Manifold are the interpretations of the poetic works which exist about the Holy Grail. The most serious scholars and researchers have occupied themselves with this mystery. Some of their work has high moral value, but it all bears within it the great fault that it shows only a building up from the earthly upwards, while the main thing, the ray of Light from above downwards, which alone could bring animation and enlightenment, is lacking.
All that strives from below upwards must come to a halt at the boundary of material substance, even when it is permitted to attain to the highest. In most cases, however, with the most favourable pre-conditions, barely half of this way can be covered. But how far then is the way yet to the true recognition of the Holy Grail!
This intuitive perception that it is so unattainable finally makes itself felt with the researchers. The result is that they try to take the Grail as a purely symbolic designation of a concept, in order thus to give it the high place which they quite rightly sense inwardly to be necessary for this designation. In so doing, however, they are really going backward, not forward. Downward instead of upward. They are deviating from the right way which the poetic works already indicate in part.
Only these allow the Truth to be divined. But only to be divined, because the high inspirations and visionary pictures of the poets were made far too earthly through the intellect co-operating in the transmission. They endowed the reproduction of what was spiritually received with the image of their earthly surroundings at the time, in order thus to make the meaning of their poetic work more understandable to men, in which nevertheless they still did not succeed, because they themselves could not come close to the real essence of the Truth.
Thus the subsequent investigating and seeking was given an insecure foundation from the beginning; a narrow limit was thereby set to any success. It is not surprising, therefore, that finally only pure symbolism could be thought of, and redemption through the Grail was transferred to every man's inmost self.
The existing interpretations are not without great ethical value, but they cannot claim to be an explanation of the poetic works, much less even to approach the truth of Holy Grail.
Nor by the Holy Grail is meant the vessel which, at the end of His earthly Mission, the Son of God used during the Last Meal with His disciples, and in which His blood was afterwards caught at the Cross. This vessel is a sacred memento of the high Work of Redemption by the Son of God, but it is not the Holy Grail of which the poets of the legends were mercifully blessed to sing praises. These poetic works have been wrongly interpreted by mankind.
They were intended as promises from the Highest Heights, the fulfilment of which men have to await! Had they been interpreted as such, then surely there would also long since have been found another way which could have taken the research still somewhat further than hitherto. As it was, however, things finally had to come to a dead stop in all the interpretations, because a full, gap-less solution could never be attained, since owing to the hitherto-existing misconception the starting-point of every research was on the wrong basis from the beginning. --
Never will a human spirit, even if finally in its greatest perfection and immortality, be able to face the Holy Grail itself! Therefore no detailed tidings about it can ever get thence earthwards into material substance, unless it be through a messenger who has been sent forth
from there. Thus the Holy Grail must remain a mystery to the human spirit for eternity.
Let man keep to what he is able to grasp spiritually, and above all seek to fulfil and bring to the noblest flowering what lies in his power. But unfortunately, in his longing he is only too ready always to reach far beyond that, without developing his real ability, and as a result he is guilty of a negligence that prevents him even from attaining to what he could, whereas in any case he can never attain to what he longs for. He thus deprives himself of the most beautiful and the highest of his real being; all he does is fail completely to fulfil the purpose of his existence.--
The Parsifal is a great promise. The deficiencies and errors, which through their all too earthly way of thinking the poets of the legends have added, distort the real essence of this Figure. Parsifal is one with the Son of Man, Whose Coming the Son of God Himself proclaimed.
An Envoy of God, with a bandage before His spiritual eyes, He will have to go through the most severe earthly hardships, outwardly as man among men. After a certain time, freed from this bandage, He must again recognise His Starting-point and with it Himself, as well as clearly seeing His Mission before Him. This Mission will likewise bring a redemption for the seriously-seeking humanity, linked with a rigorous Judgment.
For this, however, not just any human being can be assumed, much less still is the possible experiencing of numerous or even of all men to be recognised in it; but it will be only one quite definite, especially sent One.
In the immovable Lawfulness of all Divine Will, there is no other possibility than for each one after its course of development, in its highest perfection, to return again to the starting-point of its original being, but never beyond this. Thus also for the human spirit. As a spirit seed-grain, it has its origin in Spiritual Substantiality, whither it can return after its course through the World of Matter, in highest perfection and in the living purity it has acquired as a conscious spirit in substantiate form.
No spiritual-substantiate one, however high and pure and radiant, is able to cross the boundary to the Divine. The boundary, and the impossibility of crossing it, lies also here, as in the spheres or planes of Material Creation, simply in the nature of things, in the difference between the species.
As uppermost and highest is God Himself in His Divine Unsubstantiality. Then next and somewhat lower comes Divine Substantiality. Both are eternal. Only then is this joined by the Work of Creation, going deeper and deeper, becoming denser and denser in descending planes or spheres down to the finite World of Gross Matter, which becomes visible to human beings.
The ethereal in Material Creation is what men call the beyond. Thus what is beyond their earthly, gross material ability to see. Both, however, belong to the Work of Creation, and are not eternal in their form, but subject to change for the purpose of renewal and regeneration.
