In the Light of Truth

44. The Holy Grail

There is much diversity of opinion among the critics regarding the legends of the Holy Grail. The most learned scholars have investigated the matter and sought to solve the mystery, and much of their writing has high moral value. But they all make the same mistake. They strive to build from the earth upwards and thus neglect the essential, which is the ray of Light that falls from above and which would animate and enlighten them.

All research that starts from below and makes its way upwards must come to a halt at the boundary-line of material substance, even in the case of a seeker so gifted that he could attain to the greatest possible heights. In most cases, however, under the most favourable circumstances, hardly half this distance can be traversed. What a great distance then is man from a real understanding of the Holy Grail!

The sense of its being so remote, so inaccessible and unapproachable grew on the seekers. The result was that they tried to explain the Holy Grail as the symbolical term for an idea, so as to place it on the sublime altitude that they rightly felt was its proper place. But in so doing they do not further a right understanding of the mystery, but rather retard it. They do not rise to the conception indicated by the poets, but descend to a lower plane of interpretation.

Their poems faintly reflect the truth, but only very faintly, for the lofty inspirations and heavenly visions in the poems have been transmitted by poets under the influence of their earthbound intellects, thus losing much of their sublimity and becoming very terrestrial. The transcribers clothed the spiritually received revelations in terms conformable to their worldly surroundings, with the object of making the meaning of the poems clear to men. In this, however, they failed, as they themselves could not get at the heart of the truth.

Thus the basis on which later investigators and seekers were to work was from the outset very uncertain and the possibility of success extremely limited. Hence one cannot wonder that they came to think the Holy Grail was meant to symbolise the process of making atonement and receiving absolution through the Grail.

The existing interpretations have much ethical merit, but they do not attempt to be explanations of the legends, nor can they claim to approach the truth of the Holy Grail.

It must be understood that the Holy Grail is not the cup that the Son of God and his disciples drank out of at the last supper after His having come to the end of His Ministry on earth, and in which afterwards His blood was caught when he was crucified. This vessel is a sacred memento of our Lord's sublime Work of Redemption, but it is not the Holy Grail of which the inspired poets of the legends sang. These poems have been misunderstood.

They were meant as prophecies from on high. Man was to live in the expectation of their fulfilment. Had man understood them to be such, surely another way would have been found, by which the seekers could have penetrated further into the mystery than they have been able to do up till now. As it was, however, they all had to come to a dead stop. A full, satisfactory explanation could never be given, owing to the false start at the beginning of the quest.

The human soul, even if it has attained to its highest development and has become a pure spirit, will never be able to stand in the presence of the Holy Grail itself! It follows, therefore, that no detailed tidings can penetrate to the material world, unless a messenger be sent from there. Thus the Holy Grail will remain a mystery to the human soul for all eternity.

Let man keep to what he can understand spiritually and try to live up to what it teaches him and what fruit he can bring to perfection. Unfortunately, however, without correspondingly developing his ability, he demands what exceeds his legitimate right, he would grasp at what is far out of his reach. In so doing he makes himself guilty of remissness and negligence which hinders him from attaining to what he otherwise might. The ideal that he wishes for he can never attain. He only robs himself of his rarest and most precious gift, the why and the wherefore of his being, and thus the purpose of his life on earth is not accomplished. — — —

The coming of Parsifal is a glorious promise sung of by the bards. The defects and errors in their legends came from their too material interpretation, which misrepresents the true character of this central figure.

Parsifal and the Son of Man is one and the same person whose advent was proclaimed by the Son of God Himself.*(Lecture No. 10: The Son of God and the Son of Man) As envoy from the Almighty, he will come on earth with his spiritual sight blindfolded, to go through the bitterest experiences as a man among men. After a time, his spiritual sight will be restored. He will then recognise himself and remember the celestial home he came from and realise his mission on earth. His mission is to redeem those among men who are striving for the truth, and at the same time to call all men to account on the Day of Reckoning.

Not every man but only the chosen and special envoy of the Almighty can be vested with the gifts necessary to fulfil this mission.

God's Holy Will, as laid down in His Divine Laws, decrees that everything, after it has gone through the process of development, must return to the place of its origin, but can never go beyond that point. Thus also the spirit of man, which as an unconscious germ has its origin in the world of spiritual substance, after completing its circle of experience in the world of material substance and after having arrived at the highest degree of perfection possible, will return as a pure and self-conscious spiritual being, to the place it left. But under the most favourable circumstances it may only reach as far as the forecourt of the Castle of the Holy Grail, which stands in the highest region of the spiritual world and forms a gate to the steps of the Throne, on which from time to time the Origin of all Being, God the Father, unsubstantiate Divinity, takes form and shape by clothing himself in the mantle of spiritual substance.

No spirit belonging to the spiritual world can ever be so high, so pure, so radiating that it could cross this boundary-line from the spiritual world into the sphere of unsubstantiate Divinity. Owing to the difference of substance, it lies in the natural order of things that there are boundary-lines between the many planes in spiritual substance and material substance which cannot be crossed.

