Boris Mouravieff
Gnosis II
The first rudiments of gnosis, the higher knowledge and practice which give one mastery of oneself, progressively bring the inner peace which is the first serious result of the efforts made. This inner peace, which the faithful should cultivate by any means, is the indispensable condition that will enable him to collect all his energies so that he will be able to progress on the Staircase, and it is this same inner peace that will save him from falling. However, when we cultivate this inner peace, our opportunities for profitably exploiting the negative emotions born in us, so as to obtain fine energies, become very scarce. Then there remains only one other source, that of negative emotions aroused by shocks from outside us. This kind of shock will never be lacking for those who work in the world. Indeed, to the General Law someone who 'moves' looks like a fugitive from collective work, and nature takes immediate steps - a whole series of appropriate measures - to make the rebel fall back into line.
Then begins the struggle, the great struggle, the Invisible Combat on whose outcome the fate of the Knight of Christ depends. This uninterrupted combat lasts the whole length of the Staircase, and the faithfull does not obtain his final victory until after the last trials, when he finds himself in front of the second Threshold. All along the way, however, progress is ensured by partial victories over this or that passion, over the tendency to sleep, over violent shocks or scandals coming from outside or even from inside him. The struggle is painful, especially because one does not recognize the enety until after one has been hit; his approach is always masked in infinitely varied ways: considerations, seductions, a desire to be useful or agreeable, condescensions, noble attitudes, etc. Often the Knight is defeated because he was serving the Devil with all his heart while sincerely but mistakenly believing that he was serving Christ.
But whoever commits himself on this field of battle will still find help. It comes to him from two sides: from the depths of his being, and from outside him. In the first case, it is his absolute sincerity towards himself and the purity of the faith with which his heart is aflame. By definition, faith is blind, since it is as certain of the invisible as ofthe visible. As the invisible is unknown by definition, the most ardent faith can be sincerely mistaken. The example of St Paul is sufficient proof of this. But this same example shows that, just by its existence, the sincerity of faith calls forth Love, and so it draws out a correction of what is admittedly in error from the deepest depths of the one who feels it. This is the meaning of the revelation that the future prince of Apostles received on the road to Damascus.
As for outside aid, this comes from the effects of the law which applies to every action. We have defined this law more than once by this formula: tendencies accentuate. It is popularly known, and in many countries it appears in common parlance in the maxim: only the first step counts. These two formulae express the same law, and apply algebraically, that is, in a positive or negative sense. In terms of the moral effort that must be made, it is no less difficult to steal for the first time, for example, than to practice an unaccustomed virtue. Repeated action (in this instance, partial victories over negative emotions of the same nature) creates a habit, a force of inertia.
Even then, before crossing the second Threshold we can never be sure we will not fall into the same snare again, for one's watchfulness is quickly exhausted when faced with simultaneous and reiterated attacks. But the fall will be less and less painful and the erasure of its effects less and less difficult. What is more, each partial victory augments the reserve of fine energies and so strengthens the Knight's strength in the battle. But here again, he must be particularly vigilant not to spend the reserve as fast as he accumulates it. After each victory, he must remember that the General Law automatically acts in varied ways to steal from him the surplus-relative to the 'bourgeois' level - of the fine energies he has won, and which, if rationally utilized, will allow him to make one more step forward out of the zone of influence of this fundamental law which, in this situation, is hostile to him. In the course of this Invisible Combat, a particular passion, the same mirage, loses its power over the victor once he has overcome it once, twice or more times. So while the Knight advances on the Staircase his inner peace becomes more and more complete and unalterable. He will see his 'assailants' waver and retreat, one by one.
At this time the second source of fine energies that thefaithfull needs so much in order to advance is cut off. This source is the result of the transmutation of negative emotions aroused by shocks from outside him. Again, in someone who has crossed the first Threshold and struggles to climb the Staircase with his heart burning with faith, the source of energies from the negative emotions forming inside him dries up at the same time. It then becomes a question of knowing how and where Christ's Knight can find new sources of fine energies, once he has established a steady and permanent peace within himself and has thus become unmovable by inner or outer shocks. These sources will open up for him but, we must repeat, only on condition that the inner peace he has obtained becomes firm and unshakeable. Having reached this point in our study, the enlightened reader will understand that this inner peace can be obtained only by the ????? to which we referred in the first volume. This logically leads us on to examine this phenomenon and technique which can enable us to carry out this fusion in ourselves in greater depth. ere we will digress a little in order to clear up an important question which must have arisen in the reader's mind.
To postulate of the mastery of the negative emotions is well founded, as has been demonstrated above, and this gives rise to the following question: in these conditions, what is their usefulness in the general economy of our Mixtus Orbis? From what has been said, the reader may have the impression that negative emotions are simply one of the instruments by which the General Law keeps man in his place. Here, it is necessary to make a distinction, because the action of negative emotions has not one role but two. Their action becomes destructive for those who are close to the first Threshold, and even more for those who, having crossed it, are progressing on the Staircase. We have already mentioned that as far as the General Law is concerned they are potential or confirmed 'fugitives.' For them, negative emotions represent one of the factors that can make them lose ground, and this is a danger against which the faithful should fight with all his strength. But this is the special case of someone who takes part in esoteric work, and it is rather uncommon. So the question is to learn the significance of these negative emotions when they invade people who are satisfied with themselves and perhaps even with their fate, who not only do not dream of any esoteric evolution, but who have no idea of the General Law, of its action, or that it is possible to escape from its clutches. These are docile, perfect subjects of the General Law, and their kind forms the greater part of the human species. Negative emotions have numerous meanings and play countless roles that largely extend beyond the boundaries of our Mixtw Orbis.
We will try to determine their place within the framework of the note LA of organic life on Earth, especially in its two principal aspects: the personal aspect and the collective one. In both these cases the role of negative emotions is not really negative, although their direct effects are always destructive: damaging the individual's health, provoking discord in families, and giving the human masses impulses that push them to excesses: to revolts, wars or revolutions. In the individual case, the positive effects of negative emotions lies in the fact that they serve as awakening alarms. Their dynamism communicates impulses to the individual which force him to act. It is the energy SI-12 stored up by the motor centre which mixes with the energy of one or more passions-which have the heavier density of 24-to give birth to negative emotions. Afterwards, in this mixed state, it penetrates the motor sectors H of the two other centres and makes them vibrate. The emotional centre then vibrates in a violent way.
The same mixture of energies gives the intellectual centre an inventive but always calculating orientation, rendering it cunning and capable of all kinds of lies. In this way the organism of man's psyche comes out of its somnolent mental state but, uncultured from the esoteric point of view, it automatically or even voluntarily falls back into the same state whenever there is a lack of external impulses. It takes life in a spirit of an eternal holiday. Negative emotions could be said to form a valid common denominator for all human beings and human groups without distinction of race, caste, sex or religion. They give birth to a common language which can be understood by all, even by animals. Wars and revolutions are certainly calamities for the generations that suffer them, but ancient and modern History show us that they provoke a recrudescence of human activity not only on the battlefields but also in the chancelleries and in the silent studies of philosophers and men of letters, as well as in the laboratories and factories. And it is from that activity, provoked if not imposed by the calamities of wars, that marvels are born for the following generations.
This is one indirect but clearly positive effect of negative emotions. We may even add that, without negative emotions, the door onto the path of access to evolution would be closed to individuals as well as to human groups. This digression having come to an end, let us continue our examination of the phenomenon of fusion. The process which leads to fusion must be attentively observed during its development and subjected at every moment to the practice of constatation in a state of lucidpresence in oneself. The whole process may take many years. It includes five successive stages.