44. The Holy Grail


Many are the interpretations of the poems that exist about the Holy Grail. The most serious scholars and researchers have dealt with this mystery. Much of it has high moral value, but everything carries in it the great flaw that they only show a structure from the earthly upwards, while the main thing, the ray of light from above, which could only bring life and enlightenment, is missing. Everything that strives from below upwards must stop at the boundary of matter, even if it is granted the highest attainable. In most cases, however, under favourable conditions, hardly half of this distance can be covered. But, then, how far is the path to true knowledge of the Holy Grail!
 
This realization of unattainability is the last thing that researchers perceive. The result is that they now try to take the Grail as a purely symbolic expression of a concept, in order to give it the height of which they quite rightly feel the necessity for this designation. But in so doing they are in reality going backwards, not forwards. Downwards instead of upwards. They deviate from the correct path, which parts the poems already contain. Only these give us a glimpse of the truth. But even this is only a glimpse, because the poets’ high inspirations and dreamlike images were made too earthy by the intellect which collaborated in the process of passing them on. They gave the reproduction of what they had received spiritually the image of their present earthly surroundings, in order to make the meaning of their poetry more understandable to people, but they still did not succeed because they themselves could not get close to the actual core of the truth.
 
Thus, later research and seeking were based on an uncertain foundation from the outset, and a narrow limit was set to any success. It is therefore not surprising that in the end one could only think of pure symbolism and that redemption through the Grail was placed in the innermost self of every human being.
 
The existing interpretations are not without great moral value, but they cannot claim to be an explanation of the poems, much less to approach the truth of the Holy Grail.
 
Nor does the Holy Grail mean the vessel which the Son of God used at the end of His earthly Mission at the Last Supper with His disciples, in which His Blood was collected on the cross. This vessel is a sacred reminder of the great redemptive work of the Son of God, but it is not the Holy Grail that the poets of the legends were gifted to sing about. These poems have been misconceived by mankind.
 
They were supposed to be promises from the Highest Heights, the fulfilment of which mankind could expect! If they had been interpreted as such, another way would certainly have been found long ago, which could have taken the research a little further than it has been up to now. But as it was, a dead end had to be reached in all the interpretations, because a complete, gapless solution could never be attained, since the starting-point of every research stood on false ground from the outset, owing to the previous wrong view. ––
 
Never will a human spirit, even in its greatest perfection and immortality, be able to face the Holy Grail Itself! For this reason, no extensive information about It can ever reach the World of Matter
from there, except through a Messenger sent from there. The Holy Grail will therefore always and forever remain a secret to the human spirit.
 
Let man stick to what he is able to grasp spiritually and seek above all to fulfil and bring to the noblest blossoms what lies within his powers. Unfortunately, however, he is only too willing to reach far beyond this in his desire, without developing his actual ability, whereby he commits a negligence that does not even allow him to achieve what it could, while he can never achieve what he wants anyway. He thus deprives himself of the most beautiful and the highest of his actual being; he achieves only a complete failure to fulfil his purpose of existence. ––
 
Parsifal is a great promise. The flaws and errors that the poets have added to the legends through their all too earthly thinking distort the very essence of this figure. Parsifal is one with the Son of Man, whose coming was proclaimed by the Son of God Himself. Sent by God, He will have to go through the most difficult earthly hardships with a bandage before His spiritual eyes, as a man among men. After a certain time, freed from this bandage, He must recognize His starting point and thus Himself again, as well as see His task clearly before Him. This task will likewise bring redemption to earnestly seeking humanity, combined with sharp Judgement. But not just any man can be chosen for this, still less will the possible experience of numerous or even all of humanity be recognized in it; but only a very definite, select, special Messenger will carry these possibilities within Himself.
 
In the immutable lawfulness of all Divine Will it is not otherwise possible than that, each one, after the course of development in its highest perfection, can return again to the starting point of its original being, but never beyond it. So also the human spirit. It has its origin as a spiritual seed from the Spiritual-Essential, to which it can return as a conscious spirit in essential form after its course through the World of Matter, when it has attained the highest perfection and living purity. There, in the most favourable case, his path can lead him to the
forecourt of the Grail Castle, which stands as the highest in Spiritual Essentiality and in this forms the Gate to the Steps of the Throne, on which the origin of all being, God the Father, in His Divine-Inessentiality, temporarily wraps the Mantle of the Divine-Essential around Himself, thus assuming form. No spiritual being, no matter how high and pure and radiant, is able to cross the Border to the Divine. Here, too, as in the spheres or planes of material Creation, the boundary and the possibility of crossing it lies simply in the nature of the thing, in the diversity of the species.
 
As supreme and highest is God Himself in His Divine Inessentiality. Then next, a little lower, comes Spiritual Essentiality. Both are eternal. This is followed by the material work of Creation going deeper and deeper, beginning with the gaseous ethereal materiality, becoming denser and denser in descending planes or spheres until the finite coarse materiality becomes visible to human beings. The ethereal part in the material Creation is what people call the beyond. That is, the beyond of their earthly, coarse-material vision. Both, however, belong to the work of Creation, are not eternal in their form, but are subject to change for the purpose of renewal and regeneration.
 
