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the secret teachings of all ages
Conclusion
CHAPTER xxxxiI
manly p. hall
PHILIP, King of Macedon,
ambitious to obtain the teacher who would be most capable of imparting
the higher branches of learning to his fourteen-year-old son, Alexander,
and wishing the prince to have for his mentor the most famous and
learned of the great philosophers, decided to communicate with
Aristotle. He dispatched the following letter to the Greek sage: "PHILIP
TO ARISTOTLE, HEALTH: Know that I have a son. I render the gods many
thanks; not so much for his birth, as that he was born in your
time, for I hope that being educated and instructed by you, he will
become worthy of us both and the kingdom which he shall inherit."
Accepting Philip's invitation, Aristotle journeyed to Macedon in the
fourth year of the 108th Olympiad, and remained for eight years as the
tutor of Alexander. The young prince's affection for his instructor
became as great as that which he felt for his father. He said that his
father had given him being, but that Aristotle had given him
well-being.
The basic principles of the
Ancient Wisdom were imparted to Alexander the Great by Aristotle, and at
the philosopher's feet the Macedonian youth came to realize the
transcendency of Greek learning as it was personified in Plato's
immortal disciple. Elevated by his illumined teacher to the threshold of
the philosophic sphere, he beheld the world of the sages--the world that
fate and the limitations of his own soul decreed he should not
conquer.
Aristotle in his leisure hours
edited and annotated the Iliad of Horner and presented the
finished volume to Alexander. This book the young conqueror so highly
prized that he carried it with him on all his campaigns. At the time of
his triumph over Darius, discovering among the spoils a magnificent,
gem-studded casket of unguents, he dumped its contents upon the ground,
declaring that at last he had found a case worthy of Aristotle's edition
of the Iliad!
While on his Asiatic campaign,
Alexander learned that Aristotle had published one of his most prized
discourses, an occurrence which deeply grieved the young king. So to
Aristotle, Conqueror of the Unknown, Alexander, Conqueror of the Known,
sent this reproachful and pathetic and admission of the insufficiency of
worldly pomp and power: "ALEXANDER TO ARISTOTLE, HEALTH: You were wrong
in publishing those branches of science hitherto not to be acquired
except from oral instruction. In what shall I excel others if the more
profound knowledge I gained from you be communicated to all? For my
part I had rather surpass the majority of mankind in the sublimer
branches of learning, than in extent of power and dominion.
Farewell." The receipt of this amazing letter caused no ripple in the
placid life of Aristotle, who replied that although the discourse had
been communicated to the multitudes, none who had not heard him deliver
the lecture (who lacked spiritual comprehension) could understand its
true import.
A few short years and Alexander
the Great went the way of all flesh, and with his body crumbled the
structure of empire erected upon his personality. One year later
Aristotle also passed into that greater world concerning whose mysteries
he had so often discoursed with his disciples in the Lyceum. But, as
Aristotle excelled Alexander in life, so he excelled him in death; for
though his body moldered in an obscure tomb, the great philosopher
continued to live in his intellectual achievements. Age after age paid
him grateful tribute, generation after generation pondered over his
theorems until by the sheer transcendency of his rational faculties
Aristotle--"the master of those who know," as Dante has called
him--became the actual conqueror of the very world which Alexander had
sought to subdue with the sword.
Thus it is demonstrated that to
capture a man it is not sufficient to enslave his body--it is necessary
to enlist his reason; that to free a man it is not enough to strike the
shackles from his limbs--his mind must be liberated from bondage to his
own ignorance. Physical conquest must ever fail, for, generating hatred
and dissension, it spurs the mind to the avenging of an outraged body;
but all men are bound whether willingly or unwillingly to obey that
intellect in which they recognize qualities and virtues superior to
their own.
