Lecture Seven: Conclusions
We must now draw together the materials we have presented and see where we stand and what are the ways forward. It seems appropriate to do this under four headings, asking ourselves: first, what is the Grail? Second, What constitutes achievement of the Grail? Third, What are the conditions for the quest? And, finally, what do we recommend in terms of method and way? That is quite a bit of material to cover, so let us start directly with a rather large question... The Holy Grail is the chalice of the Last Supper in which the wine was given the significance of the blood and life of the Divine. As it is at the focus of the pouring of Divine life into the world, creating and sustaining it by an act of sacrifice which is both eternal and in time--in eternity the " sod ha tsimtsum," the mystery of the Divine making space, and in time the mystery of the Incarnation and the Cross, so--as that focus--the Grail is (or at least is an ideal image) of that which is the focus of the universe itself as vessel of the Divine, for all the worlds and levels together form a single vessel. In this aspect, to digress for a moment from this rather dense definition, the Grail would appear to be the image that the popular novelist Stephen King is reaching for in his Dark Tower series when he speaks of a mystically fascinating "nexus" or "pylon" around which all possible worlds revolve...and indeed his character Roland may be seen as a modern Grail knight, his depiction is a bit colored perhaps by the conventions of both modern "hard--boiled" realism and "horror" fiction, but completely recognizable finally as a companion of the quest. Now, to get back to business, not only is the universe a "vessel" but so is the individual soul, and that is why the Grail is so truly the archetype of the individual's spiritual way. Furthermore the one Grail gathers up the symbolisms of all those other and lesser (because realized only on the level of imagination) cups--the Krater of the Platonists, the Cauldron of Ceridwyn and so on--so that they are seen as rays of rainbow light from that one prism and heart of light which is the Grail. The Grail is, again, the transformation and restoration (indeed a transformation which goes beyond restoration!) of the world. As it is the vessel of the Eucharist, so is also the source of the Eucharist today, whether served in an ancient Gothic cathedral or in some store-front in the inner city, however in particular I daresay the spirit of the Grail mythos resides in the Eucharist experienced as the Eucharist of the 'Eschaton', of the 'end' (the 'term' of Plotinus), towards which all things rush. I believe you will find this a rather complete definition; the "alchemical" approach to the Grail for example simply expresses this same material in terms of alchemical symbolism. If anything, many approaches to the Grail involve a reduction of the vision to a symbolism, finally one of many interchangeable symbolisms, of personal transformation. Well, without wishing to overstress what must be an individual discovery, we counsel against that sort of reduction and in favor of the hard climb to the place where one can see the Grail in its breathtaking universality and Glory.
II. What is achievement of the Grail? Now, we have said already that achievement of the Grail involves becoming, and knowing oneself as, a vessel of the Divine and that it is a hard climb to vision. We will say more when we come to make some recommendations for the way, and of course we are aware that there is little use piling on words that are beyond our experience, but it seems appropriate to add one thing here. That is that because the Grail is that which sustains the world and all the "ten thousand things" in existence--by precisely the Divine act of "Tsimtsum', of Sacrifice on all levels--the passing beyond of the vision of the Grail is not that of disappearance into the Divine but that of free and loving adoration. Again, and this is very important to meditate and work with inwardly, the Grail that precisely which sustains and validates all things, including your existence and mine, and its achievement involves knowing oneself in relation to the Fountain of Life.
III. What are the Conditions for the Quest? Two conditions of the Quest, which I daresay will do for going on with, are suggested by the characters we have studied; Perceval and Galahad. From Perceval we learn the necessity of that absolute simplicity and honesty in relation to ourselves, which we might call, in the Zen sense, "beginner's mind" From Galahad we learn the necessity of that "ultimate concern", that yearning for the Divine, that passionate intention, "Purity of heart" Kierkegaard observed, "is to will one thing which can really carry one beyond...from where one is to where one ought to be..."
