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Introduction to The Great Initiates – Paul Allen June 1961

At this time, "the infinite deeps of the Invisible" seemed to draw the boy ever and again into the cathedral at Strasbourg.

There, in the hush of the crypt, the majesty of the great nave, the glory of the music, the awe-inspiring mystery of the service, the holy calm of the candle-flames, the wreathing fragrance of incense smoke ascending into the dimness, he felt a kind of inner satisfaction, a longing fulfilled. Something of the spirit of the great mystics, Meister Eckhart and Johannes Thuler, whose lives were connected with this place, touched the soul of the boy, and he felt the transforming peace of the Friends of God of Strasbourg.

Finally the moment came when the world of the spirit opened itself before his enraptured eyes. It is perhaps prophetic of his future activity that again it was a work of art that was the external cause of this second milestone on Edouard Schure's path to the spirit.

One afternoon he was sitting in a corner of the lofty gallery of the cathedral, gazing in deep absorption at the light streaming through a great rose window. Like Dante when face to face with the Celestial Rose of the Paradise, the boy beheld the Figure of the Risen Christ, surrounded by an aureole of sublime glory. In that instant, cathedral, men, women-all his earthly surroundings-vanished, swallowed in a heavenly influx. From that moment, for the rest of his long life, Edouard Schure was convinced that his destiny was linked with the service of the divine world.