Covid-19: Through a Glass Darkly

By John Rawson

We are now three years into a global pandemic. The world has changed for everyone. TV screens are saturated with statistics: infection rates, mortality, hospitalisations. As human beings we need more than data to make sense of our world. We have a deep need to seek out reason and purpose. "Covid-19: Through a Glass Darkly", is a response to questions of reason and purpose from a spiritual community. This community, the community of Free Priests, was founded in the tradition of Western Spirituality. It is a community that is free from religious dogma, and religious structure. It is an expression of how the priesthood may evolve in a future where there are no more churches, and organised religion no longer satisfies the spiritual yearnings of souls.

Organised around a set of communications with the members of this community, the book discovers and communicates the spiritual reasons for the coronavirus pandemic. Philosophers and thinkers have tried hard in the last 500 years to repress the concept of a spiritual world. Modern culture focuses almost completely upon physical expression. We believe only what we touch with our hands and see with our eyes. We are embedded in Realm-1, the realm of the physical.

Spiritual tradition tells us that Realm-1 is only part of the whole. There is a whole world that lies beyond the physical. This is Realm-2, the spiritual worlds. In the past, insight into the spiritual worlds has been the prerogative of the rare sage, seer, prophet or clairvoyant. What do such souls have that the rest of us don't? The answer is deceptively simple. Where we use physical eyes to see in Realm-1, we need to develop spiritual eyes to see into Realm-2. Where our physical ears conduct messages through a physical medium, we will hear messages from the spiritual worlds when we develop organs of spiritual hearing.

When we look at the physical world from the perspective of the spiritual, then our view is very different. We discover that events in the physical world are manifestations of spiritual energies. This means that the purpose of the coronavirus must be sought on the spiritual levels.

As the reader travels through this book, they begin with the darkness of our materialistic understanding. As we enter more deeply into a spiritual consciousness however, the darkness is illuminated by an inner light. Through our own inner light, we discover purpose. Through our own inner light, we discover our spiritual architecture, and through our own inner light we complete the journey described by Paul the Apostle: "…for now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face…"

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667825458

Book preview

Introduction to the Western Spiritual Tradition

The four essays in this little book were produced independently. They were created for the community of Free Priests, described in second section of the book.

Chapter One, The Truth About the Corona, describes the spiritual purpose of the manifestation of the new pandemic as countries around the world proclaimed travel bans, social distancing and lockdowns.

Chapter Two, The Work of the Free Priesthood addresses the ways a spiritual community might maintain itself and thrive in this new world.

Chapter Three, The Expression of the Corona Energy is inspired by a question asked in a Spiritual Reading: What is the spiritual meaning of the Covid-19 pandemic?

Another Spiritual Reading question prompted the fourth chapter, The Entry of the Feminine Energy.

The material in this little book was originally created for a specific audience. An audience of people initiated into the Western Spiritual Tradition as presented by a remarkable teacher, Reverend Rev Mario Schoenmaker. Terms such as ‘Spiritual Reading’, ‘New Year Reading’, ‘Free Priesthood’ may be unfamiliar. My suggestion is that you read the first four chapters of the book and allow the sense to lap over you. We are not striving here for precise intellectual understanding, we are striving for resonance.

When I was learning the piano as a young boy, my teacher said to me one day, Now we are going to learn how the sustain pedal operates. It works through resonance. She told me to hold down the key two octaves below middle C without making a sound and to keep it pressed down. Then she quickly stuck all the C notes above this. After she stopped, I could hear the low C note I had been holding down reverberating in the silence. That is resonance, she said.

Just as a piano string may vibrate in sympathy through the power of resonance, I hope that something in the first four chapters of the book may stir an understanding within you.

Read Chapter Five, Welcome to Realm-2, and Chapter Six, The Western Spiritual Tradition. Finally, armed with the information given here, re-read the first four chapters of the book again.

If you discover that the message of this book strikes a deep chord within you, then we look forward to continuing the conversation at the Realm-2 website.

1. The Truth About the Corona

It is March 2020. Suddenly our news, our politics and our actions are dominated by one singular event: The Covid-19 pandemic. It was originally named coronavirus - and as we shall see, names are important.

As spiritual beings, we understand that behind every event in the world, is a spiritual origin. We discover this spiritual origin by the process of asking questions. Asking a question is much more powerful than making a statement, for it opens up the door through which truth may enter. It will turn out that Truth is at the core of our discussion.

Our community now knows that the Year 2020 is the Year of Truth. I’m sure that when this was announced, none of us would have predicted that a deadly illness would sweep through our society.

We will investigate three important questions:

1. What is the spiritual cause of the coronavirus pandemic?

2. What is the purpose of this global infection?

3. How does it connect with the year of Truth?

There are simple answers to these questions, especially the first two.

What is the cause of the pandemic? We are!

What is its purpose? To create a change in consciousness.

Such simple statements are not going to satisfy us, so we need to delve into the causes of disease and the purpose of illness.

Our teacher, Rev Mario Schoenmaker, said that the purpose of a disease, especially an infectious disease, is to cleanse and purify us. Remember this, for we shall soon discover what needs to be purified lies within our consciousness. Rudolf Steiner observed that when any immoral action is committed, it has an effect like a fever upon the global consciousness. You will know that fever is one of the coronavirus symptoms.

Names bear within them a deep significance. Coronavirus was originally an epidemic. Epidemic comes from two Greek words, epi, which means about, or upon - and demos meaning people. An epidemic is then something that descends upon the people. We have proceeded to another term: pandemic. The word pan means all. So, the coronavirus has descended upon all the people. There is another meaning to pan. Pan was a Greek god. He ruled over nature and pasturelands. Pan had the power to inspire madness and dread in others. This is the root of panic - an irrational fear that derives from the unbridled forces of nature. We see Pan at work in the strange, irrational behaviour which proceeds from the working of Covid-19 in the world.

This might be a good moment to address Australia’s unique contribution to the coronavirus panic. We inaugurated the toilet paper panic. Freudian psychologists have had a wonderful time with this. In Freudian theories of child development, the