Pearls of Wisdom

Vol. 55 No. 14 - Beloved Elizabeth Clare Prophet - July 15, 2012

A Journey into the Sunset

Dealing with Death

When we are reading Longfellow’s poems and listening to Mark speak, to me the wonder is the resonance of his voice.1 There is a richness in his speaking, of course in singing, and also in his writing. And the richness I feel is that which comes from having experienced the highs and lows of human sorrow, human joy, pain, suffering, bliss, and so forth. Witness, for instance, his ability to deal with death as I read to you “Hiawatha’s Departure.”2

From his place rose Hiawatha,
Bade farewell to old Nokomis,3
Spake in whispers, spake in this wise,
Did not wake the guests, that slumbered.

“I am going, O Nokomis,
On a long and distant journey,
To the portals of the Sunset.
To the regions of the home-wind,
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin.... ”

Forth into the village went he,
Bade farewell to all the warriors,
Bade farewell to all the young men,
Spake persuading, spake in this wise:

“I am going, O my people,
On a long and distant journey;
Many moons and many winters
Will have come, and will have vanished,
Ere I come again to see you.
But my guests I leave behind me;
Listen to their words of wisdom,
Listen to the truth they tell you,
For the Master of Life has sent them,
From the land of light and morning!”

On the shore stood Hiawatha,
Turned and waved his hand at parting;
On the clear and luminous water
Launched his birch canoe for sailing,
From the pebbles of the margin
Shoved it forth into the water;
Whispered to it, “Westward! westward!”
And with speed it darted forward.

And the evening sun descending
Set the clouds on fire with redness,
Burned the broad sky, like a prairie,
Left upon the level water
One long track and trail of splendor,
Down whose stream, as down a river,
Westward, westward Hiawatha
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
Sailed into the purple vapors,
Sailed into the dusk of evening.

And the people from the margin
Watched him floating, rising, sinking,
Till the birch canoe seemed lifted
High into that sea of splendor,
Till it sank into the vapors
Like the new moon slowly, slowly
Sinking in the purple distance.

And they said, “Farewell forever!”
Said, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!”
And the forests, dark and lonely,
Moved through all their depths of darkness,
Sighed, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!”
And the waves upon the margin
Rising, rippling on the pebbles,
Sobbed, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!”
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
From her haunts among the fen-lands,
Screamed, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!”

Thus departed Hiawatha, Hiawatha the Beloved,
In the glory of the sunset,
In the purple mists of evening,
To the regions of the home-wind,
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the Kingdom of Ponemah,
To the Land of the Hereafter!

It was a few days after the ascension of our beloved Mark that he took me to that very passage, and I read, as he read in my heart, the departure of Hiawatha. It was an illustrated book, and in my heart I could liken the parting of Mark to the movement of his soul on the canoe into the sunset and into the purple evening. It was a moving experience—the great wonder of the color purple and the ascent of the soul into the violet flame.

At the same time he led me to open the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, and the concluding chapter of that book is on the departure of the prophet. I would also like to read that to you because it has an imagery of the traversing of the soul, the getting on the ship. It is the most picturesque means for us to understand that there is a vast ocean of God, and one day we must all take that bark and cross to the other side. It is the imagery of the Buddha; it is an old, old imagery. There is comfort in it because we know that when we see the boat departing, it must reach another shore, and we realize that the sea itself is symbolical of the ocean of God’s being.

Jesus Wept

Mourning is an important process to the psyche. The soul cannot simply slice off the experience of death. One has to move through the experience. One has to be willing to taste of the experience, no matter how painful, so that the pain, having been experienced, can move on to the ever self-transcending spiral, pass through the fires of the heart, and experience a new day and a new birth and a new resurrection.

Some people do not allow themselves to mourn the passage of a loved one because they think it is not part of the path of the ascended masters or not part of a certain level of attainment. There is no one, not even Jesus, who does not experience grief at the death of a loved one. The shortest verse in the New Testament consists of two words: “Jesus wept.” He wept for the death of Lazarus.4 He also wept over the city of Jerusalem because he saw how death would come to the people.5 So this experience, which comes to all of us sooner or later, is one that we must internalize.

Even in the reading of the embodiments of Lanello, with each of his passings we experience a certain moment of the sorrow and of the death. The record in akasha is there.

