Hortus Conclusus

The Book on The Living God:

All great things demand courage and belief! –

Before you have hung ‘on the cross’ you cannot ‘rise again’! – –

Before you have faith, the ‘pillar of fire’ can not lead you through the ‘parted’ sea!

You have so much to conquer within yourself; you will have to learn to conquer even more, if you are to make progress on your journey…

The sea will threaten to swallow you up and the desert will refuse you all nourishment, – despite  this, you must never stand still for a second in doubt and hesitation, once you have set off on this path to yourself and the God within  you. –

You will only see how hard this is once you are on this path!

But be not afraid!

You are not alone on this path…

All those who once walked upon this path  before you escort you!

They too once had to pass through all the  dangers!

The path was no easier for any of them than it is for you!

Now they have arrived at the ‘Promised  Land’…

Now they have reached the end of all their striving; from the ‘holy mountains’ they send you help and strength. – – –

From those who in the supreme light of their God shine like suns, who like gods, as one entity, sun of all suns, illuminate all suns, all worlds, – – down to those who live in spiritual form on this earth, and finally to those who wear the apparel of the earthly animal, a river of substantial spiritual light flows far and wide, uniting those filled with it into the most sublime community. – –

On the lowest rung of this ‘heavenly ladder’, the one nearest to you, stand those helpers who can offer you their hand in support, should you want  it…

They will never abandon anyone who strives to find his way through the night of terror towards that peaceful, silent, exalted temple where his God can ‘beget’ himself – from light unto light – within him. –

But they send their help not, as it were, from outside, for they are connected to you deep within

your innermost being as soon as you set off courageously on your path, – the same path that all who have found their way to their God once had to walk. It is the path those who now wish to help you once had to walk, although their spiritual being had already been prepared through the millennia to give them the capacity for most lucid spiritual knowledge. –

Whoever is not one of these can not help you, even if he could work wonder upon wonder…

Many false teachers will cross your path, ‘teachers’ who are themselves in great need of instruction, and many proud orators will pose with their ‘knowledge’ before you.

You will meet many self-righteous ‘holy men’ consumed with vanity; they see seducing others into their own ‘holiness’ and presumptuous ‘dignity’ as an act of greatness.

You will be frightened by the most bizarre ‘hierophants’ who seek to dazzle anyone who approaches them with confused, glittering and arcane symbols pinned with tinsel onto their ‘magic cloaks’ in their own scatter-brained delusion…

If you abandon caution just once you can easily run into many concealed snares; rarely does anyone who has become ensnared escape safe and sound from these fowlers’ slings…

Only through constant alertness can you avoid danger!

Beware of all those who believe that their supposed ‘wisdom about God’ can be taught and acquired like earthly wisdom!

Beware of all those who would bewitch you with their ‘miraculous powers’!

There are still many things, even in this so-called age of ‘enlightenment’ which may appear to you to be most ‘wondrous’; truly, there are genuine miraculous powers deeply hidden in man. Yet never can the spirit of eternity become such a question to itself that it would seek to ‘prove’ itself through ‘miracles’…

If wondrous powers are genuinely manifested in a person, this only goes to show that such powers exist; they are never ‘proof’ that the person in question ‘consciously lives and breathes’ in the spirit and can bear sure witness of truth founded in reality! – –

This witness can only be verified by the ‘miracle’ of the insight it creates within the soul; you must not accept anything to be true which is not confirmed within your innermost being, once you have fulfilled the conditions entitling you to gain that confirmation. – –Beware also of that folly which thinks it possible to eat or breathe one’s way to ‘higher spirituality’ by being particular about physical nourishment or by some or other fakir practice!

The Luminaries of the First Light illuminating the worlds will certainly never counsel you to follow such practices!

They will also never require you to separate yourself from your fellow men in order – to submit to secret, mind-befuddling ceremonies or mysterious rituals!

They will never bestow on you ‘secret ranks’, strange titles or ‘honours’ which only feed vanity and might stimulate ridiculous arrogance in you…

Only what became reality in you, because you realised it yourself, has any validity in their eyes and determines for them your ‘rung’! –

You will also not find them making grandiloquent gestures on soap-boxes, or in the market places before the crowds. –

Rather, they will offer their help only in words which you can consider in all quietness within your self, – undiluted by ensnaring rhetoric…

They will help you in your inner activity, never showing themselves!

