Reflection N° 155 - Spiritual Triumph
At the end of his life, Kurosawa made a beautiful film of simple and easily understandable sequences, “Dreams”, which through five or six chapters, relates some of the traditions of the Japanese people, which have survived throughout centuries. A tradition here recalled is a child funeral. On a wonderful landscape with a serene stream moving three big hydraulic wheels taking out waters, Kurosawa crosses such stream through a stone path with many flowering plants and meets a guardian, a picturesque old man fixing the buckets of the wheels. They talk amiably. You can hear music nearer and nearer and through the path a short procession of musicians and dancers is coming and singing in time of drums and flutes along with the little coffin of the dead child. The old man quickly changes his clothes and leads the procession dancing and singing. The procession passes throwing flowers. Kurosawa keeps silence and comes back by the path which he is also traveling through by the water while throwing flowers.
On Peru and Bolivia plateau, Coya aboriginals celebrate child burials with a picturesque ceremonial feast, reciting hymns to Earth, Pachamama. None weeps or complains; they drink chicha of maize and eat regional cakes.
In China, little peasants play to graves and bury dolls made by them on a small place of the orchard; and such dolls will remain there for long time. As they are old men and die, their children will bury them on the orchard, near those dolls. Playing, they learn the law of life.
Cistercian monks have in the monastery a room where they sleep and study, and a little individual walled garden where it is said every day they dig with a shovel a little of earth for their grave. It is asceticism similar to those customs of the Chinese children.
Each nation has a different way of saying goodbye to the deceased and revering them according to traditions, practiced religions, social status and personal will. Tibetan monks, once the family said goodbye, deliver the body on a plateau and prepare it for food if night beasts.
In India, the deceased are put on wooden rafts filled with flowers on rivers for food of tortoises and crocodiles.
In the West, as a rule, corpses are buried in immense cemeteries or put in niches of several stories. In certain cities there are high skyscrapers next to other corpses with a lot of niches and their metal plates. In Mendoza Gardens of Peace are in vogue, on a well-kept grass ground where deceased are buried. Such burial follows a careful protocol with stewardesses taking little baskets with earth and flowers that are offered to the bereaved. Also there are professionals to make up the corpses with a suitable face, of peace and good colors.
Finally, Lenin’s Mausoleum is in the Red Square in the center of Moscow waiting for faithful communists. Eva Duarte’s tomb is in the Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires but nobody goes there. Winston Churchill is in Saint Martin’s Church, near Woodstock, England. Charles De Gaulle’s grave is in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, France. All of them are somewhere, in Taj Mahal, Malvinas, Valley of the Egyptian Dead, sand deserts, Churches, or cement of cities, but nobody is there, except guardians cleaning and taking care of the metal plates. At death they fled to other dimensions and left their simulacrum behind.
Is death a triumph or a defeat, or both things at a time, or is it different for each individual? Catholic Church, that is so scholastic and disciplined, has two strata, Paradise, Purgatory and Hell, according to merits of every one, as have been perfectly described by Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy. The Jews do not believe in life in the hereafter and regard death as the end and memory for relatives. Mohammedans classify the deceased according to their wealth; for the Mogul Emperor in Agra, the most beautiful building of the world, the Taj Mahal, and for the poor people of the desert, a place of two meters below sand. For seamen, the vast Ocean receiving them in its waters. For victims of fires, tsunamis, earthquakes and other natural misfortunes, nothing at all. So, what is death, a mystery we are unable to unveil, the end as in plants and animals, a stage in life to be traveled once and again until not starting again a new life on Earth? Christians believe in the first position; Jews, agnostics and the majority of modern men believe in the second position; and polytheists of the new race believe in the third position; and every one, according to his spiritual experiences, will take a position.
What is the spiritual triumph for those who follow the Way of Renunciation? To come progressively near to God en every one of the incarnations, little by little, until reaching the Substantial Union, not incarnating again karmically, except voluntarily to perform a work of good among men, constituting the Mystical Body of Great Initiates that the polytheistic tradition names Divine Mother, and the Catholic Church Communion of the Saints.
