What is the Communion of Saints?

The Communion of Saints - a concept familiar to every Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox Christian  - simply means that we, as Christians, are connected with all other believers and people of good will, both living and dead.

Death does not separate us from them.

We may call the Communion of Saints by its Work name, Conscious Humanity, although, strictly speaking, only the more spiritually advanced members of that communion may be called conscious. Nevertheless, all of us in the Work belong to the Communion of Saints, even if more through desire than through achievement.

And it's not only those who were Christian during their lifetime who are included in this community. Sufis, Buddhists, Hindus, Orthodox Jews, those who have been Good Householders although they may never have followed any particular religion, together with everyone who has lived according to their conscience, may eventually be admitted to this group.

Brother John of the Carmelite Order used to preach that after death there will lots of people who, meeting Jesus for the first time, will exclaim in wonder "So it was You, all the time, and I didn't know!You were the One who healed my child, saved my life, gave me the courage to carry on! Thank You!"

Not everyone will reach Paradise all at once, of course, because we're not fit for it as we are. And Paradise is, in any case, "Only good for two-three days", according to Gurdjieff. What we shall do after we've enjoyed a well-earned rest will depend on us, our abilities, our deepest wishes, and on God and His many helpers, the saints, angels, and archangels.

We may be put to work maintaining the balance of energies on a particular planet; to educating young souls about to incarnate; to helping those in Purgatory to endure the pain of remorse and repentance. We don't know; it's not entirely up to us, in any case. But we believe that death is only a veil, a curtain, which separates those alive on Earth from those already in a different dimension, and that communication between us is still possible.

We are all working for a common aim, the perfecting of our being and the subsequent coming of the Kingdom of God.

We Catholics know that, when we pray to the saints for help, they respond. Proof of this is given daily in the form of miraculous happenings, both great and small. Some have been solidly proven by medical and scientific evidence, the criteria the Vatican uses to decide who is to be recognized as a bone fide Catholic saint.

We know that we may also pray to - and for - our ancestors. Many cultures, both Eastern and Western, encourage the setting up of family shrines in the home, where we can remember our dead and pray to and for them.

Gurdjieff believed that doing so helps us and them. He gave several examples of this type of prayer, from the need to pray for our direct family ancestors (and thus help our "grandfathers" and those even earlier than that generation) to the way in which one person's ancestor (in this case, Gurdjieff's own mother, who had passed away) could help the mother of a Work student.

Daily, in the Catholic church, Masses are offered for the dead. We believe this confers great honour on the deceased one, and helps him or her in the afterlife, wherever they may be. In Work language, we are dedicating a quantity of the very highest, finest energy - that of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ - to those we honour in this way.We also ask our dead loved ones to pray for us, just as we petition the saints to do the same. We are all one family, and we help one another.

No, our family dead are not necessarily out and out saints, not yet, but they are closer than we are to the miraculous realm where Conscious Humanity lives, and they can add their prayers to ours in cases of need.

What is the post-death state like? And will we all be part of Conscious Humanity one day?

All religions believe in some sort of afterlife. The Jewish and Christian faiths postulate a post-death period of assessment, where our next destination will be decided. We Christians call it Purgatory.

Purgatory is not a state of physical torture; it is the place where, with great compassion and empathy, we are helped by those more conscious than ourselves to relive the unrepented sins of our earthly life, and to make atonement for them by our sincere remorse.

Painful, yes. And this is the reason why we are urged, in the Jewish and Christian faiths and most of all in the Work, which is Esoteric Christianity, to repent - undergo metanoia - in our present life. Those sins, those errors, we have committed need to be faced and accepted before we can proceed any further.

It is this belief which underlies the practice, common to many religions and to the Twelve Step programs, of taking a personal inventory at the end of the day. I prefer to do this during the day, so that problems may be dealt with as they come up, but either way is fine. What is certain is that we will have no escape from facing our own sinful, mechanical nature, and we can either do this now, on Earth, or later, in Purgatory. The choice is ours.

A modern Kabbalistic interpretation of Purgatory says that after we die we are placed in a private cinema, with a comfortable chair and a large screen. The film of our life is then projected for us to view, over and over again, until we have repented for the evil, the mechanical acts, we have committed. Then, and only then, may we allowed to ascend to the next stage of our existence.

What will that stage be like?

Marian, my Work teacher, explained that the substance of our Essence is immortal and therefore cannot be physically destroyed in the same way that our bodies can. After death, if someone has remained asleep all their lives, if they have not worked on themselves at all, if they have stifled the voice of their conscience and lived mechanically, their body will decay and their Essence will be thrown back into the melting pot. Nothing of them will survive, because they had not achieved any individuality.

This is Work teaching, and of course it is subtly different from the exoteric, Christian, doctrine.

If, on the other hand, we have begun to wake up, then our spiritual journey is commencing. We will be sent again and again into incarnation so that every lesson we need to learn can be fully assimilated. Only then will we be allowed to remain in "Heaven", however we picture that realm.

For me, it's a world of education, activity, and purpose. It's the fount of order in the universal battle against entropy. It's the state we picture ourselves in when we yearn to be of use to God. And if we follow our conscience, one day we shall certainly find ourselves there, with all the necessary Higher Being Bodies that we have created with the help of Conscious Humanity, which will give us the ability to survive in that rarefied atmosphere.

The Way of the Good Householder will eventually lead there, especially if followed in conjunction with one of the true religions.

For us in the Work, we are following the Way of Accelerated Completion. We hope to reach our destination more quickly than if we simply followed an exoteric religion, but there are no guarantees.

 In the meantime, we need all the help we can get, and praying to the saints, both known and unknown, who are part of Conscious Humanity will help us in more ways than we can possibly imagine.

Please note that, although we are encouraged to pray to the dead, and to offer our own prayers for them, we are not to contact them through a medium or any other occult activity. This is strictly forbidden by all religions and by the Work. Why? Because it is an illegitimate method of communicating with the dead, and calls on the astral realm rather than the spiritual dimension. This being so, all sorts of mischievous, possibly very evil, entities may respond and pretend to be the person summoned when they are nothing of the kind.

I have personally experienced this realm when in the presence of a medium, even though I did not give her permission to call on the dead and did not realize that this was what she was doing. The frightening consequence was only too real, and I have heard of others who also experienced this type of happening while physically in the presence of a medium. If we have not asked for it, the evil realm - the "sitra achra", or other side, in Hebrew - does not have permission to stay, so the remedy is to pray to God and ask for it to be stopped. This is always effective. But it is much better not to court this sort of experience at all. Some types of evil entities are very hard to dismiss.

Real communication with the dead takes places through the spiritual realm, without any medium, and always with the understanding that God may allow it or may prevent it for a particular reason. This is the only legitimate way.

That said, I do have a family shrine in my own house, where I honour the living and dead members of my family and pray for their wellbeing every day. And I ask for their prayers, too, because we are all members of the Communion of Saints, even though some of us are only potentially, not actually, thorough going saints!

Sometimes the dead may communicate with us directly, through a dream sent via the Higher Emotional Centre. This is a very powerful experience, very cleansing and fructifying. And while it should not be sought, neither should it be ignored. It is useful to write it down so that we don't forget the content, and can meditate on it later for guidance.

My personal practice is to pray to the saints, especially St Therese of Lisieux, when in particular need of enlightenment or understanding. There are saints for every type of problem, however, as you will find if you study the saints of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. They are all much closer to God than we are, and they invite our prayers. They long to help us, because in helping us, they help God Himself.

 And that is the purpose of the Communion of Saints - a great mutual-help society, formed of goodwill and spiritual energy, a tremendous source of help which we are foolish to ignore.