It is not necessary for you to recognise them if you should happen to meet them!

It is not necessary for you to find them in this earthly apparel!

They will find you and can help you, even if you never sense the presence of these helpers!

Truly, they work with different means than those vain fools who seek to lure adherents with arcane gestures and hollow sounding rhetorical  tricks. –

They will also never demand or expect payment for their instruction and guidance, and would rather share with you their last penny than take a half-penny from you for their help.

What they have to bestow spiritually is the spirit’s property; none of those who can give it would ever want to exchange it for things of earthly value…

Only ‘work’ required for sustaining the earthly body is entitled to earthly remuneration.

He who has eyes to see and ears to hear, let him protect himself against crooks and usurpers!

They will be easily recognised!

The Luminaries of the First Light, on the other hand, are harder to find.

You will find it hard to discover them among other men wearing this earth’s apparel; nothing peculiar will betray their presence to you, for they live in stillness and value seclusion…

If they are compelled to live in the noisy world, they will certainly be hard to distinguish from all other honest men carrying out their work on earth!

Blessed are those who put their trust in  them! – –

But now, seeker, let us go together into stillness, and I will show you the beginning of the ‘path’!

Collect your thoughts and listen to me, now that you are surely prepared to understand with a conscious mind the things I have furthermore to tell you!

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Firstly, seeker, you will have to forget many things! – –

You have been given a false idea of ‘God’;  with idle doctrine has been strangled the seed in you from which the ‘lotus flower’ should have blossomed in the sacred waters of your deepest soul, the ‘lotus flower’ in which can be ‘born’ the light which shall eternally illuminate you…

“The spirit which hovered over the waters” fills endless space, but you can only approach it – in yourself! – – –

Only when it takes form in you, – as your God, – from light unto light, will you be able to bear witness to its silent rule! –

Those who seek to fathom its endlessness err greatly…

They presumptuously believe they can approach the One all cosmic space cannot encompass; they have no idea of the caricature they have created which now controls them. –

But we seek to plant again deep within you the seed of that eternal ‘lotus flower’…

Perhaps it will now find nourishment from your own powers! –

When its blossom has opened, the spirit which propagates itself from itself and is alive from itself will come down upon you and be ‘born’ as your God in you, – – as your living God within you! – – –

Before this you will not know of ‘God’!

Do not believe those who tell you of the God of their dreams: – of a God found in sultry ecstasy! –

Whatever is found in this way is simply a ‘mirage’ of the inner world!

You do not yet know the riches which the expanses of your soul encompass! –

Here there are ‘powers’ and ‘might’s’ you would revere like the prophet before the burning bush, were I able to make them visible to you. – – –

Your soul is an unfathomable ocean; no-one has fathomed its depths or the wonders contained in the ocean of the soul’s powers! – –

You think of your soul as a transparent veil and believe you can only find yourself in it…

However, your soul is like a sea holding myriad drops filled with latent might, – or it is like a cloud alive with hosts of beings  filled with power, and – you must become lord and master of all these beings. – –

Unless they recognise in you their assured master, you will become their slave, benumbed with fear of their power. –

They must serve you, if you master them, – but if you bow down before them in false humility they will lead you a merry dance with their bizarre trickery.

They want an iron will under which they can  unite…

Until you have united them within a single will, you will never find the peace within your soul which alone can bring about the blossoming of the holy ‘lotus flower’. – –

Before this occurs you will not receive within yourself, through the powers of your soul, tidings of that gentle spirit realm which can only be recognised and felt – indeed, at times seen and heard – by you through the powers of your soul, united under a single will, for it lives in you, as everywhere, by the same powers…

Before this occurs you will not receive a sure sign from your guide from the spirit, – before this occurs you will not feel within you the exalted spiritual guides, the Luminaries of the First Light…

Strive then, seeker, above all things to establish a resolute, clear-sighted will within yourself!

