Dearly beloved reader friends:
Dear friends, I am pleased to send you this engraving entitled…
…THE REPENTANT MAN AND THE SORROW
First of all, let us say that this engraving belongs to the Flemish painter Maarten de Vos (1532-1603).
Homo poenitens, the repentant sinner, is accompanied by the allegorical figures poenitentia –’repentance’– and sorrow, and is led toward heaven on a cloud strewn with flowers accompanied by angels full of joy. Three angels play a harp, a lute and a flute, and four cherubim fly overhead with bells, a tambourine, a musical triangle, and a crown. All this is the welcome into heaven offered to the repentant soul after renouncing its egoic behavior.
The repentant soul is flanked by two heavenly women who bear at their feet the adjectives or qualities marked as dolor and poenitentia –’penance’─. This woman, who symbolizes penance, carries in her right hand a bouquet of laurel indicating hermetic triumph. At the top of this engraving we can see, finally, a sun in the center of which the name of God is read in Hebrew letters: IOD-HE-VAU-HE.
This illustration is the image of what is experienced internally, in the superior dimensions, when we have reached repentance for our evil deeds. We need, in truth, to experience that which the sacred books call repentance, otherwise we will never reach the realm of our BEING.
We cannot forget that, thanks to Gnosis, we have in our ontological depths a self-conscious part of our own eternal reality which we call KAOM in Gnosticism.
This Kaom is activated in us when he considers that our acts deserve to be purified because of their barbarity. It is indispensable that this most sacred part of our own BEING be activated, because otherwise we cannot be considered righteous. And it is written that in the kingdom of heaven ─of Consciousness─ none but those who have been declared righteous before the kingdom of the Most High will be able to dwell.
On several occasions we could hear from the V.M. Samael Aun Weor –our Patriarch– that those who do not feel remorse, repentance, moral pain for the harm they have done to others, it is because they have moved far away from the Intimate –the Father or Atman of the Hindustanis─. And he added: “This is very serious, because without the forgiveness of divine mercy we will be condemned to involution in the submerged kingdoms of Nature.”
For the humanity of today, crime has become something absolutely normal and people do not even reflect when they commit atrocities of various kinds. This is the fruit of having lost the faculty of our Consciousness from our psyche… Then we roam the streets of our cities like true monsters, using the façade of our personality, which masks our false identity and our false values.
All the great perversities that have been unleashed on the face of our world, namely, the First World War, the Second World War and the Third World War that is already underway, have been the fruit of our abominable animal Ego, and in spite of the horrific events that we have had to live through in these wars, we do not see in our surroundings an atom of repentance on the part of the multitudes or human masses. Everything has been reduced to a sad memory and, in most cases, to oblivion. On the other hand, we have indeed wanted to take economic advantage of these unpleasant circumstances through literature, history, art, etc., etc., etc.; and all this to get money and more money… This pleases our dear Ego enormously.
We, the lovers of Gnosis, yearn to know our BEING, to share with Him His kingdom, to experience the innumerable multiple characteristics of the hyper-dimensionality of space, etc., etc., etc.; however, we want to obtain everything without renouncing our ethical irresponsibility, as if we deserved the blessings of divinity at every moment of our existence. It is clear that our SELF-LOVE does not allow us to observe ourselves as we are, and therefore we have never even remotely thought of changing our way of feeling, our way of thinking and our way of acting….. Conclusion: As our doctrine explains, we are simply blind little machines that receive different types and subtypes of energies coming from space and then unconsciously retransmit them to the upper layers of the earth. That is what we are: little machines that only serve to keep our world alive. A sad reality. Our Consciousness, which should be an extraordinary tool to explore ourselves and help us find our true values, our authentic identity and our legitimate image, sleeps its sleep embedded in the multiplicity of the “I”.
The Holy Scriptures speak of the bliss experienced by those who have managed to achieve total repentance of their evil deeds, let us see:
Luke 15:
“7 I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine [a]just persons who need no repentance.
10 Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
I give you the same sentence in Latin:
«Dico vobis ita gaudium erit in coelo super uno peccatore poenitentiam agente, quam super nonagintanouem iustis qui non indigent poenitentia. Ita dico vobis, gaudium erit coram angelis Dei Super uno peccatore poenitentiam agente». Luc. XV
I now give you a few sentences to reflect upon:
“The greater the crime, the greater must be the time devoted to repentance.”
Victor Hugo
“The guilty who repents is not yet lost.”
Democrates
“More than a regret for the evil we have caused, our repentance is a fear of the evil that might befall us.”
La Rochefoucauld
“A good repentance is the best medicine for the diseases of the soul.”
Cervantes
“Whoever wants to see completely clearly before he makes up his mind, never makes up his mind. He who does not accept repentance does not accept life.”
Amiel
AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM.
─‘For the greater glory of God’─.
KWEN KHAN KHU
