THE CLOUD OVER THE SANCTUARY
SOMETHING OF WHICH THE PROUD PHILOSOPHY OF OUR CENTURY DOESN'T DOUBTS

By Councilor D'ECKHARTSHAUSEN

Absque nube pro nobis



TO MEDITATE BEFORE READING THE LETTERS

(Excerpt from a treatise on chemistry by M. d'Eckhartshausen).


Si oculus tuus fuerit simplex totum corpus tuumlucidum erit. (St. Luke, chap. 11, v. 34.)
The inner eye of man is reason, potentiahominis intellectiva, mens.

If this inner eye is illuminated by divine light, then it is the true inner sun, through which all objects come to our knowledge.
As long as the divine light does not illuminate this eye, our interior lives in darkness. The dawn of our interior begins when this light rises.
This sun of the soul illuminates our intellectual world, as the external sun illuminates the external world.
As, at sunrise outside, the objects of the sensible world gradually become visible to us; thus, at the rising of the spiritual sunrise, the intellectual objects of the spiritual or rational world come to our knowledge.
As the outer light enlightens us on the Way of our pilgrimage, so the inner light enlightens us on the path of salvation.
But, as the outer eye of man is exposed to different dangers, so is the inner eye. The inner eye must be kept healthy, pure and unalterable: then it can rise, like the outer eye, to heaven; and, as the outer eye can gaze upon the firmament, the stars, and the sun, so the inner eye can see all the heavens, the angels, and even God—as it is written: Signatum est super nos lumen Vultûs tui, (Ps. 4) ; Ostendam omne bonum tibi, (Ex. 6, 33.)
What a great destiny for the inner man!
His spiritual can rise to angels and super-angelic intelligences; he can approach the Throne of Divinity, and see in himself all the magnificence of the divine, spiritual, and physical worlds; Averte oculum tuum, ne videat vanitatem.
Turn away your soul, your inner eye, from all things that are not God; close it to the night of errors and prejudices, and open it only to the spiritual Sun.
This spiritual Sun is Jesus Christ! For, as the external sun possesses light and heat, makes everything visible and brings everything to fruition; thus this inner sun renders everything capable of being known in the mind, and active in the heart: for Wisdom and Love are its forces, reason and the will of man its organs. He perfects our powers with Wisdom and our will with Love.

ON HUMAN FORCE DEVELOPMENT

The more organs a body has for the reception, development and propagation of various influences, the more certainly its existence is rich and perfect, because it has more vital potential. But several forces can sleep in us for which we have no organs, and which consequently cannot act.
These latent forces can be awakened, that is, we can organize ourselves so that they become active within us. The organ is a form in which a force acts; but all form consists in the definite direction of the parts towards the acting force. To organize for the action of a force simply means to give the parts such a form or situation, so that the force can act there. This is what the organization is all about.
Now, just as for a man who has no organs, no eyes for the light, the light really does not exist, when however all those who have this organ enjoy it; thus many men may not enjoy something that others may enjoy. I mean that a man could be organized in such a way that he would smell, hear, see, taste things that another could not smell, hear, see, or taste, because he would lack the organ.
Thus, in this case, all explanations would be fruitless; for one would always mingle the ideas which he would have received by his particular organ with the ideas of the other, and he could taste and understand something only so far as it approached his own sensations. As we receive all our ideas through the senses, and all the operations of our reason are abstractions of sensible impressions, so we cannot form any idea of ​​many things, because we have not yet any sensations of these things. Only that for which we have an organ becomes perceptible to us.
Hence it seems to be demonstrated that men organized for the development of higher forces cannot give to those who are not organized for that any idea, except a very vague one, of the higher truth. So all our disputes and our writings are of little use. Men must first be organized for the perception of truth. When we wrote entire folios on light, blind people would not see any clearer. They must first be given the organ of vision.
Now the question is: What is the organ of perception of truth? What makes man capable of receiving it? I answer: In simplicity of heart; for simplicity puts the heart in a suitable situation to purely receive the ray of reason and this organizes the heart for the reception of Light.

FIRST LETTER

No century is more remarkable to the peaceful observer than ours. Everywhere there is fermentation in the mind as in the heart of man; everywhere there is combat of light with darkness, of dead ideas with living ideas, of the dead and powerless will with living and active force; everywhere finally there is war between the animal man and the nascent spiritual man.
Natural man!... renounce your last strength, your very combat announces the superior nature which slumbers in you... You sense your dignity, you even feel it; but everything is still dark around you, and the lamp of your weak reason is not sufficient to illuminate the objects to which you should aim.
It is said that we live in the age of enlightenment, it would be more accurate to say that we live in the age of twilight: here and there the ray of light penetrates through the cloud of darkness, but it does not yet illuminate, in all its purity, our reason and our heart. Men do not agree on their conceptions; scholars argue; and where there is dispute, there is still no truth.
The most important objects for humanity are still undetermined. We do not agree on the principle of reason or on the principle of morality or the motive of the will. This is proof that, despite the fact that we are in the great age of enlightenment, we still do not really know what is going on with our head and our heart.
We might know all this sooner, if we did not imagine that we already have the torch of knowledge in our hands, or if we could look at our weakness and recognize that we still lack a higher light. We live in times of the idolatry of reason; we lay a pitch torch on the altar, and we shout loudly that now it is the dawn and that day is really dawning everywhere, in that the world is rising more and more from darkness to light and perfection by arts, sciences, cultivated taste, and even by a pure understanding of religion.

Poor men! how far have you pushed it, the happiness of men? Has there ever been a century which has cost humanity so many victims as the present century? Was there ever a century where immorality was greater and selfishness was more dominant than in this one? The tree is recognized by its fruits. Foolish people!... With your imaginary natural reason... where do you get the light with which you want to enlighten others so well? Are not all your ideas borrowed from the senses, which do not give you the truth, but only phenomena?
Is not all that knowledge gives in time and space relative? Is not all that we can call truth relative truth?... Absolute truth cannot be found in the sphere of phenomena. So your natural reason has not the essential, but only the appearance of truth and light; but the more this appearance increases and spreads, the more the essence of light decreases within, and man loses himself in appearance and gropes for dazzling images devoid of reality.
The philosophy of our age elevates feeble natural reason to independent objectivity; it even attributes to it a legislative power; it removes it from a higher authority; it makes it autonomous and deifies it, by suppressing between God and it all relationship, all communication; and this deified reason, which has no other law than its own, must govern men and make them happy!... Darkness must spread light!... Poverty must give wealth! ... And death must make alive!
The truth leads men to their happiness... Can you give it?
What you call truth is a form of conception empty of substance, the knowledge of which has been acquired from without, through the senses; and the understanding coordinates them by a synthesis of the relations observed in science or in opinions. – You have no material truth, the spiritual and material principle is for you in noumenon.
You abstract from Scripture and tradition moral truth, theoretical and practical; but as individuality is the principle of your reason, and selfishness is the motive force of your will, you do not see your light, the moral law which commands, or you reject it with your will. This is how far the current lights have been carried. Individuality, under the cloak of philosophical hypocrisy, is the child of corruption.
Who can claim that the sun is at high noon, if no luminous ray gladdens the country, and if no heat vivifies the plants? If wisdom does not improve men, and if love does not make them happy, very little has yet been done for the whole.
Oh ! if only the natural man or the man of the senses could learn to see that the principle of his reason and the motive force of his will are only individuality, and that for that very reason he must be extremely miserable, he would seek a higher principle within himself, and he would approach the source, which alone can give it to all, because it is wisdom in essence .
AD is Wisdom, Truth and Love. Like Wisdom, it is the principle of reason, the source of the purest knowledge. Like Love, it is the principle of morality, the essential and pure motive force of the will. Love and Wisdom engender the Spirit of Truth, the inner light; this light illuminates the supernatural objects in us and makes them objective for us. It is inconceivable how far man falls into error when he abandons the simple truths of faith, and opposes them with his own opinion.
Our century seeks to define cerebrally the principle of reason and morality or the motive of the will; if learned gentlemen were attentive, they would see that these things would find a better answer in the heart of the simplest man than in all their brilliant reasonings. The practical Christian finds this motive of the will, the principle of all morality, objectively and really in his heart, and this motive is expressed in the following formula:
Love God above all, and your neighbor as yourself.
The love of God and neighbor is the motive force of the Christian's will; and the essence of love itself is Jesus Christ within us. Thus the principle of reason is wisdom in us; and the essence of wisdom, wisdom in substance, is still Jesus Christ, the Light of the world. Thus we find in Him the principle of reason and morality.
All that I say here is not a hyper physical extravagance, it is the reality, the absolute truth, which each one can test experimentally as soon as he receives in him the principle of reason and morality, J.-C., as being essential Wisdom and Love. But the eye of the man of senses is profoundly incapable of grasping the absolute basis of all that is true and all that is transcendental. And even the reason that we want to raise to the throne today as legislator, is only the reason of the senses, whose light differs from the transcendental light, as the phosphorescence of rotten wood differs from the splendor of the sun.
Absolute truth does not exist for the man of the senses, it exists only for the interior and spiritual man alone, who possesses his own sensorium; or, to put it more punctually, who possesses an inner sense to perceive the absolute truth of the transcendental world; a spiritual sense which perceives spiritual objects as naturally in objectivity, as the external sense perceives external objects. This inner sense of the spiritual man, this sensorium of a metaphysical world, is unfortunately not yet known to those outside, and it is a mystery of the kingdom of God. The current incredulity for all the things where our reason of the senses finds no sensible objectivity, is the cause which makes misunderstand the most important truths for the men.
But how can it be otherwise? to see, one must have eyes; to hear, ears. Any sensitive object requires its meaning. Thus the transcendental object also requires its sensorium – and this same sensorium is closed for most men. Hence the man of the senses judges the metaphysical world as the blind judge colors, and as the deaf judge sound. There is an objective and substantial principle of reason and an objective and substantial motive of the will. These two together form the new principle of life, and morality is essentially inherent in it. This pure substance of reason and will united is the divine and the human in us, the Light of the world, which must enter into direct relationship with us in order to be truly known.