You must affirm yourself, if you would experience within the spirit affirmation by the spirit!

You will find yourself, and in yourself your God, only in your own ‘I’! – – –

Seek with cheerful joy and in calm composure to assert yourself peacefully within yourself; turn your eyes away from all inner images which your excitable mind, still not at one with yourself, would gladly show you!

First you must come completely to yourself in joy and full of trust!

Before you have grasped yourself within yourself and confined on all sides, – like a sea defines its own limits – like a cloud that gathers itself together, – you will seek in vain to possess your soul. For your soul’s powers will only surrender to those truly worthy of their reverence…

Do not believe, however, that you could ever reach this goal, if you always persist in outward inactivity!

As a man of the outer world into which you were born you must seek to act every day – in the same way as nature is always active and creates forms which are always new –, if you are to learn to create that iron will your soul’s powers can obey! – –

Nothing in the external world is so insignificant that it could not teach you something!

From every single experience you can learn a lesson; no activity is so contemptible that you could not learn from it! –

Above all, you must learn to harness your fleeting thoughts and always gather them to one focal  point. – –

The solitude of the desert and life among the jungle’s wild creatures are no more beneficial to your intentions than the bustle of a busy city where you actively ply your trade! – – –

If you have learnt to stay calm and collected even in the busiest racket; if you can master your thoughts and will with absolute certainty; if your wishes come and go at your command alone, – only then should you begin the first attempt to unite the powers of the soul within you! – –

You will find much internal resistance even  then…

You will exercise in vain your resolute will for a long time in seeking to subjugate all those powers of the soul resisting you. –

Each individual power of the soul is seeking to possess your will only for itself, and none willingly surrenders to your will…

You will understand this once you clearly see that each of your soul’s powers, – though you regard them all as your own inherent ‘characteristics’ – is an independent being of the soul with its own will and the drive to assert itself alone, even at the expense of all other powers of the soul. – – –

But you must never become discouraged when you often seem to be struggling in vain for the supremacy of your own will over the many separate wills seeking to assert themselves alone in your soul! –

Never must you mistrust yourself! –

Never must you lose that joy in your heart and your quiet composure! – –

All your struggling is but a continual test of your patience and the power you have already acquired within your own will…

Know that in this way you will in the end become the victor!

Truly, a day will come when with deep happiness you will experience within you the sublime joy of the victor!

Then the seed of the ‘lotus flower’ will have opened. In the holy temple ponds, unseen by human eyes, the spiritual eye of your invisible guide, – the ancients called him your guardian ‘angel’, – will spy a bud above the motionless, mysterious surface of the water…

He will call his companions in blessed joy; a host of chosen guardians will from that day on keep watch over the holy waters.

A miracle has happened!

A miracle wrought by a mortal man, – for it is

easier to lead a raging elephant by a string of hemp through the hustle and bustle of the market, than it is to unite the many wills of the soul’s powers forming the ‘soul’ of man under the single will of this very  man! – – –

Yet now the muted light of day must bathe the bud with its gentle rays, so that it can one day blossom into its full and magnificent splendour.

Lofty, centuries old trees surround the mysterious temple pond and protect the gentle bud from the sun’s burning darts lest they prematurely singe and destroy the scarcely opened flower…

High temple walls ward away the desert’s scorching wind…

A new activity now begins for you who seeks!

But this activity now requires as well external peace and most silent contemplation.

You will be able to carry out the things you should now do after you have completed your day’s work, or perhaps dedicate the still morning hours to  them…

The time has now come for you to ask gently and tenderly within yourself and to learn to hear within yourself.

You cannot be silent enough for this!

Whatever is concealed within you, and will shortly reveal itself, will not be found in the loud talking of your thoughts. – –

It is at the centre of your heart, yet still you will not hear its words, for its voice is as soft as a distant bird call…

Do not frighten away its words!

Pay heed to its gentlest sound!

You can easily miss what it has to say if you do not preserve that silence within you! –

At first it will answer your silent questions so softly that even the slightest of breezes will blow away its voice in you. – –

Yet one day you will surely hear its voice and learn to tell it apart from every other inner voice.

