In this article, Roberto Assagioli explores the journey of spiritual development through the allegorical lens of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.”
By Roberto Assagioli. Doc. #24108 – Assagioli Archive – Florence. Original Title: La Purificazione dell’Anima. Translated and Edited With Notes by Jan Kuniholm
Abstract: In “The Purification of the Soul,” Roberto Assagioli explores the journey of spiritual development through the allegorical lens of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.” He emphasizes that the initial stage of spiritual awakening is often marked by confusion and inner turmoil, represented by Dante’s encounter with a dark forest. This symbolizes the suffering and unease that precede the soul’s awakening, leading to the aspiration for higher spiritual experiences.
As the soul begins to ascend toward enlightenment, it faces significant challenges, personified by three beasts: a leopard representing sensory temptations, a lion symbolizing spiritual pride, and a she-wolf embodying selfishness. Assagioli stresses that overcoming these obstacles requires moral purification, which he argues is essential for spiritual progress. He critiques schools of thought that claim moral purification is unnecessary, asserting that true spirituality involves a deep commitment to ethical principles and the overcoming of selfish desires.
Virgil, Dante’s guide, symbolizes spiritual discrimination and reason, helping the soul navigate its path. The assistance from higher forces, such as divine compassion and wisdom, is crucial for the soul’s journey. Assagioli concludes that moral purification is vital for spiritual liberation and that those who seek spiritual enlightenment must cultivate a higher moral awareness than that of ordinary individuals. The text ultimately invites readers to embark on their own spiritual pilgrimage, following the path of purification toward the light of higher consciousness and unity.
In our last meeting, we discussed the internal constitution of man, examining the lower and higher elements of our being. Now we will begin to discuss the work of purification that we must undertake to transform the lower elements and unify our being. To begin this discussion, I will take my cue from Dante Alighieri.[1]
Everyone knows the Divine Comedy, but few understand its most intimate and profound meanings; so while everyone studies and admires it as the most sublime literary work written in our language, few appreciate it as a true “sacred poem,” as a wonderful description and guide to inner life and spiritual development.
Like all writings and words that attempt to express the inexpressible, it is allegorical and symbolic, and each symbol is complex and multifaceted; i.e., it has various meanings on various levels; and to discover each meaning, one must possess the corresponding “key.” Thus, as is well known, the Divine Comedy has a historical or political meaning; and to understand this properly, one must have the relevant “key:” that is, one must know the political conditions of Italy, indeed of Europe, at the time of Dante. One must know his political opinions and ideals, and the practical action he took during his life.
The same applies to the spiritual and esoteric meaning of Dante’s symbols. One must have the “key,” and with it one can cross the threshold of appearances and forms and discover the great truths that are symbolized.
Let us try to do this with regard to our topic today. The part that interests us is found right at the beginning of the divine poem.
Dante, “midway on life’s journey,” finds himself, without knowing how, in a wild, harsh, arduous forest; but it is precisely there that he finds something good. In fact, wandering in that forest, he comes to the foot of a hill; then he looks up and sees that it is illuminated by the sun.
This simple allegory symbolizes in a nutshell everything that concerns the early stages of spiritual development.
The wild forest represents not only — as commentators generally say—the vicious life of ordinary man; but also, and above all, the special state of unease, acute suffering, and inner darkness that usually precedes the awakening of the soul. This state corresponds much more to what Dante says of the forest than to the ordinary life of man, namely that the mere memory of it filled him with fear and that “death could scarcely be more bitter than that place!”[2] And what follows confirms this even better. In fact, the discovery of the hill illuminated by the sun and the raising of his gaze clearly indicate the decisive moment of the awakening of the soul. Then fear subsides in the lake of the heart and, after a little rest, he begins to climb the slopes of the hill. This clearly symbolizes the phase that follows the awakening of the soul, and which we must deal with today.
Those who have had a first glimpse of the dazzling light of the Spirit, those who have experienced, even for an instant, the great peace and perfect bliss of the “awakened,” naturally feel a strong desire rising in their souls to receive more and more light and to live forever in those serene and blissful regions. He therefore without hesitation tries to climb toward the dazzling summit of light, and in the enthusiasm of his first revelation, he believes he can advance straight ahead and safely.
But, alas, difficulties and dangers soon begin. Here, “almost at the beginning of the rise,” Dante tells us, he encounters a beast that continually bars his way, “and it would not pass, but stood;” indeed:
”. . . it would not pass, but stood
So blocking my every turn that time and again,
I was on the verge of turning back to the wood.”[3]
This first beast, [a spotted Leopard], “all tremor and flow and gaudy pelt,” symbolizes above all the attractions and temptations of the senses.