Thus, there must necessarily be for this communication an organized and spiritual sensorium, a spiritual and interior organ capable of receiving this light, but which is closed in most men by the bark of the senses. This inner organ is the intuitive sense of the transcendental world; and until this sense of intuition is opened in us, we can have no objective certainty of higher truth. This organ was closed as a result of the fall, which threw man into the world of the senses. The coarse matter which envelops this inner sensorium is a quagmire which covers the inner eye and renders the outer eye incapable of seeing the spiritual world. This same material deafens our inner hearing, so that we no longer hear the sounds of the metaphysical world;it paralyzes our inner tongue, so that we can no longer even stammer the words of strength of spirit which we used to utter, and by which we commanded the outer nature and the elements.
The opening of this spiritual sensorium is the mystery of the New Man, the mystery of Regeneration and of the most intimate union of man with God; it is the highest goal of religion here below, of this religion whose most sublime destination is to unite men to God in Spirit and in Truth. We can easily see from this why religion always tends to the subjugation of the man of the senses. It does so because it wants to make the spiritual man dominant, so that the spiritual or truly rational man will rule the man of the senses. The philosopher also feels this truth; only his mistake consists in not knowing the true principle of reason, and wants to put in his place his individuality, his reason of the senses.
As man has in his interior a spiritual organ and a sensorium to receive the real principle of reason or divine Wisdom, and the real motive of the will, or divine Love, so he has in the exterior a physical and material sensorium to receive the appearance of light and truth . As external nature has not the absolute truth, but only the relative truth of the phenomenal world, so human reason cannot acquire intelligible truths either, but only the appearance of the phenomenon which only excites in it, for motive of its will, concupiscence, in which consists the corruption of sensory man and the degradation of nature.

The outer sensorium of man is composed of corruptible matter, while the inner sensorium has as its fundamental substrate an incorruptible, transcendental and metaphysical substance. The first is the cause of our depravity and mortality; the second is the principle of our incorruptibility and our immortality. In the realms of material and corruptible nature, mortality masks immortality, and the cause of our miserable state is corruptible and perishable matter. For man to be delivered from this distress, it is necessary that the immortal and incorruptible principle internalized in him exteriorizes and absorbs the corruptible principle, so that the envelope of the senses is destroyed and man can appear in his original purity.
This envelope of the sentient nature is an essentially corruptible substance, which is found in our blood, forms the bonds of the flesh and enslaves our immortal spirit to this mortal flesh. It is possible to tear more or less this envelope in each man and, consequently, to procure for his spirit a greater freedom so that it arrives at a more precise knowledge of the transcendental world.
There are three successive degrees of the opening of our spiritual sensorium. The first raises us only to the moral plane, and the transcendental world operates there in us by inner impulses, called inspirations. The second, higher degree opens our sensorium for the reception of the spiritual and the intellectual, and the world works in us by interior illuminations.
The third and highest degree – the most rarely achieved – opens the entire inner man. It reveals to us the Kingdom of the Spirit and makes us capable of objectively experiencing metaphysical and transcendental realities; hence, all visions are basically explained. Thus, we have sense and objectivity in the interior, as we have in the exterior. Only the objects and the senses are different. In the exterior there is the animal and sensual motive which acts upon us, and the corruptible matter of the senses undergoes the action.
In the interior, it is the indivisible and metaphysical substance which is introduced into us, and the incorruptible and immortal being of our spirit receives its influences. But, in general, in the interior, things happen as naturally as in the exterior; the law is everywhere the same. So, as the spirit or our inner man has a completely different meaning and another objectivity than the natural man, we should not be surprised that it remains an enigma for the scholars of our century who do not know this meaning, and who have never had the objective perception of the transcendental and spiritual world.From there, they measure the supernatural with the measure of the senses, confused corruptible matter with incorruptible substance, and their judgments are necessarily false on an object for the perception of which they have neither sense nor objectivity and, consequently, neither relative truth, nor absolute truth. As regards the truths which we enunciate here, we have an infinite obligation to the philosophy of Kant.
Kant has unquestionably proved that reason, in its natural state, knows absolutely nothing of the supernatural, the spiritual and the transcendental, and that it can know nothing, neither analytically nor synthetically, and that thus it can prove neither the possibility nor the reality of spirits, souls and God. This is a great, lofty and beneficial truth for our times; it is true that St. Paul has already established it (first epistle to the Corinthians, chap. 1, v. 2, 24); but the pagan philosophy of Christian scholars knew how to ignore it until Kant.
The benefit of this truth is twofold. First, it sets insurmountable limits to sentiment, fanaticism, and the extravagance of carnal reason. Then it puts in the brightest light the necessity and the divinity of Revelation. Which proves that our human reason, in its obtuse state, has no objective source for the supernatural without revelation; no source from which to learn about God, the spiritual world, the soul and its immortality; whence it follows that it would be absolutely impossible, without revelation, to know anything and to conjecture anything about these things.
So we are indebted to Kant for proving to philosophers in our day, as it had long been in a higher school of the community of light, that without Revelation no knowledge of God, nor any doctrine about the soul, was possible . By which it is clear that a universal Revelation must serve as a fundamental basis for all religions in the world.
Thus, according to Kant, it is proved that the intelligible world is entirely inaccessible to natural reason, and that God dwells in a light into which no speculation of limited reason can penetrate . Thus, the man of the senses or the natural man has no objectivity of the transcendental; hence the revelation of higher truths was necessary to him, and for that very reason also faith in revelation, because faith gives him the means to open his inner sensorium, by which truths inaccessible to the natural man can become perceptible to him. It is quite right that with new senses we can acquire new realities. These realities already exist, but we do not notice them, because we lack the organ of receptivity.
This is how the color is there, although the blind do not see it; this is how sound exists, although the deaf do not hear it. The fault should not be sought in the perceptible object, but in the receptive organ. With the development of a new organ, we have a new perception, new objectivities. The spiritual world does not exist for us, because the organ which makes it objective in us is not developed. With the development of this new organ, the curtain is suddenly lifted; the impenetrable veil hitherto is torn, the cloud in front of the sanctuary is dissipated, a new world suddenly exists for us; the pillowcases fall from the eyes, and we are immediately transported from the region of phenomena into that of truth.
God alone is substance, absolute truth, he alone is he who Is, and we are what he made us. For Him, everything exists in unity; for us, everything exists in multiplicity. Many men have no idea of ​​this opening of the inner sensorium, any more than they have any idea of ​​the true and inner object of the life of the spirit, which they in no way know or sense.
From there, it is impossible for them to know that one can grasp the spiritual and the transcendental, and that one can be raised to the supernatural up to the vision. The true building of the temple consists only in destroying the miserable Adamic cottage, and in building the temple of the divinity; it is, in other words, to develop in us the interior sensorium or the organ which receives God; after this development, the metaphysical and incorruptible principle reigns over the earthly principle, and man begins to live, no longer in the principle of self-love, but in the Spirit and in the Truth of which he is the Temple.

The moral law then passes into love of neighbor and in fact, whereas it is for the natural, exterior man of the senses, only a simple form of thought; and the spiritual man, regenerated in the spirit, sees all in the being, of which the natural man has only the empty forms of thought, the empty sound, the symbols and the letter, all of which are dead images, without the inner spirit. The highest goal of religion is the most intimate union of man with God, and this union is, even here below, already possible; but it is so only through the opening of our inner and spiritual sensorium which makes our heart susceptible to receiving God. These are great mysteries of which our philosophy does not suspect, and the key to which cannot be found among the scholars of the school.
Meanwhile, a higher school has always existed, to which this depository of all science has been entrusted, and this school was the inner and luminous community of the Lord, the society of the Elect which has spread without interruption from the first day of creation until the present time; its members, it is true, are scattered throughout the world, but they have always been united by one spirit and one truth, and. have never had but one knowledge, one source of truth, one lord, one doctor, and one master in whom substantially resides the universal plenitude of God, and who alone initiated them into the lofty mysteries of Nature and the Spiritual World.
This community of light has always been called the invisible and interior Church, or the most ancient community, of which we will speak more fully in the next letter.

SECOND LETTER

It is necessary, my beloved brethren in the Lord, to give you a pure idea of ​​the interior Church, of this luminous Community of God which is scattered throughout the world; but which is governed by a truth and united by a spirit.
This community of light has existed since the first day of the creation of the world, and its duration will be until the last day of time. It is the society of the elect who know the light in the darkness, and separate it in what is proper to it.
This community of light has a School in which the Spirit of Wisdom Himself instructs those who thirst for light; and all the mysteries of God and nature are preserved in this school for the children of light. The perfect knowledge of God, of nature and of humanity, are the objects of the teaching of this school. It is from her that all the truths come in the world; it was the school of the prophets and of all those who seek wisdom; and it is only in this one community that we find the truth and the explanation of all the mysteries. It is the innermost community and has members from various worlds; here are the ideas we must have of her. Always,
Thus, at all times, there has been an inner assembly, the society of the elect, the society of those who had the greatest capacity for light and who seek it; and this inner society was called the inner sanctuary or the inner Church. All that the outer Church possesses in symbols, ceremonies and rites, is the letter whose spirit and truth are in the inner Church. Thus the inner Church is a society whose members are scattered throughout the whole world, but which a spirit of love and truth binds within, and which from all time has been occupied in building the great temple for the regeneration of mankind, by which the kingdom of God will be manifested. This society resides in the communion of those who have the most receptivity for the light, or the elect.