Saying Good-bye

We see that the Piscean master in Longfellow deals with death as a journey into the sunset, a saying good-bye. When I was with Mark in the last year of his life, 1972, he went to his hometown, visited everybody he knew. We traveled there by bus. He went to different places around the country, saw people, seemed to be settling accounts, saying good-bye. We journeyed to Africa that year, in the summer, and to the Holy Land in the fall. He touched all the places he had touched as the apostle Mark and Origen, and more. We had been in Europe, of course, in 1968, India in 1970, and these are the last years of his life. We’ve been to Hawaii and all over the United States, and always he was very concerned about contacting individuals—individuals he never met before, but he’d meet them in hotels or lobbies or on our travels, on sightseeing tours, wherever we would go.

He was personally involved with people, always giving something of himself. Knowing the cosmic being he was even while he was in embodiment, I am absolutely certain that with mathematical precision—down to the last gas station attendant, truck driver or waitress that he happened to have an exchange with—he was delivering the last farthing of his payment to lifestreams, settling accounts, giving joy in full measure, giving over and above that which might have been owed, simply giving of himself. It was an interesting experience to watch all of this taking place, as Mark was saying good-bye before he would take his leave.

And we have the realization that the transcending of planes is like taking a boat and going to the other side, promising that “it will be some time before I again come back.” Longfellow is putting in the mouth of Hiawatha the unspoken and ever-so-gentle gesture alluding to reincarnation. He doesn’t come out and fiery preach it and thrust it into the face of New England in the nineteenth century, which could have been seen as heresy.6 No, Hiawatha says, “It’ll be awhile before you see me again or before I come back.”

Finding Resolution: Internalize the Loved One Lost

So it’s a very sweet thing when our souls will pause to experience the loss, internalize the loved one, and finally go through the resurrection itself. That is the real secret of joy and of love. And that is the secret of being totally cleansed of a certain bitterness. It is a bitterness that remains as a residue on people who do not accept the ordinances of God and the will of God graciously.

I want to remind you that the first individual who fell, out of rebellion against God (before Lucifer), by the name of Peshu Alga, fell because he was angry at God that God took from him his son. His son died. He held him in his arms at death. He never accepted that death. He cursed God, he shook his fist at God, he was enangered at God, and he determined to get even with God. His getting even with God was a determination to subvert Lucifer. And he was the one who actually subverted that one, and that is how he had his alienation from God—the refusal to accept the justice and the righteousness of the eventualities of life.

Since we are on this subject, it would be very well for you to search your soul to be certain that you have had a resolution with God about the loss of loved ones and records of this from previous incarnations. Ultimately, the correct resolution of the loss of a loved one is that we assimilate the good of that person, the elements of character and of life. We must become the one whom we have lost. It is the only way to deal with death on earth. We look at the light and the life and the joy and all we have shared with that person, and we realize that our only gift to give is that we go on and be that person. If we truly love someone, we want that one to live forever and to be a part of all whom we meet.

This is a true understanding of the Guru-chela relationship. The Guru departs so that the chela will be forced to become himself. When I’ve asked the ascended masters, “Why have you all ascended? Why are you not here with us?” they always say, “It is so that you, in longing for us, in loving us, will be forced to become us”—the true integration of life. So we must internalize the saint.

In this life Mark Prophet lost his father when he was nine years old. Mark’s own son lost him when he was nine years old. So we can see the necessity, carried over from the life of Longfellow, who suffered great personal loss, for the Piscean conqueror to move on and keep on reexperiencing his victory.

What did Mark do? He internalized father. He was a young boy, the Depression was coming soon, his mother didn’t have support, so he went to work. He worked very hard at a very young age so that there would be food on the table. So he had to become father at an early age. Well, to us he’s the father of our movement, the father of our Church with Saint Germain, the father of our teaching, the father of our soul. Father and Guru are synonymous terms, you know. He is our Father principle, and in a sense he’s a father to the whole world. So God saw to it that he had to become father very early.

The Farewell

I’ve mentioned to you before that this book, The Prophet, always appeared to me somewhat as a story of our life because it begins and opens with Almitra standing with the prophet on the shore. The ship has come and she begins to ask him questions. And so he must stay and tarry and answer her questions, and when there are no more questions, then he leaves.

I experienced asking Mark questions for twelve years, and I know that in the last years of our life together, I asked fewer questions than I did when I first met him. When I first met him I never stopped asking questions day and night.

So when we come to the end of the story of the prophet, we find yet another way of expressing the transition of death. [The Messenger reads “The Farewell.”7]

And now it was evening.

And Almitra the seeress said, Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken.

And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener?


Then he descended the steps of the Temple and all the people followed him. And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck.

And facing the people again, he raised his voice and said:

People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you.

Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go.

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.

Even while the earth sleeps we travel.

We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.


Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken.

But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again,

And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak.

