«The facts of Meyrink's life are less problematic than his work⦠Munich, Prague and Hamburg shared the years of his youth. We know that he was a bank employee and that he abhorred that job. We also know that he attempted two revenge or two forms of escape: the confused study of the confused "occult sciences" and the composition of satirical writings ». With these words, in 1938, Borges fearlessly presented to Argentine readers Meyrink, the dream author par excellence, in which the fatal encounter between the occult and the feuilleton takes place. And it is in the Green Face that Meyrink reaches the apex of his art as a "chimeric novelist" and of his "admirably visual" style - and the apex of his histrionics, if with this word we mean an amazing ability to breathe narrative life into the most arduous esoteric images: in this case the legend of the green face, that is the evanescent face of the one who holds "the keys of the secrets of magic" and, immortal, remained on earth to gather the elect ". [back cover Italian edition Adelphi]
(Taken from G. Meyrink, Β«The green face", Postal Code. XI)
βLife is generous; in every moment it gives us a new beginning. The question: "Who am I?" urges us relentlessly. We avoid it; that's the reason we don't find the beginning.
"If we ever decide to really ask it, the day will come when sunset will mark the death of those thoughts which, having penetrated into the chambers of power, feast at the expense of our soul".
βThe coral reef β built by them over the millennia with zeal by infusoria β which we call 'our body' is the work, nest and home of such thoughts. If we want to gain the open sea we must breach this limestone and muddy barrier, and then dissolve it again in the spirit that existed from the beginning. Later I will teach you how to build a new house from the ruins of that barrier β.
(...)
βBut now listen to what I have to say: prepare yourself for the time that is coming! Soon the world clock will strike the last hour, the number marked on the dial is red, soaked in blood. From this you will be able to recognize it. The first hour of the new time will be preceded by a storm β.
"Be on your guard, do not get caught in your sleep, because those who pass with their eyes closed in the dawn of the new day will remain the animals they have always been and will never wake up again."
βThere is also an equinox of the spirit, and the first new of the new time to which I refer is the culminating point. In it the balance between light and darkness will be achieved β.
βFor a millennium and more men have learned to understand the laws of nature and to use them. Lucky are those who recognized and understood the sense of this work, that is, the fact that the inner law is identical to the outer one, only one octave higher: they are called to reap the harvest; the others, on the other hand, will remain slaves who break their backs on the fields; with his face turned to the earth ".
βThe key to domination over the inner nature has been rusty since the universal flood. It consists in vigil! Staying awake is everything β.
βOf nothing man is so certain as that he is awake; in reality, he is caught in a web of sleep and dreams that he himself has woven. The denser the network, the more powerful sleep dominates; those who remain imprisoned there are the sleepers who go through life like a herd of animals headed for the slaughter: dull, indifferent and carefree ".
βThose among them that they dream they see through the net a world between the meshes, they catch only deceptive glimpses to which they adapt their actions, without suspecting that such images are only senseless fragments of an imposing totality. These 'dreamers' are not, as you may think, the daydreamers and poets, but the active, the diligent, the restless, those consumed with the desire to act; they resemble ugly hardworking cockroaches that climb up the smooth surface of a pipe and then, when they reach the top, fall into it β.
"They imagine they are awake, but what they think they are living is really only a dream, predetermined down to the smallest detail and independent of their will."
βThere have been, and still do, some who they knew to dream, pioneers who went as far as the ramparts behind which the eternally awake Ego is hidden: seers like Goethe, Schopenhauer and Kant, who, however, did not possess the weapons to conquer the fortress, and their battle cry did not wake the sleepers β.
βStaying awake is everything. Be awake in everything it does! Don't think you already are. No, you sleep and dream ".
βGet busy, gather your strength and for a single moment let yourself be completely pervaded by this feeling: 'Now I'm awake!'. If you can try it, you will immediately realize that the state you have been in so far was a kind of numbness, of daze. This is the first timid step on a long, long road that leads from slavery to omnipotence. Thus proceed from one awakening to the next ".
βThere is no tormenting thought which thus cannot be rejected; it stops and can no longer go up to you, who rise above it like the crown of a tree grows on bare branches. And when you are able to transmit this waking state to the body as well, the pains will fall off you like dead leaves β.