At the highest Starting-point of Eternal Spiritual Substantiality stands the Grail Castle, spiritually visible, tangible, because it is still of the same spiritual-substantiate species. This Grail Castle contains a Chamber, which in turn lies at the outermost boundary towards the Divine, thus is still more etherised than all else of Spiritual Substantiality. In this Chamber, as a pledge of the Eternal Goodness of God the Father, and as a symbol of His Purest Divine Love, as well as the Starting-point of Divine Power, is:
the Holy Grail!
It is a Chalice, in which there is a ceaseless bubbling and surging like red blood, without ever overflowing. Radiantly enveloped by the lightest of Light, it is granted only to the purest of all the Spiritual-Substantiate ones to be able to look into this Light.
These are Guardians of the Holy Grail! When it is said in the poetic works that the purest of men are destined to become Guardians of the Grail, this is a point which the blessed poet has made all too earthly, because he was unable to express himself differently.
No human spirit can enter into this hallowed Shrine. Even in its most perfect spiritual substantiality, after returning from its course through the World of Matter, it is still not etherised enough to cross the threshold, thus the boundary. Even in its highest perfection it is still too dense to do so.
A further etherisation for it would have to be equivalent to complete disintegration or combustion, because from its origin its species is not adapted to becoming even more radiant and luminous, hence even more etherised. It cannot bear it.
The Guardians of the Grail are Eternal Ones, Primordial Spiritual Beings who never were human beings; the highest of all Spiritual Substantiality. But they have need of Divine Unsubstantiate Power, are dependent upon It, just as everything is dependent upon Divine Unsubstantiality, the Source of all Power, God the Father.
From time to time on the Day of the Holy Dove, the Dove appears above the Vessel as a renewed token of the unchanging Divine Love of the Father. It is the Hour of Communion, which brings renewal of Power. The Guardians of the Grail receive it in humble devotion, and are then able to pass on this miraculous Power which they have received.
On this depends the existence of the whole Creation!
It is the moment when in the Temple of the Holy Grail the Creator's Love radiantly pours forth to bring new life, a new creative urge which, pulsating downwards, spreads through the whole Universe. With it goes a trembling through all the spheres, a holy awe of joy filled with diving, of great happiness. Only the spirit of earthman still stands aside, without intuitively perceiving what is happening just to him at that moment, what an immeasurable gift he apathetically accepts, because his self-restriction in the intellect no longer allows him to grasp such greatness.
It is the moment of life-supply for the whole Creation!
The constant, necessary recurrence of a ratification of the Covenant which the Creator keeps with His Work. Should this supply ever be cut off, should it fail to appear, then all that exists would slowly have to wither, grow old 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 reflected in the legend. It is even indicated how everything must grow old and perish if the Day of the Holy Dove, the “uncovering” of the Holy Grail, does not recur, in the ageing of the Grail Knights during the time when Amfortas no longer uncovers the Grail, until the hour in which Parsifal appears as King of the Grail.
Man should cease to regard the Holy Grail only as something intangible; for it really exists! But the human spirit, owing to its nature, is denied the possibility of ever beholding it. Yet the blessing that streams forth from it, and which can be and also is passed on by the Guardians of the Grail, can be received and enjoyed by the human spirits if they open themselves to it.
In this sense some of the interpretations cannot exactly be called wrong, as long as in their explanations they do not try to draw the Holy Grail itself into them. They are right, and yet again not right.
The appearance of the Dove on the appointed Day of the Holy Dove indicates the sending each time of the Holy Spirit; for this Dove is in close association with Him.
But that is something which the human spirit is only able to grasp figuratively, because by the nature of things the human spirit at its highest development can in reality only think, know and perceive intuitively up to the point from which it came itself, thus as far as the species that is
one with its purest nature of origin. That is the eternal Spiritual Substantiality.
Even in its thinking it will never be able to cross this boundary. Nor can it ever grasp anything beyond it. This is so self-evident, logical and simple that every human being can follow the train of thought.
What is above this, however, will and must for this reason always be and remain a mystery to mankind!
Every man therefore lives under a delusion if he imagines that he bears God within him or that he is himself Divine, or can become so. He bears
spirituality within him, but
not Divinity. And therein lies an unbridgeable difference. He is a creature, not a part of the Creator, as many a one tries to persuade himself. Man is and remains a
work, and can never become master.
Hence it is also wrong to declare that the human spirit issues from God the Father Himself and returns to Him. The origin of man is
Spiritual Substantiality, not Divine Unsubstantiality. Therefore even on attaining perfection, it can only return as far as to Spiritual Substantiality. It is right to say that the human spirit originates in the
Kingdom of God and can therefore also, when it becomes perfect, return again into the
Kingdom of God, but not to God Himself.
Later there will yet follow detailed lectures about the individual divisions of Creation, which are quite different in their essential nature.
At the highest height of each one of these planes of Creation there is a Grail Castle as the necessary place of transition and power-transmission.
Formed in accordance with the essential nature of the Creation-planes concerned, this is always a replica of the real, highest Grail Castle which stands at the summit of the whole Creation, and which is the Starting-point of the whole Creation through the radiations of Parsifal.
Amfortas was Priest and King in the
lowest of these replicas of the Grail Castle, which stands at the summit of the plane of all the human spirits who have developed from spirit seed-grains, thus closest to mankind on earth.
Abd-ru-shin - In The Light Of Truth
(Title of the original German edition: Abd-ru-shin: „Im Lichte Der Wahrheit“)
