– I main­tain that there is a con­nec­tion between the abso­lute and the rel­at­ive spheres of the uni­verse.

– I too would like to believe that – said the ever-doubt­ing dis­ciple. – But how am I to believe it?

– On the web of meta­phys­ic­al con­scious­ness everything is con­nec­ted with everything. Plato held cer­tain con­cepts to be opposed to one anoth­er and yet mutu­ally related, such as wak­ing and sleep. These are each other's oppos­ites, and the inter­ac­tion that leads from the one into the other is fall­ing asleep or, in turn, wak­ing up. To this he likened the oppos­i­tion of life and death, and the pro­cesses of dying and rebirth. If, then, we accept the mater­i­al world and the spir­itu­al uni­verse as each other's oppos­ites, and also assume that inter­ac­tions exist between them, then this is noth­ing other than per­meab­il­ity, and two-way per­meab­il­ity at that.

– Two-way per­meab­il­ity? How am I to under­stand that?

– Sym­bol­ic­ally I can put it like this: from above down­wards, and from below upwards. The primary one is the per­meab­il­ity that leads from the lower towards the high­er level, and this is the path of sal­va­tion. But if this exists, then its oppos­ite exists too; that is, the other dir­ec­tion of per­meab­il­ity is the path of the fall.

– Then every­one comes here alike, under com­pul­sion?

– That is not cer­tain. For some, per­meab­il­ity is a fall; for oth­ers, a voca­tion, a life's task. Think of the hell-faring her­oes who went down into the under­world to search out the secret of life or to set their loved ones free. Christ too des­cen­ded to the threshold of hell – des­census ad infer­os – for the sake of the souls await­ing redemp­tion there. The situ­ation of the bod­hisat­tvas is sim­il­ar… For those who come to Earth with a heav­enly mis­sion, this seem­ing des­cent becomes the very means of their ascent.

– And is there a return? For a fall I can still under­stand, but going to and fro between the two worlds?

– Well, cer­tain aspir­ants may indeed advance far at the cost of enorm­ous effort, and may very nearly be lib­er­ated, but if some­thing is lack­ing in their per­fec­tion, they are forced back onto the plane of mater­i­al exist­ence. But trust that, besides the tem­por­ary lib­er­a­tions and hells, there exists a final sal­va­tion.

– And what is the nature of the pas­sage? In what way does it exist?

– The mys­tic­al way of see­ing recog­nises the divine facts. Cos­mo­lo­gic­ally, the abso­lute and the rel­at­ive spheres of the uni­verse bor­der on one anoth­er, which means that they are also sep­ar­ated. The Self is the bar­ri­er at the bound­ary…

– I do not under­stand this yet, but I am try­ing to accept it.

– Good! Con­sider, too, that the highest plane of the mater­i­al sphere touches the low­est layer of the spir­itu­al sphere. This is a mat­ter of cos­mic vis­ion. If you exam­ine the ques­tion indi­vidu­ally, as it con­cerns man, then I can say that man's chakra-sys­tem is embed­ded among the sphere-levels of the uni­verse, and the mys­tic­al energy chan­nels issu­ing from his heart cre­ate a con­nec­tion between the micro- and the mac­ro­cosm.

– That seems easi­er to under­stand. After all, we are part of this uni­verse, aren't we?

– We are part of it, and we are not. The body was taken from mat­ter, where­as the soul is from the heav­enly sphere – this too hints at per­meab­il­ity. In terms of spir­itu­al prac­tice, dis­mant­ling man's false ego­ism must go hand in hand with the unfold­ing of his spir­itu­al iden­tity – here the two world-spheres meet.

The great saints who crossed the ocean of ignor­ance in the heav­enly barque of the ser­vice of God did not take this boat with them, and so it still rocks on this shore.

– And how can the pas­sage­way be used?

– Yes… the great ques­tion! Is it effort, or the path of grace? Human effort is neces­sary, but not suf­fi­cient. For com­plete suc­cess both factors are neces­sary, human effort and divine grace alike. In this way the change of dimen­sion takes place, and the dis­tance between man and God shrinks. The Sun is the gate of the world – an entrance for the sage, a closed door to the ignor­ant.