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Dane Rudhyar's Fire Out of the Stone. Image Copyright 2007 by Michael R. Meyer.

FIRE OUT OF THE STONE
A Reformulation of the
Basic Images of the
Judeo-Christian Tradition

by Dane Rudhyar, 1962




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This title was first published by Sevire, 1963.

Cover for the online edition copyright © 2008
by Michael R. Meyer.

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"Thy God is a cosumming fire."
Duet. 4:25



"He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire."
Matthew 3:11



"I am come to send fire on the earth."
Luke 12:49

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1. NOT TO REPEAT, BUT TO RENEW - page 3


"And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind"
Romans 12:2

"Only the self that is willing to dare change can think creatively"
Charles Morris — The Open Self

Because the words "spirit" and "creative" constitute a constantly recurring theme in this book, it is imperative that the meaning given to them should be made clear at the outset. And if they are to carry a fresh conviction this meaning should be direct, simple, and experienceable. I shall thus define spirit as that which provides, at all times and in every conceivable place, basic and transforming answers to real human needs, and solutions to all vital human problems. Spirit forever seeks to reestablish the disturbed harmony of the cosmos, to re-integrate whatever has experienced any degree of disintegration. It is God in act, inasmuch as God is absolute Harmony and all encompassing Love.

In the same practical and concrete sense, the act of creation should be considered as the process through which is brought forth and dynamically emanated a basic and integrating solution which aims at solving some vital problem of humanity and, in a cosmic sense, of the universal whole. God creates perfectly; man, most imperfectly — unless man becomes truly an "agent" of God. But in both cases one can speak of creative activity. One must speak of it whenever one speaks of men as "sons of God". He who can meet the needs and problems of his environment at any time by discovering and imparting solutions able to stir, vitalize and mobilize into transforming action the imagination, the minds and the hearts of other human beings is, in a limited but real sense, a creative agent. He is a spiritually creative agent whenever, through him, the one universal creative power of spirit is released. This one universal creative power is forever seeking release through open, ready and able individuals, simply because new problems and needs constantly arise in human evolution. But few are the individuals able and willing.

This creative power is also a healing agent. True creative activity must be as well a healing activity, at least as to its ultimate results, if it has its source in the spirit. To heal is to arouse the organism from inertia and sloth, to remove obstacles to the healthy flow of the life-force, whether at the physiological or the psychological level, as well as to fill the sick with new vital substance. And this is why Jesus said that he came to bring a sword rather than peace, as we usually think of peace; that wherever he came, or his disciples would come, conflicts in families and groups would follow — or as the Gospel of Luke has it "division" (12 : 51-53). Every confrontation with the creative spirit brings about division among those who belong to a biological, tribal or social group; because, when faced by such a challenge of the spirit to transformation and self-renewal, some go forth as carriers of the "Good News" of rebirth and re-creation, while others refuse to stir and become the slaves of a past that, because of the new confrontation, becomes from then on obsolete and increasingly negative.

The spirit of God indeed works in strange and mysterious ways. The way of purgation and catharsis is the way of the Crucifixion. It is the necessary way wherever mental inertia and self-complacency, egocentricity and greed, a sense of guilt and a craving for power, have choked the circulatory systems of body and soul with toxins and scar tissues. But crucifixion is actually a phase of creation. That healing which is of the spirit must force crises upon the personality and upon society.

Crises, catharses and crucifixions are tools used by the Creative. The power of Christ is proclaimed from the Cross, as healing is latent in the catharsis, and the blossoming tree in the seed rent in twain by germinative processes.

The Kingdom of Heaven is the creative energy and the substance of all new beginnings at the very core of all endings. It is indeed the Creative Order, here and now, operating wherever there is metamorphosis and essential renewal. It is "within you", if you let it act within the conscious experience of your everyday dying to the past. It is the Resurrection within every Crucifixion assumed consciously and serenely. No man can experience, or even understand, the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven who "is not willing to dare change" — even if this change must mean death to the old.

This change must, however, be a conscious and deliberately sought-for transformation if it is to release the power of creative renewals out of crises of crucifixion. Man must bring to a clear focus within his own soul the energy of the Creative Order if he is to experience "Heaven" within and the Resurrection. Crucifixion is focalization, not death, for him who has understood the organic essence of the Creative Order. Where the arms of the Cross meet, there man finds his spiritual focus; there the mystic Rose of "divine Sonship" comes to bloom and "death" is overcome, simply because "life" is transcended.

Where there is life, there is also repetition and compulsive bondage to instinct and unconscious activity. The sequence of life and death keeps all nature bound to repetitive patterns of birth, growth, decay and death. But spirit, as it enters the realm of life, is the power to effect creative transformations. Life conforms and repeats; spirit transforms and renews. And the true message of Christ is the "Glad News" that spirit can win over life-and-death, in and through any man who is irrevocably attuned and self-dedicated to the way, the truth and the symbolical life of the divine Exemplar.

The Crucifixion is the core of this victory, because it is a manner of death that transforms the life-and-death sequence. It is a consciously accepted, deliberately assumed, fully understood process of transformation in which spirit, the power of the Creative, is brought to a clear and indestructible focus in the individual. The Cross is the symbol and the field of application of the dynamics of the creative spirit. The Cross is the Creative in the here and now of man immersed in the ocean of life-energies on this earth.

Because Christian men and women have, on the whole, failed to seek liberation from their blind subservience to the tides of life-and-death, because they have not dared to understand and accept the dynamics of the creative spirit, the Cross of Christ has been worshipped as a tragic symbol of suffering and expiation. It is, on the contrary, a hieroglyph of victory over both life and death, over repetition and conformity; but it can only have such a meaning when it is understood and experienced as the supreme catharsis through which all complete renewal in spirit and mind can become real, here and now.

The individual who calls himself a follower of Christ must gain such an understanding of the Cross if he is to wield the energy of the creative spirit, if he is to become a power for renewal in our present society. The Christian leader must attune his consciousness to this creative spirit, as to a force of collective social transformation, if he is to lead humanity to new beginnings. And the seed for these new beginnings is here. It is the ancient and eternal Christ-seed.

All seeds must experience germination. All new beginnings in the creative spontaneity of the spirit must emerge out of the center of the Cross, where the Love of God flows as a power of healing and of victory. Christianity must germinate anew, because a new "spring" is near. The sun of God is releasing renewed light and renewed warmth; but will Christianity as we know it today prove itself a fertile seed? Will it, can it, take the leadership in the creative process and consciously, deliberately, assume the crisis of the Crucifixion?

Only he who has experienced the Transfiguration can truly make of the Cross the place of creative victory. We must seek therefore, in humility and with courage, in clarity of mind and with faith of soul, the way to the Transfiguration, that we may meet, as Jesus did, our supreme crisis and make of it the altar of our victory.






This edition copyright © 2008 by Michael R. Meyer
All Rights Reserved.





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