At the highest starting point of the eternal Spiritual-Essential stands the Grail Castle, spiritually visible, tangible, because it is still of the same spiritual essence. This Grail Castle holds a Sanctuary that lies on the outermost border of the Divine, and is therefore even more of a finer consistency than all other Spiritual-Essential. In this Sanctuary, as a pledge of God the Father’s eternal Goodness and as a symbol of His purest Divine Love, as well as the direct starting point of Divine Power, is the
Holy Grail!
 
It is a Vessel in which It continuously surges and billows like red blood without ever overflowing. Radiated by the brightest light, only the purest of all spiritual beings are granted the gift of being to look into this Light.
These are the Guardians of the Holy Grail! When it is said in the poems that the purest of human beings are destined to become guardians of the Grail, this is a point which the gifted poet has too earthily obscured because he was unable to express himself in any other way. No human spirit can enter this sacred space. Even in its most perfect Spiritual-Essential, after its return from its course through materiality, it is still not etherized enough to cross the threshold, that is, the boundary, to this space. Even in its highest perfection of essentiality it is still too dense for this. Further etherealization for it would be tantamount to complete decomposition or combustion, since its nature, from its origin, is not suited to becoming still more radiant and luminous, that is, still more etherealized. It cannot bear it.
 
The Guardians of the Grail are Eternals, Pure Spirits who have never been human beings, the pinnacles of all spiritual beings. But they need the Divine Unsubstantial Force, they depend on It, just as everything depends on Divine Inessentiality, the origin of all Force, God the Father.

From time to time, on the Day of the Holy Dove, the Dove appears above the Vessel as a renewed sign of the unchanging Divine Love of the Father. It is the Hour of Union that brings renewal of strength. The Guardians of the Grail receive It in humble devotion and are then able to pass on this preserved miraculous Force.
 
On this depends the existence of all Creation!
 
It is the moment when, in the Temple of the Holy Grail, the Creator’s Love pours out radiantly into new being, into new creative urge, which spreads downwards like a pulse through the whole Universe. A tremor passes through all spheres, a holy shivering of foreboding joy, of great happiness. Only the spirit of earthly men still stands aloof, without feeling what is happening to it, what an immeasurable Gift it dully accepts, because its self-confinement in the intellect no longer permits the comprehension of such greatness.

It is the moment of life supply for all Creation!
 
The constant, necessary recurrence of a confirmation of the Covenant which the Creator holds towards His work. If this supply were once cut off, if It were to cease, then everything that exists would slowly dry up, age and decay. Then would come the end of all days, and only God Himself would remain as it was in the beginning! Because He alone is Life.
 
This process is reproduced in the legend. It is even indicated how everything must age and pass away if the day of the Holy Dove, the “unveiling” of the Grail, does not return, in the growing old of the Grail Knights, during the time when Amfortas no longer unveils the Grail, until the hour when Parsifal appears as Grail King.
 
Man should refrain from regarding the Holy Grail only as something incomprehensible, for It really exists! But the nature of the Grail prevents the human spirit from ever being able to behold It. The blessing, however, which emanates from It, and which can be and is passed on by the Guardians of the Grail, can be received and enjoyed by the human spirits. In this sense, some interpretations are not exactly wrong, as soon as they try not to involve the Holy Grail itself in their interpretations. They are correct and yet they are not.
 
The appearance of the Dove on the particular Day of the Holy Dove indicates the sending of the Holy Spirit each time; for this Dove is closely connected with Him. But this is something that the human spirit is only capable of grasping metaphorically, because out of the nature of the thing, with the highest development, it is in reality only able to think, know and feel as far as where it itself came from, thus as far as the kind that is one with its purest nature of origin. That is the eternal Pure-Spiritual-Essential. He will never be able to exceed this limit, even in thinking. He will never be able to grasp anything else. This is so self-evident, logical and simple that every human being can follow this train of thought. But what is above it will and must for this reason always be and remain a secret to mankind!
 
Every human being therefore lives in an erroneous delusion if he imagines that he carries God within himself, or that he himself is Divine, or that he can become so. He carries
Pure Spirituality within himself, but not Divinity. And therein rests an irreconcilable difference. He is a creature, not a part of the Creator, as some people try to convince themselves. Man is and remains a work and will never be able to become a master.
 
It is therefore also incorrect when it is declared that the human spirit emanates from God the Father Himself and returns to Him. The origin of man is the Spiritual-Essential, not the Divine-Essential. Therefore, even when he has attained perfection, he can only return to
Spiritual Essentiality. It is correct to say that the human spirit originates from the Kingdom of God and therefore, when it becomes perfect, it can return to the Kingdom of God, but not to itself. The Kingdom of God is Pure Spiritual Essentiality.
 
The Mediator between the Divine Unsubstantial and the Pure-Spiritual has become the Son of God. He passes out of the Divine-Unsubstantial into the Spiritual-Substantial, just as He once passed into the World of Matter. The coming of the Son of Man brings the completion of the high Divine task of the Son of God. After the fulfilment, the Son of God will again return completely to Divine Substantiality, while the Son of Man will assume the office of Mediator in His place, and thus become the Leader of the Guardians of the Holy Grail, the Grail King who looks after the Holy Vessel.
 
The Son of Man will then be the Alpha and the Omega for the human spirit, because He gives the beginning and the end for the capabilities of the human spirit; for He is able to go over the border to Divine Inessentiality, and thus to survey everything.

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