Elisabeth Haich (1897-1994) was a Spiritual Teacher and author of several books dedicated to spiritual subjects.
She was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. After the end of the World War II, she fled to Switzerland and founded with Selvarajan Yesudian a yoga school in Europe.
In her best known book Initiation, Elisabeth Haich relates the dramatic story of her past life, her apprenticeship with Divine Ptahotep and her introduction to yoga in ancient Egypt.
I would say that this book brought me on my path and eventually to Theosophy. I have read it numerous times and love it today as much as I loved it over 30 years ago.
In this book, which you can even find in pdf-format online Elisabeth Haich starts out with her earliest memory when she felt pain, how she awakened to consciousness, became accustomed to the fact that she was a child and shared her feelings how she thought early on that her father was not her “real” father”.
The concept ‘Father’ was identical in her mind with that of the ‘Great One’ who was above everyone and whose will everyone had to follow. His word is law, and obviously he is perfect. If it were not so, he would not be the ‘Great Master’!
She was over-sensitive as a child and had a reoccurring nightmare about a lion chasing her. She learned to read early and loved to read books.
She had a vision as a young girl of her “real father’s” loving blue eyes and remembers hearing his voice saying that she can’t obtain true things through false things when she came up with a signature that did not feel true to herself because she was always seeking a kind of eternal unity in friendship.
When Elisabeth Haich was nine, her brother saw a “Red Man” when he had pneumonia as a 2 year old and she did not understand the meaning of this until she visited India later in her life.
Still young she discovered Shakespeare, Ethnographical Research and the Encyclopedia. She also had a lot of interest in black magic, occultism, and ceremonies.
By performing in front of her family she had become accustomed to bringing things forth out of her inner world irrespective of whether her audience understood her truths or not. Already then she spoke for the sake of truth itself, and only one listener was important: God!
Without knowing what she was doing she started to practice certain poses that made her feel better, which nobody understood until a man who had traveled often to the Far East identified them as Yoga exercises.
Her first attraction to a young man served her to become very educated, learn several languages and develop a very strong will-power because he was ambitious and wanted her to be submissive and consider herself as his property. They even got engaged but at the age of nineteen her will was so strong that she let him know that she did not want to be his wife. She had lost all respect for him because of his domineering, tyrannical but sometimes cowardly behavior.
She understood early on that the path of her life could be only her own (compare with “Initiation” by Annie Besant), and that she could not accept the advice her mother gave her in respect to her future. During her engagement her attention was guided towards a world lying hidden deep within the human being: the unknown, unconscious world of the human self.
At 15 she discovered that she could sometimes see the future; at first through dreams and much later in her life trough an act of will.
While visiting her aunt at the age of 19 she thought the first time about death and asked herself why we should go through all the trouble of learning things. That’s when she heard that voice again telling her that only through the portals of death can she be released from her body, and that she cannot escape death.
During that visit she fell in love with a young man who showed compassion and they got engaged. During that time she had the first time a dream about her past life in Egypt – she heard that she will have to be in the tomb for 3000 years. She suddenly remembered that she had been the daughter and wife of the Pharao.
She tells the story of her wedding, how much she disliked the formality and that she didn’t feel that it was a special day. At the same time she felt great happiness and love. At the beginning of her marriage she thought of death the second time in her life, and realized that in the days when she had not experienced happiness yet, she had been actually much happier because she did not yet have the possibility of losing her happiness!
Because everything lasts only for a time, because nothing is permanent, because everything dies, everything passes away, everything must pass away!
She bore within herself constantly a heavy spiritual burden without being able to shake it off. Sooner or later, however, a constant burden on the soul is bound to affect the body – she could never feel completely free and happy. The consequence was that she almost became blind. She was deeply concerned and saddened by the black streaks in her eyes but she hid those feelings on the outside. She had to receive salt injections into the eye and had to stay completely still despite the pain. She did not know at the time that she was learning to control the natural instincts, the most advanced Yoga exercises which eventually bring about complete control over all bodily functions.
After that she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a boy. When she sees her son she asks herself ‘Is that my child?’ But she feels that only its body is ‘her child’, otherwise it is an independent being she knew has come into being as ‘their child’.
The birth was very difficult and she was very weak for some time. Her eyes had gotten better but were very sensitive to light. During her son’s young years she remembers spending many beautiful days with her extended family and friends and the secret sources of energy of the sea completely renewed her. She returned home in excellent health and very much more able to stand light.
On the surface everything seemed in order. Nevertheless she was not happy! She did not know why. An inner discontentment grew in her until she could not disregard it any more.
She was searching for fulfillment of an eternal nature, a real union which remains! She was searching for a union in which the identity of herself and that of her lover became one and the same thing. She desired to participate in his soul, his thoughts, his whole being! She wanted to become him! Then she understood that the physical union is a desperate attempt to become one being—every fiber and muscle is strained to the highest pitch—and in the moment when both believe that they have achieved fulfillment, they fall apart … without ever attaining union.
The body cannot carry within itself a wish which cannot be fulfilled by reason of its own presence. Who and what therefore desires this supreme union? It can only be the immaterial spirit, the self. Yet it is the body which itself impedes our success. Now she realized what is meant by the ‘fall from paradise’! This night was the turning point in her life. Sex can satisfy only the body, but never the soul, the self. Never could sexual satisfaction appease this desire!
She tried to find the truth by studying. Since religion had not answered her questions she started to read European Thinkers.
Once when she meditated again on death she heard the voice: “Life and death alternate in an everlasting circle. Death is but the other side of life …’.That’s when she remembered an event as a child standing in front of the mirror and understands the concept of reincarnation. The body dies but the self remains and will one day “wake up with two new eyes” and that in the ‘unconscious’ there is no ‘time concept’. And that’s when she realized the dreams when she was young had brought an earlier life into consciousness.
Her search for the other world and the life beyond this one and her ideas about re-incarnation turned her attention to spiritualism. She experimented with a pen that on the third day made her write things. While the pencil was writing, she observed her arm and her hand. Whence came the force that moved my hand? If the pencil could write all by itself, she reflected, every pencil lying around could stand up and start writing.
