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MAN, KNOW THYSELF 

Amanda Rooke 

           

 I have brought in the cover of the CD of British rock band,The Moody Blues, album Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. I think this illustration sums up the doctrine of ‘Man Know Thyself’ - an old man presenting the precious stone of the knowledge of the divine to a little boy, both their faces perfect in their appearance, seeming to radiate with the light of this knowledge. I’ll leave it on the wall as a constant reference point for us, and I will end with a poem by this fantastic group, which again sums it all up, in my estimation.             

Theosophical writer, Dr Gottfried de Purucker,[GDP] speaks much about “Man know thyself”, and believes it is in the teachings of all the world’s great philosophies and religions which indicate that man’s constitution contains “not only all the mysteries in the Universe, but as containing likewise the master-key unlocking those mysteries themselves”, and in proportion, the more man learns to know himself, the more he is able to unlock the mysteries of the Universe around him, which he mistakenly thinks to be outside himself. [1] This is not to say we should be narcissistic and self-obsessed, of course, we must think outwards and live in the world.

            Has anyone seen the movie The Secret Garden? You may recall the scene where the heroine, a little girl orphaned in India, and coming to England, explained this wonderful doctrine, condensed for a child’s understanding in a tale her Hindu nursemaid taught her. She told of a little boy who was very special, because when you looked down his throat, you could see the whole universe there. I think the boy must have been one of the Hindu gods. Of course, her (really odious) English cousin scoffed and said: “Don’t be silly, the universe would never fit inside him! That’s impossible”, but I think he came to believe this, from the events that unfolded later. I too hope to unfold how Man mirrors the universe, the sum of his pieces being greater than the whole. The girl was saying what HPB called “poor orphaned humanity”, was also trying to find its way home. As we’ve been told often before, the gods pondered where to hide the truth of Man’s inheritance and the truth of life, deciding to hide it somewhere he would never look for it, within himself!              Grace Knoche, in her book: Theosophy in the Qabbalah, discussed the origin of the universe, which the ancients pictured in the form of a great tree, or a divine man, originator/Adam Kadmon. A similar story reflects the many and varied forms of the successive avatars of Vishnu, the preserver in the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Siva and Vishnu, all emitting from Brahma originally. An avatar is a ray sent from a god, originating from a ray from the raja sun, which shines upon a very spiritual man who acts for the greater good upon the earth. (At this point in the lecture a wooden carving of Vishnu riding a Garuda bird, which was carved on the island of Bali in Indonesia was shown. Also and illustration from the indian epic The Bhagavad Gita, illustrating Krishna and Arjuna in their chariot)) This is pictorially summed up in the statue of Garuda, Vishnu’s “means of transportation”, a great divine eagle/man. And we are reminded of the symbolism of the chariot (the man), with its charioteer, the higher self/selves, yet drawn by a horse, the lower self, working in cooperation with its fellow-selves as one. Another smaller statue [of an eagle/man, also from

Bali] better shows the morphing of the eagle with the man, perhaps our animal and spiritual nature combined. In many philosophies Man is described as midway between the animals and the angels or gods, having the body of the former and the mind/spirit of the latter. On the big statue, eagle-man’s back sits his godlike director, and below, they stand upon the back of the turtle whose segmented back mirrors the continents in the seas of the earth, and the horn on whose nose (also a representation of Mt. Meru, the original and holiest land created), was used as the twisting-peg for the rope, serpent also with a horned nose, which rope was twirled to stir the primordial oceans of milk into curds, the continents upon which men live, and whey, the oceans. There were serial creations, a series of worlds, a series of

