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PASSING ON

Off-print from - Sparks from the Infinite - "Il Cenacolo" Publications · Milan Italy 

 

 A soul has passed on, a soul has climbed one step higher up the divine ladder, the evolutionary scale, the stairway of forgiveness. We, though belonging to the soul-state of earthly beings, do not dwell upon the personal fact of this separation that has occurred but upon the selfless fact that co-exists with it.

If it is true that children are only lent to their parents in order to be educated and humanized, then it is also evident that parents, likewise, do not belong to their children. Both parents and children are the creations of God, desired and created by Him, and existing only in so far as He exists. So why would you, as human beings, create a physical sorrow for yourselves, since the loss you suffer when another passes on is merely the loss of a blood relationship, merely the destruction of matter?

Reflect a moment on this fact, seemingly so fearful and yet essentially very simple, as simple as anything can be. Matter is a mass of energies, transitorily condensed together for the period that lasts from the time you are born to the time you pass away. After you have passed on, the energies that were condensed into matter completely disintegrate, becoming re-converted into energies (even the bones, which though enclosed in urns yet eventually crumble and disappear, perhaps after centuries have passed), for in time nothing can be eternal, all is transitory: eternity is here above. This matter which has been transformed into energy is the covering that enables the Spirit to operate physically. This means that it works on matter, enabling it to move and endowing it with the power of acting materially, physically, for its own sake and above all for the sake of its fellows. The Spirit is eternal, the flame is divine. The motion of passing on means an entry into reality, a reality that may be burning, perhaps even disappointing, but which yet contains one decisive point: eternity based on love, eternity based on the Father.

The indestructible bond, which will be formed between what was a human creature and the Creator of that created being, should be an incomparable source of joy and peace to you. When one of your parents dies, you tend to think: “I am the child of this human creature who has now passed from this life, I have lost the person who gave me life.”

 This is the first error: a parent gives physical life, he bears a karmic burden, a burden imposed by the Law, but life itself was a gift of the Father. The movement from this life to the next is no more than a return, for there has been an account outstanding between the being passed on and the Everlasting, a reckoning that has to be settled, following the projection out of the Infinite into the finite of those who were the masters of their own fate, the precipitates, towards whom this soul still feels yearnings and a sense of attachment. When the passing-on has taken place, a mass of energy still surrounds the creature: this is the perispirit, which is the protective covering of the Spirit, while the external matter, the body, constituted the moving part of the created being. This physical part is the first to be shed, being transformed from matter into energy.

A soul leaves the earth, enclosed in a covering, which no longer retains the ambitions, intolerances, injustices, envy of the material being, but it still carries some traces of all these negative factors, so, as soon as the perispirit enclosing the soul has set itself free, it goes towards a place that I shall call a place of rest, where it is isolated from the infinite movement. This isolation may last a day or a century, depending on the karmic burden that it has borne in time, a double burden, both physical and spiritual. The length of its stay in the place of rest, of recovery, of reconquest of its capacity will depend on the degree of this twofold burden. The greater that strain has been, the longer the soul and the perispirit will remain in the place of rest.

However it is clear that the first point to analyse is not the parting from earth but the point of arrival, the state of repose, of regeneration, which I have spoken of. The soul that has passed on is no longer in a state of anxiety, of anguish, of rebellion, of suffering, of trouble, but is at rest, and will remain in this state of immobility until the recharging of its energies has transported perispirit and soul into the environment (biothesis) where it continues and complete the process of becoming conscious and atoning for its initial fault and any other faults it may have accumulated during its successive lifetimes.