Therefore, without any doubt, the pencil was being moved by her arm, but without her having wanted to do so. Consequently she concluded that the force must be coming from a source outside her own consciousness, but doubtless from her. Then she experimented with telepathy with her husband and followed the “materialized will” of her husband. She was thrilled by the new experience, the fact that the human will flows out of the solar plexus, literally reaching another person, embracing him like an octopus, and even cancelling out the effect of gravity. After the experiment she understood that it is only subjective when we feel something to be matter. Force gives us the impression of matter.
We can decide whether we want to compare this ‘material’ manifestation of the human will with a form of matter or with electric current. The result is the same in either case, for modern science knows that matter is nothing but a form of energy (compare with Quantumphysics), a vibration, and only gives us the impression of being matter because it is impenetrable for us. When she experimented with others she realized that everybody’s current is different. She understood clearly and in an almost physically palpable manner the real meaning of sympathy and antipathy: emanations that give and those that absorb. The former radiate strength, while the latter cling to a person like the arms of an octopus, drawing out and absorbing his strength. She also learned during this very tiring exercises that cultured, self-disciplined people emit very different radiations from those of coarse and uncouth people living only for the satisfaction of their instincts. These radiations cannot be hidden, falsified, counterfeited or ‘explained away’. They reveal immediately the kind of person one is dealing with. She stopped with those exercises after a few years because they were extremely tiring and there are a lot of people out there who don’t understand the power of the unconsciousness.
In her opinion only people who are strong enough to resist all influences, have deep psychological knowledge, extensive experience and an enormous conscious will power and self-control should concern themselves and experiment with spiritualism.
Spiritualism finally led her to the study of psychology. After doing a lot of readings she met a psychologist and got access to patients in mental institutions. Hell lay open before her very eyes during that time, and in desperation she stood on the brink of an unfathomable ocean of suffering, desperate at the helplessness of mankind in the face of this terrible misery. She felt that something must be done! Everybody must be informed about the causes of mental disease. Healthy people everywhere must work together with united efforts to fight this misery.
As she was thinking how to help she again heard the familiar voice inside hersef: ‘Where will you find some help? Inside yourself! Don’t you see this is just the trouble—everybody is waiting for help from outside, and as everybody is expecting help and not giving it, nobody gets help. But if everybody would give help, everybody would receive it too. Then the whole world could be freed of suffering!’ Then she said: “Nothing else in life can interest me any more, nothing can make me really happy again as long as I constantly carry the sufferings of others in my consciousness. I want to be a co-worker in the salvation of the world!” That’s when the voice warned her that this would mean duty and sacrifice; said that she would have to put an end to her imperfections! That she must never forget herself for even a minute. She must always be on guard that she does not do a single thing in contradiction to the eternal laws of life. All the temptations she had not been able to withstand so far in her life will come back to haunt her again and woe to her if she does not withstand them. No mortal can play with the divine forces. She may never again use the powers you achieve as a co-worker for your own personal ends. After assuring the voice that she meant what she said he reminded her not to forget herself this time.
She started to investigate her motivation for every action, her inner thoughts. She kept herself constantly, uninterruptedly under observation. She learned that we have to control our instincts, desires and passions. She continued to study psychology and philosophy, without neglecting her woodcarving or her music. Artistic work provided her a wonderful opportunity to turn inward spiritually and to ponder all kinds of questions. She also started lessons in sculpt work.
One night she continued to see everything despite her closed eyes, but in a transparent way. Then she had a period where she had a lot of visions. One led to a heart attack and the realization that the fear of death is a physical condition. She was between life and death and when she decided she wanted to die she felt infinity, and saw a long road winding onward, and at its end, beyond everything material, standing in eternity, the majestic form of a (compare with Proof of Heaven) man made of blinding light, his arms stretched out in indescribable love. He seemed infinitely far away from her, and his countenance shone with such an intensely powerful light that it blinded her and she could not see his features. Nevertheless, she recognized him as the Savior of the world. Then she saw the road towards the light where many, many souls were walking and she guided them. That’s when she realized that she would not die and that she still has a lot of work to do.
Another time she remembered a past life and when she told her husband he remembered it as well. He added that since that life he learnt to recognize the value of money. And he had come to realize that the worth of a human being begins when he is able to make a living for himself and his family. All of these views now lie anchored deep in his subconscious because of what he had learned and came to realize in that incarnation.
The next vision was a horrible apparition looking like a witch, which was already carrying her child in its arm and trying to escape. The witch was the personified servant of the ‘evil one’. She simply knew it. That witch was reality, a fact! Had the whole scene been merely a projection, an illusion? Why do we all carry this picture in our subconscious, if it really does come from our subconscious? She was convinced that the entire struggle occurred only between forces and not between ‘bodies’.
Another time she saw two beings with a pole and a loathsome greenish mass hanging from it coming towards the house. To express the matter in different terms, she did not really see these beings themselves but the hole they made in the rays of light where they were.
Soon after that her son got very ill and fought for his life. She took care of him and realized that a mother does not take care of her child for its sake, but for her own sake!
She understood that she was not allowed to pray to the greatest power, the Creator, for personal, subjective things; for He knows what is good and why. And the child? For him too it is certainly best for God’s will to be done, whatever that may be. So as she sat there with her boy she was praying constantly, ‘Thy will be done … Thy will be done …’. After six weeks the swelling broke and released a loathsome greenish mass which looked exactly like a ghost depicted in a Disney movie – and then the boy got better. Soon after this illness her son remembered a previous life as a black person.
When Elisabeth’s health condition due to the vaccine worsened again and doctors recommended surgery, a friend taught her to do certain Yoga exercises to get better instead. She did follow his advice, paid attention to her consciousness and that worked.
During that time of her life she often felt that she was doing nothing even though she did a lot all day. But it was for herself. Then she realized that every person who awakens and sees the goal of life goes through the growing pains of wanting to save humanity instead of first saving himself!
Her inner voice told her that talent without diligence and diligence without talent is not art. She understood that she had to combine her talent with diligence. She was told that she had talents which she simply allowed to lie idle: the ability to express the spirit. Practice the artless art. That’s when she became acquainted with Ayurvedic medicine and read other spiritual books.