Adams or Manus, told of in Hindu and Jewish, mysticism. Vishnu in earliest tales plunged into the waters in the form of a boar, to hold up the earth on his tusks, and in later versions he has 10 avataras, ranging from the fish, tortoise, boar, man-lion, dwarf, with Krishna at the 8th and the 10th who will be the Kalki-avatara (a bit like Christ of the 2nd coming, or the Maitreya Buddha).            I think this eagle-man, the intercessor between godlike and animal kingdoms, is Man working in his higher nature, to achieve contact with the angelic/godlike, abodes, as in the intersecting downward and upward triangles of the Seal of Solomon. The emanator, from a single point to the plethora of points making up the manifest universe, the “ra” symbol, symbolises the inner spiritual, sutra atman, or thread-self, the bead-string and the place through which it is threaded, linking us with all the rest of Manifestation of which we are a part and which are fellow-mirrors of the greater life within life, from which we originated, and part of which is in us and everything. The dot is the Raja Sun, within the outer circle of sun we see in the sky, which is nevertheless our physical source of life.(show picture) This too is a constant reference point diagram!            

Vishnu is the god, sits atop the animal-man, atop the animal, a chain of being. A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion says Vishnu’s name derives from the root “vish”, “to pervade”, he manifested the solar energy, crossing the seven regions of the universe in three steps and enveloping all things with the dust of his beams; embodying mercy and goodness displayed as the preserving power, the self-existent, all-pervading spirit, as per the water pervading everywhere before Creation, coalescing in the image of Narayana  who sleeps upon the waters, and from whom his worshippers believe all things emanate, in the form of 10 (actually innumerable) Avataras, 8th = Krishna, - succeeding in levels of spiritual actualisation. [3] This is like the doctrine of Swabhava in the Indian Sanskrit language “to become”, “to grow into something” or “self-becoming” - each being has its essential nature “Swabhavat” and that each being expresses this essential nature through garments, vehicles or bodies, which are suitable for it at each stage of its long journey of spiritual evolution. The fundamental and immortal Self sends rays of itself into the material worlds and uses appropriate vehicles to express its inner nature a bit like the Sun sending out its rays into the surrounding darkness of the Solar System and nourishing the different planets of its kingdom.             

The word “Man” is very similar to “manas” which means mind, and the Indian word for the Adam/Adam Kadmons, and their successive emanations, were the series of seven MANU’S, embodiments of manas, mind. We should see the “divine” not with the kama manas, but the higher triad, of which Manas is the lowest link; by living/evolving, the atman/buddhi/manas evolve more and more, and, as we do in school, we become ourselves, by knowing things, we re-coalesce in a finer form.            

The French  philosopher and mathematician, Descartes, said: “I think therefore I am”. We save and build piece by piece for ourselves, from our experiences, a mirror of the outer world within our mind and brain, made to make sense of the outside world. Studying to be a plumber, we become a plumber – “For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” [prov, xxiii, 7], or in Sanskrit: Yadyad rupam kamayate devata, tattad rupam devata bhavati: - “Whatever body (or form) a divine being longs for, that very body (or form) the divine being becomes”, because “Tat twam asi” “That, thou art”. [5]  That or Tat, is the Sanskrit name for the ineffable spiritual source of all. You can successfully be you, you can’t really be someone else, therefore “find your joy” and be it with all your might.             

We can come to know ourselves by becoming a chela and following the Path, instructed by a guru, or just as nature designed it, gaining mastery over self through the tasks and challenges of daily life, which are amazingly esoteric in nature, and show a glimmering trace of the hierarch directing these tasks set before us (via our inner self’s “desires” for knowledge). We must remember this is a hard road, and we have to be careful what we wish for, because we might just get what we want!             

GDP wrote that: “Man know thyself,” gnôthi seauton, was an archaic Greek motto written over the portico of one of the temples of the Oracle of Apollo of Delphi. He refers constantly to the body as the temple of the living spirit. In the The Secret Doctrine by HP Blavatsky [HPB], it says that the Delphic Temple had in it a sacred symbol (of wood, then bronze), of the sacred numeral Five, linked with the five words written upon Christ’s akashic shining garment at His glorification, and linked to the five mystic powers on the robe of the Initiate after his last trial of three days trance. (robe meaning body, as in “coats of flesh” in Jewish and African mysticism, I think, here. – [6] HPB refers to the “Delphic Oracular vapours” (i.e. of incense from the altar?) as synonymous with the akasic light, or primordial substance – Fohat?[7] That is, the temple may have been given over to the divine gnosis, attained by intuition. This is just like the phrase: “Know ye that ye are gods, and that the spirit of the Divine dwelleth within you? For verily each one of you is a temple of the divinity”.            

