THE ROYAL ROAD

by
David Cherubim

0. Give ear to our Gnosis, and open your heart to

Understanding the Wisdom of our Voice; for
we shall now throw Light upon the Royal Road
by these words scribed for your Illumination.
1. First, know that the body is the temple of the
mind, and the mind is the temple of the Soul,
and that these are really one. The Soul is your
Inner Self, your True Self, the God of your
life. There is no other God for you than your
own Soul.
2. To believe that God is separate from you is an
illusion. God is within you and is ultimately
who you really are. Not you, the illusive ego,
the personality, the temporal self, but you, as
an eternal Soul, your True Self.
3. Yes, in reality YOU are God, but the fact is
you have been hiding in plain sight from
yourself, playing hide and seek with something
that cannot be hidden except by your own
ignorance.
4. However, the God we are referring to is not
some old grumpy deity sitting on a celestial
 throne in Heaven judging and condemning his
own creation, or other such childish nonsense.
5. God is not a person, but the inmost center,
essence and energy of your very existence. It is
an inner state of divine being. God lives in
your Heart of Hearts in the Sanctuary of your
Soul. It is the great Mystery of your Life and
the ultimate destiny of your existence.
6. To know this God you must think outside of
the box of conventional religion. Fortunately
you can do this by taking a quantum leap
outside of the box, and then by throwing away
the box itself or your conditioned beliefs.
7. This God within you is neither male nor
female. It is rather the source and unity of all
Opposites. It is the Spirit of the Tao within
you, the source and the balanced interplay of
the Yin and Yang, or the Feminine and
Masculine Forces of Nature.
8. In the ancient Mundaka Upanishad it is
written: In truth, who knows God becomes God.
Ultimately, you are God; and if you will just
get honest with yourself, and put aside the
illusion of separation, you will realize that
there is no other God that you must answer to;
and your body, with its functioning brain and
mind, is an extension of your God, that is,
your Soul.
9. Nothing is more important in life than for you
to recognize your own immortal Soul and to
follow its Path from within. Ergo, it is called
the Great Work and the Path of the Wise.
10. The Soul is the Great Mystery underlying and
tying together all spiritual, religious and
psychological systems of illumination.
11. The greatest miracle of allthe miracle of
miraclesis when someone realizes their Soul,
follows their own Path from within, and
experiences Enlightenment, or the Peace of
their Soul.
12. The first lesson and requirement for true
Spiritual Living is to realize the fact that you
are a living Soul, an eternal Spirit who has
incarnated on Earth to realize itself by
following its own Path.
13. You are probably an old Soul since you are
reading these words to help awaken certain
spiritual facts within you that you have most
likely known through many incarnations.
Every Soul is eternal, but certain Souls have
reincarnated more than others, on earth as well
as on other planets, and this is what we mean
by old Soul.
14. Of course, we are referring to your Spiritual
Soul, the Atman of Yoga, the Spirit of God
within you that is realized through meditation,
 of which there are two main types: Active
Meditation and Silent Meditation.
15. Active meditation is realizing the Soul through
consecrated action, which is true ritual; and
silent meditation is realizing the Soul through
concentration in silence, of which there are
many forms, and this includes concentration
on the Silent Self.
16. You cannot understand meditation or the
effects of it without direct experience.
Meditation is the beginning and end of all true
spiritual practice, but until you have knowledge
of something, based on direct experience, it is
meaningless, and no amount of belief can
change that.
17. Meditation is not a belief, a theory, a religion,
or a philosophy; it is a truth that cannot be
understood except by experience through your
own body and mind. Samadhi, or Union with
God, only arises through meditation, and the
body and mind, though transcended, are
necessary instruments to this end.
18. Without the body and mind you cannot
meditate and experience the Vision of Atman,
your Soul, your True Self, nor can you know
its True Will or the Path it has mapped out for
itself. The body itself is more holy than any
 external temple or church when the mind is
functioning in a state of Understanding.
19. When you go to a church or temple in the
external world to worship God, you go with
your body and mind, and that is where your
true religious or spiritual feelings come from,
not from any symbolic crosses, wafers, statues,
priests, sermons, or scriptures.
20. These things can help trigger certain numinous
feelings from within you, but that is the extent
of their power. You are the only one who
really gives power to any of these things. In
fact, it all comes from within YOU.