That the philosophic culture of
ancient Greece, Egypt, and India excelled that of the modern, world must
be admitted by all, even by the most confirmed of modernists. The golden
era of Greek ęsthetics, intellectualism, and ethics has never since been
equaled. The true philosopher belongs to the most noble order of men:
the nation or race which is blessed by possession of illumined thinkers
is fortunate indeed, and its name shall be remembered for their sake. In
the famous Pythagorean school at Crotona, philosophy was regarded as
indispensable to the life of man. He who did not comprehend the dignity
of the reasoning power could not properly be said to live. Therefore,
when through innate perverseness a member either voluntarily withdrew or
was forcibly ejected from the philosophic fraternity, a headstone was
set up for him in the community graveyard; for he who had forsaken
intellectual and ethical pursuits to reenter the material sphere with
its illusions of sense and false ambition was regarded as one dead to
the sphere of Reality. The life represented by the thraldom of the
senses the Pythagoreans conceived to be spiritual death, while they
regarded death to the sense-world as spiritual life.
Philosophy bestows life in that
it reveals the dignity and purpose of living. Materiality bestows death
in that it benumbs or clouds those faculties of the human soul which
should be responsive to the enlivening impulses of creative thought and
ennobling virtue. How inferior to these standards of remote days are the
laws by which men live in the twentieth century! Today man, a sublime
creature with infinite capacity for self-improvement, in an effort to be
true to false standards, turns from his birthright of
understanding--without realizing the consequences--and plunges into the
maelstrom of material illusion. The precious span of his earthly years
he devotes to the pathetically futile effort to establish himself as an
enduring power in a realm of unenduring things. Gradually the memory of
his life as a spiritual being vanishes from his objective mind and he
focuses all his partly awakened faculties upon the seething beehive of
industry which he has come to consider the sole actuality. From the
lofty heights of his Selfhood he slowly sinks into the gloomy depths of
ephemerality. He falls to the level of the beast, and in brutish fashion
mumbles the problems arising from his all too insufficient knowledge of
the Divine Plan. Here in the lurid turmoil of a great industrial,
political, commercial inferno, men writhe in self-inflicted agony and,
reaching out into the swirling mists, strive to clutch and hold the
grotesque phantoms of success and power.
JOHN AND THE VISION OF THE
APOCALYPSE.
From an engraving by Jean
Duvet.
Jean Duvet of Langres (who was
born in 1485 and presumably died sometime after 1561, the year in which
his illustrations to the Apocalypse were printed in book form) was the
oldest and greatest of French Renaissance engravers. Little is known
concerning Duvet beyond the fact that he was the goldsmith to the King
of France. His engravings for the Book of Revelation, executed after he
had passed his seventieth year, were his masterpiece. (For further
information regarding this obscure master, consult article by William M.
Ivins, Jr., in The Arts, May, 1926.) The face of John is an
actual portrait of Duvet. This plate, like many others cut by Duvet, is
rich in philosophical symbolism.
Ignorant of the cause of life,
ignorant of the purpose of life, ignorant of what lies beyond the
mystery of death, yet possessing within himself the answer to it all,
man is willing to sacrifice the beautiful, the true, and the good within
and without upon the blood-stained altar of worldly ambition. The world
of philosophy--that beautiful garden of thought wherein the sages dwell
in the bond of fraternity--fades from view. In its place rises an empire
of stone, steel, smoke, and hate-a world in which millions of creatures
potentially human scurry to and fro in the desperate effort to exist and
at the same time maintain the vast institution which they have erected
and which, like some mighty, juggernaut, is rumbling inevitably towards
an unknown end. In this physical empire, which man erects in the vain
belief that he can outshine the kingdom of the celestials, everything is
changed to stone, Fascinated by the glitter of gain, man gazes at the
Medusa-like face of greed and stands petrified.
In this commercial age science
is concerned solely with the classification of physical knowledge and
investigation of the temporal and illusionary parts of Nature. Its
so-called practical discoveries bind man but more tightly with the bonds
of physical limitation, Religion, too, has become materialistic: the
beauty and dignity of faith is measured by huge piles of masonry, by
tracts of real estate, or by the balance sheet. Philosophy which
connects heaven and earth like a mighty ladder, up the rungs of which
the illumined of all ages have climbed into the living presence of
Reality--even philosophy has become a prosaic and heterogeneous mass of
conflicting notions. Its beauty, its dignity, its transcendency are no
more. Like other branches of human thought, it has been made
materialistic--"practical"--and its activities so directionalized that
they may also contribute their part to the erection of this modern world
of stone and steel.
