Course XXXV - Teaching 9: The Two Keys

The initiatic way is for the strong, the courageous, the domineering and the fearless.
Loneliness and silence is not the end of the Great Work but a preparation to go upward. So, once again, the disciple abandons the quiet retreat to learn how to walk alone and to conquer by himself the victory of higher grades.
Previously, at moments of trial, darkness and temptation, there was someone lending him a hand; but now he is alone: alone with his mind and his heart, alone with his thoughts and sensations, which he must conquer, subdue and overpower.
He is not any more the poor Wayfarer but the conscious Pilgrim.
Anhunit bears the Mother’s Standard because love is the beginning and the end of the Path. Even the most ordinary and gross love is always an image in miniature of the Great Universal Love, which moves stars and all things.
The Lake Ixdoubar represents the subconscious, a gross deposit of emotional experiences, which contains past experiences and acquired habits.
Hanou’s ship is an image of the physical body; and the guiding swan Tamuz is an image of the Spirit; and if the Spirit guides matter, then gross sensations are transmuted into noble and lofty emotions. Anhunit, symbol of the best part of the heart, image of an exquisite sensibility oriented to higher worlds, is totally dressed in red, because red is the color corresponding to love, passion and desire. The two keys that Anhunit delivers to the man symbolize pairs of opposites. According to the use of love, it can lead from renunciation and the loftiest sacrifice to the deepest hatred and selfishness. If a man knows how to manage his pairs of opposites, he is truly owner of heaven and hell, of love and sorrow.
But sensation should be watched, analyzed and minutely examined by the cold reason. A severe analysis, a cutting logic, takes affections and analyzes them as a surgeon opens and dismembers a corpse, to know and study them; but students should observe that here the mind is named atrium of wisdom; it means that reason is a gateway, not the end of wisdom.
Numberless are the victims who here fall dazzled by the wonderful law of the goddess Reason. Philo gives external knowledge of things; but to know you need to study the dark side, the reverse of the medal and the spiritual source hidden behind all mysteries and phenomena of life.
So, this initiation step is very dangerous; the disciple may fall into doubt, disbelief, materialism and sophism.
Verily, here you learn wonderful and true things indeed, but truths, not the Truth; these truths are flowers concealing the serpent.
He who wants to arrive must go onward. After he knows so many things, again he must know the Only Truth. All is One; all emanates from the same source; and the disciple must lead his steps to this source; and he shall lead them if he is able to pass unscathed the Garden of Philo, tasting the silence, which is the higher and spiritual part of the soul, and to bear the Standard of the Mother, which is love reluctant to be overwhelmed by reason.