21. True religion, that is, your relationship with
God, is within you, and you do not need to go
to a church, temple, or any other external place
of worship to experience and know God. God
is always within you, whoever you are,
wherever you are.
22. The outer world is here to teach you about the
inner world of the Spirit; the temporal or finite
is intended to indicate the eternal or infinite;
illusions exist to reveal the truth, not to
deceive or blind you.
23. So instead of looking for God outside of
yourself, and depending on external things or
people to know God, which is really
 impossible, look only within yourself for the
Truth, and depend only on your Soul.
24. Your body with its nervous system is where
God lives, moves, and has its Being. You can
begin to experience and know God anywhere,
in any place, and at any time, once you
understand, through experience, that your
body and mind are the Temple of God, and
that your very Soul is God within you.
25. Your body contains more wisdom than your
mind, and your body is connected more with
your subconsciousness and its feelings than
your consciousness and its thoughts.
26. The body is the outer manifestation of the
subconsciousness. It is, in terms of growth,
older than the conscious mind which is really
an extension of your body and its functioning
brain.
27. You are here in your body for an essential
work of spiritual significance; your body is a
necessary instrument for a task of great
importance. Without your body and its senses,
you cannot realize God and the Path of your
Soul.
28. Now, at this very moment, your body and your
senses are made manifest for you to realize and
accomplish a crucial task of individual and
collective significance.
29. However, you are not your body, nor its
senses, and so you should not be identified
with your body, but stand outside of it as an
observer, a witness.
30. If you can witness something, it means that
you are beyond that thing and you can
transcend it in your consciousness. You are the
SEER, not that which is seen.
31. You are always witnessing your senses in the
form of your desires, usually becoming
identified with them; but if you go within and
acknowledge your spiritual Soul beyond your
senses and desires, then do you transcend your
senses and desires, and you can then direct
them according to the Path of your Soul.
32. When you stand above the senses you are able
to obtain a certain measure of control over the
elements of Nature so that they become useful
tools on your Path.
33. To be identified with your True Self, that is
your Soul, beyond the body and its desires, is
to transcend the body and senses, and to
realize who you really are. You then become
consciously non-attached to the senses and
achieve the sublime experience of your Soul.
34. When this is the case, you can then freely
indulge in all the desires that you so will in
harmony with your True Nature. Your senses
 will then be perfect mediums of expression for
the creative liberty of your Soul.
35. But know that in essence you are not your
body and senses. This is a simple truth based
on the fact that you are witnessing their
activities as an observer, and anything you are
witnessing is just a partial perception cast upon
the screen of your temporal mind.
36. All things that you perceive are thoughts in
your temporal mind, and you are just as much
beyond your thoughts as you are beyond your
body and senses. But just like the body and
senses, the mind and its thoughts are effective
tools for the True Self, to do its True Will,
after they have been transcended and you are
no longer attached to them or identified with
them. Thoughts are reflections in the mirror
of your mind, and you are neither a reflection,
nor a mirror, but you are that which is looking
at the mirror and reflections.
37. All thought is derived from sense perceptions,
and indeed you are above them all. They are
not God, your Soul which is, in essence,
beyond all thought. God is not a thought, and
you cannot directly know God by way of any
thought in the mind.
38. From now on, we will rarely be using the word
God in this writing, not out of criticism for
 the word, rather due to the fact that this word
has unfortunately come to be too identified
with a male superior divinity and with so many
other irrational ideas that are simply useless to
our scientific times and advanced stage of
spiritual evolution.
39. Instead, we will be using terms that are a little
less subject to being misunderstoodor at
least a little less susceptible to superstition and
delusionsuch as Soul, Inner Self, Silent Self,
or True Self.
40. The True Self is the Yechidah of the Qabalah.
In the Qabalah, the Soul has various parts or
aspects of consciousness. Yechidah is a name
for the inmost supernal part of the Soul, or
for the Universal Spirit itself in its purest and
utmost nature, symbolized by the topmost
Sephira on the Qabalistic Tree of Life, called
Kether, the Crown. Kether is the Qabalistic
equivalent of Sahasrara, the Crown Chakra of
Yoga which symbolizes Spiritual
Enlightenment.
41. In Yoga, the True Self is the Atman, which is
called the Spirit of Brahman in the Yoga classic,
the Bhagavad-Gita. It is who you really are.
