The GRAIL MIRAGE

Christine Lowe
Christine Lowe is Secretary of the Theosophical Society Bolton, Lancashire Lodge. She joined The Society in 1981.

The story of the search for the Holy Grail is the most famous example of what has become known in the western world, as The Journey Quest. The pilgrimage or journey of discovery is a very prominent mystical symbol, representing the human minds' search for God. But a symbol is merely a pointer, a sign, a transparency leading to the sacred or holy, and as such is therefore still open to individual interpretation.

This legend of the Grail was most probably inspired by classical and Celtic mythologies. The grail or chalice was just one example among many, of containers, such as horns of plenty, magic life-restoring cauldrons, platters, and the like. In the Celtic myth, the cup or cauldron restored life, and provided health, nourishment, and courage. These qualities were linked to nature and the cycle of the seasons, as regeneration, fertility, and inspiration; they were essential to the simple way of life.

During the thirteenth century, when the Christian religion mostly replaced Pagan teachings, a new more austere spiritual significance was given to the Grail theme. Now the grail represented healing, wholeness, and most of all purity through sacrifice. If the search for the Grail is symbolic of our own quest for enlightenment, then this makes sense. Surely enlightenment will give us that healing, that complete sense of unity with the source, where there is no more separation.

Christian interpretation of the quest also went on to create a new hero, the pure knight Parcifal, or Galahad as he later came to be known. Only the pure in heart, or knight innocent of sin, could see the grail or find it. Because of the sacrifice of Christ for the whole of mankind, the chalice that caught his blood, came to be the most powerful symbol of purity and transformation for Christians. Christ set the example of the perfected man, and the grail thus came to represent the ultimate goal for those on the spiritual path.

The emphasis of the grail therefore changed from the fullness and plenty of the pagans, to one of sacrifice and service which the life of Christ had come to represent. For the Christians then, this became the way of personal spiritual development, through long arduous trials and sacrifice and suffering.

The journey quest itself, though, followed traditional lines. Monsters or other dangers always beset the traveller in his search, and inevitably for the hero, they had to be overcome before a transformation was achieved. We have come to know this hero's journey as symbolic of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, an essential part of the mysteries and myths of many times and cultures.

Perhaps because it is such a familiar analogy, the journey, is something with which we can all identify. The spiritual journey, unlike a physical journey where movement is involved, is however, like the Grail, surrounded in mystery. We cannot know our destination until we actually arrive there. The grail quest has to be seen as a journey to a new sense of self, which is actually experienced by the individual, and all interpretations and general explanations are therefore really meaningless. The realm of the grail is not a geographical place, not even located in time or space, but a state of consciousness - a realm beyond our waking consciousness. It represents an inner alchemical transformation. When the call for this journey comes, as it will to all humanity, because the pull to awakening is from the cosmos to our soul, the journey will be different for everyone. We cannot know the individual details at the outset of the journey, but the eventual results will all be the same. This awakening results in enlightenment.

Heraclitus states: "The waking have one world in common, sleepers each have a private world of their own. The universal mind is accessed by and common to all awakened individuals"

This story of man's eternal quest for mystical union with God as described in ancient myths like the grail quest, is continued still in modern literature. There are two novels I would briefly like to mention here. The first is by Herman Hesse and is called Siddhartha.

It is the story of a devout young Brahmin, and his quest for enlightenment. He leaves the wealth and safety of his father's house, to go out in the world to find answers to his questions which his traditional religion could not give him. He tries to live the life of an aesthetic with others in a forest, then travels to meet Gautama Buddha and follow his teachings for a while. Then he suffers the temptation of wealth and luxury in the everyday market place world, and experiences physical love and the birth of a son, but he still cannot find what his soul is longing for.

Eventually he finds his ultimate teacher, when he stops his searching, by living with and learning from the simple ferryman, Vasudeva. He learns to blend in with the world and the rhythms of nature by listening to and learning from the river. The river simply is; it is not a has been or a will be. It is everywhere itself simultaneously, ever flowing and always the same. Letting go, for him, turns out to be the answer to an enlightened state.

"When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when he did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his soul to anyone particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om - perfection."

Another beautifully written novel, which I would highly recommend that you read is The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. This is the story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy, who dreams of and eventually does, travel the world in search of a fabulous treasure, "the soul of the world". When on his travels he reaches the Egyptian desert, a fateful encounter with someone known as the alchemist awaits him. What he is told totally transforms him when he puts it into practice. There is a beautiful passage where Santiago becomes one with the desert wind and learns the secrets of Nature. This experience teaches him like the river taught Siddhartha. Both stories are full of wisdom, and teach how to link our minds with our hearts, and how to read the omens strewn along life's path by listening to our intuition.

One quote from the book says:

"No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity"

Returning to the Grail story, when Parcifal first stumbled upon the Grail castle, its surrounding landscape was barren and dried up. Nothing either grew or flourished. When he was introduced to the King, he could see he was full of great pain and suffering. But Parcifal was overwhelmed by the visions he saw there and remained an observer, locked in his own world, and thus did nothing to help. This is a vivid picture of our lives today. The environment and conditions of society are merely a reflection of man's inner chaos. Our individual everyday reality is but a reflection of our own inner world. Healing and wholeness can only come when we each address the state of our inner life.

In The Voice of the Silence, H. P. Blavatsky, asks "Hast thou attuned thy heart and mind to the great heart and mind of Humanity."

