|
Chapter 1
The Nature of the Quest
The Ancient Secret Science Revealed
Many literary critics seem to think that a hypothesis about obscure
and remote questions of history can be refuted by a simple demand
for the production of more evidence than in fact exists. […] But the
true test of a hypothesis, if it cannot be shown to conflict with
known truths, is the number of facts that it correlates and
explains.
Cornford,
Origins of Attic Comedy
Disjecta Membra
The theme of the Quest for the Holy Grail is so much a part of
Western Culture that it would be difficult to even imagine its
absence. The number of books, paintings, sculptures, plays, movies,
popular songs and other artistic or literary expressions that deal
with the “matter of the Grail” are too numerous to even count.
The
Holy Grail represents many things to many people, but in general we
could say that it represents the Quest for All and Everything. This
attitude has crept into our language when we say, “Oh, he’s
searching for the Holy Grail of _____”.
You can fill in the blank
with about any field of endeavor. Everyone who considers the
subject, even momentarily, is certain that, at the core of the
Legend is a secret and/or some ultimate prize of a material nature.
It could even be said that the attachment Western Society has to the
Legends of the Grail is really all out of proportion to the actual
confusing content of the stories themselves.
In fact, many people
who are certain that there is a deep meaning to the Legend of the
Holy Grail haven’t even read the original stories that gave birth to
that legend.
Yet, something acts on us - each and every one - to trigger the
imagination, the soul, whenever the subject comes up; and this
suggests that there is some vital thing - some magic - some mysterious
archetypal dream - that the very words “Holy Grail” awakens in the
spirit of Western peoples. It activates something in our collective
unconscious, transforming the muddled and confusing elements of the
original stories into an enchanted land of heroic love and mighty
feats of derring-do that can only be performed by the purest and the
best; and all of us - in our most private fantasies - dream that we
are “The One” who can achieve the Grail.
Anyone who studies the matter of the Grail already knows that there
are literally multiple thousands of scholarly and/or imaginative
works on the subject. There are essays, studies, criticisms - volumes
of them - devoted to this fascinating subject. The student of Grail
literature also knows that these endless treatments of the subject
present an almost hopeless muddle of contradictory opinions and
perspectives. For example: there is one school of thought that
proposes the Grail to be an entirely “Christian matter”.
There are
undeniably Christian elements that dominate certain versions. Then,
there is the school of thought that claims that the Grail matter is
essentially pagan, and most definitely of Celtic provenance. They
point out that the later Christianized versions were attempts by
ecclesiastics to “cover-up” and amalgamate a popular theme to
Christian purposes. These two are the broadest divisions, but no
means the only ones!
Each group can be subdivided into branching
schools, holding forth on any of dozens of theories.
The problem is that each of these two perspectives and their many
subsets are faced with insurmountable problems when trying to
promote their individual arguments. The theory of the Christian
origin of the Grail breaks down completely when confronted with the
most distressing fact that there is no Christian tradition
concerning a “Joseph of Arimathea”.
It seems that Joseph does not
exist outside of the Grail stories and must be relegated - by
Christianity - to romantic fantasy. In fact, as Jessie Weston
reported, as early as 1260, the Dutch writer, Jacob van Maerlant
denounced the whole Grail issue as “lies”, declaring that the Church
knew nothing of it. And he was right. The Pagan-Celtic advocates
have to face their own difficulties when dealing with the legends.
The part of the Grail stories that can be proven to be definitely
pagan and Celtic - the Perceval story - in its original form, has
nothing to do with the Grail at all!
So the problem is this: while parallels can be found for one or
another feature of the whole cycle of stories when taken in
isolation, this cannot serve a broad overview because to derive
parallels necessitates breaking the stories up into a group of
independent themes. There is no “Q” document, as is theorized for
the Gospels of the New Testament - a lost original source from which
different elements are drawn. There is no prototype with all the
elements in one story - the Waste Land, the Fisher King, the Hidden
Castle with its otherworldly feast and mysterious vessel and
maidens, the Bleeding Lance and Cup.
In short, for either the pagan-Celtic or Christian perspective,
there is just no original source that has preserved all of the
elements together. What this means is that the most logical approach
to take to the subject is to understand at the outset that neither
school of thought can ignore the other and that a broader approach
is needed. This means that the origin of the Grail story must be
somewhere other than in popular legends or Christianized tales.
Jessie L. Weston, after more than thirty years of study, wrote a
little book entitled From Ritual to Romance.
She noted therein an
observation that was startling in its implications:
Some years ago, when fresh from the study of Sir J. G. Frazer’sThe
Golden Bough, I was struck by the resemblance existing between
certain features of the Grail story, and characteristic details of
the Nature Cults described. The more closely I analyzed the tale,
the more striking became the resemblance, and I finally asked myself
whether it were not possible that this mysterious legend - mysterious
alike in its character, its sudden appearance, the importance
apparently assigned to it, followed by as sudden and complete a
disappearance - we might not have the confused record of a ritual
once popular, later surviving under conditions of strict secrecy?
This would fully account for the atmosphere of awe and reverence,
which even under distinctly non-Christian conditions never fails to
surround the Grail.[…]
The more closely one studies pre-Christian Theology, the more
strongly one is impressed with the deeply and daringly spiritual
character of its speculations, and the more doubtful it appears that
such teaching can depend on the unaided processes of human thought,
or can have been evolved from such germs as we find among the
supposedly ‘primitive’ peoples. […]
Are they really primitive? Or
are we dealing, not with the primary elements of religion, but with
the disjecta membra of a vanished civilization? Certainly it is that
so far as historical evidence goes our earliest records point to the
recognition of a spiritual, not of a material, origin of the human
race.
The Folk practices and ceremonies studied - the dances, the rough
Dramas, the local and seasonal celebrations, do not represent the
material out of which the Attis-Adonis cult was formed, but
surviving fragments of a worship from which the higher significance
has vanished.
My aim has been to prove the essentially archaic character of all
the elements composing the Grail story rather than to analyze the
story as a connected whole.21
21 Weston, Jessie L., From Ritual to Romance (London: Cambridge
University Press 1920) pp. 3, 4, 7,
10.
Let me repeat those two most important statements: The “disjecta membra of a vanished civilization”, and “surviving fragments of a
worship from which the higher significance has vanished".
In short,
what Ms. Weston has proposed is that the Grail Stories were a brief
emergence into the general consciousness of something so ancient
that finding the threads and re-weaving the whole cloth of the
Sacred Tapestry might require a perspective of not merely thousands
of years, but possibly tens of thousands of years - antediluvian,
even!
The very thought of something so daring in scope literally
took my breath away. However, being naïve and something of a fool
willing to rush in where angels fear to tread, I made the decision
that I was going to search for the pieces to this puzzle if it took
me the rest of my life.
Upon considering this idea as a hypothesis, I began to imagine how
such an event might manifest. I came across another interesting item
that helped me adjust the “lens” through which I was viewing
reality. There is a story found in the History of Herodotus, which
is an exact copy of an original tale of Indian origin except for the
fact that in the original, it was an animal fable, and in Herodotus’
version, all the characters had become human. In every other detail,
the stories are identical.
Joscelyn Godwin quotes R. E. Meagher,
professor of humanities and
translator of Greek classics, saying:
“Clearly, if characters change
species, they may change their names and practically anything else
about themselves.” 22
22 Godwin, Joscelyn Arktos, (Kempton Illinois: Adventures Unlimited
Press, 1996).
Going further still, Mircea Eliade clarifies for us the process of
the “mythicization” of historical personages. Eliade describes how a
Romanian folklorist recorded a ballad describing the death of a
young man bewitched by a jealous mountain fairy on the eve of his
marriage. The young man, under the influence of the fairy, was
driven off a cliff. The ballad of lament, sung by the fiancée, was
filled with “mythological allusions, a liturgical text of rustic
beauty”.
The folklorist, having been told that the song concerned a tragedy
of “long ago”, discovered that the fiancée was still alive and went
to interview her. To his surprise, he learned that the young man’s
death had occurred less than 40 years before. He had slipped and
fallen off a cliff; in reality, there was no mountain fairy
involved.
Eliade notes that “despite the presence of the principal witness, a
few years had sufficed to strip the event of all historical
authenticity, to transform it into a legendary tale”. Even though
the tragedy had happened to one of their contemporaries, the death
of a young man soon to be married “had an occult meaning that could
only be revealed by its identification with the category of myth”.
The myth seemed truer, more pure, than the prosaic event, because
“it made the real story yield a deeper and richer meaning, revealing
a tragic destiny”.
In the same way, a Yugoslavian epic poem celebrating a heroic figure
of the fourteenth century, Marko Kraljevic, abolishes his historic
identity, his life story is “reconstructed in accordance with the
norms of myth”. His mother is a Vila, a fairy, as is his wife. He
fights a three-headed dragon and kills it, fights with his brother
and kills him, all in conformity with classical mythic themes.
The historic character of the persons celebrated in epic poetry is
not in question, Eliade notes.
“But their historicity does not long
resist the corrosive action of mythicization.”
A historic event,
despite its importance, doesn’t remain in the popular memory intact.
“Myth is the last – not the first – stage in the development of a
hero.”
The memory of a real event survives perhaps three centuries
at best, as the historic figure is assimilated to his mythical model
and the event itself is blurred into a category of mythical actions.
“This reduction of events to categories and of individuals to
archetypes, carried out by the consciousness of the popular strata
in Europe almost down to our day, is performed in conformity with
archaic ontology”, Eliade writes. “We have the right to ask
ourselves if the importance of archetypes for the consciousness of
archaic man, and the inability of popular memory to retain anything
but archetypes, does
not reveal to us something more than a resistance to history
exhibited by traditional spirituality?”
23
23 Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of The Eternal Return; (New York:
Bollingen Foundation, Princeton University Press 1954) pp. 40, 43,
44, 46.
This mythicization of historical personages appears in exactly the
same way in all times and cultures. As it says in the Book of
Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun”. Historical
events are “assimilated” to the mythical archetype, and things that
were never done by the hero are often assigned to him. Events,
places and other characteristics of the “larger and deeper” context
are also “attached”.
What this suggests is that mythicization of historical persons takes
place in accordance with some “exemplary standard” This is why all
of the mythical heroes resemble one another in so many respects.
It’s not that each and every one of them did the same things; it is
that somebody did something - at least one thing - that was heroic and
therefore belonged to the exemplar. By so doing, they were
“assimilated” to the archetype.
We are not suggesting that the real
heroes or historical characters did not exist or that they did
nothing heroic. That is not in question. What seems to be evident is
that their real, historical nature - what they really did - cannot
resist the “corrosive action of mythicization”. Therefore,
discovering the identity of any hero by trying to compare his story
to actual historical “facts” just simply will not work.
And there is
something else important to consider here: if a fairly ordinary
“hero” and his collection of localized deeds are “assimilated” to an
exemplar, even if we do discover his identity, it means very little.
We have only discovered one of many, many individuals assimilated to
the same archetype, and we risk going around in circles forever,
trying to sort the facts, in order to discover some “magical
artifact” that is connected to the exemplar. In some instances the
tribal memory can “hold” a recollection of an ancestor’s name, even
if they have no clue about what that ancestor really did in complete
terms. In other cases, the real name is forgotten and the name of
the exemplar is attached.
This may not seem to be much help in
figuring out who really did what, but, with care and patience and
comparison, we can come to some logical conclusions about the past,
before written historical records based on facts were written down - or before the original written accounts were destroyed - which is
another distinct possibility.
Another point that is crucial to our investigation is that myths do
tend to preserve the ideas of institutions, customs and landscapes
even if we cannot rely on them for what we would call personal
historical truth. And finally, what we perceive from studying myths,
legends, sagas, and epics is the evident fact that they are not
“creative inventions” of whole cloth. There is a model. There is a
reduction of events to categories and individuals to archetypes, and
this model is
in conformity with archaic ontology! It could even be said that
mythicization of historical persons lays bare for us the meaning of
the person and event - meaning that can only be seen by withdrawing
from the immediate historical event.
