A b d - ru - sh i n
The Holy Grail

MANIFOLD are the interpretations of the legends which exist about the Holy Grail. The most serious scholars and investigators have occupied themselves with this mystery. Much of their work has high moral value, but it all shows one great fault — that they have only built from the earth upwards, while the essential thing, the ray of light from above, which alone could bring animation and enlightenment, is missing.

All who strive from below upwards must come to a halt at the boundary line of the material sphere, even if they are granted to conceive the greatest possible heights! In most cases, however, even under the most favourable conditions, barely half this road can be covered. And how great is the distance from there to the real understanding of the Holy Grail!

This feeling that it is so unattainable finally grows upon the investigators, with the result that they try to regard the Grail purely as the symbolic expression of an idea, so as to give it the high place they rightly feel is its proper due. But in so doing they actually go backwards, not forwards; downwards instead of upwards. They deviate from the right way, which is already indicated to some extent in the legends.

These legends faintly reflect the truth, but only very faintly, because the lofty inspirations and visionary pictures of the poets were pressed into far too material a concept through the intervention of the intellect during the transmission. In their reproductions they portrayed what they received spiritually in pictures conforming to their own worldly surroundings, with the object of making the meaning of the legends more readily understandable to men. In this, however, they failed because they themselves could not arrive at the essence of the truth.

Thus from the very outset the subsequent research and investigation was founded upon an uncertain basis, and any success was bound to be very limited! Therefore it is not surprising that finally only the thought of something purely symbolic remained, and redemption through the Grail was transferred to every man’s inmost self.

The existing interpretations are not without great ethical value, but they cannot claim to be an explanation of the legends, much less to approach the truth about the Holy Grail.

Nor is the Holy Grail meant to be the cup which the Son of God used during His last meal with His Disciples at the end of His Ministry on earth, and in which His blood was afterwards caught when He was on the cross! This vessel is a sacred memento of the Son of God’s sublime work of redemption, but it is not the Holy Grail of which the poets of the legends were mercifully granted to sing praises. These legends have been misinterpreted by mankind! They were meant to be promises from the Highest Heights, the fulfilment of which mankind is to await! Had they been interpreted as such, surely another way would have long since been found to take the investigations a little further. As it was, however, all their interpretations had finally to come to a dead stop because a full and complete solution could never be reached; owing to the false conceptions of the past, all the investigations started on a wrong basis from the very beginning! — —

No human spirit, even if it has finally attained its greatest perfection and immortality, will ever be able to face the Holy Grail Itself! It is for this reason that, unless a Messenger is sent from there, no detailed tidings about It can ever reach the World of Matter! Thus the Holy Grail will remain a mystery to the human spirit for all eternity!

Man should keep to what he can grasp spiritually and, above all, he should try to fulfil what lies in his power and develop it to its most noble state of perfection! Unfortunately, however, he is always too anxious to reach out far beyond these limits without developing his essential abilities! Thereby he is guilty of a negligence which prevents him even from reaching what he otherwise could, whereas in any case he could never attain the goal of his desires. He thus deprives himself of the most beautiful and sublime part of his true being with the result that he completely fails to fulfil the purpose of his existence! — — —

Parsifal is a great promise! The defects and errors which the poets have added to the legends through their too earthly way of thinking distort the true essence of this figure. Parsifal is identical with the Son of Man, Whose coming the Son of God Himself proclaimed.

As a Divine Messenger with His spiritual sight blindfolded, He will have to go through the most bitter hardships on earth, outwardly a man among men. After a certain time, when His spiritual sight is restored, He will inevitably recognise His origin and therewith Himself, as well as clearly realising His mission. This mission will also bring redemption to those who are seriously seeking, and goes hand in hand with a stern judgment. For this purpose not just anybody can be chosen, much less can the possible experiences of many people, or even of all the people, be seen in it. On the contrary, it will only be a very definite and special Messenger!

The immutable lawfulness of Divine Will decrees that everything, after it has completed its cycle of development and reached its highest state of perfection, may return to the starting point of its original substance, but never beyond it. Thus also the human spirit! The human spirit originates as a spirit-germ in the Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality, to which it may return as a conscious spirit embodied in a substantiate form if, after its course through the World of Matter, it has achieved its highest state of perfection and attained a living purity.

No spirit belonging to this sphere, however sublime, pure and radiant, can cross the boundary line into the Divine Sphere! The boundary line here, and the impossibility of crossing it, as in the spheres or planes of material Creation, is in the nature of things simply a question of the difference between the species.

The highest and most sublime is God Himself in His Divine Unsubstantiality. Next, and somewhat lower, comes Divine Substantiality. Both are eternal. Adjacent to this, going deeper and deeper, follows the work of Creation which, descending in planes or spheres, becomes denser and denser down to the World of Gross Matter, which is finally visible to mankind. The ethereal part within the World of Matter is what men call the beyond, thus what lies beyond their earthly or physical capacity to see. Both,
however, belong to the Work of Creation and are not eternal with regard to their form, but subject to change for the purpose of renewal and regeneration.

At the summit of the eternal Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality stands the Castle of the Grail, spiritually visible and tangible, because it is still of the same species of spiritual substantiality. This Castle of the Grail contains a Sanctuary which lies on the outermost border adjacent to the Divine Sphere, and is thus of still finer consistency than the rest of spiritual substantiality. In this Sanctuary, as a pledge of the eternal Goodness of God the Father, as a symbol of His Purest Divine Love, and the point from which Divine Power issues, stands the Holy Grail!

This is a chalice in which it bubbles and surges unceasingly like red blood without overflowing. Enveloped as it is in the most Luminous Light, it is granted only to the purest of all spirits in the Realm of Spiritual Substantiality to look into this Light! These are the Guardians of the Holy Grail! If it is said in the legends that the purest of men are destined to become Guardians of the Grail, this is a point about which the blessed poet has drawn all too earthly a picture, because he was unable to express himself differently!

No human spirit can enter this holy Sanctuary! Even in its most perfect state of spiritual substantiality, after having returned from its wanderings through the World of Matter, it is still not so fine that it could cross this threshold, i.e., the boundary line! Even in its highest state of perfection it is still too dense to do so!

A still further etherisation would be equivalent to its complete disintegration or combustion, because the origin of its nature does not lend itself to assuming even greater radiance and luminosity, thus becoming still more etherised. It cannot bear it!

The Guardians of the Grail are Eternal Primordial Spiritual Beings, who never were human beings. They are the highest of all in the Realm of Spiritual Substantiality. However, they are in need of Divine Unsubstantiate Power, are dependent upon It, as all else is dependent on Divine Unsubstantiality, the Source of all Power, God the Father!

From time to time on the Day of the Holy Dove, the Dove appears above the Chalice as a renewed token of the unalterable Divine Love of the Father. It is the hour of communion which brings about the renewal of power. The Guardians of the Grail receive it in humble devotion and can then transmit this magic power.

On this depends the existence of the whole Creation!

It is the moment in which the Love of the Creator radiantly flows forth in the Temple of the Holy Grail, bringing new life and a new urge to create, pulsating downwards and diffusing itself through all the Universe. A trembling and a holy awe, with forebodings of joy and great happiness, vibrate through all the spheres. Only the spirit of earthman still stands aside, without intuitively sensing what is happening particularly to him at that moment; or in what a dull-witted manner he accepts such an immeasurable gift, because the limitations he imposed upon himself through his intellect no longer permit him to grasp such greatness!

It is the moment when a new supply of vital energy is sent out into the entire Creation!

It is the necessary, ever-recurring ratification of the Covenant between the Creator and His Work! Should this supply ever be cut off, should it ever fail to come, inevitably all that exists would slowly dry up, grow old and disintegrate. The end of all days would then come, and only God Himself would remain, as it was in the very beginning, because He alone is Life! This process is related in the legend. How everything must grow old and decay if the Day of the Holy Dove, the “uncovering” of the Grail, does not recur is even hinted at in the description of the growing old of the Knights of the Grail, during the time in which Amfortas no longer uncovers the Grail till the hour in which Parsifal appears as King of the Grail.

Man should cease to regard the Holy Grail as only something intangible, for It really exists! The human spirit, however, owing to its nature, can never behold It. But the blessing radiating forth from It, which can be and is being passed on by the Guardians of the Grail, can be absorbed and enjoyed by those human spirits who open themselves to it.

In this sense some of the interpretations cannot be called wrong, as long as they do not try to draw the Holy Grail Itself into their explanations. They are correct, and yet again they are also not correct!

The appearance of the Dove on the special Day of the Holy Dove indicates the sending of the Holy Spirit on each occasion, for this Dove stands in very close connection with the Holy Spirit.

But this is something which the human spirit is only able to grasp figuratively, because by the very nature of things, even if he has attained the highest perfection, he can really only think, know and perceive intuitively up to the point from which he himself came, i.e., to the species homogeneous to the purest nature of his origin. This is the eternal Realm of Spiritual Substantiality.

Even in his thoughts he will never be able to cross this boundary! Nor can he ever grasp anything beyond it. This is so self-evident, so logical and simple, that every human being can follow this train of thought! Whatever goes beyond this boundary will and must, for this reason, remain a perpetual mystery to mankind!

Every man, therefore, who imagines that he bears God within himself or that he is himself Divine, or can become so, lives under a foolish delusion. He bears spirituality within himself, but not Divinity! And therein lies an unbridgeable difference. He is a creature, not part of the Creator, as so many try to make themselves believe. Man is and remains a work and can never become a master!

Thus it is also wrong to say that the human spirit issues from God the Father Himself and returns to Him. The origin of man lies in the Realm of Spiritual Substantiality, not in Divinity Unsubstantiate. Therefore, even if he has attained perfection, he can only return to the Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality. It is right to say that the human spirit originates from the Kingdom of God and therefore can, when it becomes perfect, return to the Kingdom of God, but not to God Himself.

Later there will follow detailed lectures about the individual divisions of Creation, which are totally different in their fundamental nature.

At the summit of each of these planes of Creation stands a Castle of the Grail as the necessary transition and power transmitting stage. Fashioned according to the nature of the sphere of Creation concerned, this is always a reflection of the real highest Castle of the Grail situated at the summit of the whole of Creation which, through the radiations of Parsifal, constitutes the starting point of the entire Creation.

Amfortas was priest and king in the lowest of these reflections of the Grail Castle, standing at the summit of the sphere of the human spirits who have developed from spirit-germs. It is the one closest to man on earth.