Yes, you are a Spirit, a Soul; and this Soul is
beyond your body with its feelings and your
mind with its thoughts.
42. Feelings, rather than thoughts, are more true to
the Soul; but feelings, just like thoughts, are
not who you really are. The Soul is who you
really are and it is untouched by feelings and
thoughts. The Soul is pure, an incorruptible
Spirit within you.
43. It is when feelings are attached to thoughts
and thoughts are attached to feelings that the
real trouble starts in the mind and body, and
you think and feel that one is the other. This
confusion of the planes is like a virus that
should be removed from your mind. Your
mental hard-drive should be deprogrammed
and restored to its natural setting, and then
reprogrammed with the facts.
44. The mind is not separate from your body, and
it is comprised of innumerable impressions
from external influences related to the body,
that is from impressions arising from the
experiences of the physical senses of your
body.
45. The mind, called the sixth sense in Buddhism,
is directly related to the body and it lives
through the five senses of the body, that is,
sight, taste, smell, touch, and hearing; it has
developed through the five senses of the body,
and it can never rise beyond them.
46. The body and mind exist together; one cannot
exist without the other; they run parallel to
each other. What is done to the body is done
to the mind, and what is done to the mind is
done to the body. One affects the other. Face
this obvious fact, once and for all, and let your
body and mind work in harmony with each
other, like Yin and Yang.
47. If the body and mind are not working in
harmony, and they are in a state of
unconscious conflict, then both mental and
physical disorders result from this conflict.
The body and mind are really one, and they
must function as one to exist in harmony. This
harmony reflects the spiritual state of the Soul,
which is PEACE.
48. Like the body, the mind is not really a spiritual
entity, that is, Spirit in pure form; it is rather an
outer phenomenon, or Spirit vibrating at a
lower frequency.
49. In practical terms, the mind is an invisible
storehouse of memories, an accumulation of
the past. It is a machine, a biological computer
which collects data, a very useful device to
survive, to create and to learn with, but it is
incapable of showing you the Truth within.
50. As long as you are identified with your mind,
and projecting your past in the form of your
 thoughts, ideas, judgments, beliefs, emotions,
and desires for fulfillment in the future, you
are missing the direct reality of what is here
and now, the truth of your Soul, the awareness
of perfection, the uncontaminated
consciousness beyond your mind.
51. To understand the true Essence of Life, to see
into the One Reality of what is, demands the
transcendence of the mind with all its
projections, thoughts, ideas, judgments,
emotions, desires, and beliefs from the past.
52. DIRECT AWARENESS from your Soul is
always here and now; it is not from the past; it
is always in response to what is happening
NOW.
53. Believing or thinking cannot give you
DIRECT AWARENESS. You can only know
it by intuition and direct experience in your
inner consciousness. When you know
something by direct experience, belief plays no
part in it; and you do not develop genuine
Understanding and Wisdom about something
through the mind by thinking about it.
54. The mind with all of its beliefs and thoughts
needs to be transcended if you are to
understand anything accurately with true
insight and DIRECT AWARENESS, that is,
 with a crystal clear consciousness from your
Soul within.
55. True understanding of anything is a DIRECT
AWARENESS of it without any projection
and interference from the mind. It is the
flower of Zen, the meditative consciousness
which gives rise to the intuitive experience of
the inherent perfection of all things. To the
Soul, all things are perfect.
56. Thinking with the mind is not a form of
DIRECT AWARENESS. It is improper to
assume otherwise, a confusion of planes. You
can understand things without any thought,
projection or ideas on your part in the silence
of your Soul. You can even do it with these
words, as with all else in Natureto perceive in
silence without thinking.
57. When you think with the mind you project
your past memories and ideas of things that
you have gathered from the outside world. The
mind is a past phenomenon, and to think with
the mind is to be identified with your mind
and past.
58. To think with your Soul is to be above the
mind, and to be free of the past, allowing you,
as a Soul, to use the mind as a tool to think for
yourself in the present. It is then no longer the
voice of the mind which speaks, but the Voice
 of the Soul, the Voiceless Voice of the Inner
Self, that is, the Voice of Intuition speaking
clearly from the silence.