"The icy baths of the Jews and Brahmins, the vigils of the followers of the Buddha and of the Christian ascetics, the torments inflicted on the Indian fakirs in order not to fall asleep are only external petrified rites which, like the ruins of columns, reveal to the one who seeks: 'Here, in the mists of time, a mysterious temple of the will of awakening has arisen'. "
βRead the sacred texts of all the peoples of the earth; among them the hidden doctrine of vigil is stretched as a guiding thread; it is the heavenly ladder of Jacob who fought against the angel of the Lord throughout the 'night', until the 'day' came to give him the victory. You have to go up, one rung after the other, towards an ever brighter waking state, if you want to overcome death whose weapons are sleep, dream and daze β.
βThe first rung of this celestial ladder is called genius; what should we call the higher levels then? They are unknown to the masses and are considered a legend. Even the history of Troy for many centuries was considered a fabulous tale, until someone found the courage and did not go digging β.
βOn the road to awakening the first enemy that will stand against you will be your own body. He will fight against you until the first cock crow, but when you see the day of eternal wake dawning, which will distance you from sleepwalkers - who believe they are men and do not know that they are sleeping gods -, even the sleep of the body will cease in you. and the universe will be at your feet β.
βThen you can work miracles, if you want, and you will no longer have to wait as devotedly as a tearful slave for a cruel idol to like to give you a gift orβ¦ cut off your head. Of course you will have to give up the joy of the faithful and wagging dog, the joy of someone who recognizes a master to serve, but think about it, would you now exchange your condition as a man with that of your dog? ".
βDo not be discouraged by the fear of not being able to reach the goal in this life! Those who have embarked on our path even once, continue to come into the world with an inner maturity that allows them to pursue their work: they will be born genius."
βThe path that I indicate to you is littered with extraordinary events: dead people whom you have known in life will rise again before you and will speak to you! They are just pictures! Figures of light, shining and intoxicating, will appear and bless you. They are only images ... immaterial forms emanating from your body, which, under the infix of your changing will, passes through magical death and becomes spirit from matter, just as rigid ice dissolves into clouds of vapor if touched by fire ".
"Only when you have eradicated the rotting element from your body can you say: 'Now sleep has abandoned me forever.' At that moment the miracle that men consider impossible will take place - because, deceived by their senses, they do not understand that matter and force are the same thing - the miracle that, even if they bury you, there is no corpse in the coffin. ".
βThen, not before, you will be able to distinguish the real from the apparent; the only ones who allora you will meet will have already traveled, before you, the same road. The others will be nothing but shadows β.
βUntil then it will remain uncertain whether you are the luckiest or most unfortunate being on earth. But fear not: no one who has embarked on the path of awakening, even if he is lost, has ever been abandoned by his guides β.
βI want to reveal to you a way to understand if an apparition is real or illusory: if, when it presents itself to you, your consciousness is blurred and things around you become confused or disappear, then don't trust! Be on your guard! What you see is a part of you. If you can't guess what metaphor it hides, then it's an inconsistent specter, a shadow, a thief feeding on your life. Thieves who steal the strength of the soul are worse than ordinary ones. They draw you like will-o'-the-wisps into the swamps of illusory hope to leave you alone in the darkness, and disappear forever β.
βDo not be dazzled by the miracles they will pretend to do for you, or by the holy names they will appropriate, or by their prophecies, even if they should come true. They are your mortal enemies, spewed out of the hell of your body with which you struggle for supremacy β.
βKnow that the extraordinary strengths they possess are yours - the ones they have stolen from you to keep you in bondage. They cannot live outside the your life, but if you submit them they will be reduced to silent and docile tools that you can use at your leisure. Countless are the victims they have claimed among human beings. Read the stories of the visionaries and followers of the sects and you will realize that the path to self-control you are walking is covered with skulls β.
βHumanity has unwittingly built a wall against them: materialism. This wall is an infallible protection, it is a symbol of the body, and at the same time it is the wall of a prison that blocks the view β.
βToday, when it is slowly crumbling and the Phoenix of the inner life rises with new impetus from the ashes where it lay dead for a long time, well today even the vultures of another world wave their wings. So be on your guard! Only from the scale on which you will place your conscience will you be able to understand whether to trust an apparition: the more your conscience is awake, the more the plate will hang on your side β.
"If a guide, a helper or a brother from a spiritual world wants to appear to you, he can do it even without plundering your conscience: like the incredulous Thomas, you can put your hand in his side".
βIt would be easy avoid the apparitions and their dangers: it would be enough for you to behave like an ordinary man. But what profit would you get from it? You would remain a prisoner of the prison of your body waiting for the executioner, the 'death', to lead you to the gallows β.