Such conception of spiritual triumph is for those who practice Renunciation, that is, for few. The majority confuses it with material success of every kind: wealth, political charges, popularity in sport games and television, to be the number one in all activities, to be in Guinness, to win a Nobel Prize, to be recognized by the street, and respected and admired. A clear example of what is publicly regarded as personal triumph is in the “Book of Job”, who started as a beggar, received many goods from God and became a rich man. To be a millionaire is a sign of spiritual triumph, as certain North-American pastor preach. Sumptuous ceremonies, attire, scenery of Saint Peter in Rome and an incalculable wealth in goods and money are also a visible sign of spiritual triumph of the Catholic Church. And masses, trapped by the illusion and image of the powerful, run toward the same prize. Maddoff in New York with three yachts and luxurious properties, drug traffickers in all countries, trade of weapons in the world, and prostitution, political corruption, thugs robbing and assaulting in broad daylight at the exit of banks, a business man that lies on the counter and evades his taxes, a physician that is eager for money, and so on. In the times of Jesus Nazarene, and in the Roman Empire, the situation was like that, and the Master had tough words against the rich: “They never will enter the Kingdom of Heaven”.
In the Mystique of great spiritual currents of the world, in all latitudes, students seek to acquire virtues and gifts of the soul, as you can see it well in Saints; Hindus seek it on getting psychical powers, clairvoyance, physical and astral journeys, control of pain as fakirs, and so on; Christians in the practice of charity, poverty and offering, with examples in Saint Vincent of Paul, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Saint Therese of Lisieux; and wisdom like Saint Thomas of Aquinas, Rumi, Lao-Tsu, and so on. There are examples beyond imagination and they all are in the service of souls seeking God. In Mystique of Aquarian Renunciation, the student takes entirely out his material and spiritual ambition, and through holocaust of the old personality he gets total detachment, ash and lack of aridity in the soul, as in the case of Great Initiates.
The Teaching “Mystique of Ash in Saint Paul of the Cross” says: “The most wonderful and surprising aspect in the life of Saint Paul of the Cross is his extraordinary spirit of renunciation and absolute detachment of anything in the world; and this is so great that he establishes in the Christian world a congregation totally devoted to achieve the mystical death”. “To follow the path to perfection and Renunciation, a soul must leave all ties, even spiritual ties, devotions, pleasant spiritual practices, lower consolations and ways of meditation, living a life of absolute renunciation to everything.” This keeps parallelism with death as we have described it in diverse cultures of the world. What does remain when the deceased are buried on the Garden of Peace in Mendoza? Nothing. And what does remain of Lenin, Evita and Churchill? Nothing. The mystical death is ahead of the fatal and painful event that is repeated once and again. By mystique of holocaust, a being does not return but remains on the dimension of the Masters; it is the Spiritual Triumph that cannot be proved by men of this Earth, however their great dignities may be, but by their peers on the highest plane of the Spiritual Dimension, that is to say, the Communion of Saints.
The Teaching “The Two Ways”, in Archaic Symbology says: “One reaches the Divine Union by two ways: by Abstraction or by Knowledge. The first way is Vel, and it is the wonderful one; a Golden Eagle watches over it, which is symbol of the highest and loftiest thing. The motto of the souls who travel through it is the Supreme Renunciation: to give everything, to know nothing, to go to the summit removing from illusion even its last veil. The other path is that of Knowledge. Its name is Aphel; it is long, tortuous and difficult”. “Also it reaches the summit because the multiple knowledge –through right intention– makes know and be free.” We recommend the entire reading of this very ancient Course to understand the theme of this Reflection, the Spiritual Triumph, because one cannot advance much with short pages and in the modern language of these days.
Notwithstanding, ideas in regard to spirit and matter are necessary at the end of the Christian Civilization, and many persons claim for them in the Canon of Internet, which are spread throughout all nations. In the last statistics received in relation to their spread, the two more powerful nations of the world –the United States and Russian Federation– are those who are at the forefront in the list of scholars who copy the Teachings.
José González Muñoz
May 2011