Yea, I shall return with the tide,

And though death may hide me, and the greater silence enfold me, yet again will I seek your understanding.

And not in vain will I seek.

If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.


I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness;

And if this day is not a fulfilment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day.

Man’s needs change, but not his love, nor his desire that his love should satisfy his needs.

Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return....


After saying these things he looked about him, and he saw the pilot of his ship standing by the helm and gazing now at the full sails and now at the distance.

And he said:

Patient, over patient, is the captain of my ship.

The wind blows, and restless are the sails;

Even the rudder begs direction;

Yet quietly my captain awaits my silence.

And these my mariners, who have heard the choir of the greater sea, they too have heard me patiently.

Now they shall wait no longer.

I am ready.

The stream has reached the sea, and once more the great mother holds her son against her breast.


Fare you well, people of Orphalese.

This day has ended.

It is closing upon us even as the water-lily upon its own tomorrow.

What was given us here we shall keep,

And if it suffices not, then again must we come together and together stretch our hands unto the giver.

Forget not that I shall come back to you.

A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.

A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.


Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you. It was but yesterday we met in a dream.

You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.

But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.

The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.

And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.


So saying he made a signal to the seamen, and straightway they weighed anchor and cast the ship loose from its moorings, and they moved eastward.

And a cry came from the people as from a single heart, and it rose into the dusk and was carried out over the sea like a great trumpeting.

Only Almitra was silent, gazing after the ship until it had vanished into the mist.

And when all the people were dispersed she still stood alone upon the sea-wall, remembering in her heart his saying,


“A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”

In the hour of the ascension of the beloved, we know that the other woman is the Cosmic Virgin, who bears the soul in the great ritual of the ascension to eternal freedom, eternal light, eternal immortality.

Accepting the Mysteries of Life

We accept the mysteries of life. Therefore we accept them when they are outplayed in our lives.

I remember when I was with beloved Ruth Jones8 in the hours before her ascension, as she lay upon her bed. Her being, her atoms, her molecules having already returned to the Central Sun, there was very little left of that frail body. And we never spoke of her terminal illness at all. We only spoke of the hereafter, of life and of joy, and she never stopped speaking of love, God’s love.

I told her about the garden that was just beyond and how she would pass from her body into this beautiful garden and there she would be received. She would be received by Archangel Michael at the time of the transfer of her soul from her body. And he would take her to this garden where she would meet beloved Jesus and Mother Mary and Lanello and her own ascended twin flame, Sidney, her husband in her final embodiment.

And when I told her that and I relieved her of her responsibilities to me, because she would not leave unless she knew that her work was finished and that Mark needed her more than I needed her now, she settled herself to accept the transition. So when I told her about Archangel Michael greeting her, she came out with her pet phrase, “Glory hallelujah!” She was so happy in anticipation of being received in the arms of Archangel Michael.

So the mysteries of life for those who understand them are no longer mysteries. If you internalize all of this, then when you experience these mysteries, when loved ones do, you can be such a source and a fount of joy, compassion, the ecstasy of pity, the divine pity that can truly enter into the sorrow of another as a friend, like Mark Prophet, Lanello, who was and still is everybody’s friend.


“The Summit Lighthouse Sheds Its Radiance o’er All the World to Manifest as Pearls of Wisdom.”

This Pearl of Wisdom is excerpted from the lecture “The Incarnations of the Magnanimous Heart of Lanello: Longfellow, the Heart and the Pen,” delivered by the Messenger of the Great White Brotherhood Elizabeth Clare Prophet on Monday, June 15, 1981, at Camelot, Los Angeles County, California. It has been edited according to the Messenger’s standards for publication. The entire lecture on Longfellow is available for download at AscendedMasterLibrary.org, as a DVD album the The Summit Lighthouse online store, and also as part of a boxed DVD set of Lanello’s incarnations that includes Aesop, Saladin, Bonaventure, Louis XIV; also available at The Summit Lighthouse online store or by calling 1-800-245-5445 or 406-848-9500.

1. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was an embodiment of Mark L. Prophet.

2. “Hiawatha’s Departure” is the final chapter in Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. An excerpt is included here.

3. Old Nokomis was Hiawatha’s grandmother, who raised him from birth.

4. John 11:32-35.

5. Luke 19:28, 41-44.

6. New England is where Longfellow was born, raised and spent most of his adult life until his death.

7. “The Farewell” is the final chapter of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951). An excerpt is included here.

8. Ruth Jones lived and served with the Messengers Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet at the Retreat of the Resurrection Spiral in Colorado for nearly a decade. She made her ascension on January 3, 1976.


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