59. The four Magical Virtues, also called the four
Powers of the Sphinx, are To Know, to Dare, to
Will, and to Keep Silent. Of these the last is the
golden key to inner Wisdom. It is true prayer,
true meditation, to be silent, to hear the Voice
of your Soul, and to see with its inner Eye,
that is, your third Eye by which you experience
DIRECT AWARENESS.
60. Silence your mind, become centered in the
Inner Space of your Soul, and experience
DIRECT AWARENESS from within. Then
will you understand these words, and all else,
from the Inner Silence of your Soul, from the
Soundless Sound of your inner Spirit.
61. DIRECT AWARENESS is from the silence
within, not from the noise of the mind. It
comes from your Soul. When the mind
becomes silent and you are truly centered and
at peace in your Inner Space, you do not
project your thoughts into Outer Space,
clouding your inner vision. In silence you can
see into the intuitive and direct reality of all
that is here and now as revealed by your Soul,
rather than by what is projected by the mind.
62. The greatest confusion is between the mind
and the Soul, and such is the greatest source
of conflict for the Will. But when the Soul is
realized and the mind is transcended, the Will
is then free to be, to create, without the mind
restricting its nature and way. The master of
the mind is the Will, which comes from the
Soul.
63. The Will is the most direct expression of the
Soul; it is the Center in the circle of the mind.
On the circumference of the circle are all of
the other psychological functions positioned,
whereas the Will is in the Center of it all.
64. It is the Will that confers consciousness of the
Soul, since the Will is born directly from it and
represents its very nature. Of course, we are
referring to the Will of the Spiritthat is,
Thelema, the True Willnot to the human will,
which is the will of the shadow self, the ego.
65. Now when you understand your mind for
what it really is, you have already commenced
the essential process of transcending your
mind, that is, your accumulated past
crystallizing itself into a false identity. This
false identity is the ego, the I, which identifies
itself with feelings and thoughts.
66. Stop thought; not by forcing your mind to
stop thinking, but by listening to the silence
 within; and become who YOU really are, that
is, the THINKER, the OBSERVER, the
WATCHER, the SILENT SELF; and learn to
see things directly without your mind
projecting itself with all your accumulated
impressions and ideas from the past.
67. See what is, not through the past, not through
your accumulated impressions and ideas, but
through a deep silence of thought without any
projection on your part. Know your Silent Self,
and look at things directly from the silence
within.
68. The more you practice this DIRECT
AWARENESS of things from the silence
within, the more you will realize the true
nature of the mind, how it is no more than a
mere instrument of your Soul, and that you
must train it and use it only as such, just like
the body.
69. The mind and body operate in accordance
with the law of cause and effect, that is, the
Law of Karma. In the Bhagavad-Gita, it is
stated: Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all
things have their life. It is Newton's third law of
motion: For every action, there is an equal and
opposite reaction.
70. Fortunately your Soul is beyond cause and
effect, and so YOU are beyond Karma. Every
 effect comes from a cause; every cause comes
from an effect; it is a perpetual chain of links.
71. The Soul, however, does not come from
anywhere but itself. It is Self-Created. It is
born of its own eternal essence and nature,
and it transcends the chain of Karmic links.
72. There is no Karma in the Soul: the Soul is
beyond Karma. And you can break and then
remake the chain of Karma, without
attachment, by the Will of your Soul.
73. You exist beyond Karma, but you can make
proper use of it to fit and fulfill your Path by
counterbalancing one cause with another and
one effect with another.
74. If you think a thought or act a certain way that
is contrary to your Will, then you swing the
balance to the opposite thought or action, and
maintain your Attention thereto.
Concentration is the key of success to this
work of Equilibrium, as with all else.
75. The law of cause and effect, or the Law
Karmathat is, the Law of Thought and
Actionapplies to the mind and body, not to
the Soul.
76. There is a higher Law, above cause and effect.
That higher Law is Love. Love is the One Law of
the Soul. Every other law is subject to this One
 Law in light of the Soul. For, in truth, the Soul
is Love.
77. When you come to realize who YOU really
arean Eternal Souland when you follow the
Path of your Soul, or, in other words, when
you do your True Will, you live and move and
have your being in Love. When you live in
Love, you live without fear, the state of the
ego, and you can then appropriately respond,
rather than react, to your internal and external
experiences to fulfill your True Will.