“Know thyself is indeed the injunction; but why are you so enjoined? It is because in knowing thyself, in looking within, in marching ever inwards, in going farther and farther into the depths of your being, you come ever closer and closer – but never can you fully attain it – to the Universal Life.” [9] This is similar to CS Lewis’s The Last Battle - everyone had to go through the dreaded stable door, which led however into Aslan’s sacred land (they had died and this was their heaven), and they were admonished to go “further up and further in”, to get to the presence of their deity. Initiates as we have been told, attain this unity with their inner god when still alive.             

GDP continues: “The Divine can be understood by looking within, along the path of understanding, along the path of comprehension, along the path of intuition; for the very root of man’s spiritual nature is that Divine itself, our spiritual origin, our impersonal parent, the source of our essence; from it we sprang in the far distant aeons of the illimitable past on our cycling journey downwards into matter; and to it shall we return in the far distant cycles of the future – but then as full-grown spiritual adults, fully developed spiritual Monads. Having left it in the morning of time as un-self-conscious god-sparks, we shall return to it as self-conscious divinities. It is we, and we are it. It is the inmost Self living at the core, at the heart, of each one of us; at the heart of all that is, of all entities that are; because fundamentally it is everything.            

As a man thinks thoughts, which are ensouled things, because they are matter and yet spring from a spiritual being, so, speaking in symbolic form, the Divine sends forth from itself sparks of its own fire, and each one of these sparks contains in itself the root of Self, self-hood, self-consciousness, growing ever greater, ever larger, ever expanding, never reaching an ultimate, but always marching towards it in constantly growing greatness of consciousness and beauty. Man, therefore, is the temple expressing as far as he may by means of the building of the spiritual vehicle within, the vast and ineffable glories of the Divine – of the Inexpressible. In man’s inmost nature is the very heart of Deity”.

The soul leaves its parent, wanders through aeons of learning, finally to return to the temple of his parent deity, recognised at last as his lost son, and invited to: “Enter into thine own.” Then there is no more separation between the I and thou, the god within and its imperfect vehicle. The Divine exists everywhere, in all the monads within all the life forms (and everything is alive) in its body/universe. “Monads are spiritual beings, self-conscious, self-motivated, self-impelled god-sparks, fully self-conscious for the Manvantara,… or Great cycle of planetary life; and such a Monad exists at the core, at the heart, of every specific corpuscle or infinitesimal… all “offspring from its parent Monad, are elemental entities beginning each its upward march, as a thought will spring from the mind of man; for thoughts are things, and are ensouled”. (a friend told me once: Angel = messenger = thought!!!) These multitudes of living entities begin the evolutionary path “in the heart of the divine Hierarch of their own particular hierarchy, pass downwards through the manifold and various stages of matter, rise again when the turn of a particular cycle has been reached, and again re-enter the bosom of the divine, from which each sprang in the beginnings of that period of evolutionary time”. 

 Evolution is about “building of a manifesting vehicle capable of expressing the innate powers of the spiritual monad. It is the unwrapping or unfolding of latent or dormant or sleeping powers. It is the building of living temples of self-expression which grow nobler with every step taken forwards.            

GDP thinks this aim is achievable through both daily life, and later through initiation, the key lying in our outlook, whether we can overcome overcome our illusions and selfish orientations, and therefore transmute our lower self, “to become first nobly human, and finally godlike [13]  – Again in Narnia Chronicles, a boy called Eustace became a dragon because he coveted another dragon’s treasure. While still a boy he donned an armband which as a dragon, caused him great pain, so he soon severely repented his “dragonish greedy thoughts”, met Aslan (i.e. God) one day near a spa-pond and was told to remove his dragonish skin so he could bathe in the curative waters; he emerged a changed boy! I’m using a child’s story, because GDP says “It is the child’s heart that we need – trusting, intuitive, and alert” because only the higher understanding lying within the higher nature “can arrive at the inner meaning of the teachings”, like that of the parables Christ gave his disciples.

