From Fool To Wise One
Part One
Many of us are aware by now that everything in the whole of Creation consists of duality, for example God and Goddess who at the same time is the Great Mother and Father of all life; masculine and feminine, yin and yang, light and darkness, good and evil, upper and lower and so on and so forth. Because each one of us is a spark of the Divine Great Light, the same characteristics and powers are also in us. The law of life is love and its main branch is the law of evolution. Everything that is evil, ugly and destructive in our world and also in some of its inhabitants is part of the lower evolutionary spiral of life on which everything in the whole of Creation is constantly travelling in a forwards and upwards direction.
As a Sun Gemini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), was very much aware of the duality of his own nature. Reflecting on why this should be so, he wrote in his Sherlock Holmes Story ‘The Sign of Four’: ‘Yes, there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer, and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe: ‚Schade, dass die Natur nur einen Menschen aus dir schuf, denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.’ Conan Doyle was born 22.5.1859 when the Sun was transiting Gemini; his Moon was in Aquarius. Aware of the duality of his own nature, Goethe’s words struck a chord with Doyle because human behaviour was puzzling just as much. I believe that, without an understanding of the processes of life, one cannot help feeling that way.
I perceive the Goethe quote as a reference to the two aspects of humankind’s nature. The higher God part is the honourable and wise one and for a long time earthly counterpart experiences life and acts in foolish and unwise ways. People’s behaviour in general must have puzzled Goethe (1749-1832) a great deal when he wrote the above words. The translation on the internet reads: ‘Nature, alas, made only one being out of you although there was material for a good man and a rogue.’ In my view that does not come anywhere near what both Goethe and Conan Doyle had in mind. My translation, as a native speaker of the language Goethe used, deals with the duality with which every human being eventually has to come to terms: ‘Pity that nature could only make you an ordinary human being, even though the material would have been right for creating either a wise one or a fool.’
As Darwin’s theory had not yet been published and hit our world like a thunderbolt, Goethe’s thinking and perception of us and our world were not yet influenced by the concepts of Darwin’s theory. To Goethe nature was probably another word for God and his words sounds as if he believed that this authority creates us just the way we are. He must also have believed that at the end of our earthly existence we would be snuffed out like candles and wait, somewhere in Eternity, for what the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, call judgment day. If we passed its tests, our physical bodies would be resurrected. What a strange view of the world it has been!
Conan Doyle was born not many years after Goethe’s departure from this plane. Doyle was spiritually very aware and became a devoted spiritualist, who also joined the Freemasons for some time. The concept of Karma and reincarnation does not yet seem to have been part of his consciousness. The Christian teachings do not embrace it to this day.
During 1916, at the height of World War I, a change came over Conan Doyle’s beliefs that were prompted by the psychic abilities of his children’s nanny. This, combined with the deaths he saw around him, brought him to the conclusion that Spiritualism must be a new revelation sent by God to bring solace to the bereaved. To my mind, this undoubtedly is true. As a result, ‘The New Revelation’ was the title of Doyle’s first Spiritualist work that was published two years later. In the intervening years, he wrote to Light magazine about his faith and lectured frequently on what he saw as the truth of Spiritualism.
War-related deaths close to him strengthened his long-held belief in life after death and spirit communication, though it would be wrong to claim that the death of his son, Kingsley, turned him to Spiritualism, as is often stated. Doyle appeared before the public as a Spiritualist in 1916, two years before his son’s death. In October 1918 Kingsley died from pneumonia which he contracted while convalescing after being seriously wounded in the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Doyle’s brother Brigadier-general Innes Doyle died, also from pneumonia, in February 1919. His two brothers-in-law, one of them was E. W. Hornung, creator of the literary character Raffles, and his two nephews also died shortly after the war. His second book on Spiritualism ‘The Vital Message’ was published in 1919.
Although as a writer and thinker Goethe was in many ways ahead of his time, it was too early to understand that what he called ‘nature’ was but one of the many physical manifestations of God, the Great Father/Mother of all life. In Goethe’s as well as Conan Doyle’s days, it was too early for the knowledge that every one of us was created from the prototype of the perfect human being who is whole and holy. This means the higher and lower aspects of its nature are fully integrated and working together harmoniously, the way they are doing in our Creator. Each one of us once emerged from this idea in the heartmind of the Great Father, the masculine aspect of the Divine Trinity. Whether someone is as yet aware of it or not, from fool to wise one that, in a nutshell, is the evolutionary pathway every one of us has always been walking.
