Tekst achterflap

In this second volume, Jan van Rijckenborgh further connects the reader to the teachings of Hermes Trismegistos, so that through this, we may inwardly hear the call of the Egyptian Arch Gnosis, the voice of the universal House of the Father. In continuing his expose of the 'Corpus Hermeticum' and taking a more detailed and comprehensive look at books 3-9, the author focuses especially on the phases, or steps of the path to liberation.

In this dialogue between Hermes, also known as 'Thrice Greatest Hermes', and Asclepius, the neophyte on the path, Hermes answers the questions posed by Asclepius by confronting him with the universal realities of the two nature orders - the mortal and the immortal. By approaching the idea of the 'All Good', Hermes (the Spirit Soul) lays before Asclepius (the seeker), firstly, the duality of his state of being on the one hand, his transient, mortal personality - and then his immortality the divine principle that lives within his heart, and which expresses the Only Good.

Jan van Rijckenborgh approaches these dialogues by bringing to the reader the esoteric and spiritual significance of insight (the head sanctuary), which is deepened and matured in conjunction with the activity of the divine spark within the heart sanctuary. From this, he places us before the spiritual imperative of 'self-sacrifice', as the key to sanctification, the path of transmutation, which must of necessity demonstrate within the life sanctuary, within our expression of life, the reality of our inner soul growth.

Beschrijving

The second volume of The Egyptian Arch-Gnosis – on the basis of books 3 to 9 of the Corpus Hermeticum of Hermes Trismegistus – presents the conditions for, as well as the phases of the path of liberation. The first condition is the profoundly experienced insight that mankind, in its current existence, is separated from God and does not know him. By sacrificing his ‘I’, man can undo this separation, can be nourished by the forces of the spirit, and overcome death.

Inhoudsopgave

Preface

I Third book: Ignorance of God is the greatest evil in man

II Fourth book: Hermes' oration to the glory of God

III Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour

The time of declaration

The ancient warning The state of our blood

The vocation of the emergency-order personality

The sevenfold heart

The sevenfold head

Go out to meet the Bridegroom

IV The fetters of the blood

Romans 7

The narcosis of ignorance

The kind of person to whom Hermes' words are addressed

The blood-culture of the personality Sinful pleasures

V Karma-Nemesis and the way to redemption

The essential task of pupilship: to die daily

The essence of sin The endura

The Garden of the Gods

Karma-Nemesis

The fall of man

The path of liberation

VI The realisation of God's plan

The sorrows of mankind

What the Gnosis demands To suffer in the ego

The birth in Bethlehem and the victory on Golgotha

The wedding with the Lamb

VII The heart-cry of the Universal Gnosis

Romans 8

The necessity of reversalThe path of the Universal Gnosis

Our task and vocation for the world and mankind

The appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven

The new gnostic realm

VIII Fifth book: From a sermon of Hermes to Tat

IX The primordial law of the gnostic mysteries

How will this law be fulfilled in the present?

True piety

The necessity of building

Unswerving courage and perseverance No reservations, no pretexts

Enter the circle of eternity

X The imitation of Christ

True self-freemasonry

In the world, but no longer of the world

Liberation is possible in the present

Liberation for the sake of service

The negative state of natural religions

Ignited by the Spirit of God

XI The path from Bethlehem to Golgotha

The process of the resurrection of the soul

The events of Jesus' imprisonment and humiliation, his path

of the cross, death and victory

The endura: non-conflict

Let Jesus Christ carry out his work in you

XII The twofold nature of man

The inescapable choice between life and death

Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect

Man's twofold soul

The realisation of God in man

The resurrection of the Spirit-Soul

Pain and grief

The triunity of the All-manifestation

XIII Sixth book: General dialogue between Hermes and Aesclepius

XIV The nature and activity of the All

Hermetic argumentation

The two natures of the opposites

The created and the uncreated

The divine and God

The Son, who is in the heart of the Father, has revealed Him

The logic and necessity of restoring the link with the one source of life

Our unconscious, earthly existence is the most illogical thing in the

All-manifestation

XV The unassailability of God's plan

To move in harmony or in counter-movement

Mary, the virginal primordial substance

How the plan of God comes into manifestation

A terrific conclusion

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom

The result of counter-movement always destroys itself

Only what is from the Spirit of the Lord is eternal

Hora est!

The cause of death is logical and scientific

The One Life develops out of true, harmonious movement

XVI Voluntary self-surrender: the final death of the I

The directedness of the head and heart

Self-surrender and co-operative movement

The dangers of counter-movement in the School

The Seven Seals are broken

The necessity of self-examination

XVII The mystery of the Holy Grail

The Seven Seals are closed

Jesus and the Comforter

The seven rays of the Seven-Spirit

The Brotherhood of the Holy Grail

Absolute life

The necessity of true longing

The image-bearer's aim in life

Enter into the peace of your Lord

XVIII New, liberating possibilities

The broken state of the human brotherhood of the beginning

The tragedy of estrangement

The hell of counter-movement

The Gnosis, the healer, the Lord of Love

The generation of the SonXIX Seventh book: Hermes tells Tat of the Mixing Vessel and

the Oneness

XX The prize for the race

In the beginning was the Word

The activity of human thought

The Logos, the Word

The mentality and the Spirit

An uncomprehending astonishment

The confusion of languages

The link with the Spirit, the prize for the race

The rose-heart, the latent faculty which leads to a higher awakening

Why do I live?