This leads us to ask the
question:
“Does this tendency of the consciousness of man to retain
archetypes and assimilate historical events and people to those
exemplars reveal something to us about the true nature of the
Exemplar itself?”
“What is the true nature of the Exemplar?”
This is going to be a
very important question to remember as we go along. It will assist
not only in understanding how stories from various sources can be
both true and not true at the same time. It is also going to be a
major clue in our investigation of certain very important matters
that will come into play as being pivotal in the Grail Quest. Is
there a level of reality at which the Exemplar exists and which
impresses itself upon humanity in broad psychological terms?
In
other words, does the mythical archetype refer to a Theological
Reality, a hyperdimensional realm, from which our own is “projected”
like a movie, and in which we live and move and have our being like
game pieces on a board?
As we study the Grail stories in comparison to other myths and
legends, we notice the ubiquity of the universal theme of a Golden
Age, which was destroyed in some terrible way - a deluge, a fall from
grace, a punishment. We suspect that Geoffrey of Monmouth interwove
this tradition cleverly with the story of King Arthur. In most
cases, the stories talk about the world before, giants, the Gods and
their doings, in terms that seem to be utterly fantastic.
The usual
explanation ascribes such stories to any number of theories based on
the fearful and ignorant state of the howling savages of the Stone
Age who imaginatively created myths to explain the inexplicable
forces of nature around them.
Many “alternative” researchers and theorists have already expounded
at great length on the idea that many myths represent an archaic
reality. Among the ideas they have proposed are those that follow
the pattern that there was a time in human history when the planets
interacted violently and these became the foundational myths of the
“wars of the
Gods”. In such scenarios, the “thunderbolts” of Jove
are the exchanges of electrical potentials between planets.
Others
have proposed that such stories represent the interactions of aliens
or alien-human hybrids with advanced technology. In these theories,
the “thunderbolts” of Jove are nuclear weapons and Jove was just a
regular guy with a big bomb.
After considering our little story about the mythicization of
history and the historicization of myth, we have some idea that both
of these approaches could be true. In the case of the Grail Stories,
we are dealing with the same problem many times over. However, in
the Grail stories, there are repeated references to the same symbols
or “objects of cultic value”. These mysterious objects form the
central theme of the action of the story of the quest, and it seems
that a true understanding of these objects is as essential to the
hero himself as it is to the modern day “seeker of mysteries”.
The
objects are a cup or dish, a lance or sword, and a stone. If we
begin to search through myth and legend, finding one of them here,
another there, and then reassemble these elements, we come to a
certain idea: that they all are part of an ensemble.
But what does this ensemble of elements really represent?
When we
consider these elements carefully, and study them, we come to the
idea that an ancient scientific knowledge might be what is being
portrayed in these stories, and how such knowledge might be
“mythicized” over time if the infrastructure of civilization were
destroyed. Naturally, the story Lord of the Flies immediately comes
to mind as one example, but there are certainly many other
situations where this process can be examined. In any event, the
more we examine this matter, and the more examples we study, the
more we realize that Ms. Weston was definitely onto something.
Let us consider the “Grail Hallows”, appearing repeatedly in myth
and legend, as elements of an ancient technology. Let us observe how
these objects were utilized, and the magical powers that were
attributed to them. Let us note that all of these abilities were the
attributes of a mastery of Space-Time manipulation. Keeping in mind
that that myths DO tend to preserve the ideas of institutions,
customs and landscapes. If this is so, the ancient legends are a
stunning view of the universe as well as descriptions of very
exciting technology.
So, let us proceed with this idea as a working hypothesis. We don’t
have to accept it as true, let’s just play with it.
Imagine, if you will, a worldwide civilization similar in many ways
to our own with advanced technology (though the technology of the
ancient world was obviously quite different, as we will see).
Imagine further that the imminent threat of a great cataclysm is
realized too late to make proper preparations to preserve the
civilization itself; or, perhaps the calamity is so devastating that
it cannot be preserved. Imagine that the infrastructure of the
civilization is destroyed. Imagine that, over the entire globe, out
of say, six billion people, only 10 million survive, so terrible is
the cataclysm.
Furthermore, the survivors themselves are so widely
scattered, and all means of travel and communication have been
destroyed, so that any idea of them gathering together to
re-implement the infrastructure that formerly existed is impossible.
What is more, many of those who survived are not even technically
capable of doing so.
But, in four or five locations, a small handful of people with
higher educations did survive. However, the unfortunate thing is,
their education is so specialized that they are able to re-implement
only limited and selected elements of the former civilization. And
so, they do the best they can. They become the Lords of the Flies,
so to speak, and they seek to find a way to re-create what was lost;
to seek out the additional knowledge, to rebuild the world from the
ashes.
Having only uneducated and technically deficient people to do all
the necessary work, and knowing that when they die, what they do
know will be lost, they attempt to pass on as much knowledge as they
can to as many as they can, knowing that even this is incomplete.
Or, conversely, they create an “elite power structure” where the
knowledge is only dispensed to a very few in order to keep the reins
of power in their own hands and the hands of their descendants.
In such a situation, what knowledge would be considered the most
valuable to pass on? What would be foremost in the mind of such a
person?
Well, the progenitor of a power hungry elite would certainly pass on
knowledge that would perpetuate the Control of others. But an
individual who wishes to help humanity as a whole might be thinking
that a better world may come if they can only pass on what they
know, and leave it up to those who come after to add the missing
pieces.
Would not this knowledge be the important things about the
civilization itself? It’s infrastructure? It’s modes of
communication, of travel, of laws and ethics; its high science; and
most of all, the terrible information that was revealed at the very
last, just before everything was blasted back to Stone Age
conditions: the knowledge that
the earth regularly and cyclically
undergoes cataclysm.
Imagine the sighting of an oncoming disaster, such as a barrage of
comets, in our own civilization. The first thing our scientists
would do would be to make measurements and observations; study path
and trajectory; and soon they would announce on television, to the
world, that we are about to go through a dangerous period that,
apparently, is part of a long period cometary shower.
They would
announce their numbers to the world, and everyone would know, just a
short time before the destruction, that what they are facing has
been here before. And that knowledge, revealed too late, would be
the one thing that the survivors of such destruction would want to
pass on to their children. And so, in such an environment, under
such conditions, myths would be born consisting of memories of the
world before and all its glorious technology, how it ended, and that
disaster will come again.
Imagine, if you will, a group of survivors.
They emerge from their
place of safety to find that the world that they knew is not just
damaged, but that the violent convulsions of the planet have folded
over, ground up, and washed away most of what formerly existed. The
factories, the power plants, the cities, the superhighways, the
railway lines, the airports and airplanes, the great ships and
industrial complexes - all reduced to twisted bits of iron,
incinerated wood, and concrete that has been ground into gravel.
With what skills they have, lacking anything but the most
rudimentary hand-made tools, they build their little community and
try to survive in the best way they can.
As time goes by, our little community of survivors is doing well.
They have grown old, and now they sit around the fires with a new
generation of little ones gathered around to hear stories of “what
did you do when you were young, grandpa?”
And the grandfathers sigh
with longing for the ease and comfort and marvels of all that was
lost, and answer:
“We went out to dinner at fine restaurants and
watched movies.”
“What is a movie, Grandpa?”
“Well, it is a big place where everybody used to go to see famous
movie stars having wonderful adventures. Everybody would sit in a
row of seats and the movie would appear on a big white wall in front
of us.”
“What appeared on the wall?”
“The images of the movie stars.”
“What is a movie star, grandpa?”
“A movie star is a famous person who pretends to be someone else in
order to tell a story.”
“What is an image, grandpa?”
“It’s a sort of projection of the real movie star who is not
actually there. They live somewhere else, and when they are not
acting in movies, they have ordinary lives.”
“How does it happen that the image of the movie star can be seen
when they are not really there?”
“Well, that’s technology. It has to do with a light that is shone
through a long piece of transparent stuff that runs around a wheel.”
“What runs the wheel, grandpa?”
“Electricity.”
“What is electricity, Grandpa?”
“It’s a great force that is in the air. Electricity is what you see
when you see lightning. When we were little, we used electricity to
make everything work. It was the power that made our lights come on.
It was what we used to cook our food. We used electricity to run our
stereos and radios and televisions.”
“Grandpa, what is a television?”
“It’s a sort of box and the images of the same movie stars that you
see in a theater can be seen right in your own house.”
“How do the images get into the television?”
“They come through the air. There were satellites floating high in
the air around the world that sent these images into the television.
The same satellites also helped us to be able to talk to anybody
anywhere in the world on a telephone.”
“Grandpa, what’s a telephone?”
We will leave this most interesting question and answer process and
jump now to a time when Grandpa has gone to his reward, and the
grandchild has grown up and has children.
He is telling his own
children about the stars in the skies that send messages into boxes
and make it possible for anyone to talk to anyone else anywhere in
the world. He also is telling his grandchildren about the great
movie stars in Hollywood who could appear on a blank wall in a big
theater after a big banquet with the Gods, or, under special
circumstances, if the Gods choose to speak from the heavens, in a
special box in a person’s very own home.
Skip another generation, and we have the community falling upon hard
times. They remember the stories of the world before, and it seems
that they need help. Perhaps if they build a replica of the box like
object that was so important a part of the time of plenty, they will
be able to communicate with the Gods in Hollywood who will then
bring the famine or plague to an end.
So, they build a box and set it on an altar. They begin to call upon
the different names they remember from the grandfather’s stories.
“Oh, great mother Elizabeth Taylor! Hear our plea! Come to help us
great father Clark Gable!” But nothing happens. Perhaps the Gods are
angry? Maybe they want something? How about a sacrifice? Some wine,
perhaps? Maybe the Gods miss the banquet part? They want a nice
succulent lamb. No? Well, how about a newborn infant? A virgin? Two?
A dozen or so?
And so, as time goes by, the facts of what existed before become
little more than fairy tales, clues to a former time, buried in
layers of ignorance and superstition. And as the populations grow,
and travel is undertaken, they meet tribes with similar stories but
from different angles. Perhaps they meet a group whose “grandfather”
was a great scientist. He taught his grandchildren to memorize
scientific formulas.
Naturally, because their grandfather was a
scientist and passed “scientific and superior knowledge” to them,
they feel that they are in a position to instruct those ignorant
rubes that are invoking Liz Taylor and Clark Gable. No, indeed, it
must be done this way: you have to form a circle around the
television and say the right words, the magical formulas.
And so,
the combined tribes begin to dance around the “Cube of Space”,
chanting,
“Eeee equals Emmmm Ceeee squared! Eeee equals Emmmm Ceeee
squared! Eeee equals Emmmm Ceeee squared! We appeal to the great God
of Ein-Stein! Speak to us!”
And if they do it long enough, they will induce the production of
certain brain chemicals, which will lead to states of ecstasy, and
there you have it! The proof that it works. And so, we have our
legends of great occult science in the making.
I’m sure that the reader can take these short vignettes even
further, and see how the memory of the golden age was passed down,
and how myths, if they were properly examined and analyzed, could be
the key to finding the threads of an ancient technology, the
disjecta membra of a lost civilization.
However, that is not to say that there were not some groups who did
actually manage to re-create some of the technology. It seems
evident that some scientists, some technocrats, survived and were
responsible for the sudden emergence of the civilizations that we
know in our recorded history. It is also equally likely, human
nature being what it is, that the very progenitors of these
civilizations became the elite, and as often happens, when the elite
take advantage of the masses, revolutions come about destroying the
very wellsprings of that knowledge.