In many of the readings it was repeated that Yoga is the way to plunge deeper into the secrets of human life and that there are various paths in Yoga: physical, mental, and spiritual exercises in concentration. During that time more and more people came to her to find the path to happiness and in order to practice Yoga she went to a small place in the mountains all by herself. The long exercises in concentration and meditation helped her to penetrate into the profoundest regions of her psyche.
And one day she not only saw the light and the loving eyes, but him.
She understood that he had always seen her. And that’s when she remembered her past life in Egypt. Her 16th birthday, the wedding to her father, the Pharao, how vain she was, how she could see the soul in people’s eyes and that she had one wish at the wedding – to become initiated because she was from the race of “Sons of God” and wore the hoop that ends with the head of a serpent – a sign of the ruling race and the initiates.
Her father, the Pharao had come to the earth with the duty of guiding and governing people in their earthly life. She understood that the members of this race even kept their spiritual consciousness when they were born into their bodies. They never forget that only the body can be ‘a child’ or ‘an adult’ and that the spirit is and always remains the same.
The only thing which she thought could make her happy was what was in her, what was identical with her, but not things outside herself. Pharao send her to his brother Phahhotep, the highest of all Priests. He had come to earth with the duty and the task of leading the sons of men in their spiritual life and initiating them in the sciences. He stood above her father because he never identified himself with his body, whereas her father had married and thus anchored himself more firmly in the material plane. She says that God alone is the only one before whom one should fall to his knees, never a visible form.
Phahhotep begins his explanations:
Initiation means becoming conscious, that she is now conscious to a degree corresponding to the resistance of her nerves and body. When a person becomes conscious to a higher spiritual degree, he automatically guides higher, stronger, more penetrating powers into his body. For this reason, he must also raise the level of resistance of his nerves and body. He warns her that she is not ready because she had not yet learned to control the divinely creative power within her body. If she made herself conscious of this power on the spiritual plane before having learned to control it in its physical manifestation, this would mean a very great danger for her.
To be courageous in the face of a danger we do not know is neither courage nor power, but only ignorance and weakness! Love is the manifestation of divine creative force and is therefore as strong as God himself! You cannot destroy this creative force; you could only transform it. But if you don’t know this force, you can’t know how it can be transformed. One of the requirements of initiation is absolute self control.
Eventually she get permission to go the path of initiation because it is a law that when a member of the tribe of the Sons of God asks three times to be initiated, the priests cannot refuse him any longer.
After her father explains the earth’ development in detail, why some changes on earth appear suddenly, that in some periods change is very noticeable, that a very different race (they manifested completely the law of spirit and not the law of matter like the races of people living today; they also knew the secret connected with the transformation of force into matter and of matter into force) used to live on earth before; that other creatures lived at the same time and they were the ancestors of present-day men and that the race of the sons of men in the country now represent a cross between these two races; that the power on earth is gradually falling more and more into the hands of ever more material races of people who were once under the guidance of higher, more spiritual races; and little by little the higher race is dying out, so that humanity may, without visible guidance, climb upward with its own power. The higher race had to implant its special powers in the lower race to enable the lower race—after a long, long process of development—to arise out of matter again. This is why many sons of the divine race made the great sacrifice of begetting children with the daughters of primitive man. There are men strong physically and others spiritually which leads to countries being led by men with different character. He also tells of a continent that was completely destroyed and why; and that some Sons of God were able to flee in time and created new civilizations. He explains that the Sons of God did not have to do physical work and used instruments with which they could control the gravitational force of the earth at will, neutralizing it or amplifying it. He further explains that they were able to shift their consciousness into the past or into the future at will and could move their consciousness to any place they wished, and that he could establish spiritual contact at any time with his brother Ptahhotep. Only persons who have achieved perfect unselfishness can have such abilities.
After that she started the path of initiation, working on becoming conscious on the highest level, the divine plane. She strengthened her nerves, built up her resistance through physical and spiritual training to prepare the nerve center and worked on concentration.
The great initiation means consciously experiencing the vital energy and creative vibrations of eternal being, experiencing these vibrations on every plane of development and in their original frequency, without transformation, and simultaneously conducting these vibrations into the nerves and the body.
Every morning at sunrise the neophytes had to assemble in the garden. They began with physical exercises. The exercises involved strong concentration. They assumes various body postures and, while doing breathing exercises, had to guide their consciousness into different parts of the body. Through long and patient practice in this way they could make the entire body completely conscious, move at will, control and guide the smallest parts of the body and all internal organs.
Each neophyte started the morning with physical exercises involving strong concentration, followed by training of the mind and soul, by controlling emotions and were taken through the seven hells and seven heavens. The exercises made them independent of both external events and own personal moods. They were taught constant inner watchfulness and presence of mind. They discovered that every state of consciousness arises—and can only arise—within ourselves. She learns that it is impossible to concentrate on words – that one has to concentrate on the meaning. But then the meaning was not in the head but in the heart. She discovered that concentration cannot be a permanent condition, but only a transition between the projected world and being.
The next step she had to practice was to keep silent. She also learned that during concentration one goes through three phases – intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. In the spiritual concentration one becomes identical with the object of concentration. After that she had to concentrate on herself – consider what she was, feel what she was and then be what she was.
One day her father explained good and evil to her: The white stone, that is nothing and everything; the positive form of the leaf and the negative background when drawn on the white stone; before that the form of the leaf was not yet separated from the Everything that is contained in this Nothing. When the leaf appeared on the wall, it became separated from the Everything, and therefore recognizable. The fact that this leaf appears in green color means that it has left behind in the Everything its form in the complementary color, in this case red, as its invisible, negative picture.
He tells her whatever one see as he looks is only recognizable because it has separated itself from its complementary half and the latter has remained behind in the invisible, unmanifested state.
She learns that one can achieve knowledge only through comparing the two sides, positive and negative, which have become separated from each other. As long as these
two sides are together, resting in each other, one can’t perceive or recognize anything.