The birth of the Son

XXI The holy Mixing Vessel

1 John 5

The Spirit, the Water and the Blood

The Holy Grail, the missing link

The Triunity of the Light: Grail, Cathar and Cross with Roses

The twofold baptism

Imitation in natural religion

Symbolism and magic

The magic of churches and sects

The work of the aeons

The recipe for true pupilship

XXII Receiving the Holy Grail

The Sign of the Son of Man

What is Pymander?

The plan of the Logos

The victory over death

The awakening of the image of the true man

The absolute knowledge of the Pymandric man

Osiris-Isis, Spirit-Soul

Transmutation and transfiguration

The divine cup

The consequences of the Holy Grail

Liberation and service, glorification and the experience of grief

XXIII The path and the sacrifice

The most difficult task on the path

The necessity of I-mortificationGod or mammon

Four obstacles

XXIV The return to oneness

An absolutely new beginning

The task of the emergency-order figure in the great plan of God

XXV Oneness (I)

How do we conquer death?

Mystification concerning death

The fourth mystery

XXVI Oneness (II)

The divine image will guide you

The unchangeable and the changeable

Oneness and the number

Unification and concrete action

The Pymander of the Living Body

Victory over death

XXVII Sell all you possess and follow me

A Brotherhood of the Holy Grail

Living cells of the Living Body

Lord, here I am

Group unity and self-surrender

The sevenfold river

The accomplishing action

XXVIII The secret of the gnostic mysteries

Attitude to life as a means of accelerating the processes of salvation

All or nothing

The weapon of slander, libel and criticism

What is the Living Body?

What is behind the Living Body?

A joyful testimony of the gnostic reality

The home Sancti Spiritus

Bought from the earth

XXIX The pentecostal feast of divine liberation

The foci of the young Gnosis

The spreading of the light-field

Reaping the harvest

The responsibility of every pupil

XXX Eighth book: Hermes to his son Tat: The invisible God is the most manifest

XXXI The celestial ship and its passengers

An incomparable gift

Intellectual training

The process of gnostic consciousness

The administration of reconciliation

Absolute self-surrender

The celestial ship

XXXII Eternity in time

There are no fundamental impediments between man and God

The delusion of dialectics

True prayer

The responsibility of the gnostic worker

XXXIII Hermes' song of praise

XXXIV The wisdom of the world and the wisdom

The seven rays of the Seven-Spirit

The brain organism of a young child

The unfree thinking of dialectical man

Understanding the un-manifested

The new thinking

The link with the manifested and the unmanifested Godhead

The delusion with regard to memory

The living testimony of the gnostic, priestly human being

XXXV The key to purification

The necessity of soul-consciousness

The childship of God and the attainment of maturity

The struggle between the soul and the body

The inescapable choice

The dominant role of the cerebellum

The liberating method of living

The harmonising effect of gnostic pupilship

XXXVI Ninth book: That none of what truly exists can be lost, but that man mistakes transformation for

annihilation and death

XXXVII The rebirth of the soul

The unreality of death

How the problem of the seeker for truth should be approached

Theology and historical materialism

An incident in the process of dissolution

The meaning of transfiguration

The error of suicide

The necessity of natural birth to make liberation possible

What is soul-birth

Earthly man is only a body

The signature of the true Rosicrucian

XXXVIII Rebirth by the soul

Save your soul

The seat of life

The heart is the most important part of the human body

The seven chambers of the heart

The task of the sternum

Present-day natural man

The accusation of the heart

The voice of the soul

XXXIX The holy Mother Earth

The absolute man

The soul's way of the cross: from Bethlehem to Golgotha

The first God and the second god

Our divine Mother Earth

Our vocation and that of the Earth-Spirit

Christ, the planetary Spirit of the Earth

Several life-waves

XL Nothing can separate us from the love which is in Jesus Christ our Lord

The fulfilment of the divine science

The atomic process of metabolism

Do not resist evil

We hold the process of immortality in our own hands

The formation of a world

The atom and the seven forces of absolute life

The coming destruction of our life-field

The work of salvation in a bona fide Spiritual School

XLI The restoration of perfect equilibrium

Two important questions

Lucifer and the Elohim

The regulation of the Universe is unassailable

The twin forces of nature: fire and cold

The necessity of learning to control the fire in our lives

The maintenance of the fundamental laws of the divine order

Glossary

Details