Also, as noted, there were probably others who sought to preserve
the knowledge, encoded for the future time when only a revival of
technology would make any of it comprehensible. This brings us to
another line of thought.
In 1984, the Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation and a group of other
institutions commissioned Thomas A. Sebeok, to elaborate answers to
a question posed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The
American government had chosen several desert areas in the US for
the burial of nuclear waste. The idea was that it was easy to
protect it from intrusions at the present time, but since they were
dealing with deadly elements which had half-lives of ten thousand
years or more, how to protect people in the future from destroying
humanity by dangerous intrusions into such areas?
Ten thousand years
is more than enough time for great empires and civilizations to rise
and perish. In just a few centuries after the last pharaoh had
disappeared, the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs had
disappeared as well, so it is conceivable that mankind could be
reduced to a “dark age” existence that came into being following the
decline of the Golden Age of Greece, and the fall of the Roman
Empire. The question was: How will we warn the future about the
danger?
Umberto Eco discusses Sebeok’s findings:
Almost immediately, Sebeok discarded the possibility of any type of
verbal communication, of electric signals as needing a constant
power supply, of olfactory messages as being of brief duration, and
of any sort of ideogram based on convention. Even a pictographic
language seemed problematic.
Sebeok analyzed an image from an ancient primitive culture where one
can certainly recognize human figures, but it is hard to say what
they are doing dancing, fighting, or hunting?
Another solution would be to establish temporal segments of three
generations each, (calculating that, in any civilization, language
will not alter beyond recognition between grandparents and
grandchildren), giving instructions that, at the end of each
segment, the message would be reformulated, adapting it to the
semiotic conventions prevailing at the moment. But even this
solution presupposes precisely the sort of social continuity that
the original question had put into doubt.
Another solution was to fill up the entire zone with messages in all
known languages and semiotic systems, reasoning that it was
statistically probable that at least one of these messages would be
comprehensible to the future visitors. Even if only part of one of
the messages was decipherable, it would still act as a sort of
Rosetta stone, allowing the visitors to translate all the rest.
Yet
even this solution presupposed a form of cultural continuity,
however weak it would be.
The only remaining solution was to institute a sort of ‘priesthood‘
of nuclear scientists, anthropologists, linguists and psychologists
supposed to perpetuate itself by co-opting new members. This caste
would keep alive the knowledge of the danger, creating myths and
legends about it. Even though, in the passage of time, these
‘priests’ would probably lose a precise notion of the peril that
they were committed to protect humanity from, there would still
survive, even in a future state of barbarism, obscure but
efficacious taboos.
It is curious to see that, having been presented with a choice of
various types of universal language, the choice finally fell on a
‘narrative’ solution, thus reproposing what REALLY DID HAPPEN
MILLENNIA AGO (my emphasis). Egyptian has disappeared, as well as
any other perfect and holy primordial language, and what remains of
all this is only myths, tales without a code, or whose code has long
been lost.
Yet they are still capable of keeping us in a state of
vigil in our desperate effort at decipherment.
24
24 Eco, Umberto, The Search For The Perfect Language, (Oxford:
Blackwell 1995) p. 177, emphasis mine.
It is extraordinarily significant to me that Eco has suggested so
clearly here the idea that our ancient ancestors may have been faced
with the knowledge of a very great peril to mankind and
“brain-stormed” for a solution as to how to transmit this
information to future generations. And it is with this idea that we
come back to the myths that formed the foundation for said religions
and form a “working hypothesis” that such stories are the
“narratives” provided by our ancestors to warn us about something,
as defined by Thomas Sebeok in his report to the Office of Nuclear
Waste Isolation.
And here we find the problem: We cannot just read
these things, put the pieces together like a regular puzzle and
thereby discover the answer.
We have to deeply analyze the stories,
discover the various versions and their inversion; and, by tracking
the roots of words, discover their relations. In such a way, we just
MIGHT be able to discover what it is our ancestors knew and what
they have so desperately tried to tell us.
Alchemy and the Enclave in the Pyrenees
Nowadays, our materialistic science derides alchemists as misguided
mystics who followed a dream of discovering a substance that could
transform base metals into gold. Yes, they admit that much
scientific discovery was accomplished in
these pursuits, but they toss out the objective of the alchemists as
just a pipe dream.
Nevertheless, there are interesting stories
there, some so deeply curious that the mind cannot grapple with the
implications, and they are immediately discarded as too fantastic
for serious consideration. I want to recount a few of them here so
that the reader who is not familiar with the literature might be
sufficiently intrigued to do research on his/her own.
But first, a short discussion of the “Philosopher’s Stone”. This is
the goal of the Alchemist; a fabled substance that can not only
transmute metals into gold, but can heal any illness, banish all
sickness from a person’s life, and confer an extended lifespan, if
not immortality, on the body. At least, that is how it is described.
That may or may not be a “cover story”.
It was thought that, by a lengthy process of purification, one could
extract from various minerals the “natural principle” that
supposedly caused gold to “grow” in the earth. In an anonymous 17th
Century alchemical text, The Sophic Hydrolith, this process is
described as “purging [the mineral] of all that is thick, nebulous,
opaque and dark”, and what would be left would be a mercurial “water
of the Sun”, which had a pleasant, penetrating odor, and was very
volatile.
Part of this liquid is put aside, and the rest is then mixed with a
twelfth of its weight of “the divinely endowed body of gold”,
(ordinary gold won’t do because it is defiled by daily use). This
mixture then forms a solid amalgam which is heated for a week. It is
then dissolved in some of the mercurial water in an egg-shaped
phial.
Then, the remaining mercurial water is added gradually, in seven
portions; the phial is sealed, and kept at such a temperature as
will hatch an egg. After 40 days, the phial’s contents will be
black; after seven more days small grainy bodies like fish eyes are
supposed to appear. Then the “Philosopher’s Stone” begins to make
its appearance: first reddish in color; then white, green and yellow
like a peacock’s tail then dazzling white; and later a deep glowing
red. Finally, “the revivified body is quickened, perfected and
glorified” and appears in a beautiful purple.
This and many similarly obscure and crazy sounding texts are the
bulk of Alchemical Literature. It occurred to me early on that these
texts were a code, and so I persisted in reading many texts of this
kind and searching for clues there and in the stories of the
alchemists themselves. It was in reading the anecdotes about
so-called Alchemists that I became convinced that there was, indeed,
something very mysterious going on here.
For example: In 1666, Johann Friedrich Schweitzer, physician to the
Prince of Orange, writes of having been visited by a stranger who
was “of a mean stature, a little long face, with a few small pock
holes, and most black hair, not at all curled, a beardless chin,
about three or four and forty years of age (as I guessed), and born
in North Holland.”
Before I finish the story, it needs to be pointed out that Dr.
Schweitzer, who was the author of several medical and botanical
books, was a careful and objective observer and was a colleague of
the philosopher, Baruch Spinoza. Schweitzer was a trained scientific
observer; a reputable medical man, and not given to fraud or
practical jokes. And yet, what I am about to describe is, in modern
understanding, impossible.
Now, what happened was that the stranger made small talk for awhile
and then, more or less out of the blue, asked Dr. Schweitzer whether
he would recognize the “Philosopher’s Stone” if he saw it. He then
took out of his pocket a small ivory box that held “three ponderous
pieces or small lumps... each about the bigness of a small walnut,
transparent, of a pale brimstone colour”. The stranger told
Schweitzer that this was the very substance sought for so long by
the Alchemists.
Schweitzer held one of the pieces in his hand and asked the stranger
if he could have just a small piece. The man refused, but Schweitzer
managed to steal a small bit by scraping it with his fingernail. The
visitor left after promising to return in three weeks time to show
Dr. Schweitzer some “curious arts in the fire”.
Well, as soon as he was gone, Dr. Schweitzer ran to his laboratory
where he melted some lead in a crucible and added the tiny piece of
stone. But, the metal did NOT turn into gold as he anticipated.
Instead, “almost the whole mass of lead flew away, and the remainder
turned into a mere glassy earth”.
Three weeks later, the mysterious stranger was at his door again.
They conversed, and for a long time the man refused to allow Dr.
Schweitzer see his stones again, but, at last “he gave me a crumb as
big as a rape or turnip seed, saying, receive this small parcel of
the greatest treasure of the world, which truly few kings or princes
have ever known or seen”.
Schweitzer must have been a whiner because he recounts that he
protested that this was not sufficient to transmute as much as four
grains of lead into gold. At this, the stranger took the piece back,
cut it in half, and flung one part in the fire, saying: “it is yet
sufficient for thee!”
At this point, Schweitzer confessed his theft from the previous
visit, and described how the substance had behaved with his molten
lead. The stranger began to laugh and told him,
“Thou are more dextrous to commit theft than to apply thy medicine; for if thou
hadst only wrapped up thy stolen prey in yellow wax, to preserve it
from the arising fumes of lead, it would have penetrated to the
bottom of the lead, and transmuted it to gold.”
The guy leaves at this point and promises to return the next morning
to show Schweitzer the correct way to perform the transmutation but,
The next day he came not, nor ever since. Only he sent an excuse at
half an hour
past nine that morning, by reason of his great business, and
promised to come at
three in the afternoon, but never came, nor have I heard of him
since; whereupon I
began to doubt of the whole matter. Nevertheless late that night my
wife... came
soliciting and vexing me to make experiment... saying to me, unless
this be done, I
shall have no rest nor sleep all this night... She being so earnest,
I commanded a fire
to be made - thinking, alas, now is this man (though so divine in
discourse) found
guilty of falsehood... My wife wrapped the said matter in wax, and I
cut half an
ounce of six drams of old lead, and put into a crucible in the fire,
which being
melted, my wife put in the said Medicine made up in a small pill or
button, which
presently made such a hissing and bubbling in its perfect operation,
that within a
quarter of an hour all the mass of lead was transmuted into the ...
finest gold.
Baruch Spinoza, who lived nearby, came the next day to examine this
gold and was convinced that Schweitzer was telling the truth. The
Assay Master of the province, a Mr. Porelius, tested the metal and
pronounced it genuine; and Mr. Buectel, the silversmith, subjected
it to further test that confirmed that it was gold. The testimony of
these men survives to this day.
Now, either ALL of them are lying, or Dr. Schweitzer really did have
a strange experience exactly as he describes it. The interesting
thing is that other people have described similar visitations by
strange men who proclaim to them the truth of the alchemical
process, demonstrate it, and then mysteriously disappear. It has
happened sufficiently often, in widely enough separated places and
times to suggest that it is not a collusive fraud nor a delusion.
Twenty years before Schweitzer’s meeting with the mysterious
stranger, Jan Baptiste van Helmont, who was responsible for several
important scientific discoveries, and was the first man to realize
that there were other gases than air; and who invented the term
“gas”, wrote:
For truly I have divers times seen it [The Philosopher’s Stone], and
handled it with my hands, but it was of colour such as is in Saffron
in its powder, yet weighty, and shining like unto powdered glass.
There was once given unto me one fourth part of one grain [16
milligrams]... I projected [it] upon eighty ounces [227 grams] of
quicksilver [mercury] made hot in a crucible; and straightaway all
the quicksilver, with a certain degree of noise, stood still from
flowing, and being congealed, settled like unto a yellow lump; but
after pouring it out, the bellows blowing, there were found eight
ounces and a little less than eleven grains of the purest gold.
Sir Isaac Newton studied alchemy until his death, remaining
convinced that the possibility of transmutation existed. The great
philosophers and mathematicians, Descartes and Leibnitz, both were
convinced that transmutation was a reality. Even Robert Boyle who
wrote a book entitled The Sceptical Chymist, was sure until the end
of his life, that transmutation was possible!
Why? These men were scientists.
The argument that their ideas or
observations were less scientific than those of the present day
simply does not stand up to scrutiny. As noted, alchemists were
rumored at various times to have gained immortality, and one of
these was Nicolas Flamel.