We all need to learn to communicate through our heart centres with empathy and compassion, both for ourselves and for others. We are extremely adept at using our minds. We communicate every day with ease during conversation. We discuss our hopes and fears, problems and dreams. But like Parcifal, who on his first visit to the Grail castle, failed to empathize with the wounded king enough to ask the question which would heal him, we fail to feel empathy and unity with our fellow human beings, and thus remain in separated states.

Rudolf Steiner in his book, The Holy Grail says "We are both the wounded king Amfortas, and the aspiring knight Parsifal. Only when we gain self-knowledge are we led from this duality into unity."

This is the key to fully understanding the grail and its transformative properties. To be brought to wholeness, healing and oneness with the universe, our hearts and minds must be fully open to the possibilities. We need to learn to ask the questions over which Parsifal stumbled, which will then lead us on to an understanding of a higher nature. We are all interconnected, both with other human beings and the whole of the manifested world.

Like the Bodhisattva who vows to reach enlightenment for the sake of all others, we cannot live in isolation. Everyone we meet is affected by who we are.

I would like now to explore why I called this article the Grail mirage. A mirage is an optical illusion, which depends on atmospheric conditions. For example, the vision of a pool of water is created by light passing through the layers of hot air above the heated surface of a road. Other more elaborate mirages, may appear as cities or forests. But that is all they are, illusion.

Those of us on the journey to seek the grail, may be seeing the illusion of signposts on our way to spiritual awakening. Maya is the word often used to describe human reality as seen through the smokescreen of our minds, our emotions and our personalities.

H. P. Blavatsky describes Maya as, "all that which is subject to change, through decay and differentiation, and which therefore has a beginning and an end".

Our life, therefore, is seen through our own creation of atmospheric conditions. As when a stick appears to be broken when viewed partly in water, because of refraction, our view of reality is distorted by our own conditioning. The hot air of our personalities rises and confuses all that we think and do. When we seek the grail we are still using the level of the mind. The grail must then remain a separate thing - as the seeker and that which is sought. That which we seek, will remain an ephemeral thing, a permanent duality, an illusion which recedes as soon as we feel we are getting closer to it. We can only view the world from our place on the spoke of the wheel, until we grow towards the centre.

As Lao Tse says in the Tao Te Ching:-
We join spokes together in a wheel,
But it is the centre hole
That makes the wagon move.
We shape the clay into a pot,
But it is the emptiness inside
That holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
But it is the inner space
That makes it livable.
We work with being,
But non-being is what we use."

Eckhart Toile in his book The Power of Now, says Being is deep within every form as its innermost, indestructible essence, and is our true nature. He goes on to add that it is our inability to feel this connectedness with Being, which gives rise to the illusion of separateness. We cannot seek to understand it, or grasp it with our minds. We can only grasp it when the mind is stilled. When we are fully present, when our attention is fully in the moment, only then can our connectedness to the whole be felt. When compassion truly opens the heart to others, in that moment, Maya has no power over the soul. When we can learn to utterly trust the universe, and accept what is, then we are one with the tao.

Lao Tse talks about the Tao and the acceptance of what is. He refers in the Tao Te Ching, to Wei Wu Wei, that is, "doing, not-doing". This is a state of awareness where right action arises without interference of the conscious will. It should not be confused with passivity or apathy.

On the contrary it is the purest and most effective form of action, because the doer is removed from the deed, becoming one with it. Thus enabling the doer to be in perfect harmony with the way things are. In surrendering to the Tao, we give up our own concepts and desires and judgements, and become one with the flow of the universe.

"The tao never does anything. Yet through it all things are done"

This is the meaning behind Siddhartha becoming one with the river, and Santiago becoming one with the desert wind. Non-action is not inertia, but a total receptiveness to that which wells up out of the source through the individual. It is a way of living, not by seeking things for ourselves, or travelling anywhere, but by becoming one with the whole and therefore letting life express itself through us. Nature is not hampered by a past or apprehensive over a future. It just is.

Underneath this level of physical appearances and separate forms, we are one with all that is. We can believe it to be true, but we need to KNOW it to be true.

Ramana Maharshi once said:
"There is no greater mystery than this - that we keep seeking reality, though in fact we are reality."

This is why our searching, our questing, our looking for the grail, will in fact keep us trapped in the mirage. Again in the words of Eckhart Tolle:- "Do not seek to become free of desire or to seek enlightenment. Become present. Be here now, an observer of your mind. Don't quote the Buddha, Be the Buddha".

In other words, WE ARE ALREADY THAT WHICH WE SEEK. We just have to realize it. We and the Holy Grail are both of the same essence. All Life is One Thing.

I would like to finish with a lovely quotation from a recent issue of The Theosophist magazine. It is from Miraculous moment: The journey to here by Dr Stephen Morris.
"When an individual human organism emerges from the cocoon-like restrictive confines of the 'Little mind', into the radiance of the absolute present moment, the boundaries of the 'Little self' melt away. In the exhilaration of such a release, one feels alive, buoyant, and not at all cut off from other beings or nature itself. The present has no beginning and no ending; it is its own source. All that could be called real, presents itself, and it is right here, always here, and only here that the holy opens up.

However momentarily, how many have not known a lightness, and supreme sense of unity with all that exists? So stirring and so solemn that it can only be called LOVE. Is not peace palpable, and is not life, ordinary, everyday life, in any NOW moment, the greatest wonder to behold?"

The Theosophical Society 2003
reproduced from 'Insight' July/August 2003, The Journal of The Theosophical Society in England