I V. How do we start on the Quest?First of all, the world of the Grail is the world of the original stories. We have already recommended the Quest of the Holy Grail as a good place to start exploration of this world In addition there are paperback editions available of the Parzival, of Chretien de Troyes' Perceval, of The High History of the Holy Grail, of Mallory's Morte, and so on. As one becomes at home, perhaps little by little, with these books, one comes to see them what they are--a really unique, in depth and scope, fusion of imagination, vision and faith, of the inner world and the outer world, of the exoteric and the esoteric...and this is also what the Grail (nexus of the worlds) is about. It may not seem a very stimulating spiritual exercise to read and reread these ancient books but I should like to that the rewards are great and, indeed, there is no other literature like this. When one knows this, as it were, authentic atmosphere of the Grail, one then has a basis to judge the more recent books, of which there are many, finding something of value no doubt in almost all-- but particularly with some feeling that "yes, this is the real thing." We have cited a number of useful modern books in the course of these lectures but, again, here I should like to urge the importance of entering into the old stories. And of course you will have the pleasure of meeting characters we have touched on barely, or not at all, of becoming acquainted with, and learning from, Bors and Gawain, Dinadan and Elaine. And then there are the related Welsh stories of the Mabinogion and the other, Arthurian but not Grail related, tales of Yvain and "The knight of the Cart" and so on. So there is a vast province of literature here, also including the Merlin material, but in any case the important thing is to become thoroughly at home in some part of the whole. V. Path working
Now a word on "path working". The Grail stories are in themselves rather like superb path workings, as you probably know "path working" is like Jungian "active imagination" with the addition of a scenario, a sort of directed tour by meditative visualization... and so, of course, there is the possibility of developing further path workings. A "state of the art" Grail path working by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki may be found in John Matthews' At The Table of The Grail, for example.
The problem with path working is that it can be hardly more spiritual than, and little different from, a game of Dungeons and Dragons. One imagines making all sorts of profound promises and declarations of intention and so on but the problem is that, unless one very careful, the imagining is not the reality. It is a little like Johnny Cash's song about the prisoner who, awaiting execution, dreams about home but then wakes up still within the gray walls of his cell. Or, probably all of us have had the experience of dreaming we were performing some difficult task, taking an examination or whatever, and then waking up having to really do it. Now this is what path working tends to result in and especially with people (which today is most of us) who are not trained in interior discernment. Furthermore, the style of path working is a problem... I have yet to read, or hear, one that really rang true...free of "preciousness" and the soft, blurred, comfortable quality of a partly deceptive dream. Now this may be because the people who write path workings today simply lack the literary gifts of, say, a Dante, or even a Charles Williams, to express spiritual vision with clarity, and this is no discredit to them. In some cases also one suspects a certain dream like quality in the vision itself, although everyone, of course, distinguishes themselves from the Dungeons and Dragons crowd and no one intends to deal in pleasant phantasms.
The criterion of a good spiritual imaginative work is that it produces in reality the transformations that it proposes. Each person will find, for themselves, what they are able to do with authenticity but may we suggest first of all the meditation using the original stories and images and then, perhaps more than elaborate path workings, the modest, sober, and intense projection of oneself into a scene by an act of active imagination and without a scenario. But, and this is why we have gone on rather at length on this, whatever imaginative exercise one finds appropriate one must on the one hand use the imagination to the fullest (the Grail stories are magisterial works of imagination) but not allow it to substitute for Reality. Discretion and Discrimination complete, it has been said, the magician's motto: To Will, to Dare, to be Silent and to Know. Let us be aware of the depth of the work of discrimination and discretion which is necessary in relation to the imagination and of the danger of failing in the quest without realizing it at all as one goes on happily in a fantasy of spiritual achievement.
Next it seems to me that the Eucharist, with which we started these studies, will become increasingly central in any Quest which sets for itself the highest goal, that of passing over into the true homeland of Real things. In addition to the Eucharist there are meditative devotions and rites related to the Eucharist and the Grail, some involving taking bread and wine, and of these it seems to me that the deepest and most evocative is Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. This is a rite, which comes out of the very spiritual world of the Grail stories. In addition there are rites of bread and wine used by various groups, insofar as they relate to the Grail, they are however secondary to the Eucharist by the essential nature of things. This does not mean they are not useful but rather, again, they are like the separated colors of which the Grail, the Eucharist of the Last Supper and also of today, is the heart of light. I daresay that it is the nature of the Grail material that whether one comes from the one side or the other one ends up willy—nilly breaking through the distinction between esoteric and exoteric if one is going to get very far on the central road of the quest, the one that leads to Carbonek, and this can be quite a disorienting experience, but--again--we suggest that this is the disorientation not of a dream but precisely of waking up to the strange clarity of reality. Of course, like all spiritual work, one's Grail meditation is inseparable from service and from the totality of one's life. Ora et labore is the formula which expresses this with precision, on the one hand--because of the nature of the Grail--the Quest is one of prayer, of adoration, which rises vertically beyond one's own self—absorption, and also it must issue in work, and in service, which transcends oneself, as it were, horizontally.
But this admonition, true as it is, is not really the right note to end our introduction to the Quest of the Holy Grail, rather let us end within the world of the Grail itself, with these words from the High History... "Many were seized with a desire to go and to see what was there. They went there but never did they return and no one knew what became of them... except two Welsh knights (who) came forth... and when they were asked why they were so happy, they said to those who enquired, "Go where we have been, and you shall know the why."Back to Top
|