Flamel was a poor scribe, or scrivener and
copyist. The story goes that, in 1357 he bought an old illuminated
book...
The cover of it was of brass, well bound, all engraven with letters
of strange figures... This I know that I could not read them nor
were they either Latin of French letters... As to the matter that
was written within, it was engraved (as I suppose) with an iron
pencil or graver upon... bark leaves, and curiously coloured...
Reportedly, the first page was written in golden letters that said
Abraham the Jew, Priest, Prince, Levite, Astrologer and Philosopher,
to the Nation of the Jews dispersed by the Wrath of God in France,
wisheth Health. So, quite rightly, Flamel referred to the manuscript
as the Book of Abraham the Jew.
The dedication was followed by curses upon anyone who was not either
a priest or a Jew reading the book. But, Flamel was a scribe, which
he must have imagined exempted him from these curses, so he read the
book. The purpose of the book was avowedly to give assistance to the
dispersed Jews by teaching them to transmute lead into gold so that
they could pay their taxes to the hated Roman government. The
instructions were clear and easy, but only described the latter part
of the process. The instructions for the beginning were said to be
in the illustrations given on the 4th and 5th leaves of the book.
Flamel remarked that, although these were well executed,
...yet by that could no man ever have been able to understand it
without being well skilled in their Qabalah, which is a series of
old traditions, and also to have been well studied in their books.
As the story goes, Flamel tried for 21 years to find someone who
could explain these pictures to him. Finally, his wife urged him to
go to Spain and seek out a rabbi or other learned Jew who might
assist him. So, he made the famous pilgrimage to the shrine of St.
James at Compostela, carrying with him carefully made copies of the
book.
After his devotions at the shrine, he went to the city of Leon in
northern Spain where he met a certain “Master Canches”, a Jewish
physician. When this man saw the illustrations, he was “ravished
with great astonishment and joy”, upon recognizing them as parts of
a book that had long been believed to have been destroyed. He
declared his intention to return with Flamel to France, but he died
on the trip at Orleans. Flamel returned to Paris alone.
But,
apparently, the old Jew must have told him something for he wrote:
I had now the
prima materia, the first principles, yet not their
first preparation, which is a thing most difficult, above all things
in the world... Finally, I found that which I desired, which I also
knew by the strong scent and odor thereof. Having this, I easily
accomplished the Mastery... The fist time that I made projection
[transmutation] was upon Mercury, whereof I turned half a pound, or
thereabouts, into pure silver, better than that of the Mine, as I
myself assayed, and made others assay many times. This was upon a
Monday, the 17th of January about noon, in my home, Perrenelle [his
wife] only being present, in the year of the restoring of mankind
1382.
Several months later Flamel did his first transmutation into gold.
Is this just a story? Well, what IS true and can be verified is that
Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel endowed,
“fourteen hospitals, three
chapels and seven churches, in the city of Paris, all which we had
new built from the ground, and enriched with great gifts and
revenues, with many reparations in their churchyards. We also have
done at Boulogne about as much as we have done at Paris, not to
speak of the charitable acts which we both did to particular poor
people, principally widows and orphans.”
After Flamel’s death in 1419 the rumors began. Hoping that they
could find something hidden in one of his houses, people searched
them again and again until one of them was completely destroyed.
There were stories that Nicolas and Perenelle were still alive.
Supposedly, she had gone to Switzerland and he buried a log in her
grave, and then another log was buried at his own funeral.
In the intervening centuries, the stories persist that Flamel and
Perenelle defeated death.
The 17th century traveller, Paul Lucas,
while travelling in Asia Minor, met a Turkish philosopher who told
him that,
“true philosophers had had the secret of prolonging life
for anything up to a thousand years...”.
Lucas said, “At last I took
the liberty of naming the celebrated Flamel, who, it was said,
possessed the Philosopher’s Stone, yet was certainly dead. He smiled
at my simplicity, and asked with an air of mirth: Do you really
believe this? No, no, my friend, Flamel is still living; neither he
nor his wife has yet tasted death. It is not above three years since
I left both... in India; he is one of my best friends.”
In 1761, Flamel and his wife were reported to have been seen attending the
opera in Paris.
Well, there is an issue here regarding the supposed clue about
“Abraham the Jew” which seems to point us in the direction of a
Jewish fraternity of alchemists or keepers of secrets. I don’t want
to go off on that thread here and now because it would add so much
complexity to the issues that we might never find our way through
the maze. But, to ease the mind of the reader, I will make a few
remarks about this here.
Even though we have not yet come to the
mystery of Fulcanelli, supposedly a 20th century alchemist who
accomplished the great work, let me mention while the subject is at
hand that Eugene Canseliet, in his preface to the Second Edition of
Fulcanelli’s
Le Mystere des Cathedrales, apparently upon the
instruction of the master alchemist, emphasized dramatically the
difference between kabbala and Cabala saying:
...this book has restored to light the phonetic cabala, whose
principles and application had been completely lost. After this
detailed and precise elucidation and after the brief treatment of
it, which I gave in connection with the centaur, the man-horse of
Plessis-Bourre, in Deux Logis Alchimiques, this mother tongue need
never be confused with the Jewish Kabbala. Though never spoken, the
phonetic cabala, this forceful idiom, is easily understood and it is
the instinct or voice of nature.
By contrast, the Jewish Kabbala is full of transpositions,
inversions, substitutions and calculations, as arbitrary as they are
abstruse. This is why it is important to distinguish between the two
words, CABALA and KABBALA in order to use them knowledgeably. Cabala
derives from cadallhz or from the Latin caballus, a horse;
kabbala
is from the Hebrew Kabbalah, which means tradition. Finally,
figurative meanings like coterie, underhand dealing or intrigue,
developed in modern usage by analogy, should be ignored so as to
reserve for the noun cabala the only significance which can be
assured for it.25
Now, the curious bringing in of the terms “coterie”, “underhand
dealing” and “intrigue” in conjunction with what he has just
remarked about Kabbalah meaning “tradition”, and Cabala being
“horse”, is a most curious juxtaposition of words. It almost seems
that Canseliet is telling us that the Kaballah, or the tradition is
a red herring.
Fulcanelli himself makes a curious remark in
Dwellings of the Philosophers:
Alchemy is obscure, only because it is hidden. The philosophers who
wanted to transmit the exposition of their doctrine and the fruit of
their labors to posterity took great care not to divulge the art by
presenting it under a common form, so that the layman could not
misuse it.26
25 Fulcanelli, The Mystery of the Cathedrals, 1984, Brotherhood of
Life, Las Vegas.
26 Fulcanelli, The Dwellings of the Philosophers, 1999, Archive
Press, Boulder.
The point of this short aside is this: don’t assume anything about
Jews, Masons, or any other group when trying to solve the mystery.
Nearly everything we come across will be obscured. And, when it is
right out in plain view, it will be even more difficult to see!
Getting back to our purported alchemists, we come now to the year
1745 in which Prince Charles Edward Stuart, known as the “Young
Pretender”, staged his Jacobite rebellion in an attempt to regain
the British throne for his father the “Old Pretender”. The Jacobite
cause, for all intents and purposes, had been crushed at the battle
of Culloden in April of that year, yet there was a constant fear by
the British government that the Jacobites were still plotting with
their French sympathizers, and being French and in London was, at
that time, a liability.
This “spy fever” resulted in the arrest of
many Frenchmen on trumped up charges, and most of them were later
released, but it was a dangerous time for Gallic visitors!
In November of that year, one Frenchman was arrested and accused of
having pro-Jacobite letters in his possession. He became very
indignant and claimed that the correspondence had been “planted” on
him. Considering the mood of the time, it is quite surprising that
he was believed and released!
Horace Walpole, English author and
Member of Parliament, wrote a letter about this incident to Sir
Horace Mann on December 9, 1745 saying:
“The other day they seized an odd man who goes by the name of Count
Saint-Germain. He has been here these two years, and will not tell
who he is or whence, but professes that he does not go by his right
name. He sings and plays on the violin wonderfully, is mad and not
very sensible.”
This is one of the few “authentic” on the scene comments about one
of the most mysterious characters of the 18th century, the Count
Saint-Germain. Another acquaintance of the Count Saint-Germain,
Count Warnstedt, described Saint-Germain as, “The completest
charlatan, fool, rattle-pate, windbag and swindler”. Yet, his last
patron said that Saint-Germain was, “perhaps one of the greatest
sages who ever lived”.
Clearly this was one of those people you
either love or hate!
Saint-Germain first comes to our attention in the fashionable
circles of Vienna in about 1740, where he made a stir by wearing
black all the time! Everybody else was into bright colors, satins
and laces, ornate patterns and designs; and along comes
Saint-Germain with his somber black outfits set off by glittering
diamonds on his fingers, shoe buckles, and snuff box! What an
attention getter! If you want to stand out in a roomful of robins,
cardinals and bluejays, just be a blackbird! He also had the habit
of carrying handfuls of loose diamonds in his pockets instead of
cash!
So, there he is, garnering attention to himself in this bizarre way,
and naturally he makes the acquaintance of the local leaders of
fashion, Counts Zabor and Lobkowitz, who introduce him to the French
Marshal de Belle Isle. Well, it seems that the Marshal was seriously
under-the-weather, but his illness is not recorded so we can’t
evaluate the claims that Saint-Germain cured him. Nevertheless, the
Marshal was so grateful that he took Saint-Germain to Paris with him
and set him up with apartments and a laboratory.
The details of the Count’s life in Paris are pretty well known, and
it is there that the rumors began. There is an account by a
“Countess de B___” (a nom de plume, it seems, so we have to hold the
information somewhat suspect), who wrote in her memoirs, Chroniques
de l’oeil de boeuf, that, when she met the Count at a soiree given
by the aged Countess von Georgy, whose late husband had been
Ambassador to Venice in the 1670’s, that the old Countess remembered
Saint-Germain from those former times. So, the old girl asked the
Count if his father had been there at the time. He replied no, but
HE had!
Well, the man that Countess von Georgy had known was at least 45
years old then, at least 50 years previously, and the man standing
before her could not be any older than 45 now!
The Count smiled and
said:
“I am very old”.
“But then you must be nearly 100 years old”, the Countess exclaimed.
“That is not impossible”, the Count replied. He then related some
details that convinced the old lady that it was really him she had
met in Venice.
The Countess exclaimed: “I am already convinced. You are a most
extraordinary man, a devil!”
“For pity’s sake!”, cried Saint-Germain in a loud voice heard all
around the room. “No such names!” He began to tremble all over and
left the room immediately.
A pretty dramatic introduction to society, don’t you think? But, was
it real, or the ploy of a very clever con artist? Did he
deliberately choose to adopt the name of someone long dead, about
whom he may have already known a great deal, and then did he set out
to deceive and con in a manner well known to us in the present time
as the modus operandi of the psychopath? Was he a snake oil salesman
or a true man of mystery?
In any event, that was the beginning of the “legend”, and many more
stories of a similar nature spread through society like wildfire.
Saint-Germain apparently fed the fires with hints that he had known
the “Holy Family” intimately and had been invited to the marriage
feast at Cana where Jesus turned water into wine, and dropped
casually the remark that he “had always known that Christ would meet
a bad end”.
According to him, he had been very fond of Anne, the
mother of the Virgin Mary, and had even proposed her canonization at
the Council of Nicaea in
A.D. 325! What a guy! A line for every occasion!
Pretty soon the Count had Louis XV and his mistress, Madame de
Pompadour, eating out of his hand, and it certainly could be true
that he was a French spy in England when he was arrested there,
because he later did handle some sticky business for the credulous
king of France.