Naturally you will want to know at this point whether the soul has to undergo unending punishment. The answer is no, because of the Father’s love, the Father’s justice, the Father’s mercy. The Father’s mercy is at work, as you know, during the earthly lifetime, while His love and justice operate beyond the human confines. The soul passes into the region assigned to it, which may be a place of meditation if the soul is at an early stage of its evolution and an increasingly intense sphere of activity as it ascends, bettering itself. As the soul ascends, the covering that encloses the Spirit, the perispirit, will gradually fade, until in the last biothesis there will no longer be any trace of the perispirit and the soul will exist in absolute transparency and freedom, in the absolute potency of its powers and faculties. It will thus be enabled to serve the Father once more, as it did before its fall, and in serving the Father serve the whole infinite motion, for we all share in the infinite motion by the will of the Father and at His behest.

So far we have followed the soul from its earthly parting to its arrival in the redeeming biothesis. I shall go on. Customarily you continue to think of the absent one, you feel a sense of loss and this causes you to suffer, or else you think of him hard at work during the day or loving towards his children, and in this way you create a suffering for yourselves which you think of as your individual sorrow. This is another error which you commit.

If you have truly loved the departed one, you should not cause his departed soul suffering by thoughts such as these but bring it joy, remembering always that suffering is power that hinders, while joy is power that releases strength and soars upwards to the highest planes. So if a mourner goes to the cemetery, to the place of burial, and gives way to tears, indulges in memories and laments, these not only fail to reach their aim, not only harm the living person, but actually hinder the progress of the departed soul as well. This is because the one that has passed on, now liberated from a part of his burden, still retains a veil of perispirit and has the power to follow its living kinsfolk. The absent one thus sees the mourner before his now worthless mortal remains, already partly transformed into energy; sees once more his own physical lineaments, and a struggle takes place between the appeals of the surviving relative and the departed soul that, in accordance with the divine will, must resist and go on its own way. It is, in truth, an unequal struggle, which the soul is bound to win, but one which leaves it, for a long time, marked by traces of strain and anguish.

If, however, the survivor retains a loving memory of the absent one and thinks of him as intent on receiving the reward for the burden he has endured and borne successfully to the end (for the absent one human effort constituted a burden, but a joyful burden, in that it was the fruit of the creative capacity of the Spirit, which saw its own creatures flourish through the contribution it had itself made), then amidst this atmosphere of lovingness a flow of harmony is created and the survivor senses the closeness of the dear departed, feeling a surrounding warmth which cannot be explained. This warmth comes from the energies of gratitude emanating from the departed. If you have not gone to the cemetery, have not imposed that appeal on the departed, have not forced him into that tug-of-war, a conflict that always impedes his evolutionary movement, but have still preserved his image and his presence in your hearts and spirits as well as in your minds, you can thank him spiritually – with quite different effects – for the knowledge, serenity, peace and love he has given you. This gratitude of yours will constitute an encouragement for the departed, enabling him to ascend more rapidly towards the goal which all men should aspire to reach. By remembering the departed in peace, in love, in joy and above all in action, you have not only helped him to continue in his ascent but you have yourselves learnt to impart your energies to your fellows, just as the departed did in his turn with you when you were children.

 This is the spirit of brotherhood in action, and once again a unity is created, confirming that no one is cut off from any other person, but all of us, though separated from the divine source, must hold ourselves in readiness, drawn closer together, not only by our own power but also by the power of our absent ones, those who have already set out on the voyage of return.

In moments which you define as sorrowful, your thoughts often turn to those whom you call the Saints. The Saints – and this you know well – do not exist. There do exist souls who have purified themselves in sorrow and suffering, but there is only one Saint in the Heavens: the Father. He is the only Holy One! He is the Uncreated, He created the Infinite when the Infinite did not yet exist, no one can excel Him in power, in love, in wisdom. He is the only Holy One!

What need is there for you to appeal to an intermediary for your thoughts to reach the Lord? The Lord reads the thoughts of all men, one by one. However, the Lord does make use of these servants, of these essences that have ascended to Him, in order to bring aid to those still alive.

