Musings on Immortality – Part 3

Transformation of Man:

Ultimately what we are trying to convey is the concept of a basic transformation of mankind. For every individual, this must obviously begin with his or her own self. That self is the only piece of the cosmos over which we have direct control and responsibility, and the only moment in which we can make changes with it is the fleeting “now.”

All the wisdom of the East is concerned with discovering the unity of life and transcending the sense of separation, so that the smaller self may merge with the greater Self – “The droplet slips into the ocean,” to quote the last line of Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia. As we have noted, the Western mind, in contrast, possesses a much greater concern for individuality. Now, however, we are approaching the Oneness, comprehending how it sifts down through all diversity. We now see that we must somehow transmute the lower self into Higher Self. Consciousness can ultimately expand to blend with the immensity of the universe; while at the same time, the paradoxical mystery and truth remains that somehow the ocean can pour itself into the drop. In meditation, we always have a focal point of consciousness, however far we lift out of the body. We are a point of light uniting with a stream of divine light, a strand of love in an ocean of love, a centre of thought moving in a vast field of thought, a point of stillness or courage in a matrix of those qualities.

Steiner uses the word “ego” not as Freud does, but as a descriptive term for that entity which moves from one incarnation to another. This is the spirit, the “I” which must give itself over to the indwelling of the numinous (divine). Whatever terms we use, we must see we are striving for this alchemical transmutation within the soul, which has accepted the I AM. This is the great evolutionary step.

Let us consider, for example, the following fragment from Francis Thompson’s poem, “The Mistress of Vision”:

Where is the Land of Luthenay?
Where is the tract of Elenore?
I am bound therefore.

Pierce thy heart to find the key:
With thee take
Only what none else would keep:
Learn to dream when thou dost wake
Learn to wake when thou dost sleep. . .
When to the new eyes of thee
All things by immortal power
Near and far,
Hiddenly
To each other linked are
Thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling a star . . .
Seek no more
Pass the gates of Luthenay, tread the region of Elenore.

Luthenay and Elenore are the mysterious etheric world, the land of spirit, Shamballah. The name Elenore is strangely emotive. The same sound is echoed in Alan Garner’s novel, Elidor, where two lads from a Manchester slum break through to that world of wonder. Twice in the lines cited above the soul appeals for help in finding the way. Then, the Higher Self responds. The key lies in the injunction to “pierce thy heart,” and the great secret is the knowledge, made good in experience, that we are part of the Oneness of being which underlies everything and dwells within every form. When that is “known,” there is a love for all being. Then the gates of Luthenay, the world of the etheric, are open. But to enter involves what T.S. Elliot describes as

A condition of complete simplicity
Costing not less than everything.


George Trevelyan