Nothing can ever be manifested and made recognizable, unless its opposite—its complementary half—is simultaneously present unmanifested! Inseparable divine unity therefore manifests itself always and everywhere; for even in this seeming separation, it continues to be active everywhere as the ever-present attractive force between positive and negative. The inherent force dwelling in everything that exists and drawing every created form back into the original unity is what we call God.
‘Both good and evil have arisen only through separation from unity which itself is neither good nor evil but divine. Only through separation is it possible to achieve recognition and knowledge. Consequently the recognizable world must consist of good and evil. If this were not so, it would not be recognizable and could not exist at all. God is unity itself.
Creation always means a half of the whole … the half which has fallen out of unity and which has become recognizable through comparisons, while its complementary half has remained behind, unmanifested. That’s why you can never find and never recognize God—the creator—in the world of creation, simply because God has no complementary half with which he could be compared. There is absolutely no possibility of comparing him, and so there is no possibility of recognizing him.—You can only BE God! God can be present everywhere as the self in every created form.
God is indivisible unity. And our body is the result of separation; it is only the visible half of our own true self. The other half has remained in the unmanifested, unconscious part of our being. By uniting these two complementary halves with each other, we can return to divine unity! Nevertheless we still can experience, in the body, this divine reunion with our complementary half: In a state of consciousness! We can expand our consciousness until we make the unconscious part of us completely conscious!
As long as a creature seeks its complementary half outside itself, in the created, recognizable world, it will never find unity, simply because its complementary half isn’t outside itself, manifested, separate from itself, but on the contrary, unseparated from itself, in its own unmanifested part, in its unconscious.
When you unite in your consciousness two halves of yourself, you’ve found your way back into the infinite all and nothing, you’ve become identical with God again!
Then she has to study the twelve sets of opposites and learn to control them because in order to be a useful co-worker in this great plan, one must first master the whole scale of the sets of opposites. Mastering these attributes means that we use them at the right time and in the right place. The same attribute that is divine at the right time and in the right place is satanically evil at the wrong time and in the wrong place.
‘These twelve sets of opposite characteristics are:
| keeping silent | talking |
| reciptivity (receptive and open to everything that is high and beautiful) | resistance to influence (spineless capitulation) |
| obeying (God’s will/ We can recognize God’s will when we thoroughly examine everything that is asked of you to be sure that it is in agreement with your innermost conviction.) | ruling (means giving ignorant and weak people some of the ruler’s ownwillpower.) |
| humility (towards the divine) | self confidence (having confidence in the God dwelling within your heart, but not in the phantom being of your person as such) |
| lightning-like speed (You must learn, instantaneously, without hesitation, to choose the best of a number of different possibilities) | divine circumspection (Before acting, you must control your temper and with lots of patience allow the decision to ripen within you) |
| accept everything (that fate brings you; never be affected by the way ignorant peopletreat you) | to be able to differentiate (as a representative of divine guidance, must defend yourself against humiliation or calumny; to withdraw modestly from glorification by the crowds; To accept everything must never be allowed to degenerate into apathetic indifference or cowardly lack of character.) |
| ability to fight (with all your energy for the divinity on earth; don’t quarrel) | peace (And even though you must often fight bravely, you must not forget thatyou have to fight with spiritual weapons in order to bring peace to the earth) |
| caution (to decide the right time and right place to use this divine gift) | courage (not fear any danger.You must stride forth courageously to face any difficulty, valiantly fending off any attack against the divine) |
| to possess nothing (nothing, absolutely nothing, ever or anywhere really belongs to you; everything is God’s property) | to command everything (You must master the art of being able to acquire as many material things as you need for your earthly task. And remember well that as long as you are on earth, you’ll have to be dealing with matter, not without it, and certainly not against it.) |
| to have no ties (don’t be attached to anyone; Don’t love the person, but love the divine within the person, tolerate the earthly, and go around the demonic) | loyalty (You should be loyal, in life and in death, toward the people in whom you have recognized God’s manifestations. You love your master and your coworkers in the great divine plan because you have recognized God in them) |
| contempt for death (you must have the unshakeable conviction that there is no death at all; when you’ve become identical in your consciousness with life, you won’t shrink back in fear of death whenever your task brings you into mortal danger.) | regard for life (You must appreciate life above everything else. Life is God himself; don’t expose yourself to danger) |
| indifference (give up your personal viewpoint, your personal inclinations and feelings, learning to love everything and everyone without distinction or discrimination, just as God himself loves everything and everyone!) | love (‘When absolutely constant and completely impartial love radiates from you to all creatures, your love will never again be mixed with personal inclinations or antipathies. You too must let your fellow human beings apply their free will, and you must never compel them to do anything by force.)‘In every living creature there is the striving towards divine unity. The male seeks the female, and the female seeks the male. That is the attraction between the two forms of manifestation of creative forces …’ |
She continues telling about the ceremony when she becomes the Pharao’s wife and explains how she practices here telepathic abilities. She begins by fixing her entire attention on one single thought. With her eyes closed, she had to imagine the person she wanted to reach, seeing him with her inward eye, his body, his face, his eyes, and imagining she is he and he is she. She had to practice in three stages and on two levels (with the person closes by; at a distance with the other person knowing and then without arrangement; she had to practice to send and receive messages).
She worked on always remaining master of all her physical, spiritual and mental forces. She had to partake in public life in the afternoons and it’s sometimes hard because the Sons of God live consciously the spirit and are not so materialistic as the sons of men. She felt that people are slaves of their physical desires. She understood that the sons of men didn’t really know that earthly life is only a journey between being born into the body and leaving it at death, whereas the self is the same in every living creature. She can detect liars because lies create a kind of insulation around them and develop a dark shadow, like smoke, in their radiation. She learned about the development of the races and that the last initiate will destroy the devices and equipment through which they control the forces of nature. The tyranny of self-seeking rulers will awaken people out of their unconscious state. Through pain and suffering their attention will be guided to higher, spiritual truth.