These elect are bound by spirit and truth, and their leader is the Light of the World itself; Jesus Christ, Point of light, the unique mediator of the human species, the Way, the Truth and the Life; the primitive light, wisdom, the only medium! by which men can return to God. The interior Church was born immediately after the fall of man, and received from God immediately the revelation of the means by which the fallen human race will be restored to its dignity, and delivered from its misery. She received the primitive deposit of all revelations and mysteries; she received the key to true science, both divine and natural.
But when men multiplied, the frailty of man and his weakness made necessary an outer society which kept the inner society hidden, and which covered the spirit and the truth with the letter. For, as the community, the crowd, the people were not capable of understanding the great interior mysteries, and as the danger would have been too great to entrust the holiest to the incapable, the interior truths were enveloped in exterior and sensible ceremonies, so that man, through the sensible and the exterior which is the symbol of the interior, would gradually be made capable of approaching more closely the interior truths of the spirit.
But the interior has always been entrusted to the person who, in his time, had the most receptivity for light; and he alone was the possessor of the original deposit as high priest in the sanctuary. When it became necessary for the inner truths to be enveloped in outer and symbolic ceremonies, because of the weakness of men who were not able to bear the sight of light, outer worship arose; but he was always the type and the symbol of the interior, that is to say the symbol of the true homage paid to God in spirit and in truth.
The difference between the spiritual man and the animal man, or between the rational man and the man of the senses, necessitated the exterior and the interior. The internal and spiritual truths passed outwardly wrapped up in symbols and ceremonies, so that the animal or sense-man could be made aware and gradually led to the inner truths. Therefore, exterior worship was a symbolic representation of interior truths, of man's true relationship with God before and after the fall, in the state of his dignity, of his reconciliation and of his most perfect reconciliation. All symbols of outward worship are built upon these three fundamental relationships.
The care of external worship was the occupation of the priests, and every father of a family was, in the first times, entrusted with this office. The first fruits and the first born of animals were offered to God; the first, as a symbol that everything that nourishes and preserves us comes from him; and the latter as a symbol that the animal man must be killed to make room for the spiritual and rational man. The outward worship of God should never have been separated from the inward worship; but as the weakness of man so easily leads him to forget the spirit to attach himself to the letter, the Spirit of God always awakened, among all nations, those who had the most aptitude for the light,
By these divine instruments the inner truths of the sanctuary were carried among the most distant nations, and modified symbolically according to their uses, their capacity for cultivation, their climate, and their receptivity. So that the outward types of all religions, their cults, their ceremonies, and their holy books in general, have more or less clearly for their object the inner truths of the sanctuary by which mankind will be led, only in the end times, to the universality of the knowledge of one truth. The more the outward worship of a people remained united with the spirit of the inner truths, the purer was its religion; but the more the symbolic letter was separated from the inner spirit, the more religion became imperfect,
When the seeds of the most important truths had been carried among all peoples by the agents of God, God chose a determined people to raise up a living symbol intended to show how he intended to rule the whole human race in its present state, and to bring it to its highest purification and perfection. God himself gave to this people his external religious legislation; and, as a sign of his truth, he handed over to him all the symbols and all the ceremonies which bore the imprint of the interior and grandiose truths of the sanctuary.

God consecrated this outward Church in Abraham, gave him commandments through Moses, and assured him of his highest perfection by the double sending of Jesus Christ, first existing personally in poverty and suffering, then by the communication of his spirit in the glory of the risen. Now, as God himself laid the foundation of the outward church, the totality of the symbols of outward worship formed the science of the temple or of the priests of those times, and all the mysteries of the most holy and inward truths became outward by revelation.
The scientific knowledge of this holy symbolism was the science of linking fallen man to God, and hence religion received its name as the doctrine linking man, separated and distant from God, to God who is his origin. We easily see by this pure idea of ​​the word religion in general, that the unity of religion is in the innermost Sanctuary, and that the multiplicity of exterior religions can never change or weaken this unity which is the basis of all exterior. The wisdom of the old covenant temple was governed by priests and by prophets. The exterior, the letter of the symbol, of the hieroglyph, was entrusted to the priests.
The prophets cared for the interior of the spirit and the truth, and their function was always to bring the priests back from the letter to the spirit, when they happened to forget the spirit and only stand in the letter. The science of the priests was the science of the knowledge of external symbols. The science of the prophets was the science and practical possession of the spirit and truth of these symbols. In the outside was the letter; within, the quickening spirit. Thus, there was in the old covenant a school of priests and a school of prophets. The former dealt with the emblems, and these with the truths which were understood under the emblems. The priests were in outward possession of the Ark, the showbread, the candlestick, the manna,
The outward church of the old covenant was visible; the interior Church was always invisible, had to be invisible, and yet governed everything, because the force and the power were entrusted to her alone. When the outward worship left the inward, it fell, and God showed by a series of the most remarkable circumstances that the letter cannot subsist without the spirit; that it is there only to lead to the spirit and that it is useless and rejected even by God, if it abandons its destination. As the spirit of nature spreads in the most barren depths to vivify, to preserve, and to give growth to all that is capable of it, so the spirit of light spreads within among all nations, to animate everywhere the dead letter by the living spirit.
Thus we find a Job among the idolaters, a Melchizedek among the foreign nations, a Joseph among the Egyptian priests, and Moses in the land of Midian, as telling proof that the inner community of those who are able to receive the light, were united by one spirit and one truth in all times and among all nations. To all these agents of light of the interior and unique community, unites the most important of all the agents, Jesus Christ himself, in the midst of time as a king priest, after the order of Melchizedek. The divine agents of the old covenant represented only particular perfections of God; in the envelope or the middle of the time, a powerful action was to occur, which suddenly showed all in one. A universal type appeared,
This greatest agent of all, this Savior of the world and this universal regenerator fixed all his attention on this primitive truth, by which man can preserve his existence and recover the dignity which he possessed. In the state of his foundation, he laid the foundation for the redemption of men and promised to accomplish it perfectly one day by his Spirit. He also showed truly in small, among his apostles all that was to happen one day with his chosen ones. He continued the chain of inner community of light among his elect, to whom he sent the Spirit of Truth, and entrusted to them the highest primitive repository of all divine and natural truths, as a sign that they would never forsake his inner community.

When the letter and the symbolic worship of the outward church of the old covenant had passed in truth through the incarnation of the Savior and were verified in his person, new symbols became necessary for the exterior, which showed us according to the letter the future or complete accomplishment of redemption. The symbols and rites of the Christian outer Church were arranged after these unchanging and fundamental truths, and announced things of a force and importance which cannot be described, and which were revealed only to those who knew the innermost sanctuary.
This interior sanctuary always remained invariable, although the exterior of religion, the letter, received various modifications through time and circumstances, and moved away from interior truths, which alone can preserve the exterior or the letter. The profane thought of wanting to secularize all that is Christian, and to want to Christianize all that is political, changed the outer edifice, and covered with darkness and death what was within, light and life. From there were born divisions and heresies: and the sophistic spirit wanted to explain the letter when it had already lost the spirit of truth.
Unbelief carried corruption to the highest degree; they even sought to attack the edifice of Christianity in its first bases, confusing the holy interior with the exterior, which was subject to the weaknesses and ignorance of fragile men. Thus was born deism; the latter engendered materialism which regarded as an imagination any union of man with superior forces; and finally there arose, partly by the understanding, partly by the heart, atheism, the last degree of abasement of man. In the midst of all this, the truth always stood firm within the sanctuary. Faithful to the Spirit of truth who promised never to abandon his community, the members of the interior Church lived in silence and in real activity,and united the science of the temple of the old covenant with the spirit of the great Savior of men, the spirit of the inward covenant; humbly awaiting the great moment when the Lord will call them and assemble his community to give to every dead letter outward strength and life.
This inner community of light is the meeting of all who are able to receive the light of the elect, and is known as the communion of saints. The primitive repository of all forces and all truths has always been entrusted to this community of light; she alone, as St. Paul says, was in possession of the science of the Saints. By it the agents of God were formed in every age, passed from within to without, and communicated spirit and life to the dead letter, as we have already said. This community of light has always been the true school of the Spirit of God; and, considered as a school, it has its Chair, its Doctor; it has a Book in which its disciples study, forms and objects which they study, and finally a method according to which they study.
It also has its degrees according to which the spirit can develop successively and rise always more. The first degree, and the lowest, consists in the moral good by which the simple will, subordinate to God, is led to good by the pure motive of the will, that is to say, Jesus Christ, whom it has received by faith. The means which the spirit of this school uses are called inspirations. The second degree consists in intellectual assent, by which the understanding of the good man, who is united with God, is crowned with wisdom and the light of knowledge; and the means which the mind uses for this degree are called inner illuminations. Finally, the third degree, and the highest, is the complete opening of our internal sensorium,by which the inner man arrives at the objective vision of metaphysical and real truths. This is the highest degree in which faith resolves itself into clear visions, and the means which the mind uses for this are real visions.
These are the three degrees of the true school of inner wisdom, of the inner community of light. The same spirit which matures men for this community also distributes its degrees by the co-action of the matured subject. This school of wisdom has always been the most secret and hidden school in the world, because it was invisible and subject to divine government alone. She has never been exposed to the accidents of time and the weaknesses of men. For at all times only the most capable were chosen for this, and the Spirit who chose them could not err. Through this school developed the seeds of all the sublime sciences which were first received by the external schools, and there, clothed in other forms and even sometimes rendered deformed.
This interior society of sages communicated, according to time and circumstances, to exterior societies, their symbolic hieroglyph to make the exterior man attentive to the great truths of the interior. Aim

all exterior societies subsist only so long as this interior society communicates its spirit to them. As soon as the outer societies wished to be independent of the inner society, and to transform the temple of wisdom into a political edifice, the inner society withdrew, and only the letter remained without the spirit. So it was that all the secret outer schools of wisdom were but hieroglyphic veils, the very truth always remaining in the sanctuary so that it could never be profaned.
In this inner society man finds wisdom, and everything with it; not the wisdom of the world, which is only scientific knowledge, revolving around the outer envelope without ever touching the center, where all the forces reside; but true wisdom, as well as men who obey it. All disputes, all controversies, all objects of the world's false prudence, all foreign idioms, vain dissertations, useless germs of opinions which sow the seed of disunity, all errors, schisms and systems are banished from it. We find here neither calumnies nor gossip; every man is honored. Satire, the mind that likes to amuse itself to the disadvantage of its neighbor, are unknown there; and one knows there only love.
Calumny, that monster! never lift up his serpent's head among the friends of wisdom; the mutual respects are here alone known; here we do not observe the faults of our neighbour; here one does not make bitter reproaches on the defects. Charitably, one leads the traveler on the path of truth, one seeks to persuade, to touch the heart in error, leaving the punishment of sin to the clairvoyance of the Master of Light. One relieves need, one protects weakness, one rejoices in the elevation and dignity that man acquires. Happiness, which is the gift of luck, elevates no one above the other; he alone considers himself the happiest, to whom the opportunity arises to do good to his neighbour;and all those men, united by a spirit of love and truth,
We should not represent ourselves by this community, no secret society gathering at certain times, choosing its leaders and its members and setting itself certain goals. All societies, whatever they may be, only come after this interior community of wisdom; she does not know any of the formalities which are the work of men. In the realm of forces, all external forms disappear.
God Himself is the ever-present leader. The best man of his time, the first leader, does not himself know all his members; but the moment God's purpose necessitates his getting to know them, he certainly finds them in the world to act toward that purpose. This community has no outer veils. He who is chosen to act before God is the first; he shows himself to others without presumption, and he is received by others without envy. If it is necessary for real members to unite, they certainly find and recognize each other. No disguise can exist; no larvae of hypocrisy, no dissimulation cover the characteristic features of this community; because they are too original.The mask, the illusion, is removed, everything appears in its true form.
No member can choose another; everyone's consent is required. All men are called; the conscripts can be chosen, if they have become ripe for entry. Everyone can seek entrance, and any man who is within can teach the other to seek entrance. But as long as one is not mature, one does not reach the interior. Immature men would cause disorder in the community, and disorder is not compatible with the interior. This repels everything that is not homogeneous. The caution of the world spies in vain on this inner Sanctuary; in vain malice seeks to penetrate the great mysteries which are hidden there; everything is an indecipherable hieroglyph for those who are immature, they can see nothing, read nothing inside.
He who is mature is added to the chain, perhaps often when he least suspects it, and to a link of which he did not suspect the existence. Seeking to attain maturity must be the endeavor of one who loves wisdom. In this holy community is the original deposit of the most ancient sciences of the human race, including the primordial mysteries of all the sciences and the techniques leading to maturity.
She is the unique and true Community of Light, in possession of the key to all the mysteries and knowing the intimate nature and creation. It units with its own forces the superior forces and includes members of more than one world. These form a theocratic republic, which will one day be the regent mother of the whole world.

