We Are But Messengers;
We Are But Scribes

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the author of Faust, was not only a great poet, he was also -- and even more so -- a great naturalist. He studied plants and intuitively divined that there was a plan which lived in the Supersensible realm which unfolded itself as the complete plant. He saw not only the blossom, but visioned the entire plan of the plant, the "archplan" which comprised the seed, the shoot, the leaves, the flower, the pollen, the seed, the shoot, the flower. The archplan is a kind of stencil which guides the formation of all things. There is one for everything. There is one for the human through which we are created by the outpourings from the God realms. It is a marvelous plan for it that describes the communication between God on the one hand, and His/Her ever-growing creations on the other.

We are a part of this and we are more than a part of this. In our divinity and in obedience to Him/Her, we are co-creators.

In a singular way of looking at things, Goethe found a different theory of color, one which was a massive departure from conventional wisdom. It was so different from Newton's theory which traditional science cherished. Listen to the contrast in the orientation of the two: in one we are the joyful servants of God and Nature; in the other, we are separated, arrogant individualists.

Goethe envisaged color as a thing in itself, alive in the Supersensible realm, seeking to represent itself in our material world. To do so, it needed an expressive agent, such as the hand of the artist. The artisan who surrendered to its intuitive and inspired messages became an artist who begot the spiritually beautiful.

By contrast, Newton's view of color was of something which we create, something we employ, something we apply according to our desires. It was, he said, only a rainbow spectrum; in our almightiness, we view it as something which is there for our employ. This attitude defines the materialistic (and arrogant, and limited) manner in which we see the world. It is as if we are alive and color is dead, only a thing to be used. Such a self-centered outlook has us confined, locked up and in deep trouble at this critical time in our history.

If, on the other hand, we subscribe to Goethe's idea that we are artists whose hands express a higher will, we will see better into all things; we will come into communication with God's domains, we will become servants of these dominions, we will become expressors of the Divine.

One day I had an important experience. It was preceded by the fact that I had long lamented the fact that I could never see "devas," nature spirits. Once, at a spiritual retreat, I had heard someone speak of seeing a massive nature spirit hovering overhead. I wondered why I couldn't. Someone else spoke of the nature spirit that ruled the mineral kingdom; I wondered again why I was lacking. But then I learned that we see such things not with the retina but with the eye of the thought realm; not straight on but in the periphery of vision. Now I was freed.

This was my experience:

I was swimming, and I felt the water. I had a thought which became a perception: I knew I was feeling an expression of the water spirit. I could feel the water around me as liquid, mobile, graceful, adaptable, fluid. I remembered that at another time, when I would be tired, or when the water would seem thick, I would feel a different expression, an expression which created resistance. I understood that the water itself was a presentation of a higher something, something which in its own way was a delegate from God's realms. I knew that I was seeing out of the corner of my mind; I was seeing water expressing itself as the manifestation of the Water Spirit. In this realization, I was able to swim the more easily, in "flow" with the water and the Water Spirit.

This awareness meant a lot to me. It meant that if we allow ourselves to enter into the current of things, we become "in communication"; we become messengers. But more than that, since we are sufficiently developed in our consciousness, we can also seize the idea; putting it in writing we communicate it to others. We become scribes, servants and messengers from the On High.

In God's dominion, we are messengers; we are scribes.

Maurie D. Pressman, M.D. is the co-author (with Patricia Joudry) of Twin Souls: A Guide to Finding Your True Spiritual Partner, published by Carol Southern Books, an imprint of Crown Publishers, New York.

Dr. Pressman is Emeritus Chairman of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Temple University Health Sciences Center. He is Medical Director at the Center for Psychiatric Wellness, clinics that operate in Philadelphia and Haddonfield, N.J. These clinics bridge traditional and spiritual psychotherapy. Dr. Pressman can be reached at 200 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106; telephone 215-922-0204.