Whenever spiritual darkness is so great that it threatens to get completely out of hand, there will always be some of the Sons of God ready to make the great sacrifice of descending to earth, being reborn in a human body, and in this way bringing divine light and consolation to humanity. ‘Through the intermarriages between the divine race and the human, the inheritable divine characteristics will be propagated among the people. In this way it will always be possible for a Son of God, through a pure woman, to receive a body with all the organs he needs to manifest himself completely. Their spiritual light will reach out in ever-greater waves, into ever-wider circles. The names of these spiritual giants will be known for thousands of years, and people will study their works hi the highest schools of the sons of men.
All the Sons of God have always brought and always will bring the same truth into different parts of the earth, but people will interpret it differently depending on the characteristics of their race and their degree of development. These different interpretations, as they get passed on to later generations, will give rise to different religions all springing from the same truths. One and the same Son of God will reincarnate himself at different times and in different places of the earth in order to proclaim the highest truth to humanity. And from the same truth proclaimed by the same spirit, people in different parts of the earth will develop different religions. Because of such differences arising merely from human ignorance, people will make war upon each other, trying to send each other to hell “in the name of God”.
In this way they will discover step by step that they don’t need to earn their bread through dull, difficult drudgery, that they don’t need to water the earth with the sweat of their brow, and that by activating their higher nerve canters they can command the forces of nature.
One day she and her father were out on a sea and find a young boy shipwrecked. He is half dead and her father revived him with a life-giving staff resembling a cross with a ring on the top. She wanted to take care of him with the help of others and get him educated at the temple during the day.
She learned the use of the staff, to speed up or slow down her heartbeat at will; and to bring her organs under her will. She was told when breathing to realize that not she is inhaling and exhaling, but that we are being inhaled and exhaled by our body.
People know very little about the laws of nature, with the exception of those they have experienced in daily life. But when they are suddenly confronted by some phenomenon they know nothing about, they immediately speak of “miracles” or “magic”. ‘People do not realize that these forces are no less laws of nature than those to which they have become accustomed to and think they know.
Everything, which has taken on material form, is visible and perceivable only because it has fallen out of perfect unity and perfect equilibrium. But from this state of disjunction, everything tends eternally to return to unison and balance. All energy, all the forces of the universe, are movements which emanate from one point—their own center—and radiate in circular waves in all directions, manifesting themselves as vibrations or oscillations. ‘The fact that the creative force manifests itself on each and every level of innumerable possibilities means there are countless different wave lengths, wave forms, and frequencies. Throughout the universe, countless varieties of vibrations are at work and all the myriad manifestations of creation are the effects of various forms of these rays. The whole universe consists of these various vibrations. The source of these creative vibrations we call God. God himself stands above all manifestations of life and rests in himself in absolute equilibrium without time and without space. But he is constantly radiating himself out into material forms in order to give these forms life. As God is omnipresent and fills the entire universe, everything that is in the universe is penetrated and filled by God.
This aspect of God who creates the material world and gives it life by penetrating it, that is, the actual life in us and in all creatures, we call the “higher self”. Expressions like “God”, “creator”, “universal self”, “higher self”(Logos) or the “creative principle” all mean one and the same divinity in its various aspects. The picture—the “name”—of God who manifests himself in the visible world is a circle, an inner circle of higher powers surrounded by a hard, material rind or crust. (This is also mentioned in the book Proof of Heaven). Expressed in letters, the symbol is OM. Another opposing force—centripetal force—is also active at the same time, drawing all material manifestations inward towards itself. One should never mistake this divine self for the personal “I” which in itself has no true existence and is merely an imaginary being.
The vital source behind every form of manifestation, be it a sun, planet, human being, animal, plant life or inorganic matter is one and the same God, the same divine self.
Each level of manifestation of life is characterized by its own degree of consciousness which is one octave removed from the next. Only man has the power to manifest several degrees of consciousness, all the way up to the divine level. Man, as a category, occupies four steps of the great ladder of evolution reaching from earth up to heaven; furthermore we see that each step corresponds to one octave on the scale of vibrations. Man knows about these four steps or degrees and has given them names: man characterized by his intellect; genius, characterized by intuition; prophet, characterized by his wisdom and universal love; and the last and highest degree, that of the God man, characterized by his omniscience and omnipotence. Every creature emits the vibrations of which it is made, that is, those which it consciously supports.
Matter: manifests itself as body – only through contraction, cooling off, and hardening
Plant: manifests two forces – on the material level and the level of force—vegetative force (searching, taking in and digesting food) —that gives life to it.
Animal: manifests three forces, the material, the vegetative and animal; conscious on the animal level: it has emotions, instincts, urges, feelings, sympathy, antipathy and desires
Average Man: stands one octave of vibrations higher because he is conscious on the mental level. He has intellect and the ability to think. But at the same time he manifests the three other levels. Man thinks consciously.
Genius: man lifts his consciousness out of the world of effects into the plane of causes. With the help of his intellect and spiritual power he is able to express his experiences on a higher plane in words or in other arts (music, painter, sculptor, dancer) and transmit them to his fellow men.
Prophet: manifests all the forces that work on the previously mentioned planes of consciousness, but he is also conscious on the next higher level too, the plane of divine wisdom and universal love. This love is universal, always giving, never taking, needs no supplement, no physical manifestation, but always radiates from the consciousness of divine all-unity.
God-man: is a person who manifests God— his own divine self—completely and perfectly through a perfect consciousness; one who experiences and radiates the divine creative forces in their primordial untransformed vibrations and frequencies.
Our will power is consumed by two great factors: time and space.
Sickness means that the vibrations of the body have gotten out of harmony. We restore the inharmonious part of the body to its own proper vibration and the person gets well. Every organ has its own characteristic vibration. This means that every organ is as it is because it has a certain characteristic vibration, and this vibration is constantly acting within it and maintaining it. When this vibration changes, the organ concerned becomes diseased.
The earth too has its complementary half in the unmanifested state, and the force of gravitation it exerts on all the creatures and objects living on it is the striving for reunification between the earth and its unmanifested complementary half which has been left behind in the void as its negative reflection. The resistance of matter keeps the earth and all creation from disappearing and being annihilated.