You will not hear the voice as though it were speaking to you from outside!

It will also not speak to you in words of your own tongue, nor in any other human tongue on  earth! – –

And yet, what the voice has to tell you will be far more understandable than everything you have ever

heard since your childhood from human lips, in human language! – – –

Now you will have to follow this voice…

Your continuance upon the path will be determined by your loyalty alone.

Slowly you will learn to recognise that your will no longer follows instructions given by your rational understanding alone, but that you can steer it imperceptibly according to the sublime instructions of the spirit, –  according to the will of that  ‘voice’…

You will plunge deeper and deeper into the mystery of your soul.

The more awareness you gain, the more you will get a feeling for what is hidden. – –

Gratefully and carefully cherish even your smallest

experience in the soul’s realm: – your gratitude for little will most readily bring abundant experiences! – – –

In the end you will behold a realm of inner wonders for which no description could give you even a feeling!

Things will enter your life which today you would call ‘impossibilities’, – and rightly so   today! – –

Yet the greatest of all wonders for you will be that all these things are given into your power, –  that you do not need to wait in uncertainty for your yearning to be fulfilled, since it now fulfils itself with all certainty through its own power…

If thus far you have proved to be a loyal follower of inner counsels, the ‘lotus flower’ in the pond of

the spiritual temple will have gradually opened wider and wider.

Very soon, or in the not too distant future, you will experience the day when the fully opened flower will shine in splendour upon the waters, imbued with a light which is not from this earth’s  sun…

Behold, the day has come for you who seeks, when your God will reveal himself as your God – in your ‘I’! – – –

He is ‘born’ in you, and you in him…

What happens spiritually in this way will remain a mystery, even for those who have spiritual  vision. – –

Yet still you will not be able to dispense with your inner guide; you shall, however, be united with him in a new way…

Already when the bud of the ‘lotus flower’ has appeared, you might see the spiritual guide before you in a magical appearance, if you have the ability for such a vision.

It is not the guide himself!

He has fashioned through his will into his likeness certain ‘magical’ powers possessed by your soul.

Be grateful if your ‘counsellor’ is able to reveal himself visibly to you in this way, – if he uses his likeness to teach you, so that you believe you have heard him in person!

But be not concerned if you never see his likeness as an outward manifestation in this earthly life!

Only in rare cases can he present himself to you as likeness; he will only use this possibility as long as it is for your benefit and not to tempt you into abusing the ‘magical’ powers of your soul into seeing other ‘likenesses’…

It is better for you never to behold the likeness of your guide than for him to use your soul’s powers to become the cause of their vulnerability to the powers of deception! – –

You will feel his guidance with more certainty within your innermost being and the things you cannot visualize outwardly will make themselves comprehensible to you deeply within you…

But now – since your God has been ‘born’ in you, and you in him – your spiritual counsellor, in union with the voice of your God and with you, will only reveal himself in the supreme life of his spirit.

You will think he is fully identical with you for the time he is with you…

He will no longer guide you through teaching but open himself up to you; you will take from his treasure of inner life the things you lack. – –

Above all this will shine the sun of divine joy; all the struggling for light and illumination which consumed you before you set off on the path will now appear to you as the ‘torments of hell’ you once suffered. –

You will see before you an eternity whose deepest depths hint at things even deeper; you know that you will continue to walk eternally through the deepest of its wonders, united with your God.

As you are aware of yourself in this earthly world of sorrow and pleasure, you are now as before only a man of the earth; – yet your spirit within your God is raised high above everything that belongs to man on earth. For your soul has become a ‘realm’ of eternity: – a heaven within the  heavens! – – –

This, oh seeker, is the course the ‘path’ takes, – the path upon which you must set off and continue to walk if you want to reach your God!

The ‘path’ is in yourself, – within your own ‘I’!

This is the path which alone leads to your highest goal: – to ‘awakening’ in the world of spirit!

If you have not already ‘awoken’ to it here on earth, you will carry on ‘sleeping’ for ages on ‘the other side’ at the end of this earthly life, until you can be awoken – awoken from your self-created dreams which may hold you in their spell for  aeons. – – –

Now hearken to further counsel I have to give you!