78. When you only live according to the law of
cause and effect, or the Law of Karma, you
live in an unpleasant state of mental stress and
physical tension, and you react out of fear of
the consequences for your actions. This
reaction makes for more fear. It is a vicious
circle that must be broken by Love under Will,
that is Love directed by the Will of the True
Self to fulfill the true nature of that Self.
79. Thought is inner action; physical action is the
offspring of thought; and physical action in
turn influences thought. It is the Circle of
Karma. It begins and ends with thought, so it
is under your control, relatively speaking.
80. One translation of the opening lines of the
Buddhist Dhammapada is: All that we are is the
result of what we have thought: it is founded on our
 thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. In other
words, you are what you think. Of course, this
only applies to you as the body and mind. The
Soul is not a thought, or any series of
thoughts, but that which is beyond all thought:
the THINKER.
81. What you are, mentally and physically, arises
from your thoughts and ends with your
thoughts. Your Soul, however, does not arise
from anything but itself and, unlike the mind
and body, it is eternal. It is that which remains
after the mind and body die. It is that which
was, and is, and is to come.
82. When Buddha declared that there is no
Atman, or Soul, he was really just rebelling
against the popular idea of the Atman during
his time, that is, the existence of a personal
permanent soul. For there is only one Soul in
Truth, the impersonal Soul of Souls, the Spirit
of Spirits, which is called Brahman in the
ancient Vedas, Upanishads, and Bhagavad-
Gita.
83. The idea of a personal soul is an illusion. A ray
from the Sun is the Sun itself in action; a wave
in the Ocean is the Ocean itself in motion.
Everyone is Brahman, God, or the Soul of
Souls.
84. In magical terms, the Microcosm is the
Macrocosm: the Soul is the Whole Universe.
So in truth there really is no personal Atman
except as a Point-of-View of Brahman, a
device for Self-Realization.
85. In the Bhagavad-Gita, it is written: Brahman is
the Supreme, the Eternal. Atman is his Spirit in
man. Atman, or the Soul, is a name for
Brahman in you. When you view the Soul as
nothing but God, the Universal and Selfless
One, the All in All, then the Buddhist Wisdom
of Anatta no soul, or no selfwill become
crystal clear to your Understanding.
86. Now, unlike the Soul, the outer life of mind
and body is sequential, like the images in a
movie which move with such velocity that you
experience the impression of motion and
continuity in your consciousness, but it is an
illusion.
87. As a Soul you can direct your Will to slow
down and stop the process through Meditation
and Awareness, to slip in at the appropriate
moment to change the moving picture to
accord with your aspirations and the Path of
your Soul. It is, in effect, an act of Magick, or
causing Change to occur in conformity with
your Will. It is not miraculous, but a natural
power that is inherent in the Soul.
88. If the aspirations of your Will are practical,
and in the scope of possibility, than there is
nothing to stop you from achieving them,
except yourself. Whatever your aspirations may
be, you can achieve them all.
89. Success has many forms, and the evidence of
your success is in the act of following your
own Path, travelling your own Royal Road, and
doing your own True Will, whatever that may
be for you.
90. Only you can stand in the way of your True
Will. The only enemy to your success is you.
Yes, you are the only enemy that you must face
and conquer. When one flowers into
Enlightenment, the personal self, the ego, the
I, is transcended and the enemy is defeated.
91. Enlightenment is when there is no personal
self, only the True Self, which is universal and
impersonal in nature. It is the selfless
experience of Nirvana, the transcendent state
of Peace, when identification with the personal
self, the illusive I, the ego, has been annihilated
by you experiencing and understanding the
Truth.
92. The personal self or personality is then no
longer the point of reference, but rather it
becomes a tool to realize the True Self and to
do its True Will. The personal self, the ego, the
 I, relates to the world and others, and is not
inside you. It is a social phenomenon, a
projection, a reflection; it is not your True Self.
93. Enlightenment is when you are centered in the
consciousness of your True Self and made
responsible for your own Path and success,
and success is ultimately knowing your True
Self by following your own Path, or doing
your True Will, from within.
94. If you are an artist producing your artand
sharing it with the world, if that be part of
your planwith or without financial gain or
worldly fame, than you are following your own
Path and you are already successful. Material
wealth or fame do not define your success
unless, of course, it is part of your Path to
secure wealth or fame.