A return to the paradisiacal divine unity—to God—is only possible through the spiritualization of the matter, that is, through the transformation of matter into spirit! But matter, all by itself, could never become spirit without spiritual help. That’s why one aspect of God comes down into matter, clothes itself in matter, assumes material characteristics, and animates it as the self in order to make possible its spiritualization, its salvation.
The next lecture she received was about the pyramids, how they were built and why the particular format was chosen.
The first source of all truth and of all manifestation is the eternal being— God. But God is in the unmanifested state beyond time and space, and only his manifestations appears as projections in the three-dimensional world.
The fact that even the most primitive man has a concept of God shows that divine consciousness is dwelling within him, even though only very dimly and to the lowest degree. On the other hand, to become conscious in God, to understand God completely, and to be God means to become completely one with one’s own divine self, with the God dwelling within.
Man can never find God by seeking outside himself! When man seeks to return to God and re-establish his identity with him he must follow the same path with his consciousness: he must draw his consciousness more and more from his own little personal “I”—deeper and deeper into himself—turning to his own true self, to his creator, until he consciously recognizes himself in Him. (Compare with “Yoga and Christianity”.)
In the field of geometry, the form of the equilateral triangle is the symbolic image of God in which the recognizer, the recognized and the recognition are one and the same: 1 in 3 and 3 in 1.
As long as the numbers 1 and 3 form a unity in divinity, they remain 3 in 1 and 1 in 3. But when they emerge from the divine condition of unity, they separate, and out of the “1 in 3” there emerges “1 and 3”, and that makes 4. The equilateral triangle contains, hidden within itself, 4 smaller equilateral triangles.
This law also contains the secret of the key number of the three-dimensional world: the number 7.
In order for a force to emerge from the dimensionless state and manifest itself, it needs a point of departure. Because a point consists of only one single factor, it bears within itself the number of unity, the number 1.
First dimension – length: Line is always bound to involve three factors, its starting point, its end point, and the intervening space between the two. Thus the line represents the number 3, the key number for the 1-dimensional world.
In order for the number 2 to arise, there has to be a splitting of unity. The number 2 can only be born when two units are set beside each other. But inasmuch as nothing has any real existence outside unity, unity must project a reflection outside itself. Thus there arises a fission, a separation, which means the death of unity. That’s why the word for “doubt” is so closely related to the word for 2. This is true in every language.
Second dimension – width: A line consists of a series of points. Assuming the creative energy is active in each of these points with the same force and for the same period of time, each of these points moves outward from itself into the second dimension; each of them becomes a line, and out of the totality of these lines a plane is created: An equilateral rectangle. The rectangle is four in one and one in four and thus consists of five
factors: the four manifested lines: Line of departure, terminal line, right and
left lateral lines, and the fifth factor: the non-manifested area enclosed by
these lines. The key number is 5
Third dimension – height: The cube is six in one and one in six and it consists of seven factors: the six manifested limiting planes and the seventh, unmanifested factor, its cubic contents. The key number of the three-dimensional world is the number seven.
Just like the equilateral triangle, which makes up its mantle, the tetrahedron is the very incarnation of harmony and equilibrium. Since each of its corner points is equally distant from each of the others, there is no strain or tension in a tetrahedron, but rather a condition of rest in equilibrium.
Only man is able to manifest his higher self-—that is God—through his thoughts, words and deeds, when he identifies his consciousness, not with his body, but with its spiritual content, with his self. As long as a person identifies himself only with his body, he is like an opaque cube in that he reveals only the characteristics of matter, crowding the divine creative principle into a latent, unmanifested state.
But the shape of the cut cube turned inside out is the pyramid. Thus we see the pyramid is the symbolic form of the God-man, who reveals his divine, selfless nature and completely manifests God on earth.
By way of contrast, the symbolic representation of materialistic man who uses his intellect for the service of his material being is the cross—or a “T”— formed out of the four squares making up the surface of the cube. On this cross, or “T” the secret, indwelling, divine self is crucified. It is crucified on the two great beams of the three-dimensional world—on time and space—and dies on this cross of matter. Its death, however, is not final!
By cutting all four corners of a cube you would find the cube doesn’t contain just one tetrahedron, but two of them, one within the other, each an exact reflection of the other. These two tetrahedrons represent the innermost law of the recognizable world: the inseparable relationship between the two complementary halves—the positive and the negative—which, self-contained each within the other, form a perfect equilibrium and sit, as creative spirits, on the right hand and on the left hand of divinity. In creation they rule as two opposite laws: the law of spirit and the law of matter.
Spirit is life, matter is resistance. The law of the spirit is radiation, giving, selflessness. The law of matter is drawing inward, cooling off, paralysis.
The reflected image which has only been able to become spirit by virtue of the fact that God, as the self of the living creatures, has breathed his own life into matter, is Satan. Thus you can see that Satan is the law of matter come alive through the divine spirit. Satan lies dead in matter, as its law, until with its own life the divine spirit makes him come alive.
Whenever man’s consciousness identifies itself with the law of matter so that his thinking, words and deeds, instead of serving the divine law, serve the law of matter, man is bringing Satan to life, man is becoming satanic himself. Without man Satan cannot exist; for without the self of man, Satan is only an unconscious force, a necessary natural law of matter.
Satan can come to life only in the consciousness of a person who manifests the law of matter, the law of the flesh, in his spirit; who identifies his consciousness with his person, with his lower nature, with the drives and urges dwelling in his flesh, with the urge of self-preservation and propagation of the species. Such a person manifests the centripetal, coagulating power of matter as spiritual characteristics such as avarice, envy, vanity, bard heartedness and selfishness. No living creature has ever met Satan by himself, for without man Satan has no existence at all. Without man Satan is only the law of matter. We can meet the living Satan only in the human being; only in a human face can we recognize Satan as the expression of this face.
If we take half the number of faces of each of the geometric bodies we’ve talked about—the tetrahedron, cube, pentagonal dodecahedron, and icosahedron, we get the numbers 2,3,6 and 10. If we multiply these numbers together, we get the number 360, the number of degrees in the circle. And if we add these numbers together, we get 21, the number of possible connections between the seven factors of the key number of the threedimensional world, the number 7.