The likeness of the body to a dragon shouldn’t make us think the body is evil and expendable, for like the Garuda of Vishnu, it is our vehicle through which our divine entity does work in the world, a place where pure spirit alone cannot exist.             Anyone can enter “The Still Small Path”, once embracing selflessness and overcoming all inner illusions, making “a deliberate and actual choice with all the strength of his being, he kindles a light within, …the buddhic splendour”, an act which is noticed by the teachers, who accept him as a chela, who proceed to test him in many ways with tests arising from the ordinary events of life, before he knows he is accepted as a chela, chelaship meaning “trying to bring out the master living in our own being”, for he is there now, through a growth in human sympathies and life, not a lessening. He will only step forward “into the more expanded selfhood which already is his own higher nature, until he learns that ‘living for self’ means descending into more compacted and restricted spheres, and that ‘living for all that is’ means an expansion of his own soul into becoming the larger life”.  (Remember the film: The Never-Ending Story, when the little-boy hero tries to get back to Fantasia through the mirror, on the other side of which is his heroic self, the boy-warrior Atreyu.)            

The second stage, as I see it, GDP describes as initiation, attained through seven degrees, to become at one with the boundless all. The aim of initiation is to ally the human being with the gods, and begins by making the neophyte at one with his own inner god.          

GDP says: “The core of our being is pure consciousness, and in proportion as we ally ourselves with our inner god, with that pure monadic consciousness, shall knowledge come to us naturally.  Our understanding will expand, and finally become cosmic, and we shall then realise that there is another cosmos still grander (as per the mirrror in the story) of which our cosmos is but an atom. This is the path of evolution, of growth, inner and outer; it is the pathway of initiation, the pathway to almighty love and compassion”. This sudden all-knowing is told of in Buddha’s childhood and youth, he was the culmination of human development known to us, and knew all languages, all religious doctrines, and excelled at all sports and accomplishments.              

GDP says all the work centres around training the inner vision, the inner eye (which poets call upon, and name “the bliss of solitude”) The first 3 degrees are concerned with study, but not filling the mind with other men’s thoughts, but rising instead the spiritual fire in himself which brings about an awakening of understanding, so the neophyte becomes his own initiator. The first seven with their seven sub-sections, relate to the seven great planes and sub-planes of our solar system. He says all outward reception of ideas and thoughts are just stimuli arousing the inner vibration preparing for the reception of the inner light, setting up “the corresponding vibratory chord in the recipient’s psychological apparatus” through which the knowledge instantly flashes from the recipient’s own mind above. “Devotion to truth, to the point of utterly forgetting oneself, opens the channel of reception”, light and knowledge then entering the mind and heart from the inner god which begins to function.            

In the 4th initiation the initiant continues the study, aspiration, the living the life, and begins to lose his personal humanity and merge into divinity; “he learns to become, to be, to enter into the intimate consciousness the entities and spheres he contacts” because to fully know something we must be it and become it.  In the 5th we become a master of wisdom and compassion, and we make the choice to be a Pratyeka, going to nirvana, or to be a Buddha of Compassion who returns to the world to live for it and not for self, and in the 7th he meets his divine self face to face and becomes at one with it, and in contact with the Maha Chohan/Silent Watcher of the human race.  He has it within, imprinted by experience, nothing external to refer to. He is always a learner in the school of life, evolving from one range of life to the next, forever forwards, “for there are veils upon veils covering the face of eternal Reality”[25] There are 2 dangers of consciousness – 1) “the mentality must be such that it will repel outside influences of the most persuasive character” which arise in the also-virtuous capacity for impressionability, and 2) and in “the too strong and too quick logical faculty of the brain-mind”, the mentality having to be “rigidly subordinated to the nobler attributes”, never usurping the place of mastery, “the higher mind rooted in the buddhi principle has an infallible logic as well as an infallible intuition of its own, of which the brain-mind procedures are pale and usually distorted reflections, and because of this are often most dangerous enemies”.             

