The Sacred in Literature
‘Sacred’ has its origin in the Latin word, ‘sacer’ meaning holy or
that which is of God, the Whole, the All, the One. Although sacred literature, or scripture
as it is often called, ranges from the Buddhist to the Zoroastrian, the sacred in literature
is a wider concept than that.
The opposite of sacred is ‘profane’ or, originally “outside the temple,”
and it is true that literature is not all of it sacred, and much of it is profane, just like us
all in fact. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have the sacred in it. Indeed, this
idea of the temple signifies that holy place, or heart, found in all literature as it is found,
too, in all people, however well hidden it may be or even denied. So the analogy is clear. The
sacred in art, including literature, is one and the same thing as that which is sacred in the
human being. It seeks experience, it seeks expression and it seeks recognition.
The written word, whether in the form of poetry or prose, a work of science or a work of the
imagination, is properly called literature if, to quote the dictionary, “it is characterised
by excellence of style and expression and by themes of general or enduring interest.” The
same criterion might be said to apply to our fellow men and women no less than to ourselves,
for excellence proceeds from the heart, the soul, the inherently spiritual, in which all life
in form is One.
If this suggests a perfection few writers have attained, few books express and even fewer
readers share, that is simply to recognise the fact that, though we are all on the Path, not
many have travelled very far on it. Therefore, anything which helps them forward is, by
definition, spiritual, and serves to bring humanity nearer to full realisation of the reality
in which the sacred resides.
A major example of such service is writing which comes from the sacred in the author, appeals
to the sacred in the reader, and stimulates both to foster the sacred in whatever is their
personal field of service. Ultimately, that field is humanity and humanity’s natural environment.
The literature which tries to fulfill that function is various. For example, in works of science,
inner divinity is approached through such subjects as physics, chemistry, natural history and
geography by studying form, movement and interrelationship. In history and biography, and also
in the novel, the sacred is approached by way of research into outer actions and circumstances,
of course, but also by discovering the psychological, inner causes of outward manifestation.
While these provide an indirect exploration of the sacred in our world and in our fellow men
and women, poetry on the other hand, like music, attempts to communicate directly with the
reader by sympathetic vibration, or resonance. This kind of revelation is at least an
approximation of a situation in which the sacred, the One, communicates with Itself, for the
source of what is communicated and the recipient are One.
Literature, therefore, is capable, in its own way, of bringing the sacred to light, and that
is how it resembles the work of Triangles. Both invoke those divine energies needed for the
reappearance of the sacred and the externalisation of its rule on Earth. Literature may not
be aware of this; Triangles is fully aware and works with strong intent.
We are told that “potencies produce precipitation.” Among those potencies is the
sacred in literature. In so far as literature reveals the sacred at its heart, it carries
forward the work of such worldwide spiritual groups as Triangles for, like all true servers,
it works in, and fosters in the reader, the light and the love and the will by which, alone,
the Plan is fulfilled.
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