The Gryphon Mystery

By Philip Matthews

A detailed account of a spiritual process that every human being must undertake in the coming age. It is the result of ten years' spiritual investigation and five years following of persistent meditation.
(Note: Due to the limitations of the ebook formats, you may find variations in the quality of the text. Hopefully this will not interfere with your experience of The Gryphon Mystery.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Matthews
• Release date: Sep 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310161155

Philip Matthews

Writer's life, hidden, frugal, self-absorbed, no TV or social media, a few good friends - but the inner life, ahhhhh. Recommend it to anyone.

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THE GRYPHON MYSTERY

PHILIP MATTHEWS

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Philip Matthews

September 1999 – May 2015

ISBN 9781310161155

"And there is a certain great law which governs the progressive development of consciousness in all future stages of life. Namely, it is what man works at to help others attain such consciousness which contributes most to its development."

Rudolf Steiner

"Alchemy is philosophy; it is the philosophy, the seeking out of THE SOPHIA in the mind."

Mary Anne Atwood

PREFACE

The essays presented here were not conceived as a series; they have grown one from the other in the order in which they are arranged. You will find that each essay introduces and explains itself as needs be.

Access to the Journal of the Anthroposophical Society in Ireland was the occasion for writing the first essay, The Spiritual Organs. The companion essay, The Spiritual Body, is in direct continuity with it, in effect the second part of a single work. I separated them simply because as one essay it would have been too long. The Spiritual Organs was published in the Summer 2000 issue of the Journal.

Though The Encounter with Christ came third in the series, it is for obvious reasons the pivotal work. The subject is momentous, but I have added nothing to the revelations recounted here, hoping in this way to encourage readers to seek their own individual encounters with this being.

Activating the Spiritual Organs completes the description of the spiritual organs begun in The Spiritual Organs and The Spiritual Body. It gathers together much of the material disclosed in the preceding three essays. The Seth Meditations is an addendum to Activating the Spiritual Organs. While it is intended to illuminate an important aspect of that essay, it stands in its own right as a significant spiritual experience.

The completion of the Gryphon Mystery led on into a long period of new insight, which took many years to understand. But it would be expected that the achievement of the Hieros Gamos (Sacred Marriage) – which is what the successful activation of the Spiritual Organs amounted to – should lead to the release of the Wisdom which the female part of the Adam Kadmon possesses. The last five essays introduce the main outlines of that Wisdom.

The sixth essay, On the Division of the Human Being and the Advent of the Ego, details the context for the creation of the Spiritual Organs and their relation to the destiny of mankind.

The seventh essay, The Same and the Other – the Nature of Human Will, is an attempt to outline the larger destiny of mankind and its place in the great spiritual drama that shapes the whole of reality.

The next essay, Soul and Will – the Phantom of Life, elaborates the description of reality introduced in the previous essay.

The ninth essay, On the Incarnation of the Ego, is an account of the final development of mankind, while the last essay, Desire and Beauty – The Ego and The Other, examines the two great stimuli in human life and their very different influences upon us.

The Appendices contain further reflections on the nature and destiny of mankind in relation to the Ego. The Endnote 1 looks back across the entire process from the perspective of the cycle of novels that constitute The Dark Liberation. The reader should consult the novels listed in the Endnote for fuller accounts of the woman’s role than can be provided here. Endnote 2 examines death and the thereafter. Finally Endnote 3 examines the phenomenon of the Mother.

The motivation for bringing these disclosures and experiences to the attention of others is detailed in The Spiritual Organs. My hope is that reading these essays will stimulate the spiritual element that resides in all human beings to the point where each individual becomes aware of its presence and will thus be encouraged to open his or her own spiritual organs.

THE GRYPHON MYSTERY

THE SPIRITUAL ORGANS

Manifestations of life are always sevenfold.

Rudolf Steiner

The Riddle of Humanity.

To be candid, I am not sure what kind of reception this essay will receive. The world is certainly overburdened by now with diagrams, maps and figurations of occult and sacred symbols. The result is that many have come to believe that possession of a map of heaven is at once a passport to that region.

I bear in mind also Rudolf Steiner’s remark that the images perceived during spiritual development are merely indications of one’s progress and not as such of much value to others. In any case, we bear the signs of our spiritual state upon our being, signs that are perceptible to the spiritually advanced, so reporting our visions adds nothing to their assessment of us.

I accept this point. Almost from the beginning I recognised that many others have experienced what I experience, and that most of them maintain silence and strive on in humility for deeper spiritual understanding. Nonetheless, I have decided to bring forward this particular set of images. I do so for two reasons.