THIRD LETTER

The truth which is in the innermost of mysteries is like the sun; only an eagle's eye (man's soul capable of receiving light) is permitted to look upon it. The sight of every other mortal is dazzled, and darkness surrounds him in light itself.
Never was the great something which is in the most interior of the holy mysteries hidden from the eagle's sight of him who is able to receive the light, God and nature have no mysteries for their children. The mystery is only in the weakness of our being which is not able to bear the light, and which is not yet organized for the chaste sight of naked truth.
This weakness is the cloud that covers the sanctuary; she is the veil that hides the Holy of Holies. But in order that man might recover the light, the strength, and his lost dignity, loving divinity stooped to the weakness of his creatures, and wrote the inner and eternal truths and mysteries on the outside of things, that man might soar through them in spirit. These letters are the ceremonies or the exterior of the religion, which lead to the inner spirit of union with God, active and full of life. The hieroglyphs of the Mysteries are also of these letters. These are the sketches and drawings of interior and holy truths, which the veil drawn before the sanctuary covers.
Religion and the Mysteries join hands to lead all our brothers to a truth; both aim at a reversal, a renewal of our being; both have as their end the rebuilding of a temple in which wisdom dwells with love, God with man. But religion and the Mysteries would be entirely useless phenomena, if the Divinity had not given them effective means to attain their great ends. Now these means have always been in the innermost sanctuary; the Mysteries are intended to build a temple to religion, and religion is intended to unite men there with God.
Such is the greatness of religion, and such has been the lofty dignity of the Mysteries of all times. It would be outrageous to you, dearly beloved brothers, if we could think that you have never

looked at the holy mysteries from this true point of view, from this point of view which represents them as the only means of preserving, in its purity and integrity, the doctrine of the important truths about God, nature and man; this doctrine was enveloped in the holy language of symbols, and the truths it contained, having been gradually translated among the profane into their ordinary language, thus became ever more obscure and unintelligible.
The mysteries, as you know, dearly beloved brethren, promise things which will always be and will be the heritage of a few men; they are mysteries that cannot be sold or taught publicly; they are secrets which can only be received by a heart which strives for wisdom and love, and in which wisdom and love have already been awakened. The one in whom this holy flame has been awakened lives truly happy, content with everything and free even in slavery. He sees the cause of human corruption and knows that it is inevitable, he hates no criminal, he pities him and seeks to raise up the fallen, to bring back the stray; he does not extinguish the light that still burns, and he does not finish breaking the crumpled reed,
He penetrates with a straight look the truth of all religious systems in their first basis; he knows the sources of superstition and unbelief, as the modifications of truth which has not yet reached its equilibrium. We are assured, worthy brothers, that you consider the mystical man from this point of view, and that you do not attribute to his royal art what the disordered activity of a few isolated individuals has made of it. It is with these principles, which are entirely ours, that you will consider the religion and the mysteries of the holy schools of wisdom as sisters who, joining hands, have watched for the good of all men, from the necessity of their birth.
Religion is divided into an outer and an inner religion. Outer religion is worship and ceremonies, and inner religion is worship in spirit and in truth. The wisdom schools are also divided into outer and inner schools. The outer schools possess the letter of the hieroglyphs, and the inner schools, the spirit and the sense. The outer religion is linked with the inner religion by ceremonies. The exterior schools of the mysteries are linked by hieroglyphics with the interior.
But we are now approaching the time when the spirit must make the letter alive, when the cloud which covers the sanctuary will disappear, when the hieroglyphics will pass into real vision, words into understanding. We are approaching the time that will tear open the great veil that covers the Holy of Holies. He who reveres the holy mysteries will no longer make himself understood by words and outward signs, but by the spirit of the words and the truth of the signs. It is thus that religion will no longer be an external ceremonial; but the interior and holy mysteries will transfigure the exterior worship to prepare men for the worship of God in spirit and in truth.
Soon the dark night of the language of images will disappear, the light will beget the day, and the holy darkness of the mysteries will be manifested in the brilliance of the highest truth. The ways of light are prepared for the elect and for those who are able to walk in them. The light of nature, the light of reason, and the light of revelation will unity. The court of nature, the temple of reason, and the sanctuary of revelation will form only one Temple. This is how the great edifice will be completed, an edifice which consists in the reunion of man with nature and with God. The perfect knowledge of man, of nature, and of God, will be the lights that will enlighten the leaders of humanity to bring men back to their brothers on all sides,
The crown of those who rule the world will be pure reason, their scepter active love, and the Sanctuary will give them the anointing and the strength to deliver the understanding of the people from prejudice and darkness, their heart from passions, self-love and selfishness, and their physical existence from poverty and disease. We are approaching the kingdom of light, the kingdom of wisdom and love, the kingdom of God who is the source of light; brothers of light, there is only one religion whose simple truth has been shared in all religions as in branches, to return from multiplicity to a single religion.
Son of truth, there is only one order, only one Fraternity, only one association of men united to acquire the light. From this center, misunderstanding has caused innumerable orders to issue; all will return from multiplicity of opinion to one truth and to true association, which is the association of those who are able to receive the light or the Elect Community. With this measure, one must measure all the religions and all the associations of men. The multiplicity is in the outer ceremonial, the truth is only one within. The cause of the multiplicity of brotherhoods is in the multiplicity of the explanation of the symbols according to time, needs and circumstances. The true Community of Light can only be one.
All exterior is an envelope that covers the interior; thus every exterior is also a letter which always multiplies, but which never changes or weakens the simplicity of the spirit within. The letter was necessary; we had to find it, compose it and learn to read it to recover the inner meaning, the spirit. All the errors, all the divisions, all the misunderstandings, all that, in religions and in secret associations, gives rise to so many aberrations, concerns only the letter; everything relates only to the outer veil on which the hieroglyphs, ceremonies and rites are written; nothing touches the interior; the spirit always remains intact and holy.
Now the time of fulfillment for those who seek the light draws near. The time is approaching when the old must be linked with the new, the outside with the inside, the top with the bottom, the heart with reason, man with God. And that time is for the present age. Ask not, beloved brethren... why in the present age?... Everything has its time for beings who are enclosed in time and space; thus are the invariable laws of the wisdom of God, which coordinates all according to harmony and perfection. The elect had first to labor to acquire wisdom and love until they were able to deserve the power which the unchanging Divinity can only give to those who know and to those who love.
The morning is expected in the night; then the sun rises, and finally it stings at high noon when all shadow disappears before its direct light. First the letter of truth had to exist, then came the practical explanation, then the Truth itself, and only after that can the Spirit of Truth come, who countersigns the truth and puts the seals that authenticate the light. He who can receive the truth will hear us. It is up to you, intimately beloved brothers, you who strive to acquire the

truth, you who have faithfully preserved the hieroglyphics of the holy mysteries in your temple, it is towards you that the first ray of light is directed; this ray penetrates through the clouds of mysteries to announce to you the noon and the treasures it brings.
Do not ask who are those who write to you; look at the spirit and not the letter, the thing and not the persons. No selfishness, no pride, no base motive reigns in our retreats: we know the goal of the destination of men, and the light which enlightens us operates all our actions. We are especially called to write to you, beloved brethren in the light; and what gives credence to our charge are the truths that we possess and that we will communicate to you at the slightest indication according to the measure of the capacity of each one. Communication is proper to light, where there is receptivity and capacity for light; but it constrains no one, and waits until someone is willing to receive it.
Our desire, our goal, our charge is to vivify everywhere the dead letter, and to restore everywhere to the hieroglyphs the living spirit; to change everywhere the inactive into the active, death into life; we cannot do all this by ourselves, but by the Spirit of Light of Him who is the Wisdom, the Love and the Light of the world, and wants to become your spirit and your light as well. Hitherto the innermost Sanctuary has been separated from the Temple, and the Temple besieged by those who were in the courts; the time is coming when the innermost Sanctuary must reunite with the Temple, that those who are in the Temple may act upon those who are in the courts, until the courts are cast out.
In our sanctuary all mysteries of spirit and truth are kept pure; it could never be violated by the profane, nor defiled by the impure. This sanctuary is invisible as is a force which one knows only by its action. By this short description, dear brothers, you can judge who we are, and it would be superfluous to assure you that we are not among those restless heads who, in the ordinary world, want to erect an ideal of their own fancy. Nor do we belong to those who want to play a great role in the world, and who promise wonders that they themselves do not understand. Nor do we belong to that class of malcontents who would like to take revenge for their inferior rank, or whose aim is the thirst for domination,