In 1760, Louis sent Saint-Germain to the Hague as his personal
representative to arrange a loan with Austria that was supposed to
help finance the SevenYears’ war against England. But, while in
Holland, the Count had a falling out with his friend Casanova, who
was also a diplomat at the Hague. Casanova tried hard to discredit
Saint-Germain in public, but without success. One has to wonder just
what it was that Casanova discovered or came to think about
Saint-Germain at this time.
In any even, Saint-Germain was making other enemies. One of these
enemies was the Duc de Choiseul, King Louis’ Foreign Minister. The
Duc discovered that Saint-Germain had been scoping out the
possibilities of arranging a peace between England and France. Now,
that doesn’t sound like a bad plan at all, but the Duc managed to
convince the King that this was a dire betrayal, and the Count had
to flee to England and then back to Holland.
In Holland, the Count lived under the name Count Surmont, and he
worked to raise money to set up laboratories in which he made paint
and dyes and engaged in his alchemical experiments. By all accounts,
he was successful in some sense, because he disappeared from Holland
with 100,000 guilders!
He next shows up in Belgium as the “Marquis de Monferrat”. He set up
another laboratory with “other people’s money” before disappearing
again. (Are we beginning to see a pattern here?)
For a number of years, Saint-Germain’s activities continued to be
reported from various parts of Europe and, in 1768 he popped up in
the court of Catherine the Great. Turkey had just declared war on
Russia, and Saint-Germain promoted himself as a valuable diplomat
because of his status as an “insider” in French politics. Pretty
soon he was the adviser of Count Alexei Orlov, head of the Russian
Imperial Forces.
Orlov made him a high-ranking officer of the
Russian Army and Saint-Germain acquired an English alias, “General
Welldone”.
His successes in Russia could have enabled him to retire on his
laurels, but he didn’t. In 1774 he appeared in Nuremberg seeking
money from the Margrave of Brandenburg, Charles Alexander. His
ostensible alias at this point (apparently he was no longer
satisfied with being either a Count or a Marquis) was Prince Rakoczy
of Transylvania!
Naturally, the Margrave of Brandenburg was impressed when Count
Orlov visited Nuremburg on a state visit and embraced “the Prince”
warmly. But later, when the Margrave did a little investigating, he
discovered that the real Prince Rakoczy was indubitably dead and
that this counterfeit Prince was, in fact, only Count Saint-Germain!
Saint-Germain did not deny the charges, but apparently he felt that
it was now time to move on.
The Duc de Choiseul, Saint-Germain’s old enemy, had claimed that the
Count was in the employ of Frederick the Great. But, that was
probably not true because, at this point, Saint-Germain wrote to
Frederick begging for patronage. Frederick ignored him, which is
peculiar if he had been in the employ of the Prussian king as de
Choiseul thought.
In the way of the psychopathic con man who can never quite figure
out when to quit, Saint-Germain went to Leipzig and presented
himself to Prince Frederick Augustus of Brunswick as a Freemason of
the fourth grade!
Now, Frederick Augustus just happened to be the Grand Master of the
Prussian Masonic Lodges, so this was really a stupid move on the
part of Saint-Germain since it turned out that he was not a Mason!
But, it is true of the pattern of all con men; their egos eventually
prove to be their downfall! The Prince challenged Saint-Germain
because he did not know the secret signals and sent him away as a
fraud.
In 1779, Saint-Germain was an old man in his 60’s who continued to
claim to be vastly older. He hadn’t lost his touch because, at
Eckenforde in Schleswig, Germany, he was able to charm Prince
Charles of Hesse-Cassel.
At this point, part of his scam included
being a mystic, for he is recorded as having told Prince Charles:
“Be the torch of the world. If your light is that only of a planet,
you will be as nothing in the sight of God. I reserve for you a
splendour, of which the solar glory
is a shadow. You shall guide the course of the stars, and those who
rule Empires shall be guided by you.”
Sounds rather like the build-up to another con job! Nothing like
feeding the ego of the “mark” before slipping away with all his
money! However, Saint Germain was on the way to a place where money
was of no use. On February 27, 1784, he died at Prince Charles’ home
on Eckenforde.
He was buried locally and the Prince erected a stone
that said:
He who called himself the Comte de Saint-Germain and Welldone, of
whom there is no other information, has been buried in this church.
And then the Prince burned all of the Count’s papers “lest they be
misinterpreted”. The only reason we can conceive of for that is
because the Prince wanted to continue to believe in the powers of
Saint Germain, and the papers of the Count did not support that
belief.
Supposedly there is evidence that the Count did not die, and many
occultists claim he is still alive for these past two centuries!
Based upon his pattern of behavior, however, Count Saint Germain
seems merely to have been your garden variety psychopath. He may
have had certain esoteric knowledge - he was certainly well-versed in
many subjects - but his history, and the conflicting stories told
about him give us a different perspective, particularly when we
examine the histories and personalities of those who believed in him
as opposed to those who did not. You can tell a lot about a man by
his friends and his enemies.
The mystery of Saint-Germain is mostly due to the uncertainty
surrounding his origins. One source says that he was born in 1710 in
San Germano, son of a tax collector. Eliphas Levi, the 19th century
occultist said that Saint-Germain was born in Lentmeritz in Bohemia,
and was the bastard son of a nobleman who was also a Rosicrucian.
Levi’s story and accomplishments suggest that he was another
psychopath, so his word on the matter is useless.
It is known that Saint Germain had a genuine gift for languages and
could speak French, German, English, Dutch and Russian fluently. He
also claimed that he was fluent in Chinese, Hindu and Persian, but
there was no one about to test him on those. And, we note that
Horace Walpole said that he was a wonderful violinist and singer and
painter, though none of his purported art has been known to survive.
Supposedly, he was able to paint jewels that glittered in a very
lifelike way.
There is also a great deal of evidence that Saint-Germain was an
expert jeweller - he claimed to have studied the art with the Shah of
Persia! In any event, he is reported to have repaired a flawed
diamond for Louis XV, who was very pleased with the result.
Saint-Germain also had an extensive knowledge of chemistry in all
its branches at the time, and the many laboratories that he set up
with borrowed money were all designed to produce brighter and better
pigments and dyes and also for alchemical studies. Then, there was
his reputation as a healer.
Not only did he cure the Marshal de
Belle Isle, he also cured a friend of Madame de Pompadour of
mushroom poisoning. Saint-Germain never ate in company, which was
obviously part of his plan to focus attention on himself. He could
sit at a table where everyone else was gorging on the most amazing
array of delectable dishes, and eat and drink nothing. Casanova
wrote:
Instead of eating, he talked from the beginning of the meal to the
end, and I followed his example in one respect as I did not eat, but
listened to him with the greatest attention. It may safely be said
that as a conversationalist he was unequalled.
We note that this is another of the many talents attributed to
psychopaths. Colin Wilson, author of The Occult, thought that
Saint-Germain must have been a vegetarian. I think everything he did
was designed to create an image, an impression, and a false one at
that. In the end, the real mystery, aside from his origins, but the
two may be connected, is where did Saint-Germain get all his
specialized knowledge?
Of course, as we have noted here, not all who
met Saint-Germain were impressed by his talents. Casanova was
entertained by him, but nevertheless thought that he was a fraud and
a charlatan.
He wrote:
"This extraordinary man, intended by nature to be the king of
impostors and quacks, would say in an easy, assured manner that he
was three hundred years old, that he knew the secret of the
Universal Medicine, that he possessed a mastery over nature, that he
could melt diamonds, professing himself capable of forming, out of
10 or 12 small diamonds, one of the finest water... All this, he
said, was a mere trifle to him. Notwithstanding his boastings, his
bare-faced lies, and his manifold eccentricities, I cannot say I
found him offensive. In spite of my knowledge of what he was and in
spite of my own feelings, I thought him an astonishing man...”
Count Alvensleben, a Prussian Ambassador to the Court at Dresden,
wrote in
1777:
He is a highly gifted man with a very alert mind, but
completely without judgment, and he has only gained his singular
reputation by the lowest and basest
flattery of which a man is capable, as well as by his outstanding
eloquence, especially if one lets oneself be carried away by the
fervor and the enthusiasm with which he can express himself.
Inordinate vanity is the mainspring driving his whole mechanism.
I don’t know about you, but I have met a few people with all of the
above qualities and have even been deceived by one or two for a
short while. Everything we discover about Saint Germain tends to the
theory of the brilliant psychopath. It sounds like an easy thing to
dismiss Saint Germain out of hand. But, in the case of the Count, we
have a little problem: just which of the stories are really about
him? The plot thickens!
It seems that Berthold Volz, in the 1920’s, did some deep research
on the subject and discovered, or so it is claimed, (I have never
been able to track down this purported proof), that the Duc de
Choiseul, who was overwhelmingly jealous of the Count, hired a
look-alike imposter to go about as the Count, exaggerating and
playing the fool in order to place the Count in a bad light. Is this
just another story, either wishful thinking or deliberately designed
to perpetuate the legend? Are we getting familiar with this “bait
and switch” routine yet?
Supposedly, Saint-Germain foretold the outbreak of the French
Revolution to Marie Antoinette who purportedly wrote in her diary
that she regretted that she did not heed his advice. I haven’t seen
it, so I can’t vouch for it. But, in my opinion, it wouldn’t take a
genius to predict that event, considering the social and political
climate of the time!
It was said that Saint-Germain appeared in Wilhelmsbad in 1785, a
year after he was supposed to have died, and he was accompanied by
the magician Cagliostro, the hypnotist Anton Mesmer, and the
“unknown philosopher”, Louis Claude de St. Martin. But that is
hearsay also.
Next he was alleged to have gone to Sweden in 1789 to warn King
Gustavus III of danger. After that, he visited his friend, diarist
Mademoiselle d’Adhemar, who said he still looked like he was only 46
years old! Apparently, he told her that she would see him five more
times, and she claimed this was, in fact, the case. Supposedly the
last visit was the night before the murder of the Duc de Berri in
1820. Again, we find this to be unsupported by evidence.
Napoleon III ordered a commission to investigate the life and
activities of Saint-Germain, but the findings were destroyed in a
fire at the Hotel de Ville in Paris in 1871 - which many people think
is beyond coincidence. My thought would be that the only reason to
destroy such a report would be if it had proved the Count to be a
fraud.
The result of this fire is that the legend is enabled to live
on; it is likely that the report would have made some difference in
the legend, such as putting it to rest as a fraud. Had it been
helpful to the legend, it would not have changed what is already the
case, which is that people believe that Saint-Germain was something
of a supernatural being. Thus, its destruction, if engineered, must
only have been to protect the status quo.
One of the next threads of the legend was gathered into the hands of
Helena Blavatsky who claimed that Saint-Germain was one of the
“hidden masters” along with Christ, Buddha, Appollonius of Tyana,
Christian Rosencreutz, Francis Bacon and others. In my opinion, Blavatsky’s credibility becomes highly questionable by merely making
this claim. A group of Theosophists traveled to Paris after WW II
where they were told they would meet the Count; he never showed up.
In 1972, a Frenchman named Richard Chanfray was interviewed on
French television. He claimed to be Saint-Germain and, supposedly,
in front of television cameras, transmuted lead into gold on a camp
stove! And, lest we forget the more recent “communications” of the
count to the head of the Church Universal and Triumphant, Elizabeth
Clare Prophet.
In the end, on the subject of Saint-Germain, we find lies and
confusion. Get used to it. And, if Saint-Germain was a fraud we have
to think somewhat carefully about those who claim him as their
“connection” to things esoteric!
During the 19th and 20th centuries, alchemy lost favor with the rise
of experimental science. The time was that of such stellar names as
Lavoisier, Priestley and Davy. Dalton’s atomic theory and a host of
discoveries in chemistry and physics made it clear to all
“legitimate” scientists that alchemy was only a “mystical” and, at
best, harmless pastime of no scientific value.