The first reason I will leave aside for the moment until I have created a context for it, which I will do below. The other reason is this: as you will see, the set of images is peculiarly complete in specified ways. By this I mean that the images form a complete set without at the same time disclosing all the knowledge that might be obtained from them.

In view of what I am presenting here, I should observe that the forms of the Chakras have remained largely unchanged over the last two thousand years. In fact the only deviation of note from the pattern familiar today is to be found in the 6th century AD Yoga Upanishad, where the root Chakra is said to be triangular in shape. Even C.W. Leadbeater, who based his study, The Chakras, on his own clairvoyant investigations, maintained the forms in substance, deviating only to move the second Chakra up to the spleen, and to subdivide the brow Chakra’s two petals into 48 ‘undulations’ each. The well-known model of the Chakras as lotus flowers with their associated figures and symbols date from an Indian compilation of the 17th century.

Rudolf Steiner for his part accepted the traditional Indian interpretation of the Chakras, going so far as to adopt the didactic superstructure developed over the centuries. Even so, there is a case to be made for interpreting certain ‘living’ aspects of his teaching by reference to an exploration of the depths to be found in each of the Chakras. There is no doubt that the seven lotus flowers were of great significance to him, and that he explored them ceaselessly, with truly wonderful results.

Until I perceived this aspect of Dr Steiner’s insight, my interest in the Chakras had been peripheral, just another part of the wide spectrum of occult knowledge and speculation. My first experience of them came during a course of yoga I undertook with Lily Donat in London in 1977. Towards the end of the course she led us to contact the base Chakra. I was very surprised when the Chakra actually made its presence felt! However, I was much more taken by a painting of the Chakras, done by one of her students, that hung in the exercise room. Years later, at Christmas 1985, I managed to create my own painting of the familiar tree of lotus flowers. It was a profoundly satisfying experience.

I became immersed in Rudolf Steiner’s works during the late 80’s, concentrating upon the cross-structure of the epochs of the Earth’s evolution and the development of the human bodies or sheaths. At the same time, my meditation began to develop in the early nineties, as a result of completing a project that had spanned twenty years. These private experiences ranged in a systematic way – seen retrospectively – through familiar and unfamiliar regions, culminating in January 1996 in the series of images set out below.

I feel I should say something about the nature of the sources I am using to give this account. Like so many, I have kept diaries and account books. When the present series of meditations began in late 1991, I was content to hold them in memory. Only in early 1992, when I realised the scale of the inner activity, did I begin to keep notes. It began as an expediency: I jotted down abbreviated accounts of my experiences in pencil on folded sheets of unruled A4, thus obtaining 4-page units of writing space. I filled these pages with condensed accounts plus whatever images, shapes and transforms occurred. The handwriting is tiny – I need a glass now in order to read it.

These accounts were intended to serve three purposes. One was to make an accurate and sufficient record as soon as possible after the experience. The second was to hold a comprehensive record of the whole cycle of mediations in the hope that I might better understand it in the future. The third reason is in some ways the most important. I write down my experiences in order that I might forget them. I do this in order to forestall the modern habit of labelling the new and the unknown (and the spiritual world is unknown to each of us prior to our experience of it) with preconceived concepts and names. I forget my experiences so that I do not contaminate future experience with spurious expectations derived indirectly from past experience. I stress this now because it was only when I went back over my notes of the Chakra meditations earlier this year that I began to grasp their possible significance and value.

I now intend setting out the accounts of the Chakra meditations in a ‘raw’ state, as a Diary. Only the relevant entries will be given, all abbreviations will be expanded and personal elements will be excluded unless they convey necessary information. Square brackets enclose explanatory notes not in the original account.

I am aware that these entries will appear extremely cryptic at first sight, but the commentary on the individual Chakras that follows on the Diary should help to explicate them.

Please note that I refer to the Chakras by the number of petals each possesses – the most unambiguous way to refer to them in shorthand. Thus the base Chakra has 4 petals; the sacral plexus Chakra has 6; the solar plexus Chakra has 10; the heart Chakra has 12; the throat Chakra has 16; the brow Chakra has 2, and the crown Chakra has 1000.

This is the Diary:

In addition to this: you can see that on 15/1/96 I set up a ‘plan’ for reference. I drew the Chakras in ascending order in the traditional lotus form. Then, as the meditations progressed, I set alongside each Chakra the new image(s) as I experienced them. They are laid out here (see the last page of this essay) substantially as I saw them. The only modification is an adjustment of the root Chakra. I first drew it thus:

The modification is intuitive, but it does not change the import of the image at all.