We can assure you that we belong to no other sect and no other association, but to the great and true association of all who are able to receive the light, and that no partiality whatsoever, whether it ends in us or in er, has no influence on us . Nor do we belong to those who believe they have the right to subjugate everything according to their plan, and who have the arrogance to want to reform all societies; we can faithfully assure you that we know exactly the innermost part of religion and of the Holy Mysteries;and that we also really possess what has always been conjectured to be in the most interior, and that this same possession gives us the strength to legitimize ourselves of our charge, and to communicate everywhere to the hieroglyph, to the dead letter, the spirit and the life.
The treasures of our sanctuary are great; we have the meaning and the spirit of all the hieroglyphics and of all the ceremonies which have existed from the day of Creation until these times; and the innermost truths of all the Sacred Books, with the reasons for the rites of the most ancient peoples. We have a light that anoints us, and by which we hear the most hidden and the most interior of nature. We have a fire that nourishes us and gives us the strength to act on all that is in nature. We have a key to open the doors of mysteries, and a key to close the laboratory of nature. We possess the knowledge of a link to connect us to the superior worlds and to transmit their language to us.
All the wonder of nature is subordinated to the power of our will in union with Divinity. We have the science which questions nature itself, where there is no error, but only truth and light. In our school, everything can be taught; for our Master is the very Light and its Spirit. The plenitude of our knowledge is the knowledge of the correspondence of the divine world with the spiritual world, of this one with the elementary world, and of the elementary world with the material world. By this knowledge, we are able to coordinate the spirits of nature and the heart of man.
Our sciences are the heritage promised to the Elect or to those who are capable of receiving the light, and the practice of our sciences is the fullness of the Divine Alliance with the children of men. We could tell you, dear brothers, of the marvels of the things which are hidden in the treasure of the Sanctuary, such that you would be amazed and bewildered; we could speak to you of things to the conception of which the deepest thinking to philosophize is as far as the earth is from the sun, and of which we are as near as is to the innermost being of all, the innermost light.
But our intention is not to excite your curiosity; inner persuasion alone and thirst for the good of our brethren, must push him who is able to receive the light to the source, where his thirst for wisdom can be quenched and his hunger for love sated. Wisdom and love dwell in our retreats; there is no constraint; the truth of their promptings is our magic power. We can assure that treasures of infinite value are in our innermost mysteries; that such a simplicity envelops them that they will always remain inaccessible to the proud scholar, and that these treasures, the search for which brings, to many profane cares and madness, are and will remain for us the true wisdom.
Blessings to you, my brethren, if you feel these great truths. The recovery of the Triple Word and its strength will be your reward. Your happiness will be to have the force to contribute to reconcile the men with the men, with nature and God; which is the real work of every worker who has not rejected the Cornerstone. Now we have fulfilled our charge and we have announced to you the approach of high noon, and the reunion of the innermost Sanctuary with the Temple. We leave the rest up to you.
We well know, to our bitter sorrow, that as the Savior was personally misunderstood, ridiculed, and pursued when He came in humility, so His Spirit, who will appear in glory, will be rejected and ridiculed by many. Despite this, the advent of His Spirit must be announced in the temples for what is written to be fulfilled: "I knocked at your doors, and you did not open to Me; I called and you did not listen to My voice; I invited you to the wedding, and you were occupied with other things".
The Peace and Light of the Spirit be with us.

FOURTH LETTER

As the infinity of numbers is lost in a unique number which is their base; and, as the innumerable rays of a circle unit in a single center, it is thus that the infinite mysteries, hieroglyphs and emblems have for their object only a single truth. Whoever knows it has found the key to knowing everything, all at once.
There is only one God, only one truth, only one way that leads to this great truth. There is only one way to find this truth. He who has found this means, possesses by him:
All the wisdom in a single book;
All forces in a single force;
All the beauties in a single object;
All the rich in a single treasury;
All bliss in a single good;
And the sum of all these perfections is Jesus Christ, who was crucified and who rose again.
Now this great truth, thus expressed, is, it is true, only an object of faith; but it can become experiential knowledge, as soon as we are instructed how Jesus Christ can be or can become all that. This great mystery was always an object of teaching of the Secret School of the Invisible and Interior Church, and this teaching was known in the times of Christianity under the name of Disciplina arcani. It is from this secret school that all the rites and ceremonies of the outer Church derive their origin, although the spirit of these great and simple truths had withdrawn into the interior, and appeared in our times entirely lost to the exterior.
It was foretold long ago, dear brethren, that all that is hidden will be uncovered in the end times; but it has also been predicted that in these times many false prophets will arise; and the faithful were warned not to believe in any spirit; but to test the spirits, if they are really of God. (Epistle of Saint John, chapter 4, 5 and following). The apostle himself gives the manner of making this test; he said: This is how you will know the spirit that is of God; every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ, who came in true flesh, is of God, and every spirit which divides him, that is to say, which separates in him the divine from the human, is not of God.We confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, and thereby the Spirit of truth speaks through us. But the mystery that J.-C. came in the flesh is of great extent and contains within it the knowledge of the divine human, and it is this knowledge that we choose today for the object of our instruction.
As we do not speak with novices in matters of faith, it will be all the easier for you, dear brothers, to conceive the sublime truths that we are going to present to you; which you will no doubt have already chosen several times as the goal of your holy meditations, various preparatory subjects. Religion considered scientifically is the doctrine of the transformation of man, separated from God, into man reunited with God. Hence its sole purpose is to unite each individual of mankind, and ultimately all mankind with God, in which union alone it can attain and experience the highest temporal and spiritual bliss. So this doctrine of meeting is of the most sublime dignity;and, as it is a doctrine, it must necessarily have a method by which it leads us: First, to the knowledge of the true way of meeting; and, Secondly, to the knowledge of how this means is to be applied according to the purpose.
This great means of reunion, on which all religious doctrine concentrates, would never have been known to man without Revelation. It has always been outside the sphere of scientific knowledge; and this same profound ignorance into which man had fallen, made necessary the Revelation without which we could never have found the ways to rise again.
From Revelation resulted the necessity of faith in Revelation; for he who does not know, who has no experience of a thing, must first necessarily believe if he wants to know and experience. For if faith fails, one worries little about Revelation, and one thereby closes off access to the method that Revelation alone contains. As action and reaction are reciprocally proportioned in nature, so Revelation and faith are proportioned. Where there is no reaction, the action ceases

necessarily; where there is no faith, no Revelation can take place; but the more faith there is, the more there is Revelation or development of truths which are in obscurity, and can only be developed by our confidence. It is true and very true that all the secret truths of religion, even the most obscure truths and the mysteries which seem to us the most singular, will one day justify themselves before the tribunal of the most rigorous reason; but the weakness of man, the lack of our penetration, in relation to the whole of sensible and spiritual nature, has demanded that the highest truths can only be shown and opened to us successively. The holy darkness of the mysteries is there because of our weakness,
At each step to which the believer rises, towards Revelation, he obtains a more perfect light to arrive at knowledge; and this light likewise becomes progressively more convincing for him, because each truth of the faith acquired, becomes little by little alive, and passes into conviction. Hence, faith is based on our weakness and on the full light of Revelation which must be communicated according to our capacity, to give us successively the objectivity of higher things. These objects for which human reason has no objectivity are necessarily in the domain of faith. Man can only adore and be silent; but if he wants to demonstrate things about which he has no objectivity, he necessarily falls into error.Man must adore and be silent until the objects which are within the realm of faith become gradually clearer to him and, therefore, easier to know. Everything demonstrates itself as soon as we acquire the inner experience of the truths of faith, as soon as we are led from faith to vision, that is to say, to objective knowledge.
In all times, there have been men enlightened by God, who had this interior objectivity of faith in whole or in part, according as the communication of the truths of faith passed through their understanding or their feeling. The first kind of vision, purely intelligible, was called divine illumination. The second kind was called divine inspiration. The inner sensorium was opened in many even to the divine and transcendental visions, which were called raptures or ecstasies, when the inner sensorium was so exalted that it dominated over the outer and sensible sensorium. But this species of men was always inexplicable, and must remain so for the man of the senses, because he had no organ for the supernatural and the transcendental. From this we should not be surprised at seeing a man who has considered the world of the spirits more closely as an extravagant, or even as a madman; for the common judgment of men is simply limited to what the senses give them to feel; hence the Scripture says very clearly: the animal man does not conceive what is of the spirit, because his spiritual sense is not open to the transcendental world, so that he cannot have more objectivity of this world than the blind man has of color.
So the outer man of the senses has lost that inner sense which is the most important; or rather the capacity for the development of this sense, which is hidden in him, is neglected to the point that he himself does not suspect its existence. Thus men of the senses are generally in a spiritual blindness; their inner eye is closed, and this darkening is still a sequel to the Fall of the first man. The corruptible matter that enveloped him closed his inner and spiritual eye, and thus he became blind to all that regards the inner worlds.
Man is doubly miserable, he not only wears a blindfold over his eyes, which hides from him the knowledge of higher truths; but his heart languishes even in the bonds of flesh and blood, which bind him to animal and sensible pleasures, to the detriment of higher and spiritual pleasures. It is thus that we are in the slavery of concupiscence, under the domination of the passions which tyrannize us, and we drag ourselves, like unfortunate paralytics, on two miserable crutches, namely, on the crutch of our natural reason and on the crutch of our natural feeling. The former daily gives us the appearance for the truth. This one makes us daily take the evil for the good. This is our miserable state!
Men will only be able to become happy when the blindfold which prevents access to the true light falls from their eyes. They can only become happy when the bonds of slavery that burden their hearts are broken. The blind must be able to see, and the paralytic must be able to walk if they want to be happy. But the great and formidable law to which the happiness or happiness of men is absolutely attached is the following law: Man, let reason reign over your passions!

