Humans distinguish many different types of love. In English, the word love is
used to cover many aspects of love, all of which are types of desire. The
nigredo process is the complete sacrifice of earthly love, of all the aspects of
it one by one until finally self-love, that is, the desire for anything at all
for oneself, becomes very weak and threadlike. And that's when the experience of
compassion, just once reaching upwards very strongly, cuts through the last few
strands of earthly love, and the divine fire shoots down to meet it.

After that, divine love never leaves again.

And once that severance happens, the first glimmerings of understanding can
begin.

Before that point, knowledge is useless. In fact it is dangerous, because if the
I gets hold of it, it will use knowledge to serve itself. And it holds the
seeker back, because as long as the seeker tries to use it as a tool, they are
actually strengthening their earthly love, their own desire, by serving it with
this tool. So it extends the period in which they lack the direct link with the
one, divine love. And this can trap the pupil in a kind of limbo for a very long
time, leaving them thinking that they're getting somewhere when, in reality,
nothing is achieved at all except the postponement of the ultimate despair that
is the signature of the death of earthly desire.

This condition of despair, in which compassion can cut through the remaining
strands of selfish desire to meet the ultimate divine love, consists of the
complete and utter belief that every action one can take leads absolutely
nowhere, that our every action is entirely pointless.

The occultists, in grasping knowledge without this preliminary despair, believe
they are building freedom for themselves, when in fact they are building their
own straightjacket.

Because the ultimate victory of the rubedo process can only be carried out by
the rock of pure compassion, standing in complete surrender, while the storm of
the last remaining earthly power fulminates around it in a tremendous battle in
which it destroys itself. Only then will the new Jerusalem come into view.

Knowledge is the garment that is given by divine love to enable the rock of
understanding to be chiselled out of human ignorance, which enables that last
stand to be made.

Without the gift of divine love, the seeker cannot understand what they need to
do with the knowledge. The gift of divine love includes the invitation to return
to the father, to the one, to return to the source., and the first instruction
on how to get there. And then divine love delivers each new instruction, each
dawning aspect of knowledge, to the extent that the pupil has assimilated the
last one.

That invitation is generated by the first touch of divine fire in the head, a
touch which cannot be forced, and can only be drawn to the pupil by the purity
of compassion reaching upwards from the heart. Then, as the two streams meet,
the fire etches the invitation indelibly in the heart, so that it cannot be lost
again.


Chris