At the beginning I said I had two reasons for deciding to communicate these new images. One was because they form a complete set. I think you can see that this is true. The other reason, the compelling one for me, is the encounter with the spirit who called himself ‘RUDOLF’ at the start of the sequence, and a second encounter, this time in dream, with Rudolf Steiner.

Now, I want to emphasise that it is this aspect which compels me to disclose these images. It is not an authority to do so, nor does it underwrite my doing so. Believe me when I say that I only became aware that the Chakra meditations were bounded by these two encounters earlier this year, when I first set out to study my notes of the meditations in detail.

It seems to be a common factor in spiritual development that spirits – good and bad – are drawn to the opening one is creating. It is my conviction that if one is obliged to remain silent about one’s visions, one is doubly obliged to maintain silence about the spirits one encounters. Delusion in the matter of images is one thing; delusions about spirit beings is a graver and more frightening matter.

W ith this caution in mind, I am prepared to submit to the impulse to make these meditations known to those they might interest. I am presenting them here in a ‘raw’ state so that no one is seduced by persuasive presentation of pretty pictures. In the end, you will have to judge their worth for yourself.

Before I undertake what I intend will be a fairly concise commentary on the images, I should indicate a certain liberty in presenting them here. You will notice that colour is an important element in the images. While the colours attributed to the various images here follow the disclosures, I have added to them in small ways in order to elucidate some of the implications apparent in the images themselves. In the following commentary I will detail these additions.

THE KUNDALINI GARDEN

This image is novel in the context of the Chakras and totally new in my experience. I see it as a hollow building block filled with earth (green) from which two plants grow, one ‘hot’, the other ‘cold’ – red and blue, which form the interlacing currents, Pingala-Sun and Ida-Moon of Indian tradition, that are said to rise from Chakra to Chakra to the brow Chakra.

The injunction in the 11/1/96 meditation to ‘always return’ reminds us that the Kundalini must always be returned to its resting place in the Garden after any exercise involving it, a caution repeated by most authorities on the subject.

Much is said of the Kundalini Garden in the meditations, more than I am prepared to absorb even yet. But a word of caution: the rising of the Kundalini is represented by many authorities as a traumatic event. One must be careful then not to confuse the knowledge imparted in these meditations with one’s experience of the events referred to. In other words, I know important things about the Kundalini, but I am less certain of my experience of it.

ROOT CHAKRA – 4 petals, at base of spine.

Colours: Base, red; armature, blue; globe, yellow; tip, white

This is a truly transformative image. Fourfold as the four bodies of the human being – red for physical, blue for ether, yellow for astral, white for Ego. Best images: an egg in an eggcup; a chalice with host; Grail with stone; a shaving mirror.

Notice how the fundamental nature of this organ is signalled in the 20/1/96 meditation by the echo set up in all the other organs, like a roll call, excepting the organ immediately above, the 6.

I will refer to it again at the end of this discussion.

SACRAL PLEXUS CHAKRA – 6 petals, below navel.

The colouring is as indicated in the meditation of 3/3/96. I feel that the gold and yellow triangles rotate against each other. I have little meditational experience of this lotus and only one physical experience. Even my reception of the images has an element of confusion. You see that on 20/1/96 I raised the question of the status of this lotus after I listed only six lotuses as opened or closed. The arrow through the six means to point to the hexagram in the 15/1/96 entry. I forgot then that the hexagram there is linked to the throat lotus and seems to refer back to the content of the 24/12/95 meditation, which precedes the series proper.

I don’t intend pursuing this matter further here – it is one aspect of the meditations that I cannot yet fathom. There may be a link, to do with alchemy, between the hexagram of the Throat Chakra – the ‘mineral disposition’ – and that associated in detail with the Sacral Plexus Chakra, but I am not prepared to speculate on this.

The physical experience, by the way, was one of intense joy rising from that part of my body at the sight of a group of obviously happy people in a park. It seems thus linked with the Solar Plexus and Heart Chakras. See below.

SOLAR PLEXUS CHAKRA – 10 petals, above the navel.

Colour, pink, violet-pink, red-pink.

I have seen this Chakra vividly a number of times. I call it the lotus of wrath, but suspect it is also the source of the love felt in the heart lotus. The opening of the Chakra brings all your anger and resentment to the surface. In anger you will see the lotus – a congeries