He will already be “a sun in embryo, a child of some other sun that then existed in space” – Aham asmi Parabrahman, I am the boundless all” – beyond both space and time. This idea is the very keystone of the temple of truth. It is mother of her diviner, spiritual, psychological, ethereal, and physical reaches that is our universal home – a home having no specific location because it is everywhere”. Every aspect of this essence of the universe, is within the inmost of us, hence to go back to the beginning, the Sages say: “Man, know thyself”, going inwards in thought and feeling, ever more allying ourselves with this divine inner core, also the core of the Universe, where our home is: “boundless, frontierless Space”.  And this explains the deft summary in the story of the boy down whose throat you could see the whole universe.            

We have seven selves, of descending grades of materiality/spirituality, and there were 4

Adams, 4 worlds that he/they governed, each world having its locus in the individual human being and correspondence with one of the four basic principles of the human constitution. Even the ordinary man comes from one of four castes, and has four stages of life, the child, student, family man, and Vana prasta, the old hermit/contemplator. These selves and Adams have been discussed in: Grace’s book, about the Sephira, where the universe is pictured as a tree and as the ideal man, mirror image of the Adams who came to remodel humanity: and which have already been discussed already in an earlier Angels lecture. Grace has written in much detail of this, but the key I think is this:

             “When the Boundless Ein Sof wished to exhibit an aspect of itself, this three in one veil of nonbeing contracted or “concentrated its essence” into a single point called Sephirah, primal number or emanation. From this contraction it again expanded into a universe of 10fold character.  At this point in writing, I had to go and fold up the socks, inverting their into themselves, (demonstrate this) I realised this is just like the ra-symbol for the emanation and contraction of the universe, a dot within an encompassing circle, the raja sun within the bodily, visible one, and a symbol of “man know thyself”. (See The Secret Doctrine, especially first few pages of Vol 1, Cosmogenesis where she explains the unfoldment of Parabrahm from an initial point).             The Kabbalah describes the Sephirophal Tree/Body of Adam Kadmon, the “ideal man”, the physical vehicle of the manifest universe, whose astral image was clothed with the receptacle of the seeds of future lives, the radiant image (Iselem), projected by the tselem of the Elohim, in the image of the ancestral pitris [1]These karmically attracted seeds of being were composed by the host of cosmic power, the Dhyan Chohans. Briefly go through the diagram, descending in order like the beings in the statue do.  The head, Crown or Kether issued forth first, the invisible, that is the first unmanifested Logos. From Kether issued two rays, at the right the male Hokhmah the duad, Ab, Father, or Yah, at the right shoulder. From Hochmah issued Binah, the supernal mother, the intelligence, insight, at the left shoulder. These three make the upper triad, from which issues the second triad Hesed, ardour, love goodness, compassion, male, the right arm, and Geburah strength, power, might, feminine, on the left arm. From these two issue tefereth (beauty, magnificence, glory), the heart of Adam Kadmon and of the sun, exuding all goodness and inspiration into the lower sephiroth, called Elohim, or mighty ones, gods, goddesses. This triad is the second countenance in contradistinction to Keth or macrocosmos. G de P says that the armies of evolving beings issue from the heart of divinity after their pralayic sleep. [1] The second triad issue Netsah the right thigh Yehovah, Lord of hosts or armies, and Hod, the left thigh, whose divine name is Elohim Tsebach; according to the Zohar (3:296a) that through Netsah and Hod we comprehend extension multiplication, and force. The son of Netsah and Hod is Yesod (foundation) Adam Kadmon’s reproductive strength, the portal for all the potentialities into the manifested world. Its divine name Elhai means the mighty living being, lord of life. The triad parents and the son are the Sefiroth of Construction partaking of the qualities of manifestation in contradistinction to the Supernal unmanifest triad of Keth, Hokmah and Binah. 10th and last is Malkhuth, (kingdom, dominion), the carrier or vehicle of all 10 powers, the nether pole of Kether, the feet of Adam Kadmon, the bride or inferior mother, the close of the construction of the Angels, accomplished by the six immediately preceding it. It’s divine name is Adonai.              The “Sephira” in the Sephirophal Tree means “number”, a doctrine also found in Pythagoras, and this tree is the symbol of man, atom, star, or any other hierarchy, showing how a series of emanations that the one or divine monad of any being unfolds from within itself in assuming full imbodiment. This parallels how Parabrahm or Ein Soph issues forth at karmic intervals, universes great and small. The boundless itself contained a series of “concealed sephiroth”, providing the potential garment for the one in thre garment of nonbeing, “Ayin or no-thing-ness, the darkness of pure nonbeing, which produced ein sof, “boundless” expanse of space, the union of these 2 bring forth Ein Sof Or, boundless or limitless light, the primal light of pre-manifestation.  This seems to be the ineffable source to which GDP referred initiation was leading us.            

