Gnostic and Esoteric Search Engine

Using Google Custom Search, I've created a new search engine for searching key websites in the history of spirituality, Gnosticism, Esotericism, Alchemy, etc. The search box is at the top of the side panel. Additions and comments welcome.

Further down the side panel, there are boxes for Nirmala Search, and other Google customised search engines of interest to enlightened researchers. Also there are search boxes for Google Scholar, Google Books and WorldCat.

William Blake in contemporary context

The Sick Rose
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm.
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Commentary:
This poem has to be considered in its context: as a handwritten text with integrated graphics; as part of a larger work, the Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794); and as a commentary on, and influenced by, London of the early 1790s, specifically the radical, working class circles that Blake moved in during this period of his life.

William Blake (1757-1827) was a prophetic visonary who used Biblical and other imagery in his work. The rose only occurs twice in the Authorised version of the Bible (Isaiah 35:1 and Songs 2:1) but both texts were used by Blake in his work. Traditionally, the rose has been seen as a female archetype, with specific sexual connotations, often linked to the Biblical story of the temptation of Eve by the serpent, as used by Milton in Book IX of Paradise Lost, a work with which Blake was familiar.

In this poem William Blake portrays the Sick Rose as a female figure representing the rose of England, the national identity, which had been blighted and corrupted by the invisible worm of moral decay in the England of the early 1790s. In so doing he draws on both Biblical imagery and on London's radical politics of the time, including the agitation against the intrigues and manipulations of press freedoms by the politician and journalist George Rose (1744-1818).

References
William Blake, Songs of Experience: fascimile reproduction (New York: Dover Publications, 1984), plate 11

Jon Mee, 'The "insidious poison of secret Influence": a new historical context for Blake's "The Sick Rose"', Eighteenth-Century Life, vol.22(1), 1998, pp111-122

The Buddha and Enlightenment

When The Buddha achieved complete enlightenment, the first words that came to him were:

Seeking but not finding the House Builder,
I travelled through the round of countless births:
O painful is birth ever and again.

House Builder, you have now been seen;
You shall not build the house again;
Your ridge pole is demolished too.
My mind has now attained the unformed nirvana
And reached the end of every kind of craving.

Then he thought:

I have attained the unborn.
My liberation is unassailable.
This is my last birth.
There will now be no renewal of becoming.

(from the Dhammapada, verses 153-154)


From the Therigatha (Verses of the Elder Nuns), verses 112-116, here is a verse by one of the Buddha’s female disciples:

Patacara’s Enlightenment

When they plow their fields
and sow seeds in the earth
when they care for their wives and children
young brahmans find riches.
But I've done everything right
and followed the rule of my teacher.
I'm not lazy or proud.
Why haven't I found peace?
Bathing my feet
I watch the bathwater
spill down the slope.
I concentrate my mind
the way you train a good horse.
Then I took a lamp
and went into my cell,
checked the bed,
and sat down on it.
I took a needle
and pushed the wick down.
When the lamp went out
my mind was freed.

Guru Nanak and Sahaja

There are many references to Sahaja in the writings of Guru Nanak (1469-1539), preserved in the Adi Granth.


Mera mani mera man eara Ram piyara Ram

Believe me, my mind is imbued with love of my beloved Rama
The Lord is the truth. He is the primal person, He is beyond all limits.
Him I have accepted as my Rama
He is beyond reach, beyond comprehension of the senses

Beyond our most distant horizons.
He is the Great God who presides over everything.
He was before everything else;
He was when Time began,
He is and ever shall be.
Believe me all else is falsehood.
He who knows not the worth of good deeds and piety,
How can he understand anything?
How shall he attain salvation?
Sayeth Nanak, the saintly know the Word
Day and night they meditate upon the Name.

Believe me my mind has accepted the Name of Rama as its companion
I know that neither ego nor things I love nor wealth will go with me, O Rama!
Neither mother nor father, brother nor sons
Nor any of cunning devices nor property will help you take them or your wives with you.
I have forsaken wealth, divorced maya [illusion] from my mind and crushed her under my foot.

The Primal Lord showed me the way
Wherever I turn I see Him.

Sayeth Nanak, abandon not the worship of Hari,
By the gentle path of Sahaja, you will attain Him.

Believe me, my mind has been purified,
It seeks the Truth, O Rama!
My sins are forgiven,
I am at the meeting of rivers of virtue, O Rama!
I abandon evil ways and tread the path of virtue;
I am at the gate of Truth,
I shall not be born to die,
I have imbibed the quintessence of the guru’s teaching.
Noble Friend! Learned Companion!
When I meet Thee I see the Truth and am exalted.
O Nanak, the jewel of the Name glitters,
Such is the message of the guru!

