The Song of Longing
By Herbert Vollmann
Once upon a time a long procession of tiny light
flames set out from their eternal homeland where they had just been awakened from deep sleep by a tender breath of spring.
Luminous hands waved in blessing as a last farewell; kind and loving eyes
followed them.
Bells from Paradise rang at their departure and at the
last moment they caught some of their silvery sound. They held it fast in the
center of their young hearts. Then the gates closed and in a merry whirl the
sparks descended into the immense depths of the worlds below.
The time came when the tender little flames had
blossomed into pure human spirits and a soft tone from far distant lands mixed
into the blossoming and stroked, as with soft fingers, the strings of their
hearts and evoked the lovely sound that they remembered from their exodus and
that they had kept safe deep inside their hearts.
Soon they were gripped by an impetuous urge. They
remembered the sweet sound of home. And soon the sound of their strings was
fuller; their
song grew into a melody of longing. It
was the time when the Earth Star still revolved in light orbits and heavenly
dew sprinkled down on it.
Then a day came when the sound of longing grew
fainter, weaker. Alarming how the voices
no longer sounded jubilant! And soon the great chorus became silent. No resonance was heard in the heavenly dome
anymore. Earthman’s sacred song had
died.
Discordant notes were heard, first here and there, until
they filled the cosmos.
Most of mankind replaced the longing for eternal
existence with the desire for earthly things, the desire for the dark pleasures
of lower regions. If ever they felt a hint of something heavenly beneath the
dark, dense cover, they numbed it in their search for earthly things.
The human spirit reeled from frenzy to frenzy. What
was the poison that had paralyzed him?
Had made him forget the song of his heavenly home? Man, can you no longer
remember the wondrous sound that makes your heart tremble with secret joy?
See, when far away from your earthly home you
meet fellow countrymen, you are overjoyed. You are proud of your
homeland, you know exactly where you come from, what it is like there, how far
it is to get there. But have you
forgotten that you have another home, much more beautiful and radiant and
flowering?
Why do you never talk about this home? Why don’t you
feel mutual joy at meeting down here on earth during your great journey through
the worlds?
Listen--, once more the lofty song of longing sounds
through all the worlds. Listen closely!
Let the sound touch your heart and bring up blissful
memories from deep within you! Set your longing free; clear away all petty qualms and doubts. Greatness be your goal
and desire forever. ---Heavenly Song of Longing, have you truly gone silent?
Or is perchance a secret sound of your melody still
alive where seeking men are on their great journey? Only you have covered up the longing and
hidden it deep within you.
Don’t you notice the longing, how it is ever urging,
prodding when a man grabs his walking staff, when he wants to travel across
land and sea, climb mountains, or when he is in the grip of a restlessness he
can’t explain amid the turmoil of daily life?
Burst through this cover with the purity of true
longing and you are instantly connected
with the Light of the World. And on the path of this connection happiness will
come to you quietly and a new and wonderful hope begins to bud in your heart.
He who is able to keep
this connection alive here on earth has mastered life in the material world. He
experiences Love Sublime that is above all. He no longer seeks earthly
attachments, his love is no longer for an individual.
But he will uplift and pull along everything that
bears inside the same pure longing.
One filled with longing will always wish for his
fellowman to find the same momentum for his upward path.
He is intensely focused on guiding humanity upward to
the blessed realms.
As his longing for Heaven grows stronger, compassion grows pure and strong and
silently offers help to one in spiritual distress. Silently it gives rise to
helping thoughts and sends them to the one seeking help to strengthen his weak
spots.
As love and longing grow, man will soon be anchored
again firmly in life on earth while he is able to draw from the heavenly
wellspring without end.
And the more he draws, the more will grow that healthy idealism that within natural
boundaries creates ever more spiritual values and builds a golden ladder on
which at long last the spirit may enter into Paradise.
The spark has become a blazing flame – What miracle!
Spirit sparks leave Paradise and return as fully-formed spirits.
They had been in God’s
Kingdom before, but only now can they see and experience it, after their
longing had grown and ripened in foreign lands into complete understanding of
the Laws of Creation. And along with
full consciousness they were given the gift of the knowledge of existence.
First, however, they need to “de”-velop (in the truest
sense of the word) from cloaks that hold them down. Their longing helps them
shed these cloaks. For one who seeks true longing also seeks atonement, the
liberation from all guilt.
Guilt in the material world, however, instantly forms
new, dense cloaks which must be unwrapped.
One who does that with the help of his longing at the
same time atones and razes the traces of wrong paths he had taken; he gains a
high level of consciousness even on earth by making light the remaining cloaks
which are essential for anchorage in the material world.
Thus the longing is the mainspring for development and
closely connected to the Law of Gravity.
The spirit germ leaving Paradise attracts the
radiations of the material world to himself so as to use them for wrapping
cloaks around himself; he becomes heavier and sinks. Then upward-directed
longing begins to germinate in him, he develops and becomes lighter and lighter
until he returns to his origin.
Always crucial
is the longing as an attribute of the spirit; it is the magnet-like quality
that comprises the free will.
Only in the material world, however, desire is added
as a faculty of the soul which can become very dangerous to the world wanderer
if he directs it only to earthly or even evil things.
The danger has become real and created a self-made
trap that works without fail.
He descends into Subsequent Creation, forgets his
origin; he is trapped in the material world and no longer knows what to make of
the urgings and warnings inside himself.
True, he still calls it longing and the longing is
still there, pure, beneath dense and heavy covers; but the covers have become
so hard to burst.
Enormous effort is needed and mankind would never accomplish
the feat had it not been for a Son of the Almighty who brought the Song of
Longing down to the earth to resonate and ignite the hearts of men, to burn
away the dense, hard shells.
Man, pay heed! A great Light stands on this dark
earth. Its flame blazes high up to the Creator Himself. Once more you can
ignite your longing on this flame so that its sacred song can soar upward to
the luminous heights again.
After a long, long time the Light has opened wide the
gates to the Blessed Realms whence once you took your first step in the dawning
of your consciousness.
Silvery is the sound of
the bells of Paradise as they ring again, just as they did when you left God’s
marvelous Kingdom.
Again luminous hands are raised in greeting; beautiful
angels line the path of the human beings who did not forget that song of
longing, so pure and clear as a bell, and who made the heavenly sound they
heard on their departure turn into a soaring, jubilant symphony.
Do you hear how an invisible hand glides across the
heavenly harp’s golden strings, how it sings and rings the sublime, pure
melody? Bliss ful Song of Heaven, exult and jubilate once more into the hearts
of man so that once more they may join in and resonate with the mighty chorus
in praise of the Almighty!
Amen.
