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THE SONG OF LIGHT

Throughout our earthly year, modulated within the range of the Sun's octave of motion as it spreads from solstice to solstice, northward and then southward, light sings its cyclic melody — the source and being of all living melodies.

The melody of light! We who bathe in its radiance and its eternal wonder, seeing this light centered in the moving majesty of the Sun, believe that knowing the light, we also know the Sun. Yet mystics and occultists of all ages have taken pains to show that the brilliance we behold is not the reality of the Sun, but only its outer glory. And scientists intent upon penetrating celestial mysteries speak of the various layers of the Sun's surface, especially of the photosphere which is the source of light; yet few would be bold enough to claim that they know what lies beyond the effulgent solar veils: what has been called "the Heart of the Sun".

The "Heart of the Sun" is the unknown Deity; the photosphere, His "Robe of Glory" — as the Gnostics said nearly two thousand years ago. Light is the effulgence of this Glory. It is the song of the Multitudes that are the cells of the divine Body. It is the song of the celestial Hosts conveying to the outer world the inner reality of the One who is the beginning, the middle and the end of all there is in the solar system, the One who is drawing all things to Himself that they may partake of His divinity, the One who is the supreme Integrator, the All-encompassing and Compassionate: Whom men call God.

Light is the compassionate gesture of God toward matter, the flow of His love which ever "redeems" the residuum of past failure, gathering the chaotic elements, the ashes of ancient worlds, into living organisms. Light is the call to renewed life, and therefore the command "Let there be Light" resounds as the creative evocation. It is a command; but it is even more an act of compassion — which means an act of integration.

After the end of any cycle of manifestation, be it the cycle of a man or that of a galaxy, all that was "spiritual" in the once living being is indrawn into the supreme unity of Spirit, and all that failed to reach that condition of unity is in a state of chaos, of extreme divisibility and elemental materiality. Thus there is an emphasis of duality and non-integration, even though at the time being there is no active conflict between spirit and matter — the two polar opposites within the universal Whole. But, we must not forget, conflict is relationship; hatred is relationship. It is only in utter indifference and utter oblivion that all relationship ceases. And after the end of a cycle of life-manifestation, spirit has completely forgotten matter, and matter is utterly indifferent to spirit.

It is only as spirit and matter are correlated within a living organism that relationship between the two opposites is possible; even though such a relationship means uninterrupted conflict. When the body disintegrates, spirit goes its own way, and so does matter. Then organic life ceases — life, which is the ceaseless interaction of spirit with matter, of positive with negative. Consciousness or soul is drawn into spirit — or at least whatever of it was at all spiritual. The materials of the body decompose and become mere chemicals, manure or food which lower organisms in turn will assimilate.

What could draw together once again spirit and matter, if not the will and love of Him who is the supreme Integrator, wholeness ceaselessly operative and compassion absolute? It is that divine One whom men call God and whose celestial symbol of active power is the "Heart of the Sun". Within that eternal Heart surges boundless compassion for matter, the strong desire that all inchoate cosmic elements be once more made to interact with spirit, so that out of the interaction and the conflict consciousness and soul may once more sound the majestic chord of universal Being throughout the fields of Space.

And this compassion that surges from the "Heart of the Sun" is light. It is light that thrills through Space, arousing Spirit from its dream and stirring the "dark waters of chaos". This light is the eternal power of integration, and it radiates everlastingly from the "Heart of the Sun". Men whose eyes may see only the radiation and must ignore its mystic source, believe they know the Sun; yet what they perceive is only the gushing torrent of the light. And the light flows from the Heart of divine Fullness into all the potential seeds of living organisms — be they universes, or men, or plants. That light is absorbed by the seeds, and it becomes, in them, life. To the song of light answers — faintly at first, yet ever more strongly — the song of life.