At the moment of enlightenment, of joyful exaltation, the soul no longer felt these attractions: it seemed that every illusion had vanished, that every earthly bond had been broken. But this was not the case. The soul realizes with painful surprise that its lower nature was only momentarily dormant and paralyzed, not killed; it soon awakens and rebels violently, placing itself before the soul and blocking its path.
This phase is admirably indicated by another clear symbol in the 21st rule of the first part of Light on the Path.[4] The uneasiness that precedes the awakening of the soul is called “The Storm;” the awakening is called “The Blossoming of the Flower.” The peace that follows, in which all the voices of the inner nature are silent, is indicated by “silence.” And the Light on the Path also warns immediately that this “silence” is only temporary, for nature can only pause for a moment.
The awakened soul, however, does not allow itself to be overcome by the attractions of the senses, but, sustained by its aspiration, elevated and encouraged by various signs and indications, by inner and outer help, hopes to triumph. This is expressed by Dante in the verses:
“Thus the holy hour and the sweet season
Of commemoration did much to arm my fear
Of that bright murderous beast with their good omen.”[5]
(For the sake of brevity, I will not examine more analytically the particular meaning of the individual symbols used here). But soon new and more serious obstacles appear before the soul, arousing in it new and stronger apprehensions.
“Yet not so much but what I shook with dread
At sight of a great Lion that broke upon me”[6]
The lion symbolizes one of our worst internal enemies: spiritual pride, which so easily invades the soul when it discovers new strengths and powers within itself, and glimpses the wonderful possibilities for development that lie before it. Then it feels superior to other humble mortals and despises them. But in doing so, it develops that sense of separation which is the true antithesis of spirituality, and thus places a great barrier in its own path.
But that is not all: the lion is immediately joined by the she-wolf, “a rack for avarice, gaunt and craving.” She represents the very principle of separateness, of selfishness, from which all desires truly originate; she is what Easterners call “tanha,” the lust for [earthly] life, the root of the desires of the individual soul.
Victory over this enemy cannot be achieved in the early stages of spiritual development. As the Light on the Path severely warns us in the 17th rule of the second part:
“The great and difficult victory, the conquering of the desires of the individual soul, is the work of ages; therefore expect not to obtain its reward until ages of experience have been accumulated. When the time of learning this seventeenth rule is reached, man is on the threshold of becoming more than man.”
It should not surprise us, then, that it is precisely the “she-wolf” who not only bars Dante’s path to ascension, like the other beasts, but also repels him by pursuing him “into the sunless wood.”[7]
While Dante finds himself in this grave danger, Virgil appears to him, and he immediately invokes him humbly, asking for help.
Thus, after having painfully experienced the difficulties of life and suffered its first bitter defeats, the soul loses its boldness and presumption, recognizes its weakness and powerlessness, acquires true humility, and thus places itself in a position to be helped. And as soon as it has done so, help comes.
This is a great and consoling law of the life of the Spirit, which we often forget in moments of doubt and discouragement, but which we should always remember: Higher help is always ready, it never fails: the obstacles that keep it away are only within ourselves. We do not know how to ask for it in the right way.
But what does this help really consist of? And where does it come from? Let us see who Virgil is. It is usually said that he personifies “reason.” This explanation is not wrong, but it is insufficient, without adequate commentary to shed light on the true nature and functions of the principle symbolized by Virgil. This principle could be more accurately defined as “spiritual discrimination,” what the Indians call Viveka; that is, the power that human reason, when not veiled and misled by passions and personal feelings, has to recognize the right path to follow and to guide the personality along that path, encouraging it and making it avoid all danger.
But who moves and inspires this power? Dante’s answer is very profound, so much so that it deserves lengthy commentary. The first impulse to help comes from the exalted spheres of Paradise, from a generous woman who takes pity on Dante. She symbolizes the mysterious divine principle of compassion, which brings about grace, the light of the soul, personified by Dante in Lucia; grace in turn arouses divine wisdom represented by Beatrice:
“Beatrice, true praise of God,
why dost thou not help him who loved thee so,
that for thy sake he left the vulgar crowd?”[8]
From this we learn that Dante had intensely aspired to obtain divine wisdom, that is, that his soul had resolutely and seriously attempted to follow the path of the spirit; and this enables him to receive higher help. But divine wisdom does not yet manifest itself directly to him: man, still impure, unregenerate, still shrouded in the dense veils of matter, cannot directly contemplate the supreme truths. Thus, Beatrice sends Virgil: divine wisdom arouses and inspires the power of knowledge and discrimination, which will guide Dante’s soul in the first part of his pilgrimage, the long and painful path of purification and expiation, through the realms of his lower nature.
