The seven trials

The seven trials in book 1 sum up what the person who
has a nascent immortal soul has to go through to be
able to perform his first liberating act - detachment
from the physical plane.

First he encounters Cerberus (Fluffy), the
three-headed dog. I will discuss Cerberus in more
detail when I start the discussion on the symbols in
Harry Potter. For now let me say Cerberus personifies
the forces of the past which tie us to the universe of
time and space. The river Styx symbolises the border
between the fallen universe and the original pure
universe of God. To cross the border, we first have to
pass Cerberus. He is the mirror of the past, in actual
fact: delusion.

Why is he three-headed? It reminds us of the three
temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. He too was at
that moment ready to cross the border between earth
and heaven, i.e. the seventh and the sixth cosmic
plane - Nirvana.

One of the great forces tying us to this universe is
fear. The person who wants to be liberated from fear
has to have the right motivation. Harry was motivated
by a great purity. He wanted to save the world from
Voldemort. Unselfishness is the only way to overcome
fear. It cannot be overcome by courage alone. Armed
with only courage, Harry would have been devoured by
Fluffy. Harry was able to make "fear" go to sleep by
playing the flute. The music played by Harry
symbolises the vibrations of his purity, his pure
motives.

Another force tying us to this universe is dogma.
"Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles,"
says Lao Tzu (Chapter 20). Yes, to live in this world,
we have to study. We need a certain amount of learning
to live a meaningful life. And so we think we can
"learn" our way into Nirvana. Bad mistake! Lao Tzu
adds: "Other men are sharp and clever, but I alone am
dull and stupid." But!! "I am different. I am
nourished by the great mother." Who is the great
mother? Why, Lily, of course.

Dear Friends, no learning, no study, no knowledge
contained within the brain can prepare us for the
overwhelming beauty of the Kingdom of Heaven. It lies
in another universe, in another plane, in a dimension
where time and space do not exist. There is nothing in
our universe that we can compare with that. No words
can describe it; no pictures can give us even the
vaguest idea. Not even the most heavenly music can
give us a slight hint of what it's like.

But we DO have a little piece of heaven inside us.
That's the great mother, the Lily inside the heart. We
must give up dogma and turn to the voice of Tao
within.

When Harry turned eleven he received a letter of
invitation to attend Hogwarts. In Harry 2 (Post 264) I
explained that the candidate for liberation has a
letter in his heart. The apprentice alchemist has the
instructions in his heart. They have been there for
millions of years but we've been too busy to read
them. Then James married Lily and Harry was born. We
can now read the letter in the heart and carry out the
alchemical processes with great joy.

We can throw away dogma. We live from the instructions
in the heart given to us by the great mother.

The third head is false idols. This is a very big,
dangerous head, because in our past lie many idols we
have worshipped through hundreds of incarnations. When
we go the path of liberation we'll be confronted by
this aspect of the past, and we'll discover that some
of those idols are a long way from being dead.

In my last post (296) I mentioned that we are all
surrounded by thought forms we have accumulated in the
past. These are our personal idols and must be given
up, one by one. How? By turning to the great mother.
She will give us Harry, the new soul, and our heart
will be so filled with love for him that all the
accumulated idols in our aura will fade away and die.

The big word for defeating Cerberus is:
self-surrender. If we surrender to the inner Christ He
will drive out fear, attachment to dogma and false
idols. He will give us the magic flute of purity and
put ol' Cerberus to sleep. It's a cinch!

Hans

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