In the ranks of the so-called
learned there is rising up a new order of thinkers, which may best be
termed the School of the Worldly Wise Men. After arriving at the
astounding conclusion that they are the intellectual salt of the earth,
these gentlemen of letters have appointed themselves the final judges of
all knowledge, both human and divine. This group affirms that all
mystics must have been epileptic and most of the saints neurotic! It
declares God to be a fabrication of primitive superstition; the universe
to be intended for no particular purpose; immortality to be a figment of
the imagination; and an outstanding individuality to be but a fortuitous
combination of cells! Pythagoras is asserted to have suffered from a
"bean complex"; Socrates was a notorious inebriate; St. Paul was subject
to fits; Paracelsus was an infamous quack, the Comte di Cagliostro a
mountebank, and the Comte de St.-Germain the outstanding crook of
history!
What do the lofty concepts of
the world's illumined saviors and sages have in common with these
stunted, distorted products of the "realism" of this century? All over
the world men and women ground down by the soulless cultural systems of
today are crying out for the return of the banished age of beauty and
enlightenment--for something practical in the highest sense of
the word. A few are beginning to realize that so-called civilization in
its present form is at the vanishing point; that coldness,
heartlessness, commercialism, and material efficiency are
impractical, and only that which offers opportunity for the
expression of love and ideality is truly worth while. All the world is
seeking happiness, but knows not in what direction to search. Men must
learn that happiness crowns the soul's quest for understanding. Only
through the realization of infinite goodness and infinite accomplishment
can the peace of the inner Self be assured. In spite of man's
geocentricism, there is something in the human mind that is reaching out
to philosophy--not to this or that philosophic code, but simply to
philosophy in the broadest and fullest sense.
The great philosophic
institutions of the past must rise again, for these alone can tend the
veil which divides the world of causes from that of effects. Only the
Mysteries--those sacred Colleges of Wisdom--can reveal to struggling
humanity that greater and more glorious universe which is the true home
of the spiritual being called man. Modern philosophy has failed in that
it has come to regard thinking as simply an intellectual process.
Materialistic thought is as hopeless a code of life as commercialism
itself. The power to think true is the savior of humanity. The
mythological and historical Redeemers of every age were all
personifications of that power. He who has a little more rationality
than his neighbor is a little better than his neighbor. He who functions
on a higher plane of rationality than the rest of the world is termed
the greatest thinker. He who functions on a lower plane is regarded as a
barbarian. Thus comparative rational development is the true gauge of
the individual's evolutionary status.
Briefly stated, the true
purpose of ancient philosophy was to discover a method whereby
development of the rational nature could be accelerated instead of
awaiting the slower processes of Nature, This supreme source of power,
this attainment of knowledge, this unfolding of the god within, is
concealed under the epigrammatic statement of the philosophic
life. This was the key to the Great Work, the mystery of the
Philosopher's Stone, for it meant that alchemical transmutation had been
accomplished. Thus ancient philosophy was primarily the living of a
life; secondarily, an intellectual method. He alone can become a
philosopher in the highest sense who lives the philosophic life.
What man lives he comes to know. Consequently, a great
philosopher is one whose threefold life--physical, mental, and
spiritual--is wholly devoted to and completely permeated by his
rationality.
Man's physical, emotional, and
mental natures provide environments of reciprocal benefit or detriment
to each other. Since the physical nature is the immediate environment of
the mental, only that mind is capable of rational thinking which is
enthroned in a harmonious and highly refined material constitution.
Hence right action, right feeling, and right
thinking are prerequisites of right knowing, and the
attainment of philosophic power is possible only to such as have
harmonized their thinking with their living. The wise have therefore
declared that none can attain to the highest in the science of knowing
until first he has attained to the highest in the science of living.
Philosophic power is the natural outgrowth of the philosophic
life. Just as an intense physical existence emphasizes the
importance of physical things, or just as the monastic metaphysical
asceticism establishes the desirability of the ecstatic state, so
complete philosophic absorption ushers the consciousness of the thinker
into the most elevated and noble of all spheres--the pure philosophic,
or rational, world.
