In Search of the Miraculous

himself, he can, so to speak, confine the manifestation of the laws of duality and

trinity to the permanent line of struggle with himself on the way to self-knowledge. In

this way he will introduce the line of will first into the circle of time and afterwards into the cycle of eternity, the accomplishing of which will create in him the great

symbol known by the name of the Seal of Solomon.

"The transmission of the meaning of symbols to a man who has not reached an

understanding of them in himself is impossible. This sounds like a paradox, but the

meaning of a symbol and the disclosure of its essence can only be given to, and can

only be understood by, one who, so to speak, already knows what is comprised in this

symbol. And then a symbol becomes for him a synthesis of his knowledge and serves

him for the expression and transmission of his knowledge just as it served the man

who constructed it.

"The more simple symbols:

or the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, which express them, possess a definite meaning in relation

to the inner development of man; they show different stages on the path of man's selfperfection and of the growth of his being.

"Man, in the normal state natural to him, is taken as a duality. He consists entirely of dualities or 'pairs of opposites.' All man's sensations, impressions, feelings,

thoughts, are divided into positive and negative, useful and harmful, necessary and

unnecessary, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant. The work of centers proceeds

under the sign of this division. Thoughts oppose feelings. Moving impulses oppose

instinctive craving for quiet. This is the duality in which proceed all the perceptions,

all the reactions, the whole life of man. Any man who observes himself, however

little, can see this duality in himself.

"But this duality would seem to alternate; what is victor today is the vanquished

tomorrow; what guides us today becomes secondary and subordinate tomorrow. And

everything is equally mechanical, equally independent of will, and leads equally to no

aim of any kind. The understand-

ing of duality in oneself begins with the realization of mechanicalness and the

realization of the difference between what is mechanical and what is conscious. This

understanding must be preceded by the destruction of the self-deceit in which a man

lives who considers even his most mechanical actions to be volitional and conscious

and himself to be single and whole.

"When self-deceit is destroyed and a man begins to see the difference between the

mechanical and the conscious in himself, there begins a struggle for the realization of

consciousness in life and for the subordination of the mechanical to the conscious. For

this purpose a man begins with endeavors to set a definite decision, coming from conscious motives, against mechanical processes proceeding according to the laws of

duality. The creation of a permanent third principle is for man the transformation of the duality into the trinity.

"Strengthening this decision and bringing it constantly and infallibly into all those events where formerly accidental neutralizing 'shocks' used to act and give accidental

results, gives a permanent line of results in time and is the transformation of trinity into quaternity. The next stage, the transformation of quaternity into quinternity and the construction of the pentagram has not one but many different meanings even in relation to man. And of these is learned, first of all, one, which is the most beyond

doubt, relating to the work of centers.

"The development of the human machine and the enrichment of being begins with a

new and unaccustomed functioning of this machine. We know that a man has five

centers: the thinking, the emotional, the moving, the instinctive, and the sex. The

predominant development of any one center at the expense of the others produces an

extremely one-sided type of man, incapable of further development. But if a man

brings the work of the five centers within him into harmonious accord, he then 'locks

the pentagram within him' and becomes a finished type of the physically perfect man.

The full and proper functioning of five centers brings them into union with the higher

centers which introduce the missing principle and put man into direct and permanent

connection with objective consciousness and objective knowledge.

"And then man becomes the six-pointed star, that is, by becoming locked within a circle of life independent and complete in itself, he becomes isolated from foreign

influences or accidental shocks; he embodies in himself the Seal of Solomon.

"In the present instance the series of symbols given—2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 —is

interpreted as applicable to one process. But even this interpretation is incomplete,

because a symbol can never be fully interpreted. It can only be experienced, in the