Organizations such as the Golden Dawn and Ordo Templi Orientis
devised corrupted mixtures of snippets of alchemy and oriental
philosophy, stirred in with the western European magical traditions,
but these were clearly distorted imitations composed mostly of
wishful thinking, romantic nonsense, and monstrous egos. When one
deeply studies the so-called “adepts” of these “systems”, one is
confronted again and again with the archetype of the “failed
magician” so that one can only shake the head and remember the
warning of the great alchemists, that those who do not develop
within themselves the “special state” that is required for the
“Great Work”, can only bring disaster .
There is no doubt in my mind
that such groups dabble in “alchemy” of a sort, or “magick” of
another, and there is no doubt that they may, in fact, “conjure”
connections to sources of “power” on occasion. But, overall, a
survey of what can be learned about them tends to point in the
direction of much wishful thinking or even the possibility of
domination by the forces of entropy in the guise of “angels of
light”.
In 1919, British physicist Ernest Rutherford announced that he had
achieved a successful transmutation of one element into another:
nitrogen to oxygen! Admittedly, his procedures and results in no way
resembled the work of the alchemists; but, what he had done was
refute the insistence of most scientists of the day that
transmutation was impossible.
In fact, it soon became known that
radioactive elements gradually “decay”, giving off radiation and
producing “daughter elements” which then decay even further. For
instance one such chain starts with uranium and the end product is
lead. So, the question became, can the process be reversed? Or, if
you start with another element, what might you end up with?
Franz Tausend was a 36 year-old chemical worker in Munich who had a
theory about the structure of the elements that was a strange
mixture of Pythagoreanism and modern chemistry. He published a
pamphlet entitled, “180 elements, their atomic weight, and their
incorporation in a system of harmonic periods”. He thought that
every atom had a frequency of vibration characteristic of that
element, related to the weight of the atom’s nucleus and the
grouping of the electrons around it. This part of his idea was shown
to be basically correct by later research.
However, Tausend further
suggested that matter could be “orchestrated” by adding the right
substance to the element, thereby changing its vibration frequency,
in which case, it would become a different element.
As it happened, at about the same time, Adolf Hitler was sent to
prison for attempting to organize an armed uprising. One of his
cohorts was General Erich Ludendorff, but Ludendorff was acquitted
of the charges and ran for president of Germany the following year.
He was defeated by Hindenburg, so he turned his mind to raising
money for the nascent Nazi party. He heard rumors that a certain
Tausend had transmuted base metals into gold, and he formed a group,
including numerous industrialists, to investigate this process.
Tausend gave instructions that they should purchase iron oxide and
quartz which were melted together in a crucible. A German merchant
and member of this group, named Stremmel, took the crucible to his
hotel bedroom for the night so that it could not be tampered with.
The next morning, Tausend heated the crucible in his electric
furnace in the presence of his patrons, and then added a small
quantity of white powder to the molten mass. It was allowed to cool,
and then, when it was broken open, a gold nugget weighing 7 grams
was inside.
Ludendorff, to say the least, was ecstatic. He set about forming a
company called “Company 164”. Investment money poured in and within
a year the general had diverted some 400,000 marks into Nazi Party
funds. Then, in December, 1926, he resigned, leaving Tausend to
handle all the debts. Tausend managed to continue raising money and
on June 16, 1928, supposedly made 25 ounces of gold in a single
operation. This enabled him to issue a series of “share
certificates” worth 22 pounds each (10 kilograms of gold).
A year later, when no more gold had been produced, Tausend was
arrested for fraud, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to four years
in prison. Nevertheless, while waiting for trial, he was able to
perform a transmutation under strict supervision, in the Munich
Mint. This was submitted to the court as evidence that no fraud had
taken place, but it was contested and did not save him from prison.
In the same year that Tausend was convicted, a Polish engineer named
Dunikovski announced in Paris that he had discovered a new kind of
radiation which would transmute quartz into gold. The mineral,
spread on copper plates, was melted by an electric discharge at
110,000 volts, and was then irradiated with these new “z-rays”.
Investors poured two million francs into Dunikovski’s project, but,
within a few months, when no gold appeared, he was also tried and
found guilty of fraud. After two years in prison, Dunikovski’s
lawyer obtained an early release, and he went with his family to
Italy where he again began to experiment. Rumors soon started that
he was supporting himself by the occasional sale of lumps of gold.
His lawyer, accompanied by the eminent chemist, Albert Bonn, went to
see him.
What was discovered was that the quartz being used by Dunikovski
(and presumably by Tausend as well) already contained minute
quantities of gold. The gold could be extracted by a usual process,
producing about 10 parts per million, but Dunikovski’s technique
produced almost 100 times as much. Nevertheless, he was only dealing
with small quantities of gold because his equipment could only
handle small quantities of quartz.
Dunikovski claimed that his process accelerated the natural growth
of “embryonic” gold within the quartz. He gave a demonstration
before an invited group of scientists that attracted considerable
attention. An Anglo-French syndicate formed to bring sand from
Africa and treat it in a big new laboratory on the south coast of
England, but WW II started at about this time and Dunikovski
disappeared. It was rumored that he was “co-opted” by the Germans
and manufactured gold for them to bolster their failing economy - but
there is no proof.
Since WW II, there have been and still are, many practitioners of
alchemy. Much of this activity has been centered in France,
including Eugene Canseliet, who claimed to have been a pupil of the
mysterious Fulcanelli mentioned above.
In studying alchemy and the history of alchemy and all related books
I could find, I came finally to Fulcanelli and the mention of him in
the book
Morning of the Magicians by Pauwels and
Bergier.
Bergier claimed that in June of 1937 - eight years before the first
atom-bomb test in New Mexico - that he was approached by an
impressive but mysterious stranger. The man asked Bergier to pass on
a message to the noted physicist Andre Helbronner, for whom Bergier
was then working. The man said that he felt it was his duty to warn
orthodox scientists of the danger of nuclear energy. He said that
the alchemists of bygone times - and previous civilizations - had
obtained such secret knowledge and it had destroyed them.
The
mysterious stranger said that he really had no hope that his warning
would be heeded, but felt that he ought to give it anyway. Jacques Bergier remained convinced until the day he died that the stranger
was Fulcanelli. As the story goes, the American Office for Strategic
Services, the forerunner of the CIA, made an intensive search for Fulcanelli at the end of the war.
He was never found.
The argument against this strange event ever having happened is that
plutonium was specifically named by the mystery man, yet it was not
isolated until February of 1941, and was not named until March of
1942. This was five years after Bergier’s encounter. Nevertheless,
Bergier stood by his story. 27
27 It has been noted by the student of Fulcanelli’s only disciple,
Eugene Canseliet, Patrick Riviere, that Bergier - just before he died - claimed that Schwaller and Fulcanelli were one and the same
individual.
Andre VandenBroeck’s AL-KEMI, A MEMOIR: Hermetic, Occult, Political
and Private Aspects of
R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1987 Inner Traditions/Lindisfarn Press)
claims a clandestine collaboration between Fulcanelli and Rene
Schwaller.
Supposedly, Schwaller confided to VandenBroeck that
Fulcanelli stole from him an original manuscript on the alchemical
symbolism of the Gothic Cathedrals and published it under his own
name as Mystery of the Cathedrals. VandenBroeck’s allegation seems
to be supported only by VandenBroeck himself, and simply does not
fit the facts or the timeline.
In her work Fulcanelli Dévoilé (1992 Dervy) Geneviève Dubois
suggests that Schwaller believed Jean-Julien Champagne to be
Fulcanelli and that it was Champagne who took the manuscript.
Champagne was quite a practical joker and was happy to let others
think he was Fulcanelli.
And, the fact is, if we are talking
about Master Alchemists, the history seems to indicate that they
have “time travel” capabilities to some extent. So, the matter of
knowing the name of the element would not have been too great a
difficulty.
In the early 1920’s, in Paris, there was a small man in his early
twenties, named Eugene Canseliet who was known as an alchemical
enthusiast. He made many references to the fact that he worked with
an actual “Master of the Art”. His friend and companion, a poverty
stricken illustrator named Jean-Julien Champagne, who was a score of
years older than Canseliet, supported these claims.
The two of them
lived in a run-down building, in adjacent apartments, at 59 bis, rue
de Rochechouart, in the Butte-Montmartre district. Because of their
hints that they had contact with such a “Hidden Master”, they soon
became the center of a circle of aspiring occultists who became
known as the Brothers of Heliopolis. It seems that both Canseliet
and Champagne were frequently seen in the city libraries, the
Bibliotheque Nationale, the Mazarin, the Arsenal and the Sainte
Genevieve, studying rare books and manuscripts. Obviously, they were
looking for something.
The story heard by those on the edges of this elite little group was
to the effect that this “Hidden Master Fulcanelli” was old,
distinguished - possibly an aristocrat - and very rich. He was also
said to be an immensely learned, practicing alchemist who had either
already, or almost, achieved the Great Work.
Nobody (until later, as we saw with Jacques Bergier) except
Canseliet and Champagne ever claimed to have met Master Fulcanelli,
and, because of this, a great deal of skepticism arose in the occult
circles of Paris. But then, the skepticism was laid to rest with the
publication of Le mystere des cathedrales in 1926. This first
edition consisted of only 300 copies, and was published by Jean
Schemit of 45 rue Lafitte, in the Opera district.
It was subtitled,
“An esoteric interpretation of the hermetic symbols of the Great Work”, and its preface was
written by Eugene Canseliet, then aged only 26. The book had 36
illustrations, two of them in color, by the artist, Champagne. So,
in one fell swoop, both Canseliet and Champagne were vindicated, and
their place among the coterie of occultists assured!
The subject of the book was a purported interpretation of the
symbolism of various Gothic cathedrals and other buildings in Europe
as being encoded instructions of alchemical secrets. This idea, that
the secrets were contained in the stone structures, carvings, and so
forth, of the medieval buildings had been hinted at by other writers
on esoteric art and architecture, but no one had ever explicated the
subject so clearly and in such detail before. In any event,
Fulcanelli’s book caused a sensation among the Parisian occultists.
In the preface, written by Canseliet, there is the hint that Master
Fulcanelli had “attained the Stone” - that is, had become mystically
transfigured and illuminated and had disappeared!
He disappeared when the fatal hour struck, when the Sign was
accomplished... Fulcanelli is no more. But we have at least this
consolation that his thought remains, warm and vital, enshrined for
ever in these pages.28
28 From Canseliet’s introduction to Fulcanelli’s book.
The extraordinary scholarship of Les Mystere drove the occult crowd
of Paris mad with desire to know who Fulcanelli really was! Rumor
and speculation ran wild!
About these speculations regarding Fulcanelli’s possible identity,
Kenneth Rayner Johnson writes:
There were suggestions that he was a surviving member of the former
French royal family, the Valois. Although they were supposed to have
died out in 1589 upon the demise of Henri III, it was known that
members of the family had dabbled in magic and mysticism and that
Marguerite de France, daughter of Henri II and wife of Henri IV of
Navarre, survived until 1615. What is more, one of her many lovers
was the esoterically inclined Francis Bacon (whom many still claim
as an adept to this day); she was divorced in 1599 and her personal
crest bore the magical pentagram, each of whose five points carried
one letter of the Latin word salus meaning ‘health.’ Could the
reputedly aristocratic Fulcanelli be a descendant of the Valois, and
did the Latin motto hint that some important alchemical secret of
longevity had been passed on to him by the family?
Some claimed Fulcanelli was a bookseller-occultist,
Pierre Dujols,
who with his wife ran a shop in the rue de Rennes in the Luxembourg
district of Paris. But Dujols was already known to have been only a
speculative alchemist, writing under the nom de plume of Magophon.
Why should he hide behind two aliases? Another suggestion was that
Fulcanelli was the writer J. H. Rosny the elder. Yet his life was
too well-known to the public for this theory to find acceptance.
