The Younger – Will I have to practice meditation, cleaning, prayer and constant remembrance all my life?
– You have just started and you already want to stop? the Elder asks jokingly.
Theo. – I like practicing, and I particularly appreciate the unique benefits I get from it, but I wonder about its purpose, about uniting, merging with the Ultimate and becoming Love.
The Elder – You won’t need your practice anymore when it holds in you, when you are in a permanent praying state, in a permanent meditative state, when no complexity can leave any impression on your subtle bodies.
Theo. – Which amounts to say that I’m going to practice all my life!
The Elder – Practicing is rather like eating three times a day, showering, sleeping, etc. We do it naturally. We act with balance and moderation. That is the saints’ way.
Theo. – I thought it meant being permanently in His Presence.
The Elder is very pleased with his disciple. An essential question has just been approached. So he keeps silent, thus encouraging his young friend to think a little further.
Theo. – I see. Your silence shows I have to look within myself for an answer, haven’t I?
Then Theophile the Younger closes his eyes and connects himself with his Inner Master. He can feel the Elder’s soft transmission subtly accompany him. Suddenly, the intuitive answer springs out in his mind.
He opens his eyes and says:
– I have approached the issue from the wrong angle or, I should say, it was just the wrong question.
The Elder – Your question certainly implied the answer I gave.
Theo. – My inner voice told me that practicing is not the answer to the problem of the incarnated soul, who aspires to be fully united with the Divine.
The Elder – Go ahead, the Elder says.
Theo. – Reaching a climax in my practice will allow me to be forever in His Presence, but this is only a stage. In fact, I must become the Presence. It is no longer a Union; it has become a merging. But when I become the Ultimate, then no “I” will be there anymore to know about it, is that right?
The Elder – Does it really matter? Now go on, keeping in mind the purpose of your spiritual approach.
The young man closes his eyes again and he projects himself into the future. The he says:
– I am like God. My condition is … ‘Nothing’. Such nothingness is Purity, Simplicity. The ego that serves my personality is subdued by Love. The Divine Breath is carrying my entire being. It acts in harmony with the Divine will. Such a splendid condition fills me with joy. How to achieve it as soon as possible?
The Elder – As Babuji used to say, “Become what you should become”.
Theo. – Yes, but when?
The Elder – It is all about how to integrate. The Divine condition has always been there, in the centre of our being, but we have partly forgotten and ignored it, sometimes even rejected it, in order to build our own creation. We have used our freewill to do whatever we want. So we have built our own realm with the suffering that goes with it. The state in which we have put our beautiful planet and its inhabitants is the miserable result of it. We should let the Divine act within ourselves so that it may freely regain its kingdom. The self must be free to withdraw, out of love, and make room for Him, let Him have His rightful place. Unfortunately, some people shun renouncing their selves, considering it would be a form of submission, or even the death of the ego, and they had rather enjoy all the so-called “pleasures of life”.
Theo. – How wrong! It’s exactly the opposite. I have never been more alive, never been happier than I was during that experience! Why not access it right now?
The Elder – Going too fast would be neither natural nor sustainable. Nine months within the mother’s womb are required for the baby to build itself starting from two cells, and over twenty years for the baby to become an adult. Same thing for the soul to be divinized.
Theo. – Do you mean that it is impossible and undesirable to let a young child go straight from kindergarten to University, however gifted he may be?
The Elder – Just as nine months are required for the baby’s gestation, some natural and spiritual laws have to be obeyed if we want to evolve and reach spiritual maturity. For the soul, reincarnating is already a trial. It must die to its world of light and be born into our world. Birth is really an initiation, both for the baby and the mother.
Theo. – So you are still influenced by your exchange with Elea, the young man says jokingly.
– Probably, the old man says, smiling as he remembers the sweet conversation he’d had with the young mother.
Then he resumes,
– While the baby is floating in the amniotic fluid within its mother’s womb, it is in a state of mergence with her, just as the soul was with God before Creation. Similarly, the mother is all and everything for the foetus during its aquatic life: it lives only through her, she is its universe, and she nourishes it at whatever level.
Theo. – Do you mean that such a state of mergence was also part of the program our soul has to achieve during this incarnation?
The Elder – Yes. There are a fair number of similarities with the mother. Before you spiritually awaken, there is an aspiration of the soul and it has to be prepared. The heart is considered as a “yoni”, a uterus. In due course, the Divine impregnates it and the spiritual child begins to grow within us, until it becomes an adult and resembles God.
Theo. – I can see the similarity, and I know that bringing up a child is no easy task. It is a real challenge!
The Elder – It requires a lot of love and patience. Spiritual growth is never systematic. It must be a voluntary act. Quite often, the soul will linger or stop progressing. That is the reason why its evolution may take many thousand lives.
Theo. – That is far too much, Theophile the Younger sighs.
The Elder – You need not worry, because every one can achieve it during this very life. Babuji used to talk about “verticality”, which is possible only with the help of a spiritual guide.
Theo. – If I got it right, the spiritual path represented by the esoteric symbol is a sort of map indicating the various steps of our spiritual growth, of our maturity. We begin as young children, then as young adults, and when our soul has gone through the stage of liberation, then it can be considered as being perfectly mature. After it, it will realise the stage of Uniting with God. It is what you had me experiment during my initiation, but I do not know what happens afterwards.
Theophile the Elder
An excerpt from Dialogs with Theophile the Elder
Theophile the Younger’s initiation