Then she learned about the four faces of God:
” The four faces of God are in everything that has been created. God in his three aspects is one in three and three in one. But this condition—just like the equilateral triangle—carries within itself the possibility of the number four. When the three aspects of the basic number one separate from each other—and this happens when they move from the unmanifested into the manifested state— the “one in three” becomes “one and three”. In this way the number four is born.
When the triangle moves out of the unmanifested into the manifested state in the three dimensional world, a tetrahedron is formed. ‘As you have already seen, the first primordial form of material manifestation—the cube—contains the tetrahedron hidden and unmanifested within itself.
The four sides of the pyramid symbolize the four faces of God, each of which taken alone and by itself manifests the three aspects of the first source, the divinity at rest within itself and standing above all creation. The shape of the pyramid shows this clearly in that each of its four sides, standing on the square base, forms a triangle representing the three aspects of God. Thus the pyramid manifests four times three: the number twelve. The entire visible universe is based on this twelve-fold manifestation of God.
Both representations reveal the same fact: whenever the divine creative principle leaves its timeless spaceless condition in the unmanifested state to come out into the three-dimensional world and become matter, it manifests itself—-even while keeping its three aspects—in the number four. The shape of the pyramid shows this clearly in that each of its four sides, standing on the square base, forms a triangle representing the three aspects of God. Thus the pyramid manifests four times three: the number twelve.”
Ptahhotep continued: ‘And that brings us to another truth. As you can see from the symbolic representation in the form of the pyramid, each of the four faces of God contains the three divine aspects. This results in a twelve-fold manifestation which is present at every point of the universe and is acting in everything that exists, beginning with the individual creatures living on the planets and running throughout the planets to the suns and the systems of suns, throughout the universe, just like little circles in larger ones and larger circles in still larger ones, on and on to infinity. So if you understand one of these circles, you will understand the inner structure of the entire universe and of every single creature in it; for the entire visible universe is based on this twelve-fold manifestation of God.
But before we go on, you must realize that everything we human beings can perceive with our organs of sense from our personal point of view—that is from the outside—is the exact opposite of what exists in the divine state of being. Everything you can see when looking at it from the outside—whether from above or below, from front or back, from the right or the left—turns into its exact opposite as soon as you stop looking at it and start being it. When you look at something, you’re in a dualistic relationship to it. You, the observer, and what you see are two different poles. But when you are something, you’re in a monistic condition, in divine unity.’
Phahhotep leads her to two circles with the zodiac signs and only when she stands precisely under, and consequently precisely in the center of the disc she sees them the “right” way and experiences a state of being. He explains that the earth receives the twelve-fold radiation of force of the four faces of God from the direction of various constellations of stars. Taken together, these constellations surround us like a wheel called the zodiac.
It’s owing to the effect of the radiations of the zodiac that the earth can exist at all. Their vibrations met in a point in cosmic space, causing interference in the waves of energy and leading to condensation …materialization. Little by little our earth came into being through this process of materialization. As the sun played a great role in this process, the earth grew in the field of force of the sun and became its satellite. It receives its life energy from the sun, but it also is constantly receiving radiations from the zodiac and from its sister planets of our solar system.
The four faces of God—that is the four cardinal points—in the vault of stars, in the divine condition of being, are Leo, Scorpio, Taurus and Aquarius. Each face of God, each cardinal point of the vault of heaven, contains within itself the three aspects of the unmanifested divinity, and so the twelve signs of the zodiac come into being:
The four faces of God in the divine state of being.
But there’s not only a relationship between the three aspects of each of the, faces of God, the four triangles are actually so related that their centers are identical. In this way they make up the zodiacal circle of twelve revelations, much that the various aspects of the four triangles form an inter-related series of steps in development and progress. Then there is still a third relationship between the individual constellations, namely the one between opposite constellations, each of which is a complementary half of the other.”
Phahhotep continues to explain the twelve signs of the zodiac and that if one wants to know the inner birth constellation of the forces that have built a living creature and are working in his soul, in his body, in his entire being—and consequently also in his fate—he has to figure out the constellation the stars had at the moment of his birth.
During the next session he explains: ‘The vibrations from the cosmos have such a great effect on the earth that they even influence world history. The leading ideas in religion, science and art are the result of the radiation of the particular constellation in which the
vernal point is moving throughout the course of a cosmic month. The incarnated spirits on earth—that is to say humanity—must always achieve a new epoch by reaching a new milestone in human development and establishing themselves in the ideas of the time.
A nation is a group of spirits, the incarnation of certain concentrations of energy. Each epoch brings to the earth a different group of spirits, a different race, and when this race has fulfilled its task of carrying out the new ideas and developing a new civilization for the space of a cosmic month, it leaves the earth in order to develop further on another planet. In every race, of course, there are always individuals who don’t quite “make the grade” before the end of the epoch. These remain behind, like the dregs in a drink, and must continue to develop on earth. That’s the reason why a nation experiences a sudden decline after achieving a high point in civilization. Degenerate and weak-willed descendants follow the highly developed fathers of the nation, and the nation, which was once greatly esteemed gradually, falls into debility and disrepute. These descendants are the dross of the nation, which has reached the highest degree of earthly development, become spiritualized, and departed from the earth.’
After explaining the end of the current time period he lays his hand on her head to show her pictures of what is to come, from Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt, to the birth of the divine child (the consciousness of the self). She sees the developments during the Age of the Fish and then during the Age of Aquarius/the Water Bearer. The great teacher of this epoch abolishes all the boundaries between the three dominant religions. With his own person he proves that the inner core of all religions is one and the same truth, one and the same God. The boundary between religion and science disappears during that epoch as well, as people discover that everything, even matter, is a wave movement . They learn that the only differences between manifestations of the spirit and those of matter are differences of frequency, while in its essence everything is only the manifestation of the one, single, prime source of all forces, God. Everything is a wave, just as the symbolic representation of the Water Bearer constellation shows: a supernal being pouring waves out of his pitcher.