But before describing the various stages of this pilgrimage, before indicating the methods of moral purification, we must pause to discuss and resolve an important preliminary question.
There are, in fact, various schools of thought which assert — some openly and explicitly, others more or less covertly and more in practice than in theory — that moral purification is not necessary, that one can very well have great revelations without the need for that painful and thankless work. Such a doctrine is certainly very convenient for our selfishness and laziness, but it is nonetheless false and pernicious beneath its attractive appearance. It is therefore necessary to clarify our ideas on this point, especially since the arguments put forward by the schools I will call “immoralistic” are specious and could deceive inexperienced and unwary minds.
Good and evil are relative, say the immoralists; the same act can be good in one case and bad in another. The spirit is above these human distinctions; for it, everything is the same, it justifies everything.
Morality, say others even more explicitly, is a social product, consisting of a series of traditional norms that ordinary people accept without criticism. But [they assert that] the occultist, the superman, can free himself from these constraints; he has such great tasks that he is allowed to do what others cannot or dare not do, and he can use means forbidden to ordinary mortals.
But those who are not dazzled by these striking phrases can easily discover their fundamental falsity.
These sophisms are based primarily on a confusion between the great moral principles of a universal nature and the particular and imperfect applications that men have made of them at various times and in various places. Concrete moral norms, codes, and moral etiquette are, it is true, very relative and sometimes contradictory; but this in no way diminishes the validity of the great laws of morality, which are as certain and rigorous as those of physical nature. For in both cases, it is ultimately a manifestation of the great law of causality, or karma. Thanks to this, every effect not only necessarily derives from its cause, but is already implicit in the cause itself.
Thus, person who commits a bad deed is not punished for breaking a human law, nor for offending a personal God; in short, he are not punished for the bad deed, but directly by the bad deed. The first and most important effect of an act is that which immediately applies to the soul of the person who performed it; a good act elevates and ennobles, while a bad act degrades its author. This is a rigorous law whose justice and necessity are evident, and there is no sophistry or acrobatics of argument that can shake it.
As for the other argument put forward by the immoralists, it too is based on a refutation of ideas. It is true that pure spirit, or more precisely the absolute, the NON-manifest, is without attributes in its essence; therefore, among other things, it is above good and evil. But with the first quiver of cosmic manifestation, the eternal One became Two; that is, polarity appeared, the infinite series of opposites, and among them are good and evil. Now, who can truly say that they themselves are pure spirit, and therefore superior to good and evil? Everyone sees the enormity and foolishness of such presumption.
Quite different are the teachings that all the ancient schools of the East and West agree upon, which tend to develop true and pure spirituality. They tell us that every passion and every selfish desire are, for those who want to ascend, like a ball of lead tied to a foot, a state of slavery to lower forces and entities.
They teach us that every passion, every manifestation of selfishness, even the most subtle and hidden, is by its very nature separative. Spiritual development consists precisely in the gradual and successive overcoming of all separateness, in the harmonization of the various antithetical elements into a higher synthesis, as a necessary preparation for conscious union with the universal Principle, for the distinct and complete realization of unity on all planes and in all aspects.
The same conclusion can be reached by examining the question from the point of view of the powers that are the natural result of the various stages of spiritual progress. There are great difficulties, dangers, and responsibilities connected with the attainment and use of those powers. We will have to learn to master and the great forces of the Universe (“macrocosm”) use them wisely and beneficially; but how can we presume to do so if we are still slaves to the small forces of the “microcosm,” to the petty passions of our small personality?
In conclusion, morality, far from limiting us or unnecessarily delaying our progress, is the only thing that makes us truly free, and all immorality, amorality, or “super-morality” — however cloaked in apparent freedom or greatness — actually make us all the more slaves, the more we are deluded and ignorant of our chains.
Countless are the lofty and severe warnings given in this sense by those who truly know, having reached the lofty heights to which we turn our gaze, filled with acute nostalgia and ardent aspiration from the bottom of the valley. From Buddha to Jesus, from the unknown wise authors of the Upanishads to the great Christian mystics, every awakened soul testifies that it has achieved victory through the purification of the personality, through the destruction of selfishness or egoism.
From all this it follows that those who advance on the path of the Spirit must not only observe the great moral principles of humanity, but must have a purer, stricter, and more conscious morality than that of ordinary men.
As their knowledge of existence and the laws of the higher planes increases, they take on new responsibilities and new duties. For example, when he has learned that thoughts, feelings, and affirmations of the will are not abstractions, but living forces with objective reality in the subtle planes, that they are truly our creations, our creatures, he is much more responsible for the use of those inner forces than is someone who is ignorant of all this. For him, sins of thought and intention become as serious as those committed externally.