This distinction between "light" and "life" is a basic feature of esoteric philosophy. Medieval philosophers, following after still older teachers, spoke of Natura narurans and Natura naturata; which mean, Nature as an active principle and Nature as a passive acted-upon element. They spoke of the former as the "astral light"; of the latter as the sub-lunar realm, of perpetual flux and passionate change. Light, thus, is always the active, universal principle; Life, considered as a manifested essence in living organisms, is the reflected, particularizing element whose tides regulate the growth and decay of all organisms. Life is the fluidic essence in the body, that mysterious elixir whose potency may be due to the presence of secretions from the endocrine glands. But, beyond the life-giving fluid, there is what some occultists have called the "body of light" or "sidereal body". The terms are unfortunate, in the sense that such a "body" is not really a body. It is rather an orchestra, a relationship of creative, light-radiating whirls — which are indeed like vibrating gongs.

These gongs are set vibrating by the mystic "Sun" within the human organism — the leader of the orchestra; nay more, He who plays upon the gongs; who plays not with hands and mallet, but with Rays of light. This Sun is said to be a very mysterious little blue Flame which can be perceived by the seer at the center of the heart, where the four cavities thereof meet. There is to be found the immanent Christ of the Christian mystics, the living God; Ishvara-in-the-body, the incarnate Krishna of whom the Bhagavat Gita speaks.

"There dwelleth in the heart of every creature, O Arjuna, the Master — Ishwara — who by his magic power causeth all things and creatures to revolve mounted upon the universal wheel of time. Take sanctuary with him alone, O son of Bharata, with all thy soul; by his grace thou shalt obtain supreme happiness, the eternal place." XVIII

We may not see this Sun in us, but we may sense its light. It flows through the great nerve systems of the body: the great sympathetic, the vagus nerve, the cerebro-spinal system. It is the electric fluid which passes through the nerves, now found by modern science to be indeed like electric wires wrapped in a protective sheath. It is that, and possibly more than that. It is the organic resonance of the body as a harmonic whole: the source of all vital activities and at the same time their synthetic vibration; the alpha and the omega of all individual being.

Light is a song — not because it changes of itself, for the Heart of the Sun is changeless; but because the Earth — symbol of the individual's consciousness — orients itself differently to it, season after season. The Earth revolves around the Sun, and, because its axis is inclined and not perpendicular to the plane of the revolution, the light of the Sun strikes most of the Earth's surface at varying angles. Therefore light is not a single tone, an unchanging diapason; it is a melody. Likewise man's attitude to his spiritual source varies throughout the span of his life; and the light within him is also a melody — at first clear and pure, then tumultuous and torrid, lastly softer and more tender, like the light which caresses the yellowing trees before the coming of the great white snow.

In the fully-developed human being the song of light is heard three times, each time in a different tonality. Each time the melody unfolds from a Winter-solstice "tonic" to a Summer-solstice "dominant", then back to a new "tonic" — or perhaps it is the same original "tonic", if growth is made impossible. Each melodic cycle takes twenty-eight years. The song of light is a song of selfhood — flowing northward, flowing southward — from purity to passion, from passion to purity — from illumination to heat, from heat to greater brilliance.

It is a song of Will; for Will is that which ever flows from the center of the living being. Will is the result of the polarization of the multitudinous energies of being to the abstract Source of that being. It is energy directed by purpose according to a pattern. The pattern may be the inherent pattern, or archetypal Form, of the being as an individualized spark of the Universal Fire — a Monad; or else it may be a pattern imposed upon an immature and unpolarized organism, or organism-to-be, by a coercive, outer ruler or discipline. Saturn is the symbol of such a pattern — be it that of inherent Destiny and Dharma, or that of collective compulsion rooted in the species or the group, but not differentiated through individual consciousness.


Energy directed by purpose according to pattern. In these words we may find the key to the basic relationship linking Sun, Jupiter and Saturn. For all energy flows forth from the Sun, but Jupiter makes the purpose of this outflow operative in terms of organization, and Saturn symbolizes the pattern through which the purpose is established as a formula of being. All energy flows forth from the Sun — and the source of the energy itself is the "Heart of the Sun"; and the source of the purpose likewise is the "Heart of the Sun". Jupiter reveals this purpose, makes it operative; just as the Hierophant reveals the Mysteries and establishes the rituals of Initiation. But behind the Hierophant is the Supreme Presence in whom — nay, through whom — is known the Mystery.

