The Quest for the Holy Grail and the Feminine Principle

Following on from The Mystery of the Holy Grail…

The Quest for the Holy Grail is not physical, emotional or mental; and secondly, there is another reality in a spiritual dimension where the real Quest takes place. The question is: How do we approach that other reality? How do we link this world with that world? This brings us to the hidden meaning behind what we call the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is a symbol of the Feminine Principle. You have to go through the Feminine Principle in order to approach the Spirit within you, the Principle of Immortality within you. That is what the quest for the Holy Grail is really about. If you read about the Knights of the Round Table and the great Warriors of China, you will notice that there is always a female in the story. Before a knight went forth on his quest, he always had to present himself to a lady and get her blessing. She would give the knight her scarf or handkerchief and thereby became his subconscious mentor throughout the quest. He would be thinking of the lady and would have to conquer enemies and find the cup or whatever he was looking for and then take it back to the lady. Only then would his mission be completed.

The writers of these stories, although they had forgotten the truth, still knew, without knowing why, that somehow a female had to be involved in the quest. In the East, too, there was always a lady who was a protector or represented a divine reality, and the quest was done in her name or by her power. In these stories the physical female stands for something profound—the Spiritual Female—because to go from this reality to that reality there is only one bridge, and that is the Divine Feminine Consciousness, or the Feminine Principle. This is why in the West there is Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, who acts on our behalf with the Christ, and why in the East there is Quan Yin, who acts between the warrior and the Absolute Reality, Tao. Accordingly, we have to understand that there is a Divine Feminine Consciousness in Creation and She plays an important role in the quest for Immortality. In the modern age Our Lady’s function is totally misunderstood because it has been materialized. Nowadays people pray to Our Lady to find them a parking spot or to win the lottery, which is a warped understanding of who She is. She is not just a cardboard figure you pray to for things, but the Feminine Consciousness of the Deity Itself, the Feminine Mind of God. She is all-powerful, a real cosmic irresistible Power. So the idea that the knights had a lady who blessed them before they went off on a quest is really the materialization of a spiritual idea. And the spiritual idea is that there is a Divine Lady within Creation and She will appear to you and guide you and help you through your trials and tribulations, if and only if you invoke Her presence. At least the Christians know enough to pray to Our Lady, which means they invoke Her presence, but then they tell her what to do. (It’s like praying to God and then telling God what to do!) All you have to do is make yourself available to Our Lady and She will know exactly what to do on your behalf for your Salvation—how to take you from this world to the other world, how to make your spiritual quest successful. Whether you call Her Our Lady or Quan Yin or whatever, the Feminine Consciousness is the key to it all. What does this mean? The Worlds of the Higher Creation (the Worlds of Light) are the Worlds of Conscious Immortality, where you are conscious and you know that it is forever impossible for you to die. You perceive Conscious Immortality in Nirvāṇic Consciousness, when you know that you are immortal not as an idea but from a deep internal experience—although the word experience is of course meaningless in this case because an experience in Nirvāṇa is not like an experience here.  In that experience you are conscious that you are immortal, that God and the Universe are immortal, that there is a Reality that is imperishable. Even if this world here were blown apart by atomic bombs, it would not make the slightest impact on that other reality—nothing. It would not even be noticed in that other dimension, not even registering as a vibration in the Worlds of Light. The secret behind the quest for the Holy Grail is that first of all the Grail is inside you and secondly that the quest is your life. That is why every aspect of the Warrior’s life is meaningful. There is not just one standard type of Spiritual Warrior. Some had great worldly responsibilities—they were kings or emperors; others had family responsibilities—they were married and had children; and some had no worldly responsibilities—they were monks. As a Spiritual Warrior you have your own unique task, or dharma, to fulfil according to what you are. If you are a king, then your dharma is to guide a nation or fight against enemies; if you are a monk, your dharma is to contemplate and preserve the Sacred Knowledge and hand it down to the next generation. Every Warrior has a dharma to fulfil.

The function of Our Lady is to help you fulfil your own dharma, the destiny of your individual life, and this is why the Christians still have a far-off memory that if you pray to Our Lady She will help you. But the problem is that most people do not understand that She is a spiritual help, that She is meant to help take you to the Kingdom of God, to mould and change you and help you along your destiny line. Your destiny line is different from your karma. You have to understand that Our Lady’s function is to help you through your destiny, not through your karma. You have to work out your karma yourself, without invoking Our Lady or the Divine Presence. If you are a student and fail your exam because you have not studied, don’t invoke Our Lady; it has nothing to do with Her. You have to distinguish between your personal karma, which you created (and continue to create), and the function of the Divine Presence, what the Divine Being is supposed to do for you. Having made that distinction, you will find that Our Lady will help you fulfil your dharma, or your true destiny. Our Lady is the servant of God, if you like, acting between the vast spiritual dimensions and the dimensions of this world. If you invoke Her correctly, She will help you through the problems and struggles you encounter in life because that is Her job. You do not have to tell Her what to do, just be respectful and reverential towards Her and allow Her to do Her job. Being a Spiritual Warrior has much to do with awakening the Feminine Consciousness in the Heart, and with surrendering to that Feminine Consciousness so that She will take you to the state of Conscious Immortality. It is about shifting your awareness from the created dimensions to the uncreated dimensions, the boundless fields of Light where Conscious Immortality is to be found. And Our Lady’s function is to help you do just that.

Excerpt from The Way of the Spiritual Warrior (Pages 264 -268)