βThe desire of mortals to see otherworldly beings is a cry that also awakens the ghosts of the underworld, because that desire is not pure, it is rather a greed: it wants to 'take', no matter how, rather than learn to 'give'. He who feels the earth as a prison, the devotees who invoke redemption, all of them, without knowing it, evoke the world of ghosts. Do it too, but consciously! ".
βIs there perhaps, for the unaware, an invisible hand capable of transforming the swamps in which they are destined to end up into fertile islands by magic? I do not know. I don't feel like doubting itβ¦ but I don't believe it β.
βWhen, on the journey of awakening, you will cross the realm of ghosts, little by little you will realize that they are only thoughts that have suddenly become visible. This is why they appear strangers to you and similar to creatures, because the language of forms is different from that of the mind β.
"Allora the moment has come for the most extraordinary transformation that can happen to you: the men around you will change intoβ¦ ghosts. Those who are dear to you will become shadows from moment to moment, even your own body. It is the worst solitude imaginable, like a pilgrimage in the desert: whoever cannot find the source of life dies of thirst β.
βWhat I have revealed to you is also found in the devotional books of every people: the advent of a new kingdom, wakefulness, overcoming the body and solitude. Yet there is an unbridgeable gulf between us and these devotees: they believe that the day is near when the good will enter heaven while the bad will be thrown into the infernal swamp. We we know that a time will come when many will wake up and distinguish themselves from sleepers, like masters from slaves, because sleepers cannot understand those who watch. We also know that there is no Evil and Good, but only the 'False' and the 'True'. They believe that 'staying awake' means keeping your senses awake and your eyes open and awake at night in prayer; we we know that 'staying awake' involves an awakening of the immortal ego, and the body's sleeplessness is a natural consequence. Their they believe that the body should be neglected and despised because it is sinful; we we know that there are no sins: the body is the principle from which we must move and we descended on earth to change it into spirit. Their they believe that we should seek solitude with the the body to purify the spirit; we we know that is up to the spirit experience loneliness and then transfigure the body ".
βIt's up to you to choose your path: ours or theirs. You have to decide in full freedom. I cannot advise you, because it is much healthier to pick a bitter fruit by one's own decision than, on the advice of others, to see a sweet one hanging from the tree. Only, do not be like so many who, even knowing what is written: 'Try everything and keep the best', do not prove anything and keep the first thing that happens β.
(...)
βFrom today you are part of our community and become a new link in the chain that goes from eternity to eternity. Here my task ends and passes into the hands of another, whom you will not be able to see as long as your eyes belong to the earth. He is infinitely far from you, and yet very close; you share the same space, yet you are more distant than the ends of the world. It envelops you like water surrounds those who swim in the ocean, but you do not perceive his presence, just as the swimmer does not taste the salt that impregnates the sea, if the nerves of his tongue are dead β.
"Our symbol is the Phoenix, the emblem of eternal youth, the legendary Egyptian eagle with red and gold feathers, which sets itself on fire in its myrrh nest and always rises from its own ashes".
βI told you that the starting point of this journey is your body; who knows can set off on a journey at any time. But now I want to teach you the first steps. You have to separate yourself from your body: not as if you wanted to leave it, you have to detach yourself from it as light separates from heat β.
βAnd the first enemy is already lurking here. Who yes disjoins from his own body to soar in the ether he travels the path of the witches, who have drawn ghostly form from the rough earthly figure, to fly with it, as on a broom, until Walpurgis night ".
βHumanity, by right instinct, has forged an armor against this danger: smiling at the possibility of such arts. But tu you will no longer need doubt to protect yourself, what I have revealed to you will be for te a much more effective sword. The witches believe they are present at the Sabbath demonic, but in reality their body lies stiff and unconscious in the room. They simply exchange the earthly perception with the spiritual one, they give up the best to have the worst, and instead of getting rich they become impoverished β.
βYou see well that this cannot be the way of awakening. But to understand that you are not your body β as men believe β you must know the arts by which it wants to assert its dominion over you. For the moment you are still so submissive to him that your life would die out if your heart stopped beating; if he then closed his eyes you would sink into the night. You think you are moving it, but it is pure illusion: it moves by itself, and your will is only a means it uses. You believe you are conceiving your thoughts, while it is he who sends them to you so that you, believing them as yours, do whatever he wants β.
βTry to sit composed with the firm intention not to move even a muscle, not to blink, to remain immobile as a statue, and you will see that he will immediately rush at you, furious, to force you to return to his orders. He will attack you with a thousand weapons until you allow him to move again. From the blind fury and the precipitous aggression with which he will throw his arrows at you, one after the other, you will be able to understand if you will be cunning, how much fear he has of losing dominion and how great his power must be ".