Truth is the salve
This salve I apply to my own eyes,
I beheld the Lord and loved Him, O Rama!
My mind and body rejoiced in Him.
He gives life to the world, He is bountiful, O Rama!
He is the giver of life to the world,
He is the Bountiful Lord.
I have dyed my mind with the colours of Hari’s Name,
By the gentle way of Sahaj He blended me with Him.

I found the company of holy men
Companionship of the congregation
By the grace of God I achieved tranquility.
Seekers immerse in the worship of Hari,
Conquer the cravings of attachment and desire.
Sayeth Nanak, once the ego is destroyed
The fortunate ones are confirmed in their faith.



Siddha Goshta

Part of the Adi Granth, the Siddha Goshta is based on a dialogue said to have taken place between Guru Nanak and a band of yogis who came to visit him.

(extracts)

The yogis took their seats on their prayer-mats
And spake in chorus: “our salutations to this holy assemblage!”

“I salute Him who is the Truth”, replied Nanak,
“Who is Infinity, Who is without any limit.
Fain would I sever my head with my own hand
And lay it at His feet!
To Him I dedicate my body and my soul.
Truth is however also found in the company of the hold and through them the soul is led by the path of sahaja to glory.
But what use is it to wander in the wilderness?
Through truth alone is true purification
Without the True Word there is no salvation.” …

“In the calm of sahaja’s cave you can discover the True One,
Sayeth Nanak, the True One loves the truthful.” …

“Through the guru’s instruction free yourself of desires
Let triumph over desires be the emblem you wear;
Know that in every heart that beats
The Lord of life hath His mansion.
It is through the guru’s teaching
We merge in the Formless One.

By the gentle path of Sahaja
Attain God, Purest of the Pure.
A disciple who serves his guru and no other
Will succeed, says Nanak, that is sure.”

Subtle energies

On another forum, someone asked about Tai Chi. This was my answer, slightly amended:

The notion of moving energy within the subtle body is very ancient, and can be found in both the Indian and Chinese traditions.

The ancient Indian texts, as early as 800BCE, talk of raising the 'Brahma force' up through the hita (veins), later known as nadis, and out of the crown of the head, later known as the Sahasrara chakra.

In China, the Daoist mystical tradition, based on the teachings of Lao Tse, had a similar knowledge of the subtle body with their knowledge of chi (energy).

Clearing the subtle body in India included physical exercises that became known as Hatha yoga, and in China similar physical exercises became known as Tai Chi.

And to follow on, when the Chinese notion of subtle energy, or chi, reached Japan at the end of the 19th century, it became ki, thus Reiki (universal energy).

The key point is this: knowledge of the subtle system cannot be divorced from realisation (yoga). So, is the 'door' at the top of the head open?
If yes, then negative energy can be sent out of the subtle body, to be replaced by divine energy.
If no, or not yet, the negative energy cannot easily be disposed off, and hence moves around within the body or is transfered, via subtle attention, to others (as in reiki).

If we can give realisation/kundalini awakening to these subtle energy practitioners (of Tai Chi and of reiki) then that would be good, however meanwhile lets not get caught out by their negative energies.

As always let vibrational awareness be our guide.

A note on Tantra

There is a difference in meaning between 'tantra' in the historical usage, and the current perverse meaning.

In the period 6th-10th centuries CE, a 'tantra' was a category of spiritual literature, a 'how-to' manual for spiritual enlightenment, in the form of instruction from enlightened Guru to disciple:

The Hevajra Tantra:
The whole world is of the nature of Sahaja – for Sahaja is the quintessence (svarupa) of all; This quintessence is nirvana to those who possess the perfectly pure Citta [mind].

The Kularnava Tantra:
Yoga is not [attained] through the lotus position and not through glancing at the tip of the nose. It is the identity of the self [jiva]and Self [atman] which the yoga experts [visharada] called "Yoga".