In a civilization primarily
concerned with the accomplishment of the extremes of temporal activity,
the philosopher represents an equilibrating intellect capable of
estimating and guiding the cultural growth. The establishment of the
philosophic rhythm in the nature of an individual ordinarily
requires from fifteen to twenty years. During that entire period the
disciples of old were constantly subjected to the most severe
discipline. Every activity of life was gradually disengaged from other
interests and focalized upon the reasoning part. In the ancient world
there was another and most vital factor which entered into the
production of rational intellects and which is entirely beyond the
comprehension of modern thinkers: namely, initiation into the
philosophic Mysteries. A man who had demonstrated his peculiar mental
and spiritual fitness was accepted into the body of the learned
and to him was revealed that priceless heritage of arcane lore preserved
from generation to generation. This heritage of philosophic truth is the
matchless treasure of all ages, and each disciple admitted into these
brotherhoods of the wise made, in turn, his individual
contribution to this store of classified knowledge.
The one hope of the world is
philosophy, for all the sorrows of modern life result from the lack of a
proper philosophic code. Those who sense even in part the dignity of
life cannot but realize the shallowness apparent in the activities of
this age. Well has it been said that no individual can succeed until he
has developed his philosophy of life. Neither can a race or nation
attain true greatness until it has formulated an adequate philosophy and
has dedicated its existence to a policy consistent with that philosophy.
During the World War, when so-called civilization hurled one half of
itself against the other in a frenzy of hate, men ruthlessly destroyed
something more precious even than human life: they obliterated those
records of human thought by which life can be intelligently
directionalized. Truly did Mohammed declare the ink of philosophers to
be more precious than the blood of martyrs. Priceless documents,
invaluable records of achievement, knowledge founded on ages of patient
observation and experimentation by the elect of the earth--all were
destroyed with scarcely a qualm of regret. What was knowledge, what was
truth, beauty, love, idealism, philosophy, or religion when compared to
man's desire to control an infinitesimal spot in the fields of Cosmos
for an inestimably minute fragment of time? Merely to satisfy some whim
or urge of ambition man would uproot the universe, though well he knows
that in a few short years he must depart, leaving all that he has seized
to posterity as an old cause for fresh contention.
War--the irrefutable evidence
of irrationality--still smolders in the hearts of men; it cannot die
until human selfishness is overcome. Armed with multifarious inventions
and destructive agencies, civilization will continue its fratricidal
strife through future ages, But upon the mind of man there is dawning a
great fear--the fear that eventually civilization will
destroy itself in one great cataclysmic struggle. Then must be reenacted
the eternal drama of reconstruction. Out of the ruins of the
civilization which died when its idealism died, some primitive people
yet in the womb of destiny must build a new world. Foreseeing the needs
of that day, the philosophers of the ages have desired that into the
structure of this new world shall be incorporated the truest and finest
of all that has gone before. It is a divine law that the sum of previous
accomplishment shall be the foundation of each new order of things. The
great philosophic treasures of humanity must be preserved. That which is
superficial may he allowed to perish; that which is fundamental and
essential must remain, regardless of cost.
THE ENTRANCE TO THE HOUSE OF THE
MYSTERIES.
From Khunrath's Amphitheatrum
Sapientię, etc.
This symbolic figure,
representing the way to everlasting life, is described by
Khunrath in substance as follows: "This is the Portal of the
amphitheatre of the only true and eternal Wisdom--a narrow one, indeed,
but sufficiently august, and consecrated to Jehovah. To this portal
ascent is made by a mystic, indisputably prologetic, flight of steps,
set before it as shown in the picture. It consists of seven theosophic,
or, rather, philosophic steps of the Doctrine of the Faithful Sons.
After ascending the steps, the path is along the way of God the Father,
either directly by inspiration or by various mediate means. According to
the seven oracular laws shining at the portal, those who are inspired
divinely have the power to enter and with the eyes of the body and of
the mind, of seeing, contemplating and investigating in a
Christiano-Kabalistic, divino-magical, physico-chemical manner, the
nature of the Wisdom: Goodness, and Power of the Creator; to the end
that they die not sophistically but live theosophically, and that the
orthodox philosophers so created may with sincere philosophy expound the
works of the Lord, and worthily praise God who has thus blessed these
friend, of God." The above figure and description constitute one of the
most remarkable expositions ever made of the appearance of the Wise
Man's House and the way by which it must be entered.
