the human being, belongs to a totally different reality. At this point, the question immediately crops up whether the spirit is at all active in this world. Berdyayev says about this: ‘Only in unimaginable depths, the spirit takes up the world and causes another light to radiate over it.’²

   This is why the spirit also touches the ‘small world’, the microcosm, of the human being in unimaginable depths only. If the human being has insight, he sees this touch by the spirit as the cause of his longing. However, it is a false guide when the longing does not focus on the spirit, but on its reflection in matter. The human being is seeking paradise, but if he does not ‘know’, he becomes ever more entangled in the jungle of his cultivated and civilised natural world.

Spirit and symbol

   In his book Freedom and spirit, Nicolai Berdyayev describes the difference between spirit and nature by a quote from V L Solovyov: ‘Everything visible here on earth is only reflection, is only the shadow of what is invisible to the eye.’ ³

   He continues that our natural world does not know any depth, but receives purpose and meaning from another world, the world of the spirit. In accordance with the hermetic statement ‘as above, so below’, this also applies to the nature-born human being. With all his power of perception, he is so bound to the natural world, the ‘reflection’, that the eternal, spiritual element in his innermost depth is nothing more than a suspicion.

   In order for the spiritual aspect to be able to reach him in such a way that he at least understands something, the language of symbols is used. Only through this language, we can recognise that which ‘is invisible to the eye’. Archetypical images in the collective subconscious of humanity stimulate the longing for the spiritual world, the origin of humanity.

   The symbol of the spiritual aspect is like a bridge that is crossed to reach the people in this world. Deep longing leads the human being on this bridge, which is to him the first opportunity to cross the chasm between nature and spirit.

The Babylonian confusion of tongues

   The original meaning of the spiritual symbols perishes in a multifaceted lack of clarity. At the same time, symbols are light and energy. Who does still possess the sensitivity to be able to recognise vibrating energy in symbols? Although the light power of the spirit appeals to the origin, to the slumbering consciousness of the divine human being, we often come up with our own interpretations that appear to be very mental or are far too emotional to be powerful. These individual reactions shatter the light into myriads of particles and split it ever further. With our natural powers, we are only able to recognise fragments.

   These individual reactions and the resulting ambiguity cause a ‘Babylonian confusion of tongues’, in which the meaning of the symbolic language of the spirit drowns. In the Biblical story, the beginning of this decline is experienced, and it is attempted to counteract its effect and consequences by building the famous Tower of Babel.

   There are, therefore, two ways of reacting to the symbols of the spirit. When we try to explain and systematise what is unimaginable, disharmony with the energy that touches us inwardly develops. When we listen to its resonance that, in Berdyayev’s words, resounds in the ‘unimaginable depth’, understanding, a ‘harmonious vibration’, awakens in our inner being.

   Many attempts and disappointments make us conscious of the chasm between spirit and nature. As has been said above, the symbols of the spirit may serve as a bridge that leads us partly across the chasm. Then the bridge ends above the middle of the chasm. We do not yet see the second part. The human being who is standing on this bridge, can reach this point because he carries the divine human being as a feasible possibility within him. The human being learns to see himself as a sleeping God.

Edvard Munch. The Cry (Despair), Oslo, 1893.
In this psychological self-portrait by Munch, 
it is quite remarkably the landscape that is crying; 
the figure on the bridge can no longer cope with this accusation.

In his painting ‘The cry’, Edvard Munch has shown the human distress on this bridge: it is the human being who hears the cry of distress of nature with which he is one. This image evokes a strong aversion in a human being and at the same time, he is almost magically attracted to it. The cry is an autobiographic document; it shows Edvard Munch’s chronic fear of life. It is related to a concrete feeling that Munch described as follows in his diary:

   ‘I walked in the street with two friends, the sun was setting -- I sensed a melancholic mood -- and the sky suddenly coloured crimson. I stopped and, dead tired, leaned against a fence, saw the flaming clouds like blood and swords -- the dark blue fjord and the city -- my friends continued, while I stood there trembling with fear -- and I felt how a long, never-ending cry rent nature.’

   Halfway this bridge we realise that we, beings of this nature, do not know anything and do not have any power in a liberating sense: ‘I stopped and, dead tired, leaned against a fence.’ With growing desperation, we try to awaken the sleeping God within us and to urge him to action, for only he can cross the bridge and the chasm.

Divine mercy

   But the cry is not answered; standing on the bridge above the chasm, the human being discovers that the missing part of the bridge surrounds him and guides him onward as it were. The striving human being above the chasm understands that only divine mercy has the power to awaken the sleeping God in the human being. Now the re-awakened spiritual human being enters the new life. Paul describes this with the words: ‘The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.’ ⁴

Sources^:
1 Nicolai Berdyayev, Freedom and Spirit, New York, 1934.
² ibid.
³ ibid.
⁴ 1 Corinthians 2:14 and 15:44.

 © Lectorium Rosicrucianum 2007.

Article from Pentagram No 2, 2007