From the day which finds you resolved to walk upon this ‘path’, you will have to cut yourself a strong staff for your journey.

You will find the ‘right wood’ if you can discover in feeling the power of the word revealed in every human tongue! –

Choose the words which speak to your heart, – words which will ‘seize’ you, ‘raise’ you and ‘penetrate’ you!

Set aside a short period of time every day, and if

possible always at the same hour, – a time when you can seek to be at one in contemplation  with the spirit of these chosen words without being distracted by external duties.

Keep a word that has ‘seized’ you for a long period in your ‘quiet hour’ as an exercise for your thinking, just as a flautist practises the same passage again and again until he finds the its purest sound. – –

You will find many words you can use for such ‘exercises’ in this book.

I have given others elsewhere in my books.

But you do not have to stick to my words!

Mankind’s ‘sacred books’ are full of words which can ‘seize’ you and ‘raise’ you up towards them. –

Poets and sages have indeed offered such words in abundance!

The only danger is: that you will also find in these words the false teaching which misunderstanding or widespread convention habitually reads into  them. – –

Therefore I advise you initially to prefer words from my own writings, should you now wish to entrust yourself to my teachings.

Begin, as I said earlier, by seeking to fathom these words in ‘thought’!

Try then to find through them a way of thinking ‘without words’!

Do not rest until you have completely grasped the deepest meaning of the chosen words in ‘wordless’ comprehension!

Mark them out visually and separate them from other words by writing them down clearly in your own hand!

Feel the words you have chosen as though they were your own!

Try to create within yourself the spiritual state of the person who first wrote these words down!

Seek to awaken your inner ear by trying to ‘hear’ the sound of the words in your innermost being!

When you have achieved certain success in all these forms of understanding, you can go on – but – only then! – even if it takes a long time to reach this stage. –

I warn you against being in ‘too much in a hurry’ to make progress!

You may well think you could achieve all this in ‘a matter of hours’…

Perhaps you already think today, as you are receiving my instructions, that you no longer have any need of these exercises in comprehension…

Many who once wanted to follow the path failed to move even past the start on account of such thinking! – –

More is required than you might at first think!

There is a need to say much that is inherently very different using similar words. –

You are not in need of what the poets call ‘an ear for language’, though someone with an ear for the sound and rhythm of language and a feeling for the importance of the words is already halfway to understanding what the task demands…

Having genuinely achieved everything required here, a new, widened sensitivity and greater conscious experience of your existence will assure you of protection against self-deception.

Walk on, – you who strives for the highest of all human goals!

Now you must strive to feel those words in yourself, with your whole being!

Now those words must become alive within  you! –

Not only should your soul be permeated by the ‘spirit’ of the words, but your earthly body must now learn to feel them in every fibre! – –

The words must be merged with you, – with your soul and your body, – into one being! –

Your earthly body must become the body of these chosen words, as though nothing else lived within it. – –

The powers of your soul, already tightly bound as one within your will, must now be at one with your chosen words; you must experience yourself as the consciousness of these words! – – –

Then you will have achieved great things on your path!

You will experience for the first time the ‘life’ which moves you and everything else alive! – –

It will seem to you that you are on a new earth, – in a new, never suspected world…

You will acknowledge that everything called ‘waking existence’ by the man of this earth is nothing other than torpid sleep and confused dreaming.

Already at this stage you can begin to see the spiritual world, as long as the powers invested in you from the start permit this, and if you are a man of vision rather than conceptual understanding. –

But if you are, by disposition, the sort who is ‘in the picture’ only when he ‘takes hold through understanding’ the things he wants to know, then ‘visions’ will hardly occur, and you will experience through understanding…

You will be changed into a new man, and you will have attained a consciousness of yourself which can scarcely be compared with your current consciousness!

Just as the radiant sun of the bright midday makes the light of a small oil lamp vanish in its own light, so

what you today still call your ‘consciousness’ will be absorbed and vanish in new consciousness…

You will then know why the wise man talks of ‘life’ as the ‘light’ of men; you will understand the magnificent sense of the much interpreted saying:

“In the beginning is the word, and the word is with God, and the word is God…”

“In it all things have life, and its life is the light of men.”