Two fundamental forms of
ignorance were recognized by the Platonists: simple ignorance and
complex ignorance. Simple ignorance is merely lack of knowledge
and is common to all creatures existing posterior to the First Cause,
which alone has perfection of knowledge. Simple ignorance is an
ever-active agent, urging the soul onward to the acquisition of
knowledge. From this virginal state of unawareness grows the desire to
become aware with its resultant improvement in the mental condition. The
human intellect is ever surrounded by forms of existence beyond the
estimation of its partly developed faculties. In this realm of objects
not understood is a never-failing source of mental stimuli. Thus wisdom
eventually results from the effort to cope rationally with the problem
of the unknown.
In the last analysis, the
Ultimate Cause alone can be denominated wise; in simpler words, only God
is good. Socrates declared knowledge, virtue, and utility to be one with
the innate nature of good. Knowledge is a condition of knowing;
virtue a condition of being; utility a condition of doing.
Considering wisdom as synonymous with mental completeness, it is evident
that such a state can exist only in the Whole, for that which is less
than the Whole cannot possess the fullness of the All. No part of
creation is complete; hence each part is imperfect to the extent that it
falls short of entirety. Where incompleteness is, it also follows that
ignorance must be coexistent; for every part, while capable of knowing
its own Self, cannot become aware of the Self in the other parts.
Philosophically considered, growth from the standpoint of human
evolution is a process proceeding from heterogeneity to homogeneity. In
time, therefore, the isolated consciousness of the individual fragments
is reunited to become the complete consciousness of the Whole. Then, and
then only, is the condition of all-knowing an absolute
reality.
Thus all creatures are
relatively ignorant yet relatively wise; comparatively nothing yet
comparatively all. The microscope reveals to man his significance; the
telescope, his insignificance. Through the eternities of existence man
is gradually increasing in both wisdom and understanding; his
ever-expanding consciousness is including more of the external within
the area of itself. Even in man's present state of imperfection it is
dawning upon his realization that he can never be truly happy until he
is perfect, and that of all the faculties contributing to his
self-perfection none is equal in importance to the rational intellect.
Through the labyrinth of diversity only the illumined mind can, and
must, lead the soul into the perfect light of unity.
In addition to the simple
ignorance which is the most potent factor in mental growth there exists
another, which is of a far more dangerous and subtle type. This second
form, called twofold or complex ignorance, may be briefly
defined as ignorance of ignorance. Worshiping the sun, moon, and
stars, and offering sacrifices to the winds, the primitive savage sought
with crude fetishes to propitiate his unknown gods. He dwelt in a world
filled with wonders which he did not understand. Now great cities stand
where once roamed the Crookboned men. Humanity no longer regards itself
as primitive or aboriginal. The spirit of wonder and awe has been
succeeded by one of sophistication. Today man worships his own
accomplishments, and either relegates the immensities of time and space
to the background of his consciousness or disregards them
entirely.
The twentieth century makes a
fetish of civilization and is overwhelmed by its own fabrications; its
gods are of its own fashioning. Humanity has forgotten how
infinitesimal, how impermanent and how ignorant it actually is. Ptolemy
has been ridiculed for conceiving the earth to be the center of the
universe, yet modern civilization is seemingly founded upon the
hypothesis that the planet earth is the most permanent and important of
all the heavenly spheres, and that the gods from their
starry thrones are fascinated by the monumental and epochal events
taking place upon this spherical ant-hill in Chaos.
From age to age men ceaselessly
toil to build cities that they may rule over them with pomp and
power--as though a fillet of gold or ten million vassals could elevate
man above the dignity of his own thoughts and make the glitter of his
scepter visible to the distant stars. As this tiny planet rolls along
its orbit in space, it carries with it some two billion human beings who
live and die oblivious to that immeasurable existence lying beyond the
lump on which they dwell. Measured by the infinities of time and space,
what are the captains of industry or the lords of finance? If one of
these plutocrats should rise until he ruled the earth itself, what would
he be but a petty despot seated on a grain of Cosmic dust?