It is therefore very true what the author of The Imitation of Christ said in a lapidary phrase:
“Quanto plus et melius scis, tanto gravius judicaveris nisi sanctius vixeris.” (“The more and better you know, the more severely you will be judged if you do not live a holy life”).[9]
I believe I have made this point quite clear; I will only add that this moral question is the surest touchstone for testing the various movements, schools, and trends that contend in the field of spiritualism. However, we must not limit ourselves to testing only theoretical expositions with this touchstone, which sometimes seem very edifying; but also and above all the practical applications and actual results of the various movements, always remembering the great truth: “The tree is known by its fruits.”
This essential need for moral purification is the key to understanding the true reason for the long pilgrimage through the inner worlds that forms the plot of Dante’s poem.
Virgil, the reason and power of higher spiritual discrimination inherent in man, recognized that the still impure soul cannot face and defeat the beasts and climb directly to the radiant summit; therefore, when Dante asks him for help:
“. . . he replied, seeing my soul in tears:
‘He must go by another way who would escape
This wilderness . . . ’ ” [10]
He proposes that they set out together to travel through the abyss of darkness and expiation, and then climb the mountain of purification. Virgil then promises that after this, he will be allowed to ascend, under a higher guide, to the coveted spheres of Light.
Dante’s first reaction was spontaneous acceptance, the result of a momentary impulse and passive submission to his guide rather than a conscious, autonomous decision. As is usually the case in such situations, this was quickly followed by doubt, discouragement, and self-doubt.
This is how Dante expresses this inner change, observed with great subtlety and psychological truth:
“Thus I began: ‘Poet, you who must guide me,
Before you trust me to that arduous passage,
look to me and look through me — can I be worthy?”[11]
……………………………….
“I am not Aeneas. I am not Paul.
Who could believe me worthy of the vision?
How, then, may I presume to this high quest
And not fear my own brashness? You are wise
And will grasp what my poor words can but suggest.
As one who unwills what he wills, will stay
Strong purposes with feeble second thoughts
Until he spells all his first zeal away —”
So I hung back and balked on that dim coast
Till thinking had worn out my enterprise,
so stout at starting and so early lost. [12]
Then Virgil, to enlighten and encourage Dante, explains the lofty origin of his mission; he speaks to him, as we have mentioned, of the divine compassion that moved grace and wisdom to urge him to come to his aid. Thus enlightened about the existence and beneficial power of those great spiritual forces, about the help granted to him from above, he found the solid foundations of a conscious and unshakeable trust, because it was based on knowledge and truth.
Then he set off resolutely and without hesitation behind his wise guide:
“As flowerlets drooped and puckered in the night
Turn up to the returning sun and spread
Their petals wide on his new warmth and light —
Just so my wilted spirits rose again
And such a heat of zeal surged through my veins
That I was born anew. Thus I began:
Blessed be that Lady of infinite pity,
and blessed be thy taxed and courteous spirit
That came so promptly on the word she gave thee.
Thy words have moved my heart to its first purpose.
‘My Guide! My Lord! My Master! Now lead on:
One will shall serve the two of us in this.’
He turned when I had spoken, and at his back
I entered on that hard and perilous track.” [13]
In these first two cantos of his divine poem, Dante represents the human soul at the beginning of the spiritual path — that is, he represents each one of us. And each of us is given — if we truly want it — the opportunity to walk the path he walked, to follow him along the various stages of his great pilgrimage, to climb with him to the sublime spheres of Light and Love.
[1] Dante Alighieri, commonly known simply as “Dante,” (c. 1265-1321) was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher, a native of Florence, who wrote in vernacular Italian (specifically his own Tuscan dialect) at a time when most literature was still written in Latin. His Divine Comedy is considered by many to be the greatest work in the Italian language and one of the great masterworks of world literature. —Ed.
[2] All translations of Dante are by John Ciardi, from The Divine Comedy, New American Library, 1954-1970. —Ed.
[3] Divine Comedy: Inferno I:34-36
[4] Light on the Path: A treatise written for the personal use of those who are ignorant of the eastern wisdom, and who desire to enter within its influence, was written by M. C. (supposedly Mabel Collins, a.k.a. Mrs. Keningale Cook [1851-1927]) and published in 1885. It is still in print. —Ed.
[5] Inferno I: 41-43
[6] Inferno I: 44-45
[7] Inferno I: 60
[8] Inferno II:103-105.
[9] The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis, Book II Chapter 12. —Ed.
[10] Inferno I: 89-91
[11] Inferno II: 10-12
[12]Inferno II: 32-42
[13] Inferno II:127-142
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