Goethe also wrote: ‘Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. Our world had scarcely become known to be round and complete in itself, when it was asked to waive the privilege of thinking of itself as the centre of the Universe. Never, perhaps, was a greater demand made on humankind when, by this admission, many cherished ideas went up in mist and smoke! What became of our Eden, our world of innocence, piety and poetry, the testimony of the senses, the conviction of a poetic/religious faith? No wonder Copernicus’ contemporaries did not wish to let all this go. That’s why they offered every possible resistance to a doctrine that demanded from its followers the kind of spiritual vision and understanding that few had and could not even dream of.’
Regardless of this, the God of the Western world in Goethe’s time was Jesus. When both he and Conan Doyle are now looking at our world from the spirit realm, if they are still there, they will be delighted about what a long way humankind’s understanding of the purpose and meaning of its existence and its spiritual background has come; that ever more of us are perceiving Jesus as a symbol for the higher God aspect of every human being’s nature and that in fact we ourselves are God; that each one of us is the creator of their own earthly personality with all its flaws and shortcomings as well as good qualities and strengths; and that everything is within us and the only thing we have to do is bring it forth.
A lot of water had to flow under the bridge of earthly life before we were allowed to find out that we ourselves, that is our spirit self, in the course of many lifetimes create the personality of our earthly self. Every individual spirit has to start this process at the lowest end of the spiral of its personal evolutionary development. Steadily and patiently, each has to work their own way forwards and upwards from being one of the fools and villains of the earthly plane, who for a long time remains unaware of his/her true nature. At the top waits the role of a good, kind and loving God-person conducting their life in the footsteps of the legendary Master Jesus. That’s how each one of us eventually fulfils their high and holy destiny as a child of the Highest and becomes a Christed one in their own right. It takes but a look at the world around us to realise that there are millions of shades between the two extremes.
Goethe thought that ‘Talents are best nurtured in solitude and character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.’ and: ‘There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.’ That’s why he wrote the following:
Selige Sehnsucht
The Soul’s Longing
Sagt es niemand, nur den Weisen,
Weil die Menge gleich verhöhnet,
Das Lebendige will ich preisen,
Das nach Flammentod sich sehnet.
In der Liebesnächte Kühlung,
Die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest,
Überfällt die fremde Fühlung
Wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet.
Nicht mehr bleibest du umfangen
In der Finsternis Beschattung,
Und dich reisset neu Verlangen
Auf zu höherer Begattung.
Keine Ferne macht dich schwierig,
Kommst geflogen und gebannt,
Und zuletzt, des Lichts begierig,
Bist du Schmetterling verbrannt,
Und so lang du das nicht hast,
Dieses: Stirb und Werde!
Bist du nur ein trüber Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749-1832
My interpretation of the first verse’s two lines, not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, who may not have understood the German language quite as well as I do, is as follows:
As the mass of people instantly jeers at
Things it fails to understand,
Tell nobody except truly wise ones . . .
It never ceases to amaze me how those who know very little about a subject insist on shouting their ignorance into our world and proudly display their lack of understanding for all to see and hear. It can be witnessed everywhere how such people dogmatically defend their limited horizons and are wearing them like a coat of armour that protects them against paying attention and learning something new.
The essence of the whole poem is a description of every human being’s most fundamental, greatest and holy desire, even though for educational reasons our earthly self has to remain unaware of it for a long time:
I praise earthly selves
That are drawn to God’s sacred fire,
Yearning for a marriage of a higher kind,
To which they feel drawn like moths to a candle flame,
Longing for the earthly part to die in God’s light,
So the soul once more becomes fully one again
With God, the truly beloved
Of all life.
Here is the last verse in masterful translation
by a dear friend of mine who wishes to remain nameless:
So long as this you fail to see:
That death precedes re-birth!
A gloomy guest you’ll always be,
Upon this darkling Earth.
From: ‘The Soul’s Yearning’
Original Title ‘Seliges Verlangen’
Goethe
To assist us with our journey from fool to wise one, the Mexican poet, Amado Nervo (1870 – 1919), the Mexican poet, journalist and educator. had some advice. The following is its essence: ‘About sublime and essential things do not talk to all, but seek the level of those you converse with, so as not to humble or distress anyone. When with the frivolous, be as frivolous as they are, gently dropping a petal from the flower of your dreams into their cup of frivolity. If they are unready for what you are giving, be on your way smilingly, because you know that they will come to what you have found in their own time. Should someone pick up your petal, examine it and inhale its fragrance, carefully and discreetly allow them a few more glimpses of what grows in your magic inner garden. Tell them of the invisible Divinity that surrounds and penetrates everything. Maybe thoughts and feelings of love will enter their minds, to act as a key and an ‘open Sesame’ of the door to the only true freedom there is for humankind: spiritual freedom!’
Recommended Reading:
• ‘Healing – The Sacred Marriage’
• ‘Soul Mates’
This article is a chapter from ‘Our World In Transition'
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