ABSTRACT
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.… T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding. (1942). ACCORDING to an old cabalistic legend describing the “Formation of the Child,” 1 God ordains that at the moment of creation the seed of the future human being shall be brought before Him, whereupon He decides what its soul shall become: man or woman, sage or simpleton, rich or poor. Only one thing He leaves undecided, namely whether he shall be righteous or unrighteous, for, as it is written, “All things are in the hand of the Lord, except the fear of the Lord.” The soul, however, pleads with God not to be sent from the life beyond this world. But God makes answer: “The world to which I send thee, is better than the world in which thou wast; and when I formed thee, I formed thee for this earthly fate.” Thereupon God orders the angel in charge of the souls living in the Beyond to initiate this soul into all the mysteries of that other world, through Paradise and Hell. In such manner the soul experiences all the secrets of the Beyond. At the moment of birth, however, when the soul comes to earth, the angel extinguishes the light of knowledge burning above it, and the soul, enclosed in its earthly envelope, enters this world, having forgotten its lofty wisdom, but always seeking to regain it. The Abyss https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315009063/39235796-934e-4f40-a1ec-bc0761fa87d5/content/fig7_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> The Two Flowers https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315009063/39235796-934e-4f40-a1ec-bc0761fa87d5/content/fig8_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