“And the light shines in darkness, and the darkness cannot extinguish it.” – – –

The writer of these words knew very well what he was saying; you too will know, once you have reached this point on your path…

Yet, – “the kingdom of heaven yields to force, and only those who use force shall seize it!’ –

Without subjugating your impatience, without persistent exercise of your powers, expecting success is not permitted.

But do not think that a wild desire to conquer or desperate efforts could bring you nearer to your goal!

This is not the meaning of these words!

You must continually surround yourself with an atmosphere of cheerful composure and quiet joy; all your concerns must be directed at achieving with utmost caution that tender, inner perception I spoke of earlier.

It will cost more ‘force’ to keep yourself in check than many a heroic and widely visible act would cost you…

If you have considered well what I have said to   you, and if henceforth you seek to do what

is required, I can give you the assurance that you too will one day be among those who may experience the mystery of the ‘kingdom of heaven’ within themselves.

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Therefore begin your steep path!

May tireless perseverance accompany you to the end!

Help from on high will always be near…

Do not look back upon a life full of sorrow and joys, guilt and success lying behind you!

Know that it matters not whether you have acquired all earthly learning, or whether you are the most ignorant of men! – –

Do not seek to isolate yourself from men; do not think that a strange way of living, foreign to the customs of your land and times, can take you forwards.

And even less can the way you eat benefit or damage you on your path, apart from keeping your body healthy and maintaining its powers.

If you wish to avoid eating the meat of slaughtered animals, then do so; if you want to avoid drinking wine, do so. But do not imagine that you have become a ‘purer’ or ‘more superior’ man through doing these things! – –

The same thing applies to sensual love between man and woman. –

Do not debase yourself into a mere animal; keep  your shackled drives strictly under control, so thatthey can never subjugate you against your will. But do not blaspheme and besmirch a mystery you can only understand in ‘all its purity’ when you have awoken in the spirit! – – –

Not without having fathomed the profoundest depths did priests in the most ancient cults declare the symbols of procreation sacred, – and truly: the object of this veneration was more than merely an image of eternally procreating nature…

Chastity  is required of you only if the untamed lustfulness of your instincts might cause harm to yourself or others. – –

You must deny all vices, for they are bound to obstruct your exalted striving for the spirit and eventually they will throttle it.

Avoid everything that could harm yourself or others!

Shun all loveless thoughts!

Love yourself! – For if you cannot love yourself, you will truly do little good to your ‘neighbour’, were you to ‘love’ him – as yourself. – –

Go your own way, but let every other man go his own way, – even if his goals lie far behind you! –

You do not know when someone else’s hour comes, and you have no right to stir him from his sleep before his given hour…

You would not be able to ‘awaken’ him, for no man escapes sleep before his hour has come. –

If his hour is near, he will himself ask you for instruction. – – –

Only then may you give it to him!

Only then will the Luminaries of the First Light also stand at your side with their power and effectively support the help you offer. – –

You are not called to guide from the spirit to the spirit; those called for such a task will never press anyone to entrust himself to their  guidance! – – –

Walk in joyful peace along the path which leads you to yourself!

Your path to yourself will lead you to your spiritual counsellor within the realm of your soul; he will lead you to your highest goal within yourself…

Your path to yourself is – your path to God!

You can never reach God if you do not find him, as he is – in yourself! – – –

Now I shall impart unto you some more words which will make you recognise the ‘workings’ of the spiritual realm on earth and many other hidden things if you are prepared and resolved to recognise spiritual matters.

I shall hang garlands on the walls of your house.

They are garlands made from the flowers I found on my highest paths and in my blossoming garden when I reached the ultimate destination of my path.

Do not pluck my garlands; leave every flower intact where I have put it! –

Otherwise you will be unable to comprehend clearly the one great reality which all the words of this book bring to you…

Otherwise you will be incapable of interpreting the mystery unveiled here in silent words: – the mystery of divine life in man of this earth, – the sublime mystery of the living God! – – –