For centuries we have endeavored reciprocally to reason and to moralize; and what is the result of our suffering for so many centuries? The blind want to lead the blind, and the paralytic the paralytic. But in all the follies we've indulged in, in all the miseries we've brought upon ourselves, we still don't see that we can't do anything on our own and that we need a higher power to pull us out of misery. Prejudices and errors, vices and crimes have changed their forms from century to century; but they have never been eradicated from humanity. Reason without light groped in every century in the midst of darkness: the heart full of passions is the same in every century.
There is only one who can heal us; only one who is able to open our inner eye so that we can see the truth. It is only one who can take away the chains that burden us, and make us slaves to sensuality. This "One Only" is Jesus Christ, the Savior of Men, the Savior because he wants to snatch us from all the consequences into which the blindness of our natural reason and the wanderings of our passionate heart precipitate us. Very few men, dear brothers, have a precise conception of the greatness of the Redemption of men; many believe that Jesus Christ the Lord redeemed us by His shed blood only from damnation ,in other words, of the eternal separation of man from God; but they do not believe that he also wants to deliver from all miseries here below those who are attached to him.
Jesus Christ is the Savior of the World, He is the conqueror of human misery, He redeemed us from death and sin. How would He be all this, if the world were always to languish in the darkness of ignorance and in the bonds of passions? It has already been foretold very clearly in the Prophets that this time of the Redemption of His people, this first Sabbath time, would come. We should have recognized this comforting promise long ago; but the lack of the true knowledge of God, of man and of nature, has been the impediment which has always hidden from us these great mysteries of faith.
You should know, my brothers, that there is a double nature, the pure, spiritual, immortal and indestructible nature, and the impure, material, mortal and destructible nature. Pure and indestructible nature was before impure and destructible nature. The latter originated only from the disharmony and disproportion of the substances which form the indestructible nature. From there, it is only permanent until the disproportions and dissonances are removed, and everything is brought back into harmony. A misunderstanding of spirit and matter is one of the main causes why many truths of faith do not appear to us in their true light.
The spirit is a substance, an essence, an absolute reality. Hence, its properties are indestructibility, uniformity, penetration, indivisibility, and continuity. Matter is not a substance, it is an aggregate. Hence it is destructible, divisible and subject to change. The metaphysical world is an extremely pure and indestructible real existing world whose center we call Jesus Christ, and whose inhabitants we know as spirits and angels. The material and physical world is the world of phenomena; it possesses no absolute truth; all that is called truth here is only relative, is only the shadow of the truth, and not the truth itself; everything is phenomenon.
Our reason here borrows all its ideas through the senses, so they are lifeless, dead. We derive everything from external objectivity, and our reason resembles only a monkey which imitates in itself more or less what nature presents to it. Thus, the simple light of the senses is the principle of our lower reason, sensuality, the inclination towards animal needs, is the motivating force of our will. We feel, it is true, that a higher motive would be necessary to us; but until now we did not know how to seek or find it. Here below, where everything is corruptible, one cannot seek either the principle of reason, or the principle of morality, or the motive force of the will. We have to take it to a higher world.
Where all is pure, where nothing is subject to destruction, there reigns a Being who is all wisdom and all love, and who, by the light of His wisdom, can become for us the true principle of reason, and by the warmth of His love, the true principle of morality. Also the world will only become and can only become happy when this real Being, who is at the same time wisdom and love, will be received entirely by humanity and will have become in it all in all. Man, dear brethren, is composed of the indestructible and metaphysical substance, and of the material and destructible substance, however in such a way that here below the destructible matter holds as imprisoned the indestructible and eternal substance.

It is thus that two contradictory natures are contained in the same man. The destructible substance always binds us to the sensible; the indestructible substance seeks to free itself from the chains of sense and seeks the sublimity of the spirit. From this derives the continual combat between good and evil; the good always absolutely wants reason and morality; evil leads daily to error and passion. It is thus that man, in this perpetual debate, sometimes rises and sometimes falls into the abyss, tries to get up and staggers again. The fundamental cause of human corruption must be sought in the corruptible matter from which men are formed. This gross matter oppresses in us the action of the transcendental and spiritual principle,
One must look for the fragility of a vase in the material of which the vase is formed. The most beautiful possible form that the earth can receive always remains fragile, because the matter of which it is formed is fragile. It is thus that we, poor men, we always remain only fragile men with all our external culture. When we examine the causes of the impediments which hold human nature in such profound abasement, they are all to be found in the coarseness of the matter in which its spiritual part is as it were plunged and bound. The inflexibility of the fibers, the immobility of the humors which desire to obey the refined incitements of the spirit, are like the material chains which bind it, and which prevent in us the sublime functions of which it would be capable.
The nerves and fluids of our brain give us only gross and obscure ideas, derived from phenomena, and not from the truth and from the thing itself; and as we cannot, by the power of our thinking principle alone, balance the violence of external sensations with the aid of sufficiently energetic representations, it follows that we are always determined by passion, and that the voice of reason, which speaks softly within us, is drowned out by the tumultuous noise of the elements which maintain our machine. Of course, reason strives to dominate the tumult, seeks to decide the fight and tries to restore order by the lucidity of its judgment. But its action is like the rays of the sun when thick clouds obscure its brilliance.

The coarseness of the materials of which material man is made, the framework of the whole edifice of his nature, is the cause of this overwhelm which keeps the powers of our soul in continual weakness and imperfection. The paralysis of our thinking force, in general, is a consequence of the dependence in which a coarse and inflexible matter holds us; matter which forms the true bonds of the flesh, and the true sources of all errors and even of vice. Reason, which must be an absolute legislator, is a perpetual slave of sensuality. This one rises in regent and makes use of the reason which languishes in its leaps and lends itself to its desires. We felt this truth a long time ago; we have always preached with words... Reason must be an absolute legislator...
The great and the small felt this truth, but as soon as it came to execution, the animal will soon subjugated the reason, then the reason subjugated the animal will for a time, and it is thus that, in each man, victory and defeat between darkness and light were alternate, and this same reciprocal power and counter-power are the cause of the perpetual oscillation between good and evil, between false and true. If humanity is to be led to truth and goodness so that it acts only according to the laws of reason, and according to the pure inclinations of the will, it is immediately necessary to give pure reason sovereignty in humanity. But how can this be when the matter of which every man is made,is more or less unequal, gross, divisible and corruptible, and that it is so constituted, that all our misery, pain, disease, poverty, death, needs, prejudices, errors and vices depend on it, and are the necessary consequences of the limitation of the immortal spirit in its bonds. Shouldn't sensuality rule when reason is in the bonds? and is it not in leaps when the impure and fragile heart pushes back its pure ray everywhere? Shouldn't sensuality rule when reason is in the bonds? and is it not in leaps when the impure and fragile heart pushes back its pure ray everywhere? Shouldn't sensuality rule when reason is in the bonds? and is it not in leaps when the impure and fragile heart pushes back its pure ray everywhere?
Yes, friends and brothers, there is the source of all the misery of men; and, as this corruption spreads from men to men, it may justly be called their hereditary corruption. We observe, in general, that the forces of reason act on the heart only in relation to the specific constitution of the matter of which man is formed. Also it is extremely remarkable, when we think that the sun vivifies this animal matter according to the measure of its distance from this terrestrial body, that it renders it as fit for the functions of the animal economy, as for a greater or lesser degree of spiritual influence. The diversity of peoples, their particularities in relation to the climate, the multiplicity of their characters and their passions, their mores, their prejudices and customs, or even their virtues and their vices, depend entirely on the specific constitution of the matter of which they are formed, and in which the spirit enclosed acts differently. Their capacity for cultivation is modified even according to this constitution, and according to it also science is directed, which modifies each people only so far as there is a present matter, susceptible of modification, determining the capacity of culture proper to a people, which depends partly on generation and partly on climate.
In general we find everywhere the same weak and sensual man, who has good, under each zone, only so much as his sensitive matter allows his reason to prevail over sensuality, and bad only so much as sensuality can have predominance over the more or less bound spirit. There resides the natural good and evil of each nation as well as of each isolated individual. We find throughout the world this corruption inherent in the matter from which men are formed. Everywhere there is misery, pain, illness, death; everywhere there are needs, prejudices, passions and vices, only in other forms and modifications. From the rawest state of savagery, man enters social life first through needs; strength and cunning,
The modifications of these fundamental animal inclinations are innumerable; and the highest degree of human culture which the world has hitherto acquired has brought things no further than to color them with a finer layer. This means that we have risen from the state of the crude animal to the highest degree of the refined animal. But this period was necessary; for with its fulfillment begins a new period, in which, after the developed animal needs, begins the development of the higher need for light and reason.
Jesus Christ engraved in our hearts, by very beautiful words, this great truth, that we must seek in matter the cause of the misery of men, mortal and fragile by ignorance and passions. When He said: the best man, the one who tries hardest to arrive at the truth, sins seven times a day, he meant by that: in the best organized man, the seven forces of the spirit are still so closed, that the seven actions of sensuality overcome each day according to their mode. Thus, the best man is exposed to errors and passions. The best man is weak and sinful; the best man is not free, is not free from pain and misery: the best man is subject to sickness and death, and why is that?because all these are the necessary consequences of the properties of a corruptible matter of which it is formed.
Thus, there can be no hope of a higher happiness for mankind, so long as this corruptible and material being forms the main substantial part of his essence. The impossibility in which humanity is of being able to soar by itself to true perfection is a realization full of despair; but, at the same time, this thought is the cause, full of consolation, for which a higher and more perfect being covered itself with this mortal and fragile envelope, in order to make the mortal immortal, the destructible indestructible, and in this must also be sought the true cause of the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ, is the Anointed of Light, is the splendor of God, the Wisdom that came out of God, the son of God, the real Word by whom everything is made and who was in the beginning. Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God who operates all things, was like the center of Paradise, of the world of light; it was the only real organ through which the divine force could be communicated; and this organ is the immortal and pure nature, the indestructible substance which vivifies and brings everything to the highest perfection and bliss. This indestructible substance is the pure element in which the spiritual man lived. From that pure element in which God alone dwelt, and from the substance of which the first man was created, he was separated by the Fall.By the enjoyment of the fruit of the tree of the mixture of the good or incorruptible principle and the bad or corruptible principle, he poisoned himself in such a way that his immortal being was interiorized, and that the mortal covered him. This is how immortality, bliss and life disappeared; and mortality, misfortune and death were the consequences of this change.
Many men cannot form an idea of ​​the Tree of Good and Evil; this tree was the product of chaotic matter, which was still in the center, and in which destructibility still had superiority over indestructibility. The too premature enjoyment of this fruit which poisons and steals immortality enveloped Adam in this material form subject to death. He fell among the elements he previously ruled. This unfortunate event was the cause that the immortal Wisdom, the pure and metaphysical element, covered itself with the mortal envelope, and voluntarily sacrificed itself so that its interior forces passed into the center of destruction and could gradually restore all that is mortal to immortality.
Thus, as it quite naturally happened that immortal man became mortal through the enjoyment of a mortal fruit, so it quite naturally happened that mortal man could recover his former dignity through the enjoyment of an immortal fruit. Everything happens naturally and simply in the Kingdom of God; but to recognize this simplicity, it is necessary to have pure ideas of God, of nature, and of man; and if the most sublime truths of the faith are still enveloped for us in an impenetrable obscurity, the cause is that we have hitherto always separated the ideas of God, of nature, and of man.
Jesus Christ spoke with His most intimate friends, when He was still on this earth, of the great mystery of Regeneration; but all that He said was obscure to them, they could not yet conceive it; also the development of these great truths was reserved for the latter times; he is the supreme mystery of religion in which all the mysteries return as in their unity. Regeneration is nothing else but a dissolution and disengagement of that impure and corruptible matter which binds our immortal being and keeps the life of the oppressed active forces plunged into a dead sleep. Thus there must necessarily be a real means of driving out this poisonous ferment which causes unhappiness in us, and of releasing the imprisoned forces.
But this means should be sought nowhere else than in religion; for as religion, considered scientifically, is the doctrine of reunion with God, it must also necessarily teach us to know the means of arriving at that reunion. Is not Jesus and His life-giving knowledge the main object of the Bible and the content of all the Christian's desires, hopes and expectations? Have we not received from our Lord and Master, as long as he walked among his disciples, the highest solutions touching the most hidden truths? Did not our Lord and Master, when he was with them, in his glorified body, after his resurrection, gave a higher revelation of His person, and did not lead them deeper into the knowledge of the truth?
Wouldn't he realize what he said in his priestly prayer? Saint John, 17, 22, 23: "I gave them and communicated the glory which you gave me, that they might be one as we are one in them, and they with me, that they might be perfect in one." As the disciples of the Lord could not conceive of this great mystery of the new and final Covenant, Jesus Christ transmitted it to the last times of the future which are now approaching, and He said: "In that day when I communicate My glory to you, you will know that I am in My Father, you in Me, and I in you. "
This alliance is called the Peace Alliance. It is then that the law of God will be engraved in the innermost of our hearts; we will all recognize the Lord, we will be His people and He will be our God.
Everything is already prepared for this actual possession of God, for this real union with God, and already possible here below; and the holy element, the true medicine for mankind is revealed by the Spirit of God. The Lord's table is open, and all are invited; the true bread of the Angels is prepared, of which it is written: " You have given them the bread of heaven."
The holiness and greatness of the mystery which contains in itself all the mysteries commands us here to be silent, and we are only permitted to mention its effects.
The corruptible, the destructible is consumed in us and covered with the incorruptible and the indestructible. The inner sensorium opens and connects us with the spiritual world. We are enlightened by wisdom, led by truth, nourished by the torch of love. Unknown forces develop within us to overcome the world, the flesh and Satan. Our whole being is renewed, and enabled to become a real dwelling of the Spirit of God. Domination over nature, relationship with higher worlds, and the bliss of visible commerce with the Lord are given to us.
The blindfold of ignorance falls from our eyes, the bonds of sensuality are broken, and we have the freedom of the children of God. We have told you the highest and most important; if your heart, which thirsts for the truth, has conceived pure ideas about all this and has fully understood the greatness and holiness of the goal to be reached, we will tell you more. May the glory of the Lord and the renewal of your whole being be, meanwhile, the highest of your hopes?