You must once again remember that, if you suffer, you bring suffering to others. For you, however, the suffering will be temporary, passing, fleeting, since the circumstances of physical life are such and so varied in the karma of each as to overwhelm you, causing you to become unmindful even of the thoughts which you should devote to the absent ones. A maxim of the wisdom of the ancient Chinese, who were spiritually much more advanced than you are, states: “Weep when a soul sees the light of day and laugh when he departs from it”, for the loss of freedom and power is sorrow, there is sorrow in the return to confinement. You should indeed weep when a baby is born, for it must labour in obedience to the commandment of our Father, who has said: “The man shall eat bread in the sweat of his brow, the woman shall bring forth children in pain”, so setting the seal of suffering on the motion of earthly life and the higher life of every human being.

This is the reason why you must free your mind of all these memories, remembering that passing on is only the accomplishment of one tiny evolutionary moment. A hundred may set out and fifty arrive; the other fifty will arrive tomorrow or another day: it is a rhythmical, complementary movement. Everyday occurrences are your salvation and should teach you that life is meant to be lived day by day, moment by moment, task by task. All that should matter to you is what tomorrow will bring and that tomorrow must be constructed individually by every single person. Yesterday is a motion which is no longer important, except for that reckoning which you will have to make, in due time, to the Father. When you find yourselves before Him, after your departure and your re-awakening, He will ask you, “Why did you do this? Why did you fail to do that? Why did you react in this way? Why didn’t you forgive this person?”. The thought of this moment, which will come in the near future, should act as a spur on you, so that when you find yourselves before His throne, He will not have a list of deeds that will lead you to be judged unfavourably. Act so that your life tomorrow will be a model life, a pattern of blamelessness. Take whatever you have received from your parents, through their teachings, their sacrifices, their self-denial, their labour, and pass it on in your turn, for in doing so you will attain a joy you have never known before.

Think of the absent one in peace and rest, with the awareness of having followed his earthly course in harmony and keeping with the will of the Eternal, and may this thought constitute your joy, your comfort. I emphasize this, not with the aim of lessening your sorrow or pain but with the aim of restoring to the rapidity of the evolutionary motion those absent ones whom you are unconsciously striving to keep bound to yourself and the fallen world. Your error lies in recalling a form, a gesture, a gift, and creating a shrine for it to which you devote your thoughts: that shrine will grow into a place of evil, harmful to your own peace and to the peace of the absent ones.

I shall now consider a further aspect of the human consequences of the movement of passing on, an aspect which will induce you to give of yourselves. From every event that you foolishly describe as mournful there is a profound lesson which must be learnt, a potential wisdom which must be assimilated.

Before you there is one of your brothers in Christ who is going through a moment of anguish caused by the passing away of a relative and you, sharing in his grief and anguish, grieve and mourn yourselves to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the greater or lesser degree of sympathy between yourselves and the mourner. However, it is clear that at the same instant, all over the world, tens of thousands of other created beings have separated themselves from the power that until then had bound them to the earth. Their bodies have remained behind and their souls have ascended to their just atonement. Confronted with the passing on of these created ones, there are humans who are feeling the same sorrow, the same grief, the same suffering, the same bitterness that is now tormenting your brother. Now, if you are capable of sympathizing with the grief of one of your brethren because you know him personally, why should you not be able to sympathize with the grief of all those who are suffering, who are unknown to you and yet are still your brethren?

This is the crucial point. Love must no longer be directed only towards the circle of one’s acquaintances, one’s friends, one’s own kinsfolk. Love should be given as Christ gave it, by making the impulse to give all-embracing and remembering that every grain in the hour-glass represents a moment of sorrow, of grief, of anguish for a certain number of beings living in time, so that in truth there are tears always being shed from human eyes.

A passing-on in time, an evolutionary step, has confronted you potentially with reality, the reality that must be embraced in the absolute, since otherwise your labour and our labour would have been in vain. Love one another as He, the Only Begotten, loves you. Jesus did not say: “Love your friend, love your brother.” He said: “Love your fellow men.” Loving means giving and it follows that the gift is the first and fundamental manifestation of love.

How can one give? How should one give?