95. However, if you are following your own Path
and you acquire wealth or fame as part of it, it
is just a means to fulfill your Path, your True
Will. Wealth or fame are dedicated to a greater
cause in this case and only contribute to the
progress of your Path which, in turn, helps
others.
96. If you are an artist, then your responsibility
and joy should be to be the best artist that you
can be for yourself and others, and to focus
your attention on making art. The act of
 making art is the goal of the true artist; the act
of creating art is the True Self of the artist in
action; it is making art for arts sake.
97. There is no ego, no self, no doer, just the
doing in the expression of pure art. The doing
itself is the fulfillment of the artists True Will.
The art is done without lust of result, freely
and joyously from the Soul. The same
principle applies if you are a writer, or a
musician. The artist loves to make art, the
writer loves to write, and the musician loves to
make music. The only thing that dictates and
really inspires his or her actions comes from
within.
98. Now there is only one Way for you to go, that
is your Way, or the Way of your True Will
which is your True Self in action. Such is your
own Path that you are here to realize and
follow. Such is the Royal Road to true
Enlightenment, Joy and Peace.
99. Everyone can experience Peace, including
YOU, even if your calling in life is to be a
warrior and fight on battle fields, for Peace is
really within you, eternally present, no matter
whom you are, what you are, or where you are.
100. Peace is not in Outer Space; it is in Inner
Space. It is in the Sanctuary of your Soul. You
 do not need to believe in it to experience it; it
is already a living spiritual fact within you.
101. To experience and know this inner Peace
before the death of the body is crucial to the
transition. If you have reached Nirvana and
found inner Peace before the body expires, you
will also exist in a state of Peace thereafter, no
matter what the cause of your death.
102. The Peace of which we speak is not a religious
belief; it is the very state of the Soul; and to
experience it does not require belief, faith,
hope, or any other common religious practice.
These things cannot give you Nirvana and the
Peace of your Soul, nor can any temples,
priests, gurus, or sacred scriptures.
103. Nothing in the external world can do more
than assist you to look within for the Royal
Road which leads to the Palace of Nirvana and
the Peace of your Soul. Nothing but your own
experiences and intuition can be of any real
significance to you; and you cannot follow
another, you can only follow your own Path.
104. If you are going to follow your own Path, you
must give yourself the freedom to think for
yourself, to believe nothing which you do not
know by direct experience, and you must learn
how to empower yourself through your own
intuition and experiences. These words are
 simply a finger pointing you in a wise
direction, but it is you who must take action
and follow your own Path.
105. Of course, there are many who will not agree
with you following your own Path; for their
actual agendas depend on the opposite, that
you follow them, that you depend on them,
and that you let them think for you. They want
to manipulate you to their own ends,
consciously or unconsciously, often in the
name of some so-called noble cause,
pretending they want to help you when in fact
they will enslave you if you follow them.
106. Unless you want to be a slave to others, you
must follow your own Path and learn how to
be your own master and leader. Others can,
should, and will also help you on your Path,
for this is part of the great mutual support
system of Nature which is evident all over the
globe. Teachings are everywhere and you can
learn from anyone, but you must ultimately
rely on yourself to follow your own Path, the
Royal Road, which comes from within, not
from any source without.
107. Once you thoroughly determine to become
enlightened and travel the Royal Road, that is,
follow your own Path by doing your True Will,
you set into motion all the forces of the
Universe within you to move you in that
 direction, that is, the Great Work for which you
have incarnated.
108. To follow your own Path from within requires
more courage than climbing a colossal
mountain, or parachuting from a plane high in
the sky, or facing and fighting a ferocious lion.
109. To follow your own Path means that you have
to face, battle and conquer the greatest demon
of all, and that demon is your self, your ego,
your illusive I, your false identity, the shadow
of your Soul.
110. To follow your own Path means that you have
to think for yourself, and the only way you can
think for yourself is if you transcend yourself
and think from your Soul, not from your mind.
It is when you, as a Soul, become unidentified
with your mind and then use your mind,
directing it according to the Will of your Soul.
111. This can be a life-time task, its realization
ultimately depending on your capacity to be
honest with yourself. Remember, dear reader:
Self-honesty is the highest of all virtues and it
is the Elixir of the Soul.

Copyright 2016.
David Cherubim.
All rights reserved.