THE FINDING OF THE BELOVED
by Max Freedom Long, F.H.F.
Our tenderest, most nostalgic, and most piteously beautiful dream, down all the centuries, has been that of finding, sometime, some place, the BELOVED.
So strong has been this inner dream of the Beloved, that it has continually risen as the very essence of glamour, enfolding the chance earthly love, blinding the lover..... and causing the later misery of disenchantment and disillusion.
When young we dream of the soul mate, the Perfect, the One, the Only, and we remember the dream through old age to the very end. The theory of soul mates is a simple and lovely one. God creates the Adams, then divides them into male and female, separating them for a long, long time, and eventually, after many incarnation reuniting them to form again a complete self. The reunion represents to us the perfection of love and mating, the climax of tenderness, compassion, beauty and attraction. It is completion, the end of all striving, utter satisfaction, rest, and the ultimate of attainment in, and beyond Splendor itself.
Some have taught that it is possible to find the soul mate while in the flesh. Others have said that it is a mystical union to be experienced only after death. The means of finding the Beloved have been variously described, but seldom if ever demonstrated.
One of the oldest theories of the reuniting is that, when we have become sufficiently evolved spiritually, we conceive in some mystical way, (be we male or female), then gestate for from eighteen months to several years, finally giving birth to an invisible BODY OF LIGHT - or a "SOLAR BODY" OR an opened "GOLDEN FLOWER". This new body becomes the vehicle through which the High Self is at last able to function, and the descriptions of this High Self usually indicates in a valid way the belief that it is implicated in some form of reunion - thus pointing to the old soul mate idea.
In Christianity we find the Body of Light hinted at, and often the symbol of the halo or "Glory" is painted around the heads of the saints pictured in the churches. The Solar Body comes mainly through the early Greeks, particularly in the mystery play called "The Book of Revelations". Pryse, in his masterful study, "The Apocalypse Unveiled", tells of the ancient belief that the highest development of man comes with the birth of the Solar Body. In "The Mystery of the Golden Flower", we read of the same birth, the symbol of the new body being the bud which opens into the Golden Flower. The theme is always of birth and reunion, whether of lower self with Higher Self, or of mated souls who have attained perfection. One must read carefully and between all the lines, for dust stands thick upon these tales.
Of one thing we may be fairly sure, and that is that the key to the mystery of soul mates lies in love. Without love the entire idea changes and the dream vanishes. But with love, we are able to sense some deep reality - an unearthly beauty and an all-inclusive compassion. The only verification is in the dream itself.
Little that is new has been written on this subject, at least by qualified Illuminists, in recent times, although Joseph Smith may have caught part of the gleam. Mormonism offers secret rites by which the souls of women are united with those of men to obtain salvation at death.
However, from the latest source of psycho-religious information, the HUNA system of the early Polynesians, much of significance may be gathered. In Huna (the words means "The Secret") there is no giving birth to an invisible or "Solar Body". Neither is there the necessity of providing a vehicle through which the High Self can function. The High Self already has such a body by its very nature, the same as we lower spirits - conscious and subconscious - have our own shadowy bodies.
The invisible body of the High Self - the Aumakua - is a "Body of Light" in the sense that it radiates light when seen by psychic vision. It is in this Shining Body that we unite with the Beloved when we have evolved_to the level of the High Self.
While Huna seems to offer little on this point, it is supposed that the beloved, in an as yet imperfect state, lives, just as we do, on this earthy plane of consciousness, belongs to similar circles, and is often married to us. In such a marriage, because we have not yet learned the lessons of life and love, there are bound to be heartaches caused by mutual imperfections. We of the lower levels are gods with clay feet, else we would have graduated and gone on.
Seen in this way, the problem becomes less one of finding the imperfect beloved of today than of making ourselves more perfect. The High Self was called, among other names, an Aumakua. This word translates, "UTTERLY TRUSTWORTHY Parent(s) Spirit". (It takes TWO to be parents) To become ready to graduate into the Aumakua stage, we must learn to be utterly trustworthy in all things down here. We must be true, honest, kind, unselfish and replete with all the virtues. When UTTERLY replete we can at last be trusted with the Wisdom and Power that come with the Aumakua stage and the union in the tenuous Body of Light with the perfect Beloved. But, as we near this point in growth, and should we find the beloved down here, there would result a mating in love and joy closely approaching the Dream.
Volumes have been written dealing with the mystery of sex and with the possibility of utilizing the polarized forces of male and female to work creative magic outside the biological sphere. Some of the proposed practices aimed in this direction have been absurd, some silly, and a few dangerous. We know that to great a repression of sex urges may cause complexes, which often are translated into actions far from desirable. The reverse of this picture is the complex caused the complete failure of a mate to measure up in any way to the Dream.
While it is obvious that most of us are far from arriving at the perfect state of a Beloved, we can (and this ability is passing strange) know that perfect love in our dreams and hold its memory in our heart as we awake. The love of the Dream seems to be given to us somewhat as is given the basic instinctive love which we have in common with the lower creatures.(The mating and parental, instinctive loves.)
It has been suggested that the gods gave man the power to dream of the perfect love and the Beloved, to serve as a lure and a goad to force him to progress through all the toil, pain and heartbreak of life and reproduction, always to be driven forward by the agony of longing to find the Beloved - and thus to gain all Beauty, all the promised and imagined Salvations.
The priests of Huna in North Africa taught W.R. Stewart that the divided state continues even after we become Aumakuas. The Father and Mother unite in the perfect interblending only when they wish to use their combined forces in High Magic. The very "Secret of the Secret" concerned the means and methods by which we of the lower levels can so "pray" as to cause the Aumakua pair to unite and perform for us such acts of High Magic as instant healing, giving immunity to fire, giving weather control and so on. (Oddly enough, the study of Huna has not, thus far, revealed any word to show a difference between the vital force (mana loa) of the Aumakua pair, nor of the male and female on our level. We can only guess that there is some polarization peculiar to each sex, and that creative powers on all levels are tied up to the work-in-union of male and female.)
It was taught that, ordinarily, all ritual prayers for food, supplies and comfort, should be addressed to the Mother, as mothers on all levels furnish these things. On the other hand, prayers were addressed to the Father for mental aid such as help in plans, inventions, arts, etc. Either Parent could show the potential future which had been created by them from our thoughts, desires and fears on the earthy level. But, once the future was seen, and if it were undesirable, the Parental union had to be invoked and the High Magic used to tear down the bad future and reconstruct one more to heart's desire.
Hints of this "Secret of the Secret" seem to have leaked out thousands of years ago, and to have been preserved in garbled form in many of the fertility rites and rites of ceremonial magic. The formula of sympathetic magic was "As below, so Above." And, to get the parental Aumakua pair to unite and perform High Magic, the earthlings united in sex unions, often orgies. Individuals striving to work magic alone, tried by acts of mind and through rites, to invoke the Beloved for a spiritual and etheric union.
Two things stand out as important to such efforts. First, the magician must find some way to teach himself to generate a great surge of love and devotion which can be projected as a mana force cum thought form (of love and the thing desired in the prayer) to the Aumakua to provoke union and miraculous action in his behalf. Perhaps men and women, working together, can generate this force of love and project it as a sacrificial offering. But such an offering would, of course, preclude the ordinary procreative use of the force on this level. Above all, the experimenting Illuminists must not stoop to folly.
(This article stems from a work project of the Huna Fellowship. Correspondence on the subject is invited from qualified Illuminists.)