There were also at least three practical alchemists working in the
city around the same period. They operated under the respective
pseudonyms of Auriger,
Faugerons and Dr. Jaubert. The argument against them being
Fulcanelli was much the same as that against Dujols-Magophon: why
use more than one alias?
Finally, there were Eugene Canseliet and Jean-Julien Champagne, both
of whom were directly connected with Fulcanelli’s book, and both of
whom had claimed to have known the Master personally.29
29 Johnson, Kenneth R., The Fulcanelli Phenomenon,1992. These
stories have since been laid to rest as everything from idle
speculation to overt disinfo with the publication in French of
Fulcanelli by Patrick Rivière in 2000. An updated and revised second
edition, with much new material, appeared in 2004, published by
Pardès in their series “Qui suis-je?” An English translation of Mr.
Rivière’s book will soon appear and should settle once and for all
the questions of Fulcanelli’s identity.
There was one major objection to Canseliet being Fulcanelli: he was
too young to possibly have gained the knowledge apparent in the
book. And, yes, a study of his preface as compared with the text
demonstrated distinctly different styles. So, Canseliet was
excluded.
Champagne is the next likely suspect because he was older and more
experienced, and it was a certainty that his work as an artist had
taken him around France so that he would have had opportunity to
view all the monuments described in such detail. The only problem
with this theory was that Champagne was a “noted braggart, practical
joker, punster and drunkard, who frequently liked to pass himself
off as Fulcanelli - although his behavior was entirely out of
keeping with the traditional solemn oath of the adept to remain
anonymous and let his written work speak for itself”.
And, in
addition to that, Champagne was an alcoholic whose imbibing of
absinthe and Pernod eventually killed him. He died in 1932 of
gangrene at the age of 55. His toes actually fell off. Doesn’t sound
much like a “Master Alchemist”. As a humorous note, some of the
descriptions of the transmutation of the alchemist make you wonder
if the toes falling off isn’t part of the process!
Joking aside, there are many more details and curiousities involved
in the sorting out of who or what Fulcanelli may have really been,
with no more resolution than we had at the beginning of the
discussion! It just goes around in circles! The bottom line is: more
than one person has attested to Fulcanelli’s existence, his success
in transmutation and to his continued existence into the present
time which would make him over 140 years old! And some theorists
think he may be older than that!
The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis Pauwels and
Jacques Bergier,
was published in 1963, and it was only then that English speaking
occultists and students of alchemy became aware of Fulcanelli. At
that point in time, it was to be another eight years before Le mystere des cathedrales would be translated into English. But, each
of these books awoke a whole new audience of Seekers to the
possibility of present day miracles as well as the very real
likelihood of a millennia old secret held in trust by persons
unknown.
In the English edition of Mystery of the Cathedrals, Eugene Canseliet said that the Master had given him a minute quantity of
the alchemical “powder of projection” in 1922 - and permitted him to
transmute 4 ounces of lead into gold.
Walter Lang, who wrote the
introduction to the book received a letter from Canseliet which
said, in part:
The Master was already a very old man but he carried his eighty
years lightly. Thirty years later, I was to see him again... and he
appeared to be a man of fifty. That is to say, he appeared to be a
man no older than I was myself.
Canseliet has since said that he has met with Fulcanelli several
times since and that Fulcanelli is still living.30
30 Johnson, op. cit.
Canseliet said that he met the Master in Spain in 1954 under highly
unusual circumstances. The late Gerard Heym, founder member of the
Society for the Study of Alchemy and Early Chemistry and editor of
Ambix, its journal, acclaimed as Europe’s formost occult scholar of
his day, made friends with Canseliet’s daughter and through her, had
a look at Canseliet’s passport. It did carry a Spanish entry-visa
stamp for 1954. So, at least on this one item we have a small fact,
even if it is hearsay. I haven’t seen it myself.
One friend of Canseliet, who wished to remain anonymous, said that
this meeting was “in another dimension... a point where such
meetings are possible”. The story was that Canseliet “received a
summons”, of some sort; perhaps telepathic, and traveled to Seville
where he was met and taken by a long, roundabout route, to a large
mountain chateau which proved to be an enclave of alchemists - a
colony!
He said that Fulcanelli appeared to have undergone a curious
form of transformation so that he had characteristics of both male
and female - he was androgynous. At one point, Canseliet said,
Fulcanelli actually had the complete characteristics of a woman.
Some of the more obscure alchemical literature does point to this
androgyny. The adept going through the transformation supposedly
loses all hair, teeth and nails and grows new ones. The skin becomes
younger, smoother and the face takes on asexual characteristics.
After Canseliet’s visit to the Enclave of the Alchemists, apparently
somewhere in the Pyrenees, Gerard Heym said that he only had vague
recollections of his experiences in Spain, as though some form of
hypnosis had been used on him to make him forget the details of what
he had seen and been told. (Why are we not surprised?!)
The point of this recitation is that there have been many well
attested stories of strange things about alchemy reported by
reliable and reputable witnesses, and the
stories continue in a sort of “subculture” down to our very day.
There is something going on, and it has been going on for a very
long time!
And since we have encountered an alchemist in recent
times - Fulcanelli - who may (or may not) have a clue, we might want
to make note of some of the things he had to say about our present
subject that may be the equivalent of the thread of Ariadne out of
this labyrinth of confusion.
A Knight on a Quest
Before proceeding to the subject at hand, some little background is
in order. As a child, I was always attracted to the stories of King
Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. This was only natural,
considering my patronymic of birth: Knight. Thus, a great many books
on the subject were read and digested at a very early age.
But, my
general opinion of them changed as I grew older. I consigned them to
the realm of fantasies or children’s stories. There was no “real”
grail; it was just a pretty tale. They were nice to read and imagine
in times of idleness, but I felt that I needed to get about the REAL
work of “finding God”. I didn’t realize that, in a very real sense
this is the true nature of the Grail quest. In any event, I
concentrated many years on this “finding God” business. For me it
was as essential a thing to do as it was necessary for me to
breathe.
I started in pretty basic ways: believing nothing, testing
everything; and over the years I gradually found my way from the
hard sciences to the “soft” sciences to the “Para-sciences”. I
analyzed and categorized everything as I went and, at the “end”, I
thought I had pretty well run the gamut.
My categories were more
varied and extensive than those of many people, but they were
categories nonetheless - and I had more or less reconciled myself to
never really knowing God except through “mind”, and mind was, after
all, as far as I could see, the beginning and end point of
everything. Cogito ergo sum. That was all we could know. I wasn’t
happy with this answer, but what else was there?
That is where matters rested until the events described in my
autobiography, Amazing Grace, that led to the Cassiopaean
transmissions. And then, the Quest began in earnest.
New evidence, new knowledge, can change the entire foundation of
what we think we know. And this, of course, is part of the very
problem of the Grail. Everyone builds a hypothesis based on what is
generally available in the context of “ordinary research” or
hypotheses constructed on the foundations of our assumptions about
our reality that are part of the social/cultural milieu in which we
live. And because we are so invested in our fundamental beliefs
about the nature of our reality, we become emotionally invested in
these hypotheses - emotionally attached, that is - and when new
information is discovered or brought to our attention, we often not
only do not WANT to hear or see it - we simply cannot.
Beginning with a state of psychic bankruptcy in 1984, the Cassiopaeans spent ten years disabusing me of my
assumptions about
our reality, as we perceive it. I had prayed fervently for answers,
and the Universe began to answer me in the dynamics of my very life.
At a certain point, when I had passed many tests, the mode of
communication became more direct and conscious - the
Cassiopaean
Transmissions themselves - and it became very clear that the Grail
Quest was
indeed important. It also became clear that it was a far deeper and
more complex
an issue than most scholars and amateur Grail Questors suppose.
What
was even
more interesting was the fact that the Cassiopaeans led me to
discover that the
Grail Quest and the “Quest of the Alchemists for the Philosopher’s
Stone” is
identical. During the years of this initiation, I was guided to
re-visit many of the texts I
had casually dismissed in my youth in order to “read between the
lines” with my
“new eyes”.
The Cassiopaeans also suggested lines of study and
research that had
not been a part of my previous work. Among the texts I was guided to
consider
were the works of the alchemist Fulcanelli.
And in the writings of Fulcanelli, I
discovered that the very problem I was considering was described:
“Furthermore, in our opinion, it seems insufficient to know how to
recognize and classify facts exactly; one must still question nature
and learn from her in what conditions and under the control of what
will her manifold productions take place. Indeed, the philosophical
mind will not be content with the mere possibility of identifying
bodies. It demands the knowledge of the secret of their
elaborations. To open ajar the door of the laboratory where nature
mixes the elements is good; to discover the occult force, under
whose influences her work is accomplished, is better. […]
“Alchemy is obscure only because it is hidden. The philosophers who
wanted to transmit the exposition of their doctrine and the fruit of
their labors to posterity took great care not to divulge the art by
presenting it under a common form so that the layman could not
misuse it. Thus because of the difficulty one has of understanding
it, because of the mystery of its enigmas and of the opacity of its
parables, the science has come to be shut up among reveries,
illusions and chimeras. […]
“With their confused texts, sprinkled with cabalistic expressions,
the books remain the efficient and genuine cause of the gross
mistake that we indicate. For, in spite of the warnings... students
persisted in reading them according to the meanings that they hold
in ordinary language. They do not know that these texts are reserved
for initiates, and that it is essential, in order to understand
them, to be in possession of their secret key. One must first work
at discovering this key.
“Most certainly these old treatises contain, if not the entire
science, at least its philosophy, its principles, and the art of
applying them in conformity with natural laws. But if we are unaware
of the hidden meaning of the terms - for example, the meaning of
Ares, which is different from Aries - strange qualifications
purposely used in the composition of such works, we will understand
nothing of them or we will be infallibly led into error.
“We must not forget that it is an esoteric science. Consequently, a
keen intelligence, an excellent memory, work, and attention aided by
a strong will are NOT sufficient qualities to hope to become learned
in this subject.
Nicolas Grosparmy writes:
‘Such people truly delude themselves who think that we have only
made our books for them, but we have made them to keep out all those
who are not of our sect.’
“Batsdorff, in the beginning of his treatise, charitably warns the
reader in these terms:
‘Every prudent mind must first acquire the Science if he can; that
is to say, the principles and the means to operate. Otherwise he
should stop there, without foolishly using his time and his wealth.
And so, I beg those who will read this little book to credit my
words. I say to them once more, that THEY WILL NEVER LEARN THIS
SUBLIME SCIENCE BY MEANS OF BOOKS, AND THAT IT CAN ONLY BE LEARNED
THROUGH DIVINE REVELATION, HENCE IT IS CALLED DIVINE ART, or through
the means of a good and faithful master; and since there are very
few of them to whom God has granted this grace, there are also very
few who teach it.’” 31
31 Fulcanelli,
Dwellings of the Philosophers
(Boulder: Archive
Press 1999) pp. 49, 65, 84.
At this point in time, as I write this little monograph, I can say
that it is true that only by Revelation - by the Initiatory work of
the Cassiopaeans - myself in the future - that much of the Secret has
been thus far revealed.
The question may be asked: why am I revealing the secret if it has
been the tradition to conceal it?
Because I am as I am, and from my
perspective, what is given to me is only serving myself until I give
it to others in response to their asking. And many have asked.
After over thirty years of work, the one thing that has become
evident is that the energies of Creation emanate “downward”, and our
individuality as human beings is merely an expression of the
“Theological Dramas”, so to say. To attempt to exert our will or to
make our voice travel “upward”, against Creation is, in essence, an
attempt to violate the Free Will of Creation, i.e. Hubris. This is
why praying, rituals designed to “change” reality, “positive
thinking” with the “intent” to change something “up there”, in order
to receive the benefits “down here”, is always doomed to produce
more strife, misery and suffering globally.