“When the Boundless Ein Sof wished to exhibit an aspect of itself, this three in one veil of nonbeing contracted or “concentrated its essence” into a single point called Sephirah, primal number or emanation. From this contraction it again expanded into a universe of 10fold character. [31]At this point in writing, I had to go and fold up the socks, inverting their into themselves, and realised this is just like the ra-symbol for the emanation and contraction of the universe, a dot within an encompassing circle, the raja sun within the bodily, visible one, and a symbol of “man know thyself”. (See The Secret Doctrine, especially first few pages of Vol 1, Cosmogenesis where she explains the unfoldment of parabrahm from an initial point). Six successive

Adams remanifested from their own materials, then a seventh day of rest. They followed the law etched on the Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus: “That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, for the performance of the miracles of the one substance” Thus the 4 Adams followed the law of unfoldment of the four olamim or planes, each becoming broth prototype or pattern for the succeeding Adam, the highest serving as a prototype, the latter ones serving solely as reflection or image of the higher Adams.  (Grace, 63) Thus their luminosity is dulled by ¼ as its reflection passes down, so our humanity only perceives ¼ of truth which it foolishly believes to be the whole truth. Thus we should look to the higher Adam, source of the full truth and light. (Grace, 65) The 2nd Adam is like

Krishna, “he establishes this universe with a portion [of himself] and remains separate”. The 4 Adams coincide with the 4 root races, going from homogenous, to protoplasmic, to the sexed humanity of this world each world having been destroyed because it couldn’t express “since they had not as yet the perfect form of which they were capable” and “because Man, represented by the 10 Sephiroth,  was not as yet. The human forms contains every thing, and as it did not as yet exist, the worlds were destroyed…Still when it is said that they perished, it is only meant thereby that they lacked the true form, ‘til the human form came into being, in which all things are comprised, and which also contains all those forms”.   In this series of re-manifestations, the second Adam’s presiding influence was “the throne”, occupied by Metatron, the great teacher or angel of Adam Kadmon’s second world, the “abode of the pure spirits”.[1]At the end of this race Man ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and began to develop coats of skin, and became aligned to the lower triad and thus parts of the upper aspects were then closed to him. Under the dual influence of the retired spiritual capacity, the cloaks of the higher light, and of the physical coats of skin, these combine, energised by the Sons of Intelligence or Elohim to bring to birth self-conscious, thinking Humanity, i.e. the Manasaputras energise sleeping matter with their spirituality.               The seven globes of a planetary chain align with the four manifest olamim or planes of existence, the three higher manifest olamin, and the lower being our earth, most material of the planes. Each globe thus distributed on the olamim correlate to a particular sefirah (or branch on the 10fold tree), the 7 lower or manifest sefiroth corresponding to the 7 globes on and in the four cosmic planes.  At the same time, on each of the olamim a 10fold sefirothal tree of life is manifested, which illustrates another facet of this multifaceted conception, HPB suggesting that on any specific plane or Olam, one aspect of consciousness only is dominant at any one time, all other aspects of the sefirothal tree being present in potential, but manifesting in minor degree. I think this tree of life is the one that God cast us out of