God Almighty, Divine unsubstantiality, is the highest principle. Next comes, beneath that, the world of spiritual substance. Both of these are eternal. Descending lower and lower, comes material Creation, beginning with the gaseous ethereal spheres, and still lower, always becoming more dense, comes the material world that man can see with his physical eyes. The ethereal region is what man calls the other world or the next life. This is invisible to man's physical eyes.

Both these worlds: the visible material and the ethereal material world, which belong to Creation, are not eternal with regard to their form, they are subject to mutation and will be thus rebuilt and re-animated in a new form.

The Castle of the Holy Grail is an edifice both spiritually visible and tangible because of the same spiritual substance. ... This building contains a Sanctuary which is the nearest approach to the region of Divinity, thus of still finer spiritual substance than the rest, and in this Sanctuary stands the sacred pledge of the Almighty Father's eternal Love and the source of Divine energy: The Holy Grail!

This is a chalice in which a fluid like red blood unceasingly surges and bubbles without overflowing. It is surrounded by the most brilliant and penetrating light, but it is only vouchsafed to spirits of the purest spiritual substance to behold its glory. They are the guardians of the Holy Grail!

If the gifted bard, not being able to express it better, tells us that this office has been reserved for the purest of men, it is that he has drawn a too earthly picture, for no human spirit can cross the threshold into this Holy Sanctuary. Even when it has reached the highest step of spiritual perfection after its long wanderings in the material spheres its body would be too dense and a further etherisation would fully consume it. Its nature being different from the very beginning would not allow of a higher degree of luminosity.

The pure eternal spirits that are the guardians of the Holy Grail were never human, they are the sublimest examples of spiritual substance. Still, they also, like all else, need to draw strength from Divine unsubstantiality and are dependent on the Holy One, the source of all life.

From time to time on the Day of the Holy Dove, the Dove appears over the chalice, as a sign of the unfailing Love of God the Father. At this moment a union takes place and new strength is poured out. The guardians of the Holy Grail receive this in humble and profound devotion. It is their office to transmit this magic energy.

On this outpouring the existence of the whole universe defends! At this moment, the Love of the Creator wells up in the Holy Temple in glorious radiance to new life and fresh creative energy, and this pulsates downwards and diffuses itself in all the universe. Holy awe and a flutter of hope and delight vibrate through all the spheres. Only the spirit of man on earth still stands aside with the insensibility of a dolt, without knowing what a priceless gift he is receiving. Having voluntarily limited himself to what his physical brain can understand, such glorious sublimity finds no echo in his heart.

is the moment of the renewal of all life for the whole universe!

It is the necessary, ever recurring ratification of the Creator's covenant with His creature. Should this supply ever be cut off, all life would gradually dry up, grow old and decay. The end of all days would come and only God would remain alone, as it was at the beginning, for He alone is Life.

This is hinted at in the legend, for from the time that Amfortas ceased to uncover the Grail on the Day of the Holy Dove till the hour Parsifal became king, the knights of the Holy Grail grew old.

Man should now no longer look upon the Holy Grail as something incomprehensible and inconceivable. It really exists! Although man's spirit is not so constituted that it can perceive the Grail, he can receive and enjoy the blessing that proceeds from it and which the guardians can and do transmit.

The bard has indeed caught something of the right meaning; his information is only unreliable when he would tell of the Holy Grail itself.

The coming of the Dove on the Day of the Holy Dove manifests the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, for this Dove is closely related to Him. But this is a thing man can only understand symbolically. To however high a degree of perfection a man's spirit may have arrived, he cannot think or know of what is beyond the sphere of his origin, the sphere of eternal spiritual substance. In his thoughts even he never can cross this boundary. What is beyond his own sphere he cannot grasp. This is so simple and logical that every man should understand it. What is beyond him must, for this reason, be and remain a mystery to him.

Those men who cherish the erroneous dream that they possess divinity in themselves or can attain to this possession, are foolish visionaries. Man possesses pure spiritual substance, but nothing Divine. Here there is a deep gulf that cannot be bridged over. He is God's creature and not a part of the Creator, as some would like to have it.

Man's spirit comes from the Kingdom of God and will, when developed to its fullest maturity return there.

Thus it is wrong to affirm that it proceeds from God the Father, it having evolved from spiritual substance and not from Divine substance.

The Son of God has become the mediator between Divinity unsubstantiate and spiritual substance. He steps over from Divinity unsubstantiate to spiritual substance just as he once descended into the world of matter.

The Coming of the Son of Man will be the completion of the Son of God's sublime Divine mission! When this is accomplished the Son of God will return to the state of Divine unsubstantially, whereas the Son of Man will take His place as mediator and thus become the leader of the guardians of the Holy Grail — He will become their King, the guardian of the Holy Chalice.

The Son of Man will then be Alpha and Omega for the spirit of man, because he will be the first and the last of what the human spirit can understand. He can go beyond the boundary and enter the sphere of Divinity unsubstantiate and thus he can overlook all things.

[Grail Message by Abdrushin]  [Resonances to the Grail Message]