As I searched through the literature in hundreds of fields of study,
the chief thing that became apparent to me is that mankind is in the
iron grip of an uncaring control system that raises him up and
brings him low for its own mysterious purposes. No group, no
nationality, no secret society or religion, is exempt.
I needed answers. I couldn’t live haunted daily by this grief for
humanity and the many horrors of history. That was the motivation
for the Cassiopaean experiment. Everything we are taught in our
society, our history, our religions, and the new age versions of
same, is all logically inconsistent and makes a mockery of the very
idea of a Creator - Ribbono Shel Olom - Master of the Universe. There
was something strange and mysterious going on here on Earth, and I
wanted to know the answers. So I undertook
the channeling
experiment that resulted, after two years of dedicated work, in what
is known as
the Cassiopaean Transmissions.
In spite of the fact that we hold an “open opinion” regarding the
source of this material, the answers we received from the
Cassiopaeans - us in the future - were intriguing, to say the least.
The closest analogy to the view of reality presented by
the Cassiopaeans is graphically explicated in the movie, The Matrix,
wherein our reality is presented as a computer program/dream that
“stores” human beings in “pods” so that they are batteries producing
energy for some vast machine dominating the world.
Certain
programmed life-scenarios of great emotional content were designed
in order to produce the most “energy” for this machine. And it seems
that pain and suffering are the “richest” in terms of “juice”.
Another major concept presented in The Matrix was that the “real
now” was the reality of the control system that produced the
“programmed dream of reality” that was being experienced by those
“trapped in the Matrix”. The Matrix Dream Reality was based on the
way things were in the past, before a terrible thing had occurred to
destroy the world-that-was, after which it came under the control of
computers which had become sentient and needed to utilize human
beings as “power sources”, or “food”.
The difference between the metaphor of The Matrix and the view of
the Cassiopaeans is that they propose a para-physical realm as
another layer in the structure of space-time from which our own
reality is projected, looping over and over again in endless
variations. You could say that the
hyperdimensional realms are the
“future” in a very real sense.
This para-physical reality of hyperdimensional space - the realm of
the Matrix programmers - is inhabited, according to the Cassiopaeans,
by beings of both positive and negative polarity who have
“graduated” from our reality, but not necessarily in the sense of
“dying” and going to a strictly ethereal realm. It is, effectively,
a world of the future that creates our present by projecting itself
into the past. What is important to realize is that if we think
about the future in terms of probable futures, or branching
universes, then what we do now, whether we wake up from the Matrix
or not, determines what kind of future we experience, individually
and collectively.
While these ideas might seem more suited to science fiction than
science proper, in fact, some of the most well-known physicists have
proposed models and research programs that in no way contradict this
hypothesis. They may one day demonstrate the mathematical proof of
such a perspective.
For example, Paul Dirac wrote:
“There are, at present, fundamental problems in theoretical physics
the solution of
which will presumably require a more drastic revision of our
fundamental concepts
than any that have gone before. Quite likely, these changes will be
so great that it
will be beyond the power of human intelligence to get the necessary
new ideas by
direct attempts to formulate the experimental data in mathematical
terms. The
theoretical worker in the future will, therefore, have to proceed in
a more direct
way. The more powerful method of advance that can be suggested at
present is to
employ all resources of pure mathematics in attempts to perfect and
generalize the
mathematical formalism that forms the existing basis of theoretical
physics, and
after each success in this direction, to try to interpret the new
mathematical features
in terms of physical entities.”
Certain ontological problems related particularly to quantum theory
suggest that an “observer” (J. A. Wheeler’s “Eye”), watching the
universe so as to “create it”, may need to be included in our
consideration. That suggests the necessity for expanding the scope
of what is nowadays considered as “physical entities”. The answer to
“observability of parallel universes” may involve taking into
account such an extension.
Now, consider the idea that there are several - maybe even infinite - “probable future yous” as observers. In the picture above, this
would be represented as many “eyes” but all of them converging on a
single point on the tail - the “now” moment that we perceive, which
is the moment of “choice”. It is from these probable futures of
infinite potential - of “thought centers” - that reality is projected.
It is through human beings that these energies are
transduced and become “real”.
You in the here and now - at the conjunction of all of these
probabilities all vying with one another to become “real” - have no
possibility of “creating” anything in this reality from “down here”,
so to say. The realities - the creative potentials - are a projection
from higher levels of density. You are a receiver, a transducer, a
reflector of the view of which eye is viewing YOU, nothing more.
The phenomenon that these ideas speak to more directly is that of
hyperdimensional realities wherein mental energies or consciousness
energies are amplified and can be interactive with the environment:
technology that suggests not only power for transport that is partly
physical, partly “ethereal”; communication that is also partly
physical and partly ethereal, as well as powers of “manifestation”
that might seem impossible to us in our present state of technology.
All of these properties do belong to hyperdimensional existence, and
such a state of being has been reported for millennia as being the
“realm of the Gods”, including Dragons and Serpents, and critters of
all sorts.
If we can describe such realms mathematically and give them a
physical reality, as Dirac suggests, then we might also consider the
hypothesis that they may be inhabited.
Could our “Gods” be
inhabitants of this realm?
As many physicists will tell you, all that really exists are
“waveforms” and we are waveforms of reality, and our consciousness
is something that “reads waves”. We give form and structure to the
waves we “read” according to some agreed upon convention.
And so, certain denizens of hyperdimensional space are “read” as
more or less “reptilian” because that is the “essence” of their
being, the frequency of their “wave form”. We call them the
Overlords of Entropy. They are not necessarily physical as we
understand the term, nor are they necessarily “alien” as we
understand that term either. We suspect that the perceptions of
these levels of reality and their “consciousness units” are what is
behind many religious conceptions and mythological representations
of “Gods and Goddesses” and creatures of all sorts.
It is in this context of the Matrix, and realizing that the inner
knowledge of many great mystery teachings down through the ages have
presented the same, or a similar concept, that I have come to view
the phenomena and interactions of our world. Such a view certainly
produces results of becoming “free” from the controls of this
Matrix, so I can say that in terms of experiment, it produces
replicable results.
However, as Morpheus explained to Neo in the
movie:
The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But
when you’re inside, you look around; what do you see? Businessmen,
teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The
very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do,
these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them
our enemy. You have to understand; most of these people are not
ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly
dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it. Were you
listening to me Neo, or were you looking at the woman in the red
dress? They will fight to protect it...
We could just as well re-write this to say:
When you are inside the
Matrix, you look around and see Christians, Jews, Mohammedans,
Zoroastrians, Wiccans, Magicians... most of these people are not
ready to be unplugged... they are so hopelessly inured, so
hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect
it. Were you listening to me, or were you listening to that
ZionistBaptistEvangelist, or purveyor of Magick and mumbo jumbo?
It was also pointed out by Morpheus that any human being who was
plugged into the system could be used as an “agent” by something
similar to a downloaded program that was designed to activate them
in a certain way. A similar state of affairs seems to be the actual
case in our reality, with
the Controllers acting from some hyperdimensional space of which we have but limited awareness, and
even less access.
The option that does seem, realistically, to be open to us is to
choose our alignment and prepare ourselves for the emanations that
are traveling “downward” to be better received.
This is the
essential point of
Castaneda’s Don Juan when he said:
One of the greatest accomplishments of the seers of the Conquest was
a construct he called the three-phase progression. By understanding
the nature of man, they were able to reach the incontestable
conclusion that if seers can hold their own in facing [human] petty
tyrants, they can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then
they can even stand the presence of the unknowable.
“The average man’s reaction is to think that the order of that
statement should be reversed,” he went on. “A seer who can hold his
own in the face of the unknown can certainly face petty tyrants. But
that’s not so. What destroyed the superb seers of ancient times was
that assumption. We know better now. We know that nothing can temper
the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with
impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions
can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure
of the unknowable.” 32
32 Casteneda, Carlos, The Fire From Within, (New York: Pocket Books
1985) p. 19.
All around us we see the result of this error: the idea that we can
exert our will and voice upward to change what is “above” us in
order to change our reality. This idea is at the root of rites and
rituals, demanding, pleading, visualizations, tapping, “workings”,
and so forth.
People who think that “meditating on compassion”, or
“feeling the feelings of all beings”, is going to result in the
“sonic entrainment of the heart’s rhythm [being] braided into more
complex and coherent patterns”, which will then enable the person to
“create a diamond imperishable body for use as a teaching vehicle
down here on earth”, have missed the entire point. To compare such
ideas to the true work of Seeker of Ascension is simply ignorant.
What seems to be true is that before the seeker of Ascension can
ever achieve the point of being able to think even momentarily about
“the oneness of all beings”, or the “feelings of all beings”, or be
in possession of “super-awareness”, he or she has spent many, many
years in the struggle to “face petty tyrants”, or to fully realize
objective reality in a step by step process that includes action in
concert with understanding.
They have repeatedly exposed themselves to as many “unpleasant
experiences” as they can find, all the while struggling to master
their emotions, desires, and physicality. It is the work of making
the physical vehicle “down here” receptive to what one chooses to
align with “up there”, as opposed to trying to forcibly change
something “up there” in order to have it “down here”. This process
is very much involved with what is called “discernment”.
The great Sufi Shaykh Ibn al-’Arabi explains that “imperfection”
exists in Creation because “were there no imperfection, the
perfection of existence would be imperfect”. From the point of view
of Sheer Being, there is nothing but good. But Infinite Potential
to
BE includes - by definition of the word “infinite” - the potential to
not be. And so, Infinite Potential “splits” into Thought Centers of
Creation and Thought Centers of non-being. It can be said that
Infinite Potential is fundamentally Binary - on or off - to be or not
to be. That is the first “division”.
Since absolute non-being is an impossible paradox in terms of the
source of Infinite Potential to BE, the half of the consciousness of
Infinite Potential that constitute the IDEAS of non-being - for every
idea of manifestation, there is a corresponding idea for that item
of creation to NOT manifest - “falls asleep” for lack of a better
term. Its “self observation” is predicated upon consciousness that
can only “mimic” death.
Consciousness that mimics death then “falls”
and becomes Primal Matter. What this means is that the “self
observing self” at the level of the Master of the Universe is
constituted of this initial division between Being and Non-being
which is, again, only the initial division - the on/off, the yes/no - of creation. You could picture this as an open eye observing a
closed eye. It has been represented for millennia in the yin-yang
symbol, which, even on the black half that represents “sleeping
consciousness that is matter”, you can see the small white dot of
“being” that represents to us that absolute non-existence is not
possible. There is only “relative” non-existence.
These “thoughts of being and non-being” interact with one another - the observer and the observed - like a viewer looking into a mirror.
Creation manifests between the viewer and the mirror. It is at once
real, because it consists of matter informed by consciousness, and
unreal, because it is ultimately composed of only consciousness
acting on consciousness.
At our level of reality, the understanding that “nothing is real”,
as has been promulgated by gurus and teachers down through history,
is as useless as saying “gravity isn’t real”. Such considerations
are useful only for expansion of perception. They are not useful for
practical application since the energies of creation apparently
transduce through several “levels” before they meet in the middle,
so to say, in our third density reality.
Organic life exists at the
“crossroads” of the myriad ideas or thought centers of being and
non-being. As such, they have the capacity to transduce energies
“up” or “down” depending on the “consciousness energy directors” of
that unit. And again, there are apparently two broad divisions:
directed toward being/ observing, or directed toward non-being/
mirroring. This division manifests across all levels of organic
life, including human beings. Human beings exist to transduce cosmic
energies of creation via organic life.
Our “higher selves” are the
directors of this transducing of cosmic energies, and the direction
in which the energy “flows” is determined by the activities of these
higher selves. Against the opposition of those forces seeking to
“capture” energy of consciousness and induce it to the “sleep of
non-being”, which is gravitational in a certain sense, the energies
of consciