Introduction

INTRODUCTION

WHAT does recognition mean? It means to come to know, to become conscious of, to be aware of a particular thing. Our recognising the Creator therefore entails our coming to know Him, our becoming aware of Him. But how do we become conscious of the Creator? According to the book "In the Light of Truth, the Grail Message" by Abd-ru-shin, the human spirit by virtue of its nature is not endowed with the capacity to behold God. He does not have the inner capacity to be able to stand before Him and actually see Him. This is nothing but a consequence of the difference in species. What he is given, however, is the capacity to recognise Him in His Works. An ability to come to know of His Nature, His characteristics through the experiencing of His Works. Therefore, the only way given to the human spirit to recognise or to know of the Creator is for him to concern himself with the experiencing of His Work.

Familiarising himself with it would reveal to him that Greatness and that Perfection which are inseparable Qualities of God. An experiencing of the Work of God would gradually awaken us to the recognition of His Nature. What matters therefore is this experiencing of the Work. What about the quest? This is inherent in the human spirit. It is a gift which must force him who understands it to return back home. It must force him to complete his cycle. It is one of the most important gifts given to us. It was given so that we would not become lost in material creation, so that we would not forget our homes and the reason for which we have come here. It was given to us so that in spite of all the experiences in material creation, we still retain within ourselves that longing which in the end must guarantee a return to where we came from, which is Paradise. This quest, which can also be termed a desire for knowledge was what impelled us out of Paradise. This desire to consciously know, to experience, to recognise, was what started us on a long journey towards perfection and self-consciousness.

Recognition of the God, however, embraces experiences which must be gone through in stages. In fact, it embraces the entire evolutionary history of mankind, and indeed of every individual right from the time we left Paradise at the beginning of the cycle of our existence up to the time we are able to return to Paradise as self-conscious human spirits. This, however, is immeasurably much because it involves a stage by stage descent through all the various realms of Creation down to the lowest lying world of Gross Matter, which includes the earth; and also a gradual ascent in a step-by-step manner through all the subdivisions of the above mentioned world of gross matter, through all the subdivisions of the Ethereal world, which lies higher than the world of gross matter, through the Animistic realm which even lies higher than the Ethereal world into finally the Spiritual realm, which is his final destination.

This is an extremely slow process for the human spirit and literally millions of years have been involved. The recognition of God therefore involves a step-by-step experiencing of all the layers of Creation, which is the Work of God and through this experiencing, gaining knowledge of it and in the final analysis being able to make use of it through all the acquired knowledge for our own benefit and for the benefit of all the other creatures. We become conscious not only of our environment but also of ourselves and our powers. We become conscious of our abilities, and at the same time come to know what laws guide the order in whatever environment we find ourselves.

In maturing further, we gradually come to realise that we are actually free in our basic decisions, but that at the same time we are subject to laws that we must adhere to. We become stronger and stronger in our recognitions and abilities until these finally permit our conscious return to a realm we left in an unconscious state so long ago. Therefore, the evolution of man is actually what we are talking about here, both spiritual and physical because the former influences and determines the latter. One of the most fundamental questions with which we must begin is "What is man"? Because it is only when we know what we are and who we are can we be in a position to trace our paths and as such complete our cycles.

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