"But behind all this lies its trap: it wants you to believe that the decisive battle for the scepter is fought on the field of external will, but these are only skirmishes which, on occasion, also let you win, and then affirm even more definitely its supremacy. The winners of these skirmishes are the poorest of slaves. They believe they will emerge triumphant and instead carry the stigma of their 'character' on their foreheads. "
βBut your goal is not to overwhelm the body. By imposing immobility on him, you only have to aim to know the forces at his disposal: ranks of armed men, so numerous as to be almost invincible. He will hurl them to assault you, one after the other if you do not desist from the apparently easy exercise of sitting still. (β¦) You can defeat all these assaults, at least in appearance, with your will. Yet the will alone is not enough: in reality behind him, invisible in his enchanted cloak, there is already a state of superior wakefulness ".
(...)
βYou have to learn for yourself how to start. It is a cautious and continuous testing the ground with the soul and at the same time it is an iron resolution. This is all I can tell you. Any advice given to you regarding this torturous struggle is pure poison. It is a stumbling block that you have to overcome alone ".
βYou don't need to free yourself forever from these thoughts; your struggle must be for one purpose only: to ascend to the higher waking state. When you have reached it, you will approach the kingdom of ghosts that I have already told you about β.Β Terrible or shining figures will appear to you, and they will try to make you believe that they are beings from another world. But they are only thoughts in visible form, thoughts over which you do not yet exercise complete control! And the most sublime-looking ones are also the most ruinous, remember that! Many false beliefs have arisen on the basis of these apparitions, and humanity has been driven back into darkness. Yet behind each of these ghosts lies a profound meaning; they are not simple images: whether you understand their symbolic language or not, they show you at what stage of spiritual development you have reached β.
βThe transformation of your fellow men into ghosts β which, as I told you, will follow at this stage β will have in itself, like any event in the spiritual field, a poison and at the same time a healing virtue. However, if you just regard men as ghosts, then you will only drink the poison and you will be like a man of whom it is said: 'If he had no love he would be nothing but resounding bronze.' If, on the other hand, you discover the 'profound meaning' that is hidden in each of these shadows of men, then you will see with the eyes of the spirit not only their living soul, but also yours. As with Job, everything stolen from you will be returned to you a thousand times over. So you will be ... at the starting point, the foolish will mock; they do not know that returning home after having lived for a long time in a foreign land is very different from never having gone away ".
βNo one can say whether, once you get this far, you will acquire the miraculous powers possessed by the prophets of antiquity, or whether it will be lawful for you to enter the kingdom of eternal peace. Such powers are spontaneous gifts bestowed by those who hold the keys to these mysteries. If you are allowed to administer them it is only because humanity needs such signs β.
βOur way leads only to the degree of maturity; if you reach it you will also be worthy to receive this gift. Will they give it to you? I do not know. But you will have become a Phoenix, one way or another; achieve at any cost that transformation depends only on you.Β Before leaving you I want to tell you again by which sign you will be able to understand if on the day of the 'great equinox' you will be called to receive the gift of miraculous powers. Listens".
βOne of those who hold the keys to the secrets of magic has remained on earth to seek and gather the elect. As he cannot die, so too the legends that circulate about him survive. Some murmur that he is the 'Wandering Jew', others call him Elijah, the Gnostics believe he is John the Evangelist, but all those who claim to have seen him describe him differently. Don't be fooled if you ever meet someone in the future who introduces him to you like this. "
βIt is normal for everyone to see it differently: a being like him, who has converted his body into spirit, cannot remain tied to a fixed form. An example will make it clear to you as well as hers figure and its face they can only be images: the ghostly semblance, so to speak, of what he really is. Suppose he appears to you as a green colored being. Green is not a true color although you see it, but it comes from the union of yellow with blue. If you mix yellow and blue well, you get green. Every painter knows this, while very few know that the world we see around us is just like color Verde, it doesn't appear as it really is: blue and yellow β.
βYou can see from this example that if you meet him and he looks like a green-faced man, he won't show you his true face anyway. But if one day you saw it as it really is β a geometric sign, a seal in the sky that only you can seeβ then know that you will be called to perform miraculous deeds β.
βI met him when he was a man of flesh and blood, and I was able to put my hand in his side. His name wasβ¦ ".
Hauberriser guessed the name; it was written on the paper he always carried with him; was the name he kept coming across: Chidher Grun.
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