For an overview of the early Hindu and Buddhist tantras, see:
http://www.tantraworks.com/Tantra_Ref.html

Elizabeth of Schonau

The German Christian nun, Elisabeth of Schonau (1128-1164) had many visionary experiences including the following:

While we were celebrating the vigil of the birth of our Lord,
around the hour of the divine service, I came into a trance
and I saw, as it were, a sun of marvelous brightness in the
sky. In the middle of the sun was the likeness of a virgin
whose appearance was particularly beautiful and desirable
to see. She was sitting with her hair spread over her
shoulders, a crown of the most resplendent gold on her
head, and a golden cup in her right hand. A splendour of
great brightness came forth from the sun, by which she
was surrounded on all sides, and from her it seemed to fill
first the place of our dwelling, and then after a while spread
out little by little to fill the whole world. …

Elisabeth received two explanations for this vision. A ‘holy angel of the Lord’ told her:

The virgin you see is the sacred humanity of the Lord Jesus.
The sun in which the virgin is sitting is the divinity that
possesses and illuminates the whole humanity of the Saviour.

At the prompting of her (male) advisers, Elisabeth asked in a subsequent vision why this ‘humanity of the Lord Saviour’ had been shown to her in the form of a virgin and not in a masculine form. John the Evangelist responded by saying:

The Lord willed it to be done in this way so that the vision
could so much more easily be adapted to also signify His
blessed mother.

Source: Liber visionem tertius

http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/schonau.html

William Blake's Jerusalem as Divine Feminine

So much has been written on the prophetic books of William Blake that one wonders what else can be said. I offer here some comments on ‘Jerusalem’ as a manifestation of the Divine Feminine.
The idealistic usage of ‘Jerusalem’ as an ideal, perfect holy city is well-known and frequently encountered in both Jewish and Christian writers; in addition there is the ‘New Jerusalem’ of the Book of Revelations in the New Testament of the Christian Bible (Rev 3:12; 21:2), and Blake was certainly familiar with the concept as his parents were members of Emmanuel Swedenborg’s New Jerusalem Church in the London of the 1780s.
So we find Blake using the imagery of Jerusalem the city in his prophetic books, especially Milton and Jerusalem, with much of the imagery and detail coming from his residence in Lambeth during the 1790s.
Blake additionally suggests ‘Jerusalem’ as a female counterpart to the male ‘Albion’. In The Four Zoas Blake refers to “Jerusalem which now descendeth out of heaven, a City, yet a Woman” and in Jerusalem provides in plate 46 a powerful portrayal of the female Jerusalem with her daughters. In the prophetic text of Jerusalem, the Universal Father speaks through Albion to Jerusalem:

Awake! Awake Jerusalem! O lovely Emanation of Albion
Awake and over spread all Nations as in Ancient Time
For lo! The Night of Death is past and the Eternal Day
Appears upon our Hills: Awake Jerusalem, and come away.

Sophia and the German Romantic tradition

By the end of the eighteenth century, spiritual seekers in the German Romantic tradition, including the young George Friedrich Philipp von Hardenburg (1772-1801) who wrote under the pen-name ‘Novalis’, and his contemporary, Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843), were able to draw on Jakob Boehme’s theological writings, and also on Gottfried Arnold’s more personal experiences, to incorporate Sophia and the feminine Divine into their literary writings alongside the emerging naturphilosophie. Thus, Novalis in his novel, Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1800), wrote:

Sophie said: “The great mystery has been revealed to all, and yet remains eternally unfathomable. The new world is born from suffering and the ashes are dissolved in tears to become the drink of eternal life. The heavenly Mother dwells in everyone, in order that each child beborn eternally. Do you feel the sweet birth in the beating of your hearts?” …

Finally Sophie said: “The Mother is among us. Her presence will bless us forever. Follow us into our dwelling; in the temple there we shall dwell eternally and guard the mystery of the world.”

A few years earlier, Holderlin had incorporated into his novel, Hyperion (1797), a prophetic vision of the feminine Divine:

The state is the coarse husk around the seed of life, and nothing more. It is the wall around the garden of human fruits and flowers. But is the wall around the garden of any help when the soil lies parched? Only the rain from heaven helps then.
O rain from heaven! O inspiration! You will bring us the springtime of peoples again. The state cannot command your presence. But let it not obstruct you, and you will come, come with your all-conquering ectasies, will wrap us in golden clouds and carry us up above this mortal world; and we shall marvel and wonder if this is still we, we who in our poverty asked the stars if a spring bloomed for us among them. – Do you ask me when this will be? It will be when the darling of Time, the youngest, loveliest daughter of Time, the new Church, will arise out of these polluted, antiquated forms, when the awakened feeling of the divine will bring man his divinity, man’s heart its beautiful youth again, when – I cannot prophesy it, for my eyes are too dim to surmise it, but it will come, that I know for certain. Death is a messenger of life, and that we now lie asleep in our infirmaries testifies that we shall soon awaken to new health. Then, and not till then, shall we exist, then, then, will our spirit’s element have been found.