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Transformation and Victor Hugo: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

A work of fiction which beautifully explores the process of the soul’s growth is Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserable’ or ‘The Afflicted’

The main thread is the story of ex-convict Jean Valjean, who becomes a force for good in the world but cannot escape his criminal past.

Only the saintly bishop, Monseigneur Myriel, welcomes him. Valjean repays his host's hospitality by stealing his silverware. When the police bring him back, the bishop protects his errant guest by pretending that the silverware is a gift. With a pious lie, he convinces them that the convict has promised to reform. After one more theft, Jean Valjean does indeed repent and sets off on a path towards love, compassion, redemption.

Plato said that:

“Once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet”

During the story the characters are lifted up by ‘love’ in its different forms. Love can be a motivation for change and transformation. Lovers or teachers or important encounters can set us on the path. Elizabeth Gilbert describes the meeting as important ‘sparks’ to shake you up and wake you up.

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.   A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”

Victor Hugo was aware of the divinity of human evolution and his book intended to enlighten a reader on it, especially upon the path to love, away from attachments, trapping and ego. He said:

“So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless”

Hugo’s epic 1,500 page novel, the longest there is, was not the only spiritual tract to hint at karmic bonds and paths of enlightenment.

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

This is a saying attributed to Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni and the Theosophists.

But what does it mean?

It suggests that some kind of growth and preparation needs to take place before one is ready for new skills to be taught. It suggests that the universe only makes the next step happen when the previous steps have been made.

It suggests that we are in an ordered and intelligent universe that is patient and prepared, steadily expanding.

Many of our teachers also spoke of our capacity for evolution. Freud said that we had an id, an ego and a super ego, and could master the control of our unconscious drives with our super ego by developing higher virtues such as love, compassion and intuition.

Maslow said we were on a pyramid, steadily trying to rise to the peak to hopefully ‘self-actualise’

One of the most enduring metaphors for the spiritual path is the transformation of the lowly caterpillar into a butterfly where human beings can follow the path to liberation, from within the depths of the soul and emerge, after great struggle, as an expression of divinity in the world.

This path leaves time behind and greed and ego, and follows a path to ‘bliss consciousness’ or a ‘face of god’ experience. Material forces such as aggression, greed and selfish pursuit are transmuted into spiritual energies such as wisdom, love, and the desire to serve others.

Next we are transformed into being a vehicle dedicated to fulfilling the soul's purpose.

A philosopher who beautifully described this transition is Plato:

“The vicious lover is the follower of earthly Love who desires the body rather than the soul; his heart is set on what is mutable and must therefore be inconstant. And as soon as the body he loves begins to pass the first flower of its beauty, he "spreads his wings and flies away," giving the lie to all his pretty speeches and dishonoring his vows, whereas the lover whose heart is touched by moral beauties is constant all his life, for he has become one with what will never fade”

The next stage is transfiguration and the best-known exemplars of transfiguration have come to us through the teachings of world religions: the Buddha, emerging visibly illumined from his six-day meditation under the Boddhi Tree; Moses, surrounded by blazing light as he received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai; the master Jesus, appearing as a luminous being to his closest disciples on Mount Tabor, completely transfigured by spiritual light.

Victor Hugo said his novel 'Les Miserable' was:

“a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. The starting point: matter, destination: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end”