Kabbalah (Your Path to Inner Freedom)

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God has been in my life as long as I can remember. I was about four years old when my mother told me, "God sees and hears everything." It frightened me, and left me always with a strange feeling when I did something I knew was wrong. But I was curious as well as scared and wanted to know why I could not see and hear God also. So, I was on the constant lookout and begged Him silently after every good-night prayer to talk to me. Then one day I figured it out: God was a giant, hiding inside the huge grandfather clock in the children's room in our home in Vienna. There, locked behind the large glass door, his two big fingers moved steadily over his shiny face and his gold ball below sounded "tick-tock" as it swung incessantly from side to side. As time passed, with beautiful and also difficult years, this childhood search for God remained with me. An insatiable curiosity became a lifelong quest. Then came Walter, my husband. For thirty-three years he filled my life with rare treasures and shared my interest in the unseen God.

Together we explored the great religions of the world and some of their later offshoots. In a scholarly fashion we devoted our-selves to the profound thoughts of sages, past and present. This metaphysical pursuit of intense zigzag study-our foremost avocation, a lasting benefit-shaped our mutual goal in life. From Hinduism we journeyed to Northern Buddhism ... from Christianity and the Bible to Islam and the glorious Koran . . . from Zoroaster to Hermes Trismegistus . . . from the Egyptian to The Tibetan Book of the Dead . . . from the harmony of pristine Gregorian chants to the mu-sic of the spheres in esoteric astrology . . . from the pearls of Greek and Roman mythology to the Tao, the I-Ching and the mystery of Zen. We looked into the ageless numbers of Pythagoras, the royal road of Gautama the Buddha, the eternal freedom of Socrates, the sublime love of Plato, the joyful visions in con-sciousness of Sri Aurobindo, the overflowing com-passion of Paramahansa Yogananda, the wisdom of J. Krishnamurti, the humanity of Albert Schweitzer.

As these enlightened ones walked in the footsteps of divinity, we walked with them. All of it touched us deeply. An altogether new and fascinating world unfolded when we left Austria and arrived in the United States in 1938. With the erudite Swami Nikilhananda at the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center in New York, we studied the three component parts of ancient oriental wisdom: Vedanta (including the Bhagavad Gita), the different Yoga systems and Shankara's peerless Self-Knowledge. Later we became familiar with Theosophy and H. P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. And, of course, we studied all of C. W. Leadbeater's inspired books, from The Masters and the Path to Man Visible and Invisible. With great joy we explored Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science of Anthroposophy, and experienced an unforgettable performance of Goethe's Faust in Dornach, Switzer-land. Later on we searched for several years through Christian Science with Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health. Finally we came full circle to the study of the Bible's first and last books, Genesis and Rev-elation.

As we shared "the Good, the True and the Beautiful" throughout those many years (a third of a century) our thoughts often turned to the nature of love, death and the hereafter. Everything seemed so clear and simple until, in 1966, Walter passed away. It put an end to our long quest for truth and its cradle. I was left alone to face and test what the two of us had learned to believe. I began to question: could death, a change in space and time, tear asunder the bond of love between two souls when one no longer has the vehicle of mortal matter? I searched fervently for the answer and gradually it became my unshakable inner knowing: just as there is no life without death, there can be no death without life. In reality "death" is but the turning of a page in the book of life and can have no power beyond the illusion of form. Real love, therefore, has no spaces that separate. It is timeless, and its hereness lives on, and has lived on and on.

Soon thereafter, and true to an old saying, "when the pupil is ready, the teacher appears," a great meta-physical Teacher and eminent Kabbalist came my way and accepted me as his only personal student of "the Tree of Life." This totally unexpected happening marked a supreme turning point on all levels of my life and brought new dimensions of untold joy, inspiration and fulfillment. In good time I came to realize that all the great truths, or "faces of God" as Walter called them, which I had pursued for so long, were but footprints that led me to the reality of truth as illustrated and told by the ancient wisdom-glyph. Step by step the Tree of Life pattern unfolded the ultimate foundation of life and illustrated that primordial truth which is beyond words. Because, as my Teacher often repeated, "a truth explained in everyday words is a truth no longer true." Like a close friend, my Teacher shared his pro-found knowledge and wisdom with me.

He had but one stipulation-that his name would never be given to anyone. I have always honored this request, and thus I refer to him here only as "my Teacher." He gave of himself abundantly in the many informal dialogues which he preferred to conventional "class-room" instruction. For more than seven years our regular meetings took place every four or five weeks depending on my Teacher's time. They lasted for one hour and were always recorded on tape. The intervals between meetings gave me enough time to con-template and study the last discourses thoroughly and formulate my next questions. The frame of the teachings represented the oral tradition and came largely from what is called the Unwritten Kabbalah, a body of wisdom formerly entrusted to a select few. Sometimes they followed the Mystical Kabbalah, which tells of the nature of the Creator, and his creation, the universe and humanity. Gradually I came to understand the all-pervading "Laws of Life" which move all manifestation in universal harmony. Most importantly, I began to feel the freedom they generate in myself. Again and again my Teacher stressed the urgent need for human freedom as the very essence and purpose of Life's Great Plan. And by pointing to the Tree of Life for a practical road map, he explained how everyone can quite naturally reach that independence if only he or she so chooses. Under the guidance of my Teacher, the unknown became knowable, the invisible visible and the unfamiliar familiar. "There is no place where life is not," he used to say. "Life, as love, cannot be without free expression. All that is visible to our senses is only a vivid display and proof of the invisible from which it came."

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