FIFTH LETTER

We have made you, beloved brethren, aware in our last writing, to the highest of all mysteries, the real possession of God;it is necessary to impart to you the fullness of light upon this object. Man, dear brothers, is unhappy here below, because he is formed of a destructible matter and subject to all miseries. The fragile envelope that is the body exposes it to the violence of the elements; pain, poverty, suffering, disease, that is his lot. Man is unhappy because his immortal spirit languishes in the bonds of the senses; the divine light is closed in him; only by the flickering light of his sensory reason he staggers along the paths of his pilgrimage; Tortured by passions, led astray by prejudices, and nourished by errors, he plunges from one abyss of misery into another.
Man is unhappy because he is sick in body and soul, and he has no real medicine, neither for his body nor for his soul. Those who should lead other men, guide them to happiness and govern them, are men like the others, as fragile and subject to as many passions, exposed in the same way to many prejudices. So what fate can await humanity? Will the greater part always be unhappy? is there no salvation for the whole?
Brethren, if mankind is ever able to rise to a happy state, the bliss it wants to acquire will only be possible under the following conditions: First, poverty, pain, disease and misery must become rarer. Second, passions, prejudices and errors must diminish.
Is this possible given the corruption of human nature, when experience has proven to us from century to century how misery only changes into another form of misery; how passions, prejudices and errors always cause the same evil; when we think that all these things have only changed shape, and that men, in every century, have been the same fragile men? There is a terrible judgment pronounced upon the human species, and that judgment is: Men cannot become happy until they are wise. But they won't become wise, as long as sensuality will rule over reason, as long as the spirit languishes in the bonds of flesh and blood. Where is the man who is without passions? Let him show himself! Don't we all carry more or less the chains of sensuality? Aren't we all slaves? all sinners?
Yes, brethren, let us confess that we are slaves to sin. This feeling of our misery excites in us the desire for redemption; we look up, and the voice of an angel announces to us: The misery of man will be lifted. Men are sick in body and mind. So this general disease must have a cause, and this cause is in the matter of which man is composed. The destructible encloses the indestructible; the light of wisdom is bound in the depths of darkness; the ferment of sin is within us, and in this ferment resides human corruption, and its propagation with the consequences of original sin.
The healing of humanity is possible only by the destruction in us of this leaven of sin; hence we need a doctor and a remedy. But the sick cannot be cured by the sick; the destructible cannot bring the destructible to perfection; what is dead cannot awaken what is dead, and the blind cannot lead the blind. Only the Perfect can bring the imperfect to perfection; only the Indestructible can make the destructible indestructible; only what is alive can animate what is dead.
From there, one should not look for the doctor and the means of the cure in the destructible nature, where all is death and corruption. One must seek the Physician and the remedy in a higher nature, where all is perfection and life. Lack of knowledge of the covenant of Divinity with nature, and of nature with man, is the true cause of all prejudice and error. Theologians, philosophers and moralists wanted to govern the world, and filled it with eternal contradictions.
Theologians did not know God's relationship with nature and thereby fell into error. The philosophers only studied matter and not the alliance of pure nature with divine nature, and thereby manifested the most false opinions. The moralists did not know the fundamental corruption of human nature, and wanted to heal by words, when the means were necessary. It was thus that the world, man, and even God were given up to eternal disputes, and that opinions drove out opinions; that superstition and incredulity ruled by turns and distanced the world from the truth, instead of bringing it closer to it.
It was only in the Wisdom Schools that we learned to know God, nature and man, and we worked there for thousands of years in silence to acquire the highest degree of knowledge: the union of man with pure nature and with God. This great goal of God and nature, to which everything tends, was symbolically represented to man by all religions; and all the sacred monuments and hieroglyphs were mere letters by which man could gradually rediscover the highest of all divine, natural, and human mysteries; namely: the means of healing for his present and miserable state, the means of union of his being with pure nature and with God.
We have reached this time under the guidance of God. The Divinity, remembering its alliance with man, has given us the means of healing sick humanity, and shown the ways to raise man to the dignity of his pure nature, and to unite him with Him, the source of his bliss. The knowledge of this means of salvation is the science of the saints and the elect; and his possession, the inheritance promised to the children of God. Be so kind, beloved brethren, to give us your full attention.
In our blood there is a sticky substance (called gluten) hidden, which has a closer kinship with animality than with the spirit. This gluten is the matter of sin. This matter can be modified differently by sensible excitations; and, according to the kind of modification of this matter of sin, the bad inclinations to sin are distinguished. In its highest state of expansion, this matter operates presumption, pride; in its highest state of contraction, avarice, self-love, selfishness; In the state of repulsion, rage, anger; in the circular movement, lightness, incontinence; In his eccentricity, gluttony, drunkenness; In its concentricity,longed for ; In its essence, laziness.
This leave of sin is more or less abundant in every man, and transmitted from parents to children; and its propagation in us always prevents the simultaneous action of spirit on matter. It is true that man can, by his will, set limits to this matter of sin, dominate it, so that it becomes less active in him; but to annihilate it entirely is not in his power. From this derives the continual combat of good and evil within us. This matter of sin which is in us, forms the bonds of flesh and blood, by which we are bound on one side to our immortal spirit, and on the other to animal excitements. It is like the bait by which the animal passions ignite in us.
The violent reaction of this matter of sin in us to sensual excitement is the cause why, for lack of just and quiet judgment, we rather choose evil than good, because the fermentation of this matter, the source of the passions, hinders the calm activity of the mind, a condition of sound judgment. This same substance of sin is also the cause of ignorance, for, as its thick and inflexible web overloads the delicate fibers of our brain, it thwarts the simultaneous action of reason, which is necessary for the penetration of the objects of the understanding.
Thus, false and evil are the properties of this matter of sin in us, as good and truth are the attributes of our spiritual principle. By the thorough knowledge of this matter of sin, we learn to see how sick we are morally, and how much we need a doctor who administers to us the remedy capable of annihilating the said matter and restoring us to moral health. We also learn to see that all our ways of moralizing with words serve little purpose where real means are needed. People have already been moralizing for centuries, and the world is still the same. The patient will not become convalescent if the doctor only moralizes at his bedside. It is necessary that he prescribes remedies; but first we must know the real state of the patient.