When it is a question of someone linked to you by bonds of affection, it is customary to set aside a moment of the day when all your minds must be united to form an active and effective force. Setting aside a moment, a time, constitutes a human impulse enclosed in itself which may possess the characteristics of a circle, or be circle-like, but it is in any case always circumscribed. The thought-wave departs from one individual, it links together the individuals engaged in the thinking process, and returns to the first individual. This is, I repeat, a human motion, not a motion capable of radiating energies and conferring help. Each individual produces a thought of his own, but the formation of this thought is not itself valuable, since only the act of all being united in thought together at that given moment for that pre-arranged commitment can sustain the wish to raise an appeal to the Eternal to succour that given individual. The first movement formed was, it is true, a self-enclosed motion, a finite motion, consisting of the formulation of the thought, but this was followed by an appeal to the Eternal for assistance, involving the renunciation of one’s own self for the sake of the one towards whom the succour is directed. Within this circle, a potential mass is created which intersects from individual to individual and composes a series of thought triangles within the circle itself, with the succouring energies radiating outwards from the vertex of each of these triangles. These triangular thought energies cannot radiate directly towards the individual whom it is desired to benefit but are projected towards the Heavens, since without the consent of the Eternal, nothing is possible. The process as a whole consists of a strengthening of human thought by permission of the Law, with the assistance of the Law. If the Law withholds its consent, the thought is in vain. Those who have produces it, have formulated it, are entitled to a reward for their goodness, but this is a barren reward, since the attempt itself has proved fruitless, the Law having cast its veto against it. Such cases may be considered exceptional but they are always a possibility and should be judged accordingly.

The triangular forms of thought emitted by you with the purpose of bestowing a gift, once approved by the Law, are projected, by the Law itself, towards the mourning survivor and are triangular shapes, signifying that they are potential ones (remember what I have said, concerning the stellar worlds in their triangular forms of emission[1]), which remain, endure and linger in existence for a period varying from three to ten of your days. They fade all the more slowly, the deeper the grief and mourning have been and the intenser the appeal to the Eternal for His grace. If, on the other hand, the thought has been superficial, then the motion composed of its energies will fade much more quickly. In any case, the period of time which you call one day will be repeated three times before the gift conferred fades completely.

All this once more confirms that there is no indispensable necessity for any gifts of money, no absolute requirement of physical nourishment; there is not even any need for a word of comfort spoken humanly, physically. Instead, there is the indispensable need for elaboration of succour through thought, the indispensable need to project these energies which should bear with them and far away from you a part of your own psychophysical being. Make your thoughts far-ranging, try to take away the suffering from every individual you see and also from those you cannot see because they are too far removed from you. Try to absorb a part of this sorrow, a part of the labour achieved and endured daily; try to make it your own, and in the evening, when you have fulfilled your human task, your karmic task, remember you are children of the Everlasting, brethren of the only Begotten, brothers of all humanity. Forget your labours, your cares, your sorrows, your karma, and send yourselves into those homes where from moment to moment someone is passing away, the places where some tragedy, some act of injustice, some sorrow, is about to take place. Try for a moment to stop smiling, try, if possible, to shed a tear, and may that tear-drop be dedicated to all those who are sorrowing unknown to you: give yourselves in this way wholly and unreservedly, as Jesus gave himself to humanity.

Thought is fleeting but if it is intense its continuance will be prolonged and you will achieve a double objective, since the energies donated today will be doubled tomorrow, tripled the day after, and so forth; and imperceptibly you will bring the suffering a wealth of succour quite beyond your conception and yet without any harm to yourselves.

Rest assured that even if you were to assimilate the suffering of all humanity, the following day you would not feel the burden and even at the time it would not crush you. “Love one another as He loves you,” means perpetuating this triangular movement of giving which constitutes in its fulfilment the salvation of humanity.

Wars, you should always remember, only arise because this basis of love-energies is lacking. Today you know something which would have been of no use to you to know yesterday. Try to spread this teaching which is so important for all humanity.

 

 

 

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