She learns that the inhabitants of the earth receive their initiation in small groups and then in larger and larger ones, all inter-related one with the other. A person can be initiated individually within his own lifetime, and a nation can receive initiation if it works its way up to the highest level of development and fulfills its task here on earth. Eventually the whole world will receive initiation by completing the full circle of the four faces of God, experiencing step by step all stages of initiation in a systematic development, and finally achieving complete spiritualization—salvation from matter; but it will take ages and ages for this development to be achieved.
‘The history of mankind on earth is not a matter of accident or happenstance. It’s important for you to know that every step of development takes place according to divine providence, following a divine plan. A person can cover this infinitely long way in a single lifetime if he concentrates his will exclusively on this goal.’
After these lessons she gets ready for initiation. On the day she learns that her earthly career—was already determined and set the very moment she fell out of divine unity for the first time, that her present character and her destiny were built up by the same forces.
Both of them are the result of cause and effect, actions and reactions, deeds and experiences through countless lives in which the self has manifested itself throughout ages and ages of time. She also hears that destiny is an incarnated projection of the future, a materialized dream.
‘As long as a person allows the will of his self—the will of God—to rule, what happens on the material plane, in the so-called “reality”, (compare with Your Soul’s Plan) is what he himself consciously wants. Consequently he is also in control of his destiny. This is because a person’s self has the power to take those dreams of his which are waiting in his subconscious for materialization and transform them into spiritual energy. On the other hand, the moment a person identifies himself with extraneous forces which are rising, not from within his self, but from within his lower nature, his body, and the moment he recognizes these forces as his own will, what happens is no longer what he himself wants but what his body wants, even though he may be fully convinced that this is his “own” will.
In this way he loses control over his destiny and is completely at the mercy of the blind forces of fate. In this case, the “dream pictures” and projections lying latent in his subconscious unavoidably and with absolute certainty turn into “real” events on the earthly plane.’
An initiate has to be an absolutely impersonal instrument of God, because every initiate has the duty of continuing to work on earth in order to help other people out of the fetters of matter, out of the fetters of the body, out of the claws of blind fate, back into the divinely spiritual state of unity. Everyone that has fallen into separation and into matter by virtue of becoming incarnated must find its way back home to the lost paradise, back to the divine state of unity.
At the same time she is told that if an initiate directs his high spiritual energies into the body, he falls from his high state and falls down low. He would burn out his nerve centers and plunge into the lowest depths like a falling comet.
And this is in the end what happened to the author. She fell in love with a visitor, realized it too late and was killed by one of her lions. But during the initiation process – where she became conscious on a higher level – she didn’t see this event – just a mist – but she could see all her lives after that without realizing that those lives were ahead of her. During the preparation she also heard that the feeling of bliss connected with a higher state of consciousness is known to every person who is gifted with intuition, and everyone who drinks wine or uses other stimulants is seeking the same blissful feeling associated with a greater flow of current through the nerves. But the artificial stimulation is always followed by a depression which throws the person farther down than he was before.
She also learns that “marriage” always means a union of positive and negative but that on earth “marriage” means the vain attempt to achieve union with another being in the body.
The God-man consciously manifests and controls all seven levels of creation. But his consciousness identifies itself only with the seventh, divine plane, not with the lower ones. He knows them, masters them, uses them— but does not eat of these fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil! He consciously remains in God, in the paradisiacal state, He unites within himself all seven planes in divine unity: he is matter, has a body, is a plant: animates, nourishes and cares for his body as for a good instrument; he is
animal: he has instincts and feelings; he is a man: he has intellect and the power of logical thought; he is a genius: he has intuition and works out of the plane of causes; he is a prophet: he stands above time and space, seeing the future and the past, loving the entire universe with selfless, all inclusive love, helping all creatures towards redemption from the fetters of the world; and he is a God-man: he is omniscient and omnipotent; he is what he is, the eternal being, life itself, God!
At the end of the initiation process she sees a lot of details about her current life and recognizes the people who were with her during the life in Egypt as well.
During that initiation dream she also sees herself walking seven steps towards God to conquer the weight of her body, the forces of her body, her feelings, her doubts, becoming an invisible spirit, become universal love, and to forget about raising her own person in order to help someone else. When she arrives she sees her complementary half! His irresistible attraction draws her to him, and she melts into complete union with him in his heart. She realizes that He was always She and She always He, the dualistic projected image of her divine, true self. In this dualistic state she always faced God as a being separate from herself, and She felt Him as ‘You’. Now in paradisiacal unity, she feels that this invisible power she has so far always called ‘God’ will become herself in the next moment.
Then she sees all her past incarnations. She feels like fire, sees herself as light and realizes that every one and everything is living in her and that everything she has always believed she didn’t love was what she had not yet recognized within herself!
When she realizes: “I AM THE ONLY REALITY, I AM LIFE, I AM THAT I AM!” she hears Phahhotep’s voice and gradually feels returning to her body.
After the initiation she can feel the difference inside her and continues life as a low priestess but remembers with dread the incarnation, especially the last one. She describes the various duties of priestesses, among them those who seek out restless souls, penetrate their beings with the power of love irradiate their consciousness with ideas that help them find a solution and a way out of their condition. But she performs duties like a priest and teaches concentration and how to solve problems.
She learns that many people do evil things simply out of fear and not because they are bad people.
She also continues to perform duties as the Pharao’s wife and that’s when she meets an emissary from a foreign land and “loses herself” by falling in love. The consequence is death and because she wanted to become conscious in the perfection resting within itself, she had to fall into rigidity. She had to start over as a stone and be in that state for 3000 years – in the condition of consciousness of matter with a human consciousness.
After all the sufferings and tortures of hell she finally lost consciousness and then she was reborn numerous times until she was born in Hungary which was the connection to the life in Egypt.
The end of the book describes how she met the Yogi from India, who had been the boy she had saved in Egypt, how they brought Yoga to Switzerland and wrote books together and other tasks she fulfilled in her last life until she passed away.
In the end she realizes that all these events she had been experiencing as ‘reality’ in her life on the material, earthly plane were things she experienced several thousand years ago in her initiation in the pyramid and that identifying ourselves with God is
INITIATION