Philosophy reveals to man his
kinship with the All. It shows him that he is a brother to the suns
which dot the firmament; it lifts him from a taxpayer on a whirling atom
to a citizen of Cosmos. It teaches him that while physically bound to
earth (of which his blood and bones are part), there is nevertheless
within him a spiritual power, a diviner Self, through which he is one
with the symphony of the Whole. Ignorance of ignorance, then, is that
self-satisfied state of unawareness in which man, knowing nothing
outside the limited area of his physical senses, bumptiously declares
there is nothing more to know! He who knows no life save the physical is
merely ignorant; but he who declares physical life to be all-important
and elevates it to the position of supreme reality--such a one is
ignorant of his own ignorance.
If the Infinite had not desired
man to become wise, He would not have bestowed upon him the faculty of
knowing. If He had not intended man to become virtuous, He would not
have sown within the human heart the seeds of virtue. If He had
predestined man to be limited to his narrow physical life, He would not
have equipped him with perceptions and sensibilities capable of
grasping, in part at least, the immensity of the outer universe. The
criers of philosophy call all men to a comradeship of the spirit: to a
fraternity of thought: to a convocation of Selves. Philosophy invites
man out of the vainness of selfishness; out of the sorrow of ignorance
and the despair of worldliness; out of the travesty of ambition and the
cruel clutches of greed; out of the red hell of hate and the cold tomb
of dead idealism.
Philosophy would lead all men
into the broad, calm vistas of truth, for the world of philosophy is a
land of peace where those finer qualities pent up within each human soul
are given opportunity for expression. Here men are taught the wonders of
the blades of grass; each stick and stone is endowed with speech and
tells the secret of its being. All life, bathed in the radiance of
understanding, becomes a wonderful and beautiful reality. From the four
corners of creation swells a mighty anthem of rejoicing, for here in the
light of philosophy is revealed the purpose of existence; the wisdom and
goodness permeating the Whole become evident to even man's imperfect
intellect. Here the yearning heart of humanity finds that companionship
which draws forth from the innermost recesses of the soul that great
store of good which lies there like precious metal in some deep hidden
vein.
Following the path pointed out
by the wise, the seeker after truth ultimately attains to the summit of
wisdom's mount, and gazing down, beholds the panorama of life spread out
before him. The cities of the plains are but tiny specks and the horizon
on every hand is obscured by the gray haze of the Unknown. Then the soul
realizes that wisdom lies in breadth of vision; that it increases in
comparison to the vista. Then as man's thoughts lift him heavenward,
streets are lost in cities, cities in nations, nations in continents,
continents in the earth, the earth in space, and space in an infinite
eternity, until at last but two things remain: the Self and the goodness
of God.
While man's physical body
resides with him and mingles with the heedless throng, it is difficult
to conceive of man as actually inhabiting a world of his own-a world
which he has discovered by lifting himself into communion with the
profundities of his own internal nature. Man may live two lives. One is
a struggle from the womb to the tomb. Its span is measured by man's own
creation--time. Well may it be called the unheeding life. The other life
is from realization to infinity. It begins with understanding, its
duration is forever, and upon the plane of eternity it is consummated.
This is called the philosophic life. Philosophers are nor born nor do
they die; for once having achieved the realization of immortality, they
are immortal. Having once communed with Self, they realize that within
there is an immortal foundation that will not pass away. Upon this
living, vibrant base--Self--they erect a civilization which will endure
after the sun, the moon, and the stars have ceased to be. The fool lives
but for today; the philosopher lives forever.