The Sun, as we know it, is not the Mystery — though men have worshipped its glowing countenance as God. Even the "Heart of the Sun" is yet a veil upon the Mystery. That God who has been called the "Unknown God" is but an atom within the Mystery — as the Sun is but a pin-point of light within the inconceivable immensities of Space, the unfathomable Ocean in which galaxies move and have their being, fulfilling purposes beyond any possible knowing.

Who can ever reach even the fringe of the Mystery! We witness the pageant of stars that are suns like our own, circling within galactic wheels for incommensurable eons. Haltingly we measure with our frail minds, strained toward infinitude and dizzy with eternity, realms which extend beyond realization. Our Sun-god nearly vanishes into insignificance when plotted against nebular vistas.

Nevertheless, in Him is our Source and from Him we must receive our direction through the mediatorship of Jupiter, the Hierophant within or without. As we link ourselves in realization with Him we may sense our purpose as a compelling force, as that innate instinct of being which is even older and more primordial than life itself — for it is the source and reason of embodied existence. As we link ourselves with the Sun-god we live in terms of will; and the directed energy, which is will, polarizes the many impulses of our little organic selves, in conformity with the significance of our true being as a unified whole.

It is often easy to become lost in the ecstasy of light, swirling from sun to stars in waves of galactic bliss. Men have been drunken with cosmic consciousness, shipwrecks on the high seas of light. It is not man's destiny to be a thing floating in the sea of light or pulled toward shores beyond the reach of the Sun. Even though our Sun be not the only sun, yet it is our Sun, and though there may be paths reaching far beyond, yet are we all of one progeny. His strength is our strength and his path our path . . . until this earthly fulfillment.

He who worships stars through paths of identification which avoid the direction of the Sun, may forego his human destiny and become the fantastic devotee of some strange cosmic god. Dark indeed may turn the way to the Mystery; dark even with the blindness of overwhelming light. The Universal Person, in whose abysmal wholeness stars and galaxies circle for incomprehensible eons — how can we speak of this unfathomable and this absolute, bounded as it were by light, yet as far beyond the level of light as Personality is beyond mere physical characteristics?

Yet, it has seemed to many that the most universal Deity is also the nearest presence in this strange world where atoms seem made in the likeness of solar systems. The God of the occultist may be awesome in His inclusiveness and His space-body spread over billions of light-years; but the mystic knows an immanent God, a Living God who is born within the heart of fulfillment of the Eternal Now, a God smiling within a space which gives the lie to astronomical distances and within an immediacy of possible union which disproves hierarchical structures erected by the mind bent upon cosmic vivisections.

God the intimate, and God the remote, all-encompassing Mystery — God the immanent, and God the universal — the Living God answering to the macrocosmic Wholeness — the divine Person one and identical with Parabrahman — Man, the Son of God, made in His own image: such a wondrous identification of the smallest with the vastest, of atoms with stars, gives a strange and adorable beauty to that union of two opposite attitudes to life, of mysticism and occultism, which remains forever unnamed, though every cycle attempts to crystallize it under a terminology soon to become ready for the morgue of histories and dictionaries.

Light is the substance of it all. The divine Person in human form is an organism of light, just as are galaxies. Light is the beginning and light is the end. Dark bodies and planets, by reflecting light to each other, lead to the slow rise of objective consciousness through relationship, through hatred as through love, through greed as through sacrifice. Until the time comes when light-reflecting objects, having assimilated fully the energy of light-radiating entities that shone in their own skies, emanate also, at the last, light. Then the illumined Ones become the Light-bearers, the Shining Ones. Personalities become divine Persons. Bodies which could only reflect sunlight shine with a glow in which may be distinguished the radiant outlines of the long-imprisoned god. They too will sing the song of light, for they will have become "solar heroes" — their lives "solar myths" indeed, and paeans of blessings.

This song of light is a universal song; but each living being sings it with his own tone color. Because each one of the gongs which throb under the divine melody is made of an alloy the composition of which varies; because each object that reflects the light is made up as yet of unregenerate and diversified past, there need be many types of being. One Light, but so many lamps; one Sound, yet so many tones. Illumination comes to those who hear the song of Light unchanged, unflickering, eternal — Light that is one though the lamps be many.






This edition copyright © 2008 Michael R. Meyer
All Rights Reserved.





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