Eden and guarded with a flaming cherubim, lest we also taste the fruit of this tree as well as of the Tree of Knowledge – therefore this is very sacred knowledge we’re hearing about.  The maxim “Man Know Thyself” applies in the human sciences - medicine, psychology, philosophy, social work- even astrology, study of everything, because that universe was invisible inside that little boy.  E.g. we can learn about our own complex nervous system by studying the simple, two-branched nervous system of the squid.                                          The “meaning of life” to some is just doing what there is at hand to do, this is why we were put in such seemingly un-spiritual circumstances, the spirit in them is within the daily round and we find it by dealing with it successfully, “character-building” in the truest sense of the word. We were put in this physical life, so by living life we could understand it, its source, and ourselves. As Stefan Carey wrote: “Living the life to do our dharma and find out about ourselves, a ready-made Owner’s Instruction Manual to our life, we also engage the life-atoms of like minded other, smaller lives attracted to us and part of us, on their/our path of life also, the whole retinue marches along with purpose and in step!… Be human, perhaps even the best human being, only you know how to be!”             

Amid life’s clamour we can still take time out to hear the “Voice of the Silence” and place ourselves into sympathy with the compassionate forces which sent each one of us forth into the adventure of daily life.   My parents told me in Year 12 of secondary school, if you think you’re alone in your lifeboat drifting haplessly on the Pacific, look out and you’ll see the sea dotted with little people in lifeboats all the way to the horizon–all life-forms are in the evolution game together, we aren’t alone and could in fact enjoy the journey, deciding to be what we are to the best we can, Like Wilbur the pig in Charlotte’s Web: “You’re a very nice little pig”! and do the best you can with this vehicle/body you are in. Being all part of the one, it behoves us to act as brothers, for this is a fact in nature; all evolves together, so we should act/evolve for the sake of the conglomerate entity, not for ourselves.  OF COURSE, when we think we know ourselves, we find we really don’t, and that knowing is an everlasting quest, that goes on ad infinitum, finding and becoming, the temple.            

Andrew Rooke in Golden Stairs to the Temple of Wisdom [published on this website], has written of 10 disciplines that lead to this self knowledge: “Out of the 10 steps to the Temple of Wisdom, I think Man know thyself is an unveiled spiritual perception, (of course to be coupled with “constant eye to the ideal of human progression and perfection which the Secret Science (Gupta Vidya) depicts” as we must use our knowledge to selfless ends. “Behold the Truth before you: A clean life, an open mind, a pure heart, an eager intellect, an unveiled spiritual perception, a brotherliness for one’s co-disciple, a readiness to give and receive instruction, a loyal sense of duty to the teacher, a willing obedience to the behests of TRUTH, once we have placed our confidence in, and believe that Teacher to be in possession of it; a courageous endurance of personal injustice, a brave declaration of principles, a valiant defence of those unjustly attacked, and a constant eye to the ideal of human progression and perfection which the Secret Science (Gupta Vidya) depicts – these are the Golden Stairs up the steps of which the learner may climb to the Temple of Wisdom.” In the New Testament, Jesus tells us that it is necessary for us to “be as little children” if we are to find the

Kingdom of

Heaven. In my opinion , this could mean stripping away the veils we inevitably build up around our inner spiritual Self over lifetimes, and attempt to get back to the direct spiritual perception of childhood when we are newly emerged from the heaven worlds. An unveiled and childlike spiritual perception would enable us to see through the outer problems of individuals and the world to look for the spirit at work in every situation. Artists and poets approach this type of perception sometimes. As a great poet once said, we should try to see God in a blade of grass or a grain of sand.  I hope this poem by the British rock band, The Moody Blues, about this quest, appeals as would a parable understandable by the childlike intuitional nature which GDP said the initiant must have:

  THE BALANCE:  After he had journeyed
And his feet were sore
And he was tired
He came upon an orange grove
And he rested
And he lay in the cool
And while rested, he took to himself an orange and tasted it
And it was good
And he felt the earth to his spine
And he asked, and he saw the tree above him, and the stars
And the veins in the leaf
And the light, and the balance
And he saw magnificent perfection
Whereon, he thought of himself in balance
And he knew he wasJust open your eyes
And realize the way it’s always been
Just open your mind
And you will find
The way it’s always been
Just open your heart
And that’s a start And he thought of those he angered
For he was not a violent man
And he thought of those he hurt
For he was not a cruel man
And he thought of those he frightened
For he was not an evil man
And he understood
He understood himself
Upon this he saw that when he was of anger or knew hurt or felt fear
It was because he was not understand
And he learned compassionAnd with his eye of compassion
He saw his enemies like unto himself
And he learned love
Then, he was answeredJust open your eyes
And realize the way it’s always been
Just open your mind
And You will find
The way it’s always been
Just open your heart
And that’s a start  [from the album A Question of Balance by The Moody Blues viewed on 24/9/07 at: http://www.davemcnally.com/lyrics/TheMoodyBlues/TheBalance.asp ] 

---

[1] GDP, Studies in Occ. Phil., p.374.

[2] GDP,Fountain Sources, p.492.

[3] A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion pp.360-361.

[4] The Seven Jewels of Wisdom: the third jewel: the doctrine of hierarchies, by Stefan Carey. pp.6-7.

[5] GDP, The Esoteric Tradition Vol 2, pp. 700-701.

[6] SD 2, 580.

[7] SD1, 338, 2nd footnote.

[8] John X, 34, 1 Cor 111, 16, quoted by GDP, Man in Evol, pp.314 7 130. The developmental stages of the human embryo recall recapitulates  or passes through the various stages which the stock to which it belongs had passed through in preceding biological time, a sort of rehearsal in brief of former evolutionary stock-history.

[9]  GDP, Man In Evolution, pp.322-323.

[10] GDP, Man In Evolution, pp.323-324.

[11] GDP Man in Evolution pp.  235-236.

[12]  Gdp man In Evolution, p.236.

[13] Fountain Souces, p.15.

[14] FS,15

[15] FS,16

[16] FS,17

[17] S,199

[18] FS,55

[19] FS,54

[20] FS,56-57

[21] FS,57

[22] FS,57-58

[23] FS,58

[24] FS,59

[25] fs,60

[26] FS,61

[27] FS,62

[28] Grace,9-10

[29] Grace, pp.9,22-25, 72,  72-78.

[30] Grace,9-10

[31] Grace,9-10

[32] Mathers, p.155n, quoted in Grace, 63).

[33] Grace,67

[34] Grace,67 and Idra Rabba, Zohar, 3:148a, Ginsburg, p.103, quoted in Grace, 69),

[35] Ibid, 3:135b, Ginsburg, p.104, quoted in Grace, 70.

[36] Grace,58

[37] Eg: GDP in Man in Evolution, believes man has existed ever, without changing, being the predecessor of all other, changed, vehicles such as apes; GDP describes the “law of embryonic recapitulation”, where the “embryo passes through in its growth the various stages which the stock to which it belongs had passed through in preceding biological time…a sort of rehearsal in brief of former evolutionary stock-history whereby a fetus in its earliest stages of development has the Premaxilla bone which carries the incisor teeth which does not exist as a separate element in man, but which is shown on the face of apes by suture-lines, marking its junction with the maxillary bones. (Man in Evol, 129-130). Man has a residual tail-bone of 4 or even 5 coccygeal bones, yet gorillas, our supposed nearest predecessors, have but 3, as they stand later in evolution than Man, according to theosophy – some human babies are born with a rudimentary tail – we will continue evolving in reaction to outer circumstances, to re-become ovoid and immaterial in appearance. (GDP, Man in Evol, p.250, and

Ch. 16).

[38] Stephan Carey, Emotions and Spirituality, nsltr, June 1998, No. 62, p.2)

[39] APR, Nsltr, No?Date?p.1

[40] TS Newsletter, Dec `1999, p.7, “Golden Stairs 5, An Unveiled Spiritual Perception”)

This is the text of a lecture given by the author at a public meeting of the Theosophical Society (Pasadena) in Melbourne, Australia. The ideas expressed in all our public meetings are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the TS (Pasadena).