When once the rational
consciousness of man rolls away the stone and comes forth from its
sepulcher, it dies no more; for to this second or philosophic birth
there is no dissolution. By this should not be inferred physical
immortality, but rather that the philosopher has learned that his
physical body is no more his true Self than the physical earth is his
true world. In the realization that he and his body are dissimilar--that
though the form must perish the life will not fail--he achieves
conscious immortality. This was the immortality to which Socrates
referred when he said: "Anytus and Melitus may indeed put me to death,
but they cannot injure me." To the wise, physical existence is but the
outer room of the hall of life. Swinging open the doors of this
antechamber, the illumined pass into the greater and more perfect
existence. The ignorant dwell in a world bounded by time and space. To
those, however, who grasp the import and dignity of Being, these are but
phantom shapes, illusions of the senses-arbitrary limits imposed by
man's ignorance upon the duration of Deity. The philosopher lives and
thrills with the realization of this duration, for to him this infinite
period has been designed by the All-Wise Cause as the time of all
accomplishment.
Man is not the insignificant
creature that he appears to be; his physical body is not the true
measure of his real self. The invisible nature of man is as vast as his
comprehension and as measureless as his thoughts. The fingers of his
mind reach out and grasp the stars; his spirit mingles with the
throbbing life of Cosmos itself. He who has attained to the state of
understanding thereby has so increased his capacity to know that he
gradually incorporates within himself the various elements of the
universe. The unknown is merely that which is yet to be included within
the consciousness of the seeker. Philosophy assists man to develop the
sense of appreciation; for as it reveals the glory and the sufficiency
of knowledge, it also unfolds those latent powers and faculties whereby
man is enabled to master the secrets of the seven spheres.
From the world of physical
pursuits the initiates of old called their disciples into the life of
the mind and the spirit. Throughout the ages, the Mysteries have stood
at the threshold of Reality--that hypothetical spot between
noumenon and phenomenon, the Substance and the shadow. The
gates of the Mysteries stand ever ajar and those who will may pass
through into the spacious domicile of spirit. The world of philosophy
lies neither to the right nor to the left, neither above nor below. Like
a subtle essence permeating all space and all substance, it is
everywhere; it penetrates the innermost and the outermost parts of all
being. In every man and woman these two spheres are connected by a gate
which leads from the not-self and its concerns to the Self and its
realizations. In the mystic this gate is the heart, and through
spiritualization of his emotions he contacts that more elevated plane
which, once felt and known, becomes the sum of the worth-while. In the
philosopher, reason is the gate between the outer and the inner worlds,
the illumined mind bridging the chasm between the corporeal and the
incorporeal. Thus godhood is born within the one who sees, and from the
concerns of men he rises to the concerns of gods.
In this era of "practical"
things men ridicule even the existence of God. They scoff at goodness
while they ponder with befuddled minds the phantasmagoria of
materiality. They have forgotten the path which leads beyond the stars.
The great mystical institutions of antiquity which invited man to enter
into his divine inheritance have crumbled, and institutions of human
scheming now stand where once the ancient houses of learning rose a
mystery of fluted columns and polished marble. The white-robed sages who
gave to the world its ideals of culture and beauty have gathered their
robes about them and departed from the sight of men. Nevertheless, this
little earth is bathed as of old in the sunlight of its Providential
Generator. Wide-eyed babes still face the mysteries of physical
existence. Men continue to laugh and cry, to love and hate; Some still
dream of a nobler world, a fuller life, a more perfect realization. In
both the heart and mind of man the gates which lead from mortality to
immortality are still ajar. Virtue, love, and idealism are yet the
regenerators of humanity. God continues to love and guide the destinies
of His creation. The path still winds upward to accomplishment. The soul
of man has not been deprived of its wings; they are merely folded under
its garment of flesh. Philosophy is ever that magic power which,
sundering the vessel of clay, releases the soul from its bondage to
habit and perversion. Still as of old, the soul released can spread its
wings and soar to the very source of itself.
The criers of the Mysteries
speak again, bidding all men welcome to the House of Light. The great
institution of materiality has failed. The false civilization built by
man has turned, and like the monster of Frankenstein, is destroying its
creator. Religion wanders aimlessly in the maze of theological
speculation. Science batters itself impotently against the barriers of
the unknown. Only transcendental philosophy knows the path. Only the
illumined reason can carry the understanding part of man upward to the
light. Only philosophy can teach man to be born well, to live well, to
die well, and in perfect measure be born again. Into this band of the
elect--those who have chosen the life of knowledge, of virtue, and of
utility--the philosophers of the ages invite YOU.
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