Lupelius - The School for Gods

secret recesses of the being. The Dreamer explained that it was there ‐ in the most hiddencorners of existence, where the river of destructive thoughts and guilt courses, and negativeemotions fester ‐ that one found the source of all those monsters, the evil origin of coarseness,of death, and of all our failures.“You need, above all, to cast out the enemy within your own flesh. And you will have barelyfinished routing him out when you will find him confronting you again even more merciless,more cruel and more powerful …. The antagonist grows with you! There are not thousands ofenemies, there is only one, and your victory is also one…conquering yourself.”“The ‘journey of return’ is the great opportunity for a man to heal his past” He said, as Hisgaze slowly surveyed the piazza; the twin churches, the patrician palaces, the statues aroundthe ancient obelisk. He looked at the people who crowded around it.“The world is the past.” He pronounced, coining one of His most admirable maxims –“Whoever you meet, whatever you encounter, is always the past. Even if it appears to bebefore you at this moment, what you see and touch is only the materialisation of your innerstates…The past is dust. The world you see and feel, in this precise moment, is thematerialisation of all that you have been…There is nothing that can happen in your life thathas not already been accepted in your thoughts. The world is dust. Blow upon it, and dispelit.The Dreamer moved His chair slightly to suggest that we should rise. His movementdistracted me abruptly from the effort I was making to keep up with Him and these newideas. I had a knot in my stomach. I would have liked to have poured this exuberant andirrepressible new wine, into the old cask of my convictions. I wanted to contain this oceanwithin the limits of my rationality that was now crumbling and yielding under His blows. Ibecame lost in empty, intellectual posturing to hide from myself the evidence that Histeachings were penetrating ever deeper, becoming more dangerous, even fatal for my oldequilibrium.In the meantime the Dreamer had stood up. With a nod, He invited me to follow Him. Iwas reluctant to leave that quiet corner where the air still rang with His words. It felt to me asthough I was leaving an ancient temple, a venerable ark of knowledge. Every detail of thatmeeting would be forever fixed within my cells, including the carefully laid tables, themovements of the waiters, and even the freshly baked rice pastries.I crossed the piazza with Him and followed Him into a church. Passing between thetransept and the altar, beyond the central nave, we came to a little chapel. I could make outtwo giant canvasses in the semi‐darkness, one facing the other. I glanced around; from ourposition, the church seemed completely deserted. The Dreamer asked me to put a coin in themeter. A strong light shone onto the two works of art. He suggested I look at them from thecentre of the chapel, from a point at an equal distance from both. I followed His instructions,and carefully examined the two masterpieces.The painting on the left showed Peter being crucified upside down; the other was of Paul’sfall on the road to Damascus.“It is not a coincidence that these two paintings are facing each other ‐He said‐ They5