Course XXXV - Teaching 11: Divine Vision

Before the aspirant begins the Great Work, the Divine Mother of the Universe entertains his spirit with a total glimpse of the path he has to travel through.
The Temple is One because the Spirit, basic principle of the Absolute, has neither variation, nor definition, nor qualities, nor separations; but the Divine Mother, who is the manifest part of the Universe, is two: EHS and Aeia.
The human being is expressed by three different forms: you call it Wayfarer when the instinct guides him; Pilgrim when he fights for the conquest of the mind; and IHS when he achieved the spiritual life. We are told these three will be One because truly in a beginning there is not a fundamental variation but an apparent variation in different principles of man.
The Great Alchemy’s day is the moment of Supreme Realization, the moment when a being recognizes that he and the Universe are One.
The four Guardians are images of lower principles of man: physical, astral, energetic and instinctive body. And the four days necessary to find them are images of the first four trials necessary to go onward in the Spiritual Development, symbolized by the four elements: earth, water, air and fire.
Of course, these four lower principles are images of the four superior and spiritual principles: comprehensive Mind, intuitive Mind, Spirit in itself and Universal Spirit; so the supreme number is: 00. Walking across the path of many lives and many deaths, the human soul acquires experiences and experiences; but even though learning liberates the soul from sorrow on the one hand, it ties the soul to the unknown on the other hand.
Here is the highest aim: To possess the essence of experience, without attachment to this experience. To stop all at once carrying the burden of many symbols, old-looking habits, sacred books, the bag with bread of a poor fellow, which are always things coming from outside inwards.
Renunciation is so hard –without it you cannot achieve liberation– that necessarily sorrow must snatch time and again objects that we love in such a way that the individual remains detached from the object by violence.
Of what avail is a cane for him whose legs are healthy and can walk without any help? Of what avail are religious rites for him who achieved the Mystical Divine Love? Of what avail are the laws of morality for him who learnt to be good?
Colors red, blue and yellow are images of the instinctive, rational and intuitive mind.
He who arrives at the Temple of the Mother is a person who completely subdued his mind; but even there he waits for the supreme trial: Perfect Union of individual spirit and Cosmic Spirit. “IHS and EHS”; this cannot be achieved without supreme renunciation, without renunciation to separateness, without renunciation to you and me.
Even Great Masters, those who reached this supreme point, do not run after the Unconditioned Eternity, but again undergo and experience life, and weep, and sorrow gives them children, spiritual children that followed the Great Masters.
But when these chosen souls are ready to total renunciation and entire extirpation of desire, just then the Temple, individuality, Saint Guardians and lower principles disappear, and they can achieve the perfect Divine Union.
The Divine Mother properly says: “I was hidden in your own heart”, because the basic and wonderful principle –which one day must unify him with the Eternal One– is latent in the heart of man.