Elizabeth Clare Prophet, can you tell us who Paul the Venetian is?
Paul the Venetian is the chohan, or Lord, of the third ray.
He is an ascended master whose final incarnation was lived as Paolo Veronese, the great Italian artist of the Venetian school. He lived in the sixteenth century and many of his great works, which hang in London, Paris, Madrid, Washington and New York, are of religious scenes.
He portrayed episodes in the life of Christ in such works as The Marriage at Cana, The Presentation in the Temple, The Via Dolorosa, Christ and the Centurion, and The Resurrection. One painting, entitled The Holy Trinity, he completed after his ascension. It hangs in his retreat, the Château de Liberté, in southern France.
The retreats of the ascended masters are on the etheric plane but they are often congruent with a physical focus. The physical focus of beloved Paul’s Château de Liberté retreat is a private château maintained by a French family.
The Holy Trinity embodies the essence of the inscription beneath it: “Perfect love casteth out fear.” This painting is viewed by souls who come as students of the master. Paul has portrayed the heavenly Father in a majestic figure, and the Son in the likeness of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as an immense white dove with a nine-foot wing span.
Focuses Of The Flame of Liberty
The ascended master known as the Goddess of Liberty is the Mother of the flame of liberty and the sponsor of Paul the Venetian. The Statue of Liberty (a gift of France to America) is the focus of her flame in New York Harbor. The flame of liberty that burns both in the heart of France and in the heart of America inspired the movement for independence in the French Revolution and the American Revolution. It is this flame of liberty, shared by the people of France and America, that binds us in our common devotion to freedom.
The threefold flame of liberty is identical to the threefold flame in the heart—in fact, it is simply another name for it. And that liberty is the freedom of the soul to choose to be God incarnate.
The threefold flame of liberty is the perfect fusion of the elements of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And upon this foundation Paul teaches his disciples the meaning of love as a discipline of the qualities of the Trinity in each of us.
He bids us welcome to his retreat as our souls journey at night while our bodies sleep. He welcomes us to one or more of the many workshops in his retreat where we can perfect our art, our sculpture and the very design of the soul on the path of initiation.
He takes us individually to a room where there is a canvas and he asks us to meditate upon our own Christ consciousness and to bring forth our own self-image of the Christ. It’s a self-portrait of the Real Self.
Some of us have gone there hundreds of years ago and we come again in this embodiment and view the painting that we painted long ago of our conception of the Christ within.
Through evolution and a greater oneness with God, we have improved that awareness and so we ask Paul if he might not allow us to repaint the painting. And this is the idea of discipline—Paul knows his disciples will return, constantly perfecting the image of the Christ within in preparation for the path of the ascension.
Mrs. Prophet, can you tell us about the relationship between love and art?
Art is the expression of the love of the soul and it is intended to portray the footsteps on the path of initiation—the stations of the cross, the waymarks of our overcoming of our trials and our tribulations.
Love, the cohesive power of the universe, is the foundation of life and is in every cell, and therefore love is a geometry of being. And that geometry brought forth is intended to be exalted in art.
Paul teaches his students that meditation upon art is for the awakening of the power of God within and that all art should lead to this. And of course he points out the discrepancy between modern art and this basic goal.
He teaches that many of the modern artists today are not tuning in to the delicate vibrations of his retreat and the great master artists but instead are tuning in to the subconscious, the collective unconscious and what is known as the astral plane.
And from out of this astral plane the artists are bringing forth not the love and the discipline of the soul but great dissonance and inharmony, which is not productive of the true culture of the Holy Spirit.
What is the effect of imperfect forms on the consciousness of those who see them?
The ancient proverb goes, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” The masters understand the creative science of vision, the science of the immaculate concept: as we see, we become. If our children meditate upon imperfection, discord, dissonance, they will outpicture this in their consciousness.
In ancient Greece and Rome it was the way of life to have pregnant women meditate upon beautiful statues so that they could mold in their consciousness the perfect form and transfer this to their offspring.
This is a very real science. What we see, we do become. And so Paul teaches us that we must guard the consciousness of little children and surround them with paintings and art that are conducive to the harmony of their souls.
Mrs. Prophet, what does Paul the Venetian teach on love?
Paul gives us the essence of love that is the Holy Spirit, love that is a self-sacrifice and a surrender to the will of God. It’s amazing, but the more we understand of God’s love, the more we realize it involves the total giving of the self to that God in manifestation.
And in order to totally give ourselves, we must discipline our energies and our way of life. Therefore there is no love—as the true compassion of the Christ for us, for humanity—without the discipline of the self.
Paul uses the symbol of a rose unfolding within the heart to represent the unfolding of the consciousness of love.
He teaches that love is a pink flame, an intense fire that consumes all hatred of the Christ and manifestations of anti-Christ, which are anti the Real Self.
He gives us an awareness that love is simply the perpetual flowing of the crystal stream of God’s consciousness. And this flowing of the stream is both the giving and the receiving of the beloved and the soul, who is reaching up for that union with God.
Paul gives us a beautiful mantra that was dictated to the Messenger Mark Prophet for our meditation on love. This is the way it goes:
Love Me
1. I AM so willing to be filled
With the love of God;
I AM calling to be thrilled
With the love of God;
I AM longing so for grace
From the heart of God;
Yearning just to see his face
By the love of God.
Refrain:
As a rose unfolding fair
Wafts her fragrance on the air,
I pour forth to God devotion,
One now with the cosmic ocean.
2. I AM hoping so to be,
Made by love divine.
I AM longing Christ to be,
Wholly only thine.
I AM so peaceful in thy love,
Feel at home with God above.
I AM at one with all mankind—
The cords of love God’s children bind.
I AM fore’er one living soul
With angels, man and God as goal.3. I AM locked in God’s great love,
His mighty arms of power;
Cradled now by heaven above,
Protected every hour.
I AM alight with happiness,
Wholly filled with God-success,
For I AM love of righteousness.
I love thee, love thee, love thee,
My own God Presence bright;
Love me, love me, love me,
Protect me by thy might.
Remain within and round me
Till I become thy light!
Paul the Venetian teaches us that we can pursue art and love and beauty as the discipline for our ascension, the acceleration of our soul into the white-fire core of being.