In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

In many religious traditions in the beginning of a scripture we find an invocation to the highest instance in the creation. In the beginning of any kind of action in the world there should be a remembrance of the human assignment. This is the opening to the channel towards the Creator beyond our consciousness of reality. In this way the connection between the different worlds will be established. In the function of this connection the cosmic assignment of the human being will be fulfilled.

In the Christian tradition over thousands of years there is the custom of establishing this contact when starting something to “cross oneself” and say the words “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen”. This gesture, consciously executed, is not only a symbolic act, but instead an event that can be experienced through all the layers of the existential reality.

This kind of strong ritual is more than just a psychological case. These days we learn and imitate rituals only in the way children play “cowboys and Indians”. The essence of the ritual, the Holy, is lost. The meaning and aim of the ritual is: to establish a connection between the different dimensions in the creation. When a human being knows that he is the only created being through whom these dimensions can come in contact with each other then he is performing the task normally allotted to the priests. Such an act is an act of cosmic dimensions.

However, rituals remain mostly symbolic or emotional happenings without the knowledge of what they should accomplish. Only a conscious execution of a connection in this scale is of humane value. The knowledge is lost and we get to know the forms that have become empty; their effect on us is the same as children’s games. The end result of this is a chaos: in the course of our life there are no clear, conscious beginnings and as a consequence nothing is completed fully and in thankfulness. Our various activities are like tangled threads twisted around each other building a sleazy ball. To clear the nebulous mist and to make meaningful patterns out of the threads for our life we need clear co-ordinates: and in this way we come to the Cross.

The Sign of the Cross

With your middle finger of your right hand
• Touch your forehead at the height above your eyes, which is sometimes called the third eye, saying: «In the name of the Father ...»
• To the Solar plexus: «... the Son ...»
• To the left and across to the right side of your breast at the level of your heart: «... and the Holy Spirit»
Like the Indian greeting bring your hands together with fingers pointing upwards at the level of your heart: «Amen».

(The above is the Catholic Sign; the Orthodox Sign is from right to left and uses different symbols and movements.)

The beginning is to invoke the highest: the Father. In His name begins the downward movement – towards THE TRUTH, which manifests itself at all levels of the creation – all the way to the Son, who carries “the imperfection of the world”.

With the horizontal movement we designate THE WAY; the way in the time in which the possibility of transformation exists.

The point where the vertical and horizontal cross each other becomes the connection between the Creator (Father) and the created (Son): it is the Holy Spirit. He takes us through – Hope (left side of the breast) and Faith (right side) to Love, which is the middle with the seat in the heart. This is the place of LIFE, at the point in which the vertical and horizontal cross; it is the central point in the whole creation. THE HUMAN BEING is simply fastened to the Cross.

Gurdjieff called Faith, Hope and Love the three “sacred being-impulses”. He said also that they are deeply buried and hardly reached by our consciousness, but they exist in all of us. When we look for them, then we can find them and nourish them until they can start to support us.

The simple definition for hope is: “Do everything so that it becomes possible. “ At the outset in the daily life failure is well in the program; we do not even try if it all looks “hopeless”. Nobody can guarantee our efforts to bring what we expect. How could we imagine what we have not experienced and be sure that it will come? Hope is the knowledge that in time everything changes and beyond time, out of our reach, the unity is in charge of these changes. The certainty of this is vaccinated in all of us and we can become aware of it when we reach beyond our intellectual reason and emotions. We know what certainty is even if it only takes place in a fleeting moment… We can remember this experience any time independent of our state at the moment.

I stay inside.
I search for the place in me with clear knowledge.
Everything is fleeting and changing.
My destiny approaches me from beyond time.
If I do not give up my effort.

With faith is meant what we today mostly call trust. Trust can only be related to knowledge that comes from existential experiences; nothing else can support us. Only after we have recognised that our experience of the unity is a unique recognition we are able to trust that this knowledge can not be compared to the knowledge of our intellect. We do not consider the union with the unity to be a daily experience, but we know that our consciousness has been touched by Eternity. We have all experienced such moments. J. Anker Larsen (Danish writer 1874 – 1957) wrote about it very accurately: „One is, one knows, one wills. Wills what? Exactly the NOW that is and the NOW that happens. One wants ones own beggarly limitations… Of just this person whose life looks so indifferent and useless. That is my task – in the outside world. I will have my fate.” (With the Door Open – English version 1931)

Now I realise this and give myself time,
so that the memory of the experience of unity can appear.
I trust the different quality of this experience.
I do not let explanations and doubts weaken this trust.

In the heart, which becomes the central point of the cross in crossing oneself, Love can awaken, little by little. It is Love, the unifying force that excludes nothing. This Love is independent of likes and dislikes, the time and the timeless. This is the Love that is the basis of the creation and it works on all levels. It manifests itself in matter as gravitation, in the body as sympathy or sex, as emotions and beyond them as compassion. All levels are included in Love; all that exists is penetrated by it and with the help of it bound back to the unity. Love is the only power which through our yearning, behind all wishes, brings us home to unity. Love flows through me, takes me home and radiates through me. Love is not mine – I can not possess it.

I bring with the two hands existence into the world. With the “Amen” I bring the essence of my experience to the heart. All contradictions, everything that was split into continuous sequences of time, light and darkness, past and future, I assemble in my heart; in the only place which can take hold of it ALL and bring it together. The yes and no, the perfection of the Godly and the imperfection of the human can only melt into the unity of existence in the heart. Then the contradictions need no longer fight against each other, they get a new direction rising vertically. A yes needs no longer crush a no; because together they form a whole. In all this even the necessary fight at the level of duality is not excluded, it is also part of it. Only the heart of man is big enough to take hold of EVERYTHING.

The gesture of Amen enables me to be aware of being. It can help me to awake and nourish my own existence and make it alive. Through the recognition of my own existence Salvation happens.

The building of the bridge between solar plexus and the third eye can only take place through the heart. In the heart the descent from eternity is baptised in the stream of time. The substance of existence has poured itself out in the various levels of experience and revitalized them. Through the blood of existence we have created our world within the frame of the four elements. The way back to eternity can only start from this centre.

With Amen I contact the only place where revelation can take place, the point without any dimension; the point of I am. This point is the “narrow gate” that builds our connection to eternity. This direction is shown by the fingers in the sign: I am prepared to sacrifice the identity of I am – in the sense of the Hebrew word for sacrifice, Korban, to bring near – so that the I am can be born in the heart; so that the Jesus of my being, who is one with the Father, can become flesh in me. The meaning of the following words will then become a living reality:

«I am
the Way, the Truth and the Life.»