STATE OF DISEASE OF HUMANITY

The disease state of men is a real poisoning; man has eaten of the fruit of the tree in which the corruptible and material principle predominated, and has poisoned himself by this Enjoyment. The first effect of this poison was that the incorruptible principle, which might be called the body of life, as the matter of sin is the body of death, the expansion of which formed the perfection of Adam, was concentrated in the interior, and abandoned the exterior to the government of the elements. It was thus that a mortal matter soon covered the immortal essence, and the natural consequences of the loss of light were ignorance, passions, pain, misery and death.
Communication with the world of light was intercepted; the inner eye, which everywhere saw the truth, closed, and the material eye opened to the inconstant aspect of phenomena. The man lost all his happiness and, in this miserable state, he would have been lost forever, without means of salvation. But the infinite love and mercy of God, who never had any other purpose in creating but the highest happiness of creatures, immediately after the fall opened to fallen man the means of salvation which he had to hope for with all his posterity, that being strengthened by hope in his banishment, he might bear his misfortune humbly and with resignation,
Without this revelation, despair would have been the lot of man. Man before the fall was the living Temple of Divinity; and, at the moment when this temple was devastated, the plan for rebuilding it was already projected by the Wisdom of God, and from this time begin the Sacred Mysteries of all the religions, which are in themselves under a thousand different exteriors, adapted to the circumstances of the various peoples, but the repeated and distorted symbols of a single truth, which is: the Regeneration of man, or his reunion with God .
Before the Fall, man was wise; he was united with Wisdom; after the Fall he was separated from her. This is why Revelation became necessary to him, to put him in a position to reunite with her again. And this first Revelation was the following:
The state of immortality consists in the immortal penetrating the mortal. The immortal is a divine substance which is the magnificence of God in nature, the substratum of the spirit world, in short, the divine infinity in which everything has life and movement. It is an absolute law that no creature can be truly happy outside the source of all bliss. This source is the magnificence of God himself.
By the assimilation of a perishable food, man has himself become perishable and material: matter is found, so to speak, between God and him; he is no longer immediately penetrated by the Divinity, and is therefore subject to the laws of matter.
The divine in him, which is enclosed in the bonds of matter, is his immortal principle; it must be set free, develop again in him in order to govern the mortal. Then man will find himself in his primitive dignity. But a means for its healing, and for eliminating the evil within, is necessary. Fallen man can neither recognize this means for himself nor grasp it. He cannot recognize it because he has lost pure knowledge, the light of wisdom; he cannot seize it, because this means is enclosed in the most interior of nature; and he has neither the power nor the strength to open that interior.
Hence the Revelation to know this means and the strength to acquire it are necessary for him. This necessity, for the recovery of the salvation of men, determined Wisdom or the Son of God to give himself to be known to man, as being the pure substance, of which all was made. To this pure substance is reserved to quicken all that is dead, and to purify all that is impure. But for this to be accomplished, and for the most interior, the divine in man, enclosed in the envelope of mortality, to be opened again, and for the whole world to be able to be regenerated, it was necessary that this divine substance should be humanized, and transmit the divine and regenerative force to the human;it was also necessary that this divine-human form should be killed, so that the divine and incorruptible substance contained in its blood could penetrate into the innermost parts of the earth and bring about a progressive dissolution of corruptible matter; so that in his time the pure and regenerated land may be found by man, and let the Tree of Life be planted there; for by the enjoyment of its fruit containing within it the immortal principle, the mortal in us will be annihilated, and man will be healed by the fruit of the Tree of Life, as he was poisoned by the enjoyment of the fruit of the mortiferous principle.
This was the first and most important revelation on which all the others are based and which has always been preserved and transmitted orally among the Elect of God until our days.
Human nature needed a Redeemer; this Redeemer was Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God Himself, the Reality emanating from God; He clothed Himself in humanity in order to introduce, once again, into the world, the divine and immortal substance, which was none other than Himself. He offered Himself, voluntarily, so that the pure forces contained in His blood could directly penetrate the most intimate depths of earthly nature and reintroduce there the seed of all perfections.
He Himself, as High Priest and Victim at the same time, entered into the Holy of Holies and, having accomplished all that was necessary, laid the foundations of the Royal Priesthood of His Elect and taught them, by the knowledge of His Person and His powers, how they were to lead, as being the first born of the Spirit, other men, their brethren, to general bliss. And here begin the Priestly Mysteries of the Elect and of the Inner Church. The true Royal and Priestly Science is the science of regeneration, or that of reuniting fallen man with God.
It is called royal science because it leads man to power and dominion over all nature. And it is called priestly science, because it sanctifies everything, brings everything to perfection, spreading grace and blessing everywhere. This science draws its immediate origin from the verbal Revelation of God; it was always the science of the interior Church of the prophets and the saints, and never recognized another High Priest than JC, the Lord.
This science had the triple aim of regenerating successively, first, the isolated man, then, many men, finally, the whole of humanity. His practice consisted in the highest perfection of himself and of all the objects of nature. This science was taught by no one but by the Spirit of God himself, and by those who were in union with this Spirit; and he was distinguished from all other sciences in that he taught the knowledge of God, nature, and man in perfect synthesis, while the outer sciences know neither God, nor nature, nor man and his destination, with exactness.
Briefly, its content was the knowledge of God in man and of the divine expression in nature constituting the seal of Divinity, and enabling us to open our interior to achieve union with the divine. This reunion, this regeneration, was its highest goal , and it is from this that the Priesthood took its name: religio, clerus regenerans. Melchizedek was the first Priest-King; all the true priests of God and nature are descended from him, and Jesus Christ Himself joined him as a priest "after the order of Melchizedek". This word is already literally of the highest and widest meaning. Melchi-Tsedeq,literally means "instructor" in true life-stuff and in the separation of that true life-stuff from the destructible sheath which encloses it.
A priest is a separator of the pure nature from the impure nature; a separator of the substance that contains everything, from the destructible matter that causes pain and misery. The sacrifice, or that which has been separated, consists of bread and wine. Bread literally means the substance that contains everything, and wine the substance that vivifies everything. Thus, a priest according to the order of Melchizedek is one who knows how to separate the substance which contains everything and vivifies everything, from impure matter;and who knows how to use it as a true means of reconciliation and reunion for fallen humanity, in order to communicate to it true royal dignity or power over nature, and priestly dignity or the power to unity by Grace, to the superior worlds. In these few words is contained the whole Mystery of the Priesthood of God, the occupation which is the goal of the priest.
But this royal Priesthood could only acquire its perfect maturity when Jesus Christ Himself, as High Priest, had performed the greatest of all sacrifices and had entered into the innermost sanctuary. Here open new and great mysteries worthy of your full attention. When, according to the eternal decrees of the wisdom and justice of God, it was resolved to save the fallen mankind, the wisdom of God had to choose the means which was, in every respect, most effective for the consummation of this great end.
When man, by the enjoyment of a corruptible fruit, and which bore in him the leaven of death, was poisoned in such a way that all that was around him became mortal and destructible, divine mercy must necessarily establish a counterpoison which could likewise be absorbed, and which contained within itself the substance which contains and vivifies all, so that, by the enjoyment of this immortal food, the poisoned and subject to death man could to be healed and delivered from his misery. But, so that this tree of life could be planted again here below, it was necessary above all that the material and corruptible principle which is in the center of the earth, was first regenerated, transformed and made capable of being one day a substance which would vivify everything .
This capacity for new life, and the dissolution of the corruptible essence itself, which lay in the center of the earth, was only possible so long as the divine substance of life would envelop itself in flesh and blood, to transmit the hidden forces of life to still life. This was done by the death of Jesus Christ. The tinctorial force, which flowed from His shed blood, penetrated the innermost part of the earth, raised the dead, broke the rocks, and caused the total eclipse of the sun, when it pushed back, from the center of the earth into which the light entered, all the parts of darkness towards the circumference, and laid the basis for the future glorification of the World.
Since the time of the death of Jesus Christ, the divine force, instilled in the center of the earth by his shed blood, was always working to exteriorize itself and to make all substances gradually capable of the great upheaval which is in store for the world. But the regeneration of the edifice of the world in general was not the only goal of Redemption. Man was the principal object which caused Him to shed His blood, and to procure for him already, in this material world, the highest possible perfection by the improvement of his being, Jesus Christ determined Himself to infinite sufferings. He is the Savior of the world, He is the Savior of men. The object, the cause of His incarnation was to redeem us from sin, misery and death.
Jesus Christ delivered us from all evil by His flesh, which He sacrificed, and by His blood, which He shed for us.

IN THE CLEAR UNDERSTANDING OF THE FLESH AND BLOOD OF JESUS ​​CHRIST IS THE TRUE AND PURE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S EFFECTIVE REGENERATION. THE MYSTERY OF UNION WITH JESUS ​​CHRIST, NOT ONLY SPIRITUALLY, BUT ALSO CORPORALLY, IS THE SUPREME MYSTERY OF THE INNER CHURCH.

To become ONE with Him, in spirit and in being, such is the supreme realization awaited by His Chosen Ones. The means of this real possession of God are hidden from the wise men of this world, and revealed to the simplicity of children.
O proud philosophy, prostrate yourself before the great and divine mysteries inaccessible to your wisdom and without common measure with the pale lights of human reason!

APPENDIX

HEAVEN ON EARTH
Gold
JESUS ​​CHRIST IN THE HEART OF MAN

The world will only be happy when it has Jesus Christ within it. Then, bliss will reign on earth, peace and prosperity will be shared by all. What is Jesus Christ? He is Love, Wisdom, Power; He is the source of pure inclinations which lead to inner illumination! Where He is resides the dignity of man, the bliss of the purified heart; He alone bears the burden that keeps us deep in misery.
Where His Spirit reigns in the heart, sorrow and suffering disappear; all days spent with Him are days of spring, all hours, hours of delight. The princes who reign by Him have no equals; Love alone is their kingdom. Let us attempt a sketch of the blessing that will be upon us, when all humanity, united by Love, will reside in His Temple: The princes will be the fathers of their peoples; the priests will be his doctors; and to Him alone, the Great Savior of Men, we will be indebted for this happiness. All who fled or hated each other, the Jew and the Gentile, the powerful and the wretched, all who are presently at odds, will live in mutual harmony.
Remedies are prepared for the convalescence of the patient; a fraternal tenderness watches over the poor. The hungry is restored; the unfortunate finds support; the stranger receives hospitality. The widow no longer weeps, the orphan no longer mourns; each has his sufficiency, for the Lord cares for all. The Spirit and the Truth dwell in the Temple; the service of the altar is celebrated by the heart as well as by the mouth, and the sacred seal of the Divinity guarantees the dignity of the priest. Wisdom is the supreme jewel of earthly diadems; Love reigns in the Sanctuary and seizes the world.No more immolations of our brothers on bloody scaffolds: we are branches of the same tree and each is necessary for the others.

Surgeons who arbitrarily carve into limbs these days put all their wisdom into keeping bodies as their own. Ah! What do I see? What joy still unknown to my heart of flesh: Christian and Jew, Mohammedan and pagan walk together, hand in hand! The wolf and the lamb are in the meadow; the child plays with the viper; enemy natures are reconciled by Love.
And you, pilgrim in search of the stage, a few more steps on the Way and then you can turn around! Already, little by little, the Veil of the Inner Sanctuary is falling! See how the bat and the owl flee before the sunrise; how error, night and prejudice descends again into the abode of shadows! The new earth begins; the new century is near: the Spirit of Jesus Christ says: "Let there be!" – and, already, he truly is! He's there; it seems that it can be seen... But no – it must remain invisible until the Veil falls. Only then will no revolution threaten the earth any longer: He, the desired of the nations, the Lord, is near.
When the spirit of darkness still pushes myriads of men to cut each other's throats, he will however have to flee, because victory is promised to Love! God uses foreign weapons when his people forget Him entirely; sin, the source of evil, becomes the punishment for sin! However, if a single tear falls from the sinner's eyes, the scene of pain changes, because his Father is near! One rules all; one leads all according to the designs of His Wisdom. Many of those who fight for Him often don't know it themselves. Many have known only what falls under the gaze of the senses. When the Veil is lifted, what amazement for the world!
Then, proud philosophers, you will depart with confusion from Him in whom the wise hope, Him who is their light and their bliss. The reason that you deify is only a simple light of the senses: he who climbs the degrees of Babel cannot reach the truth.
Your work will be annihilated by Him who scatters the sand to the wind: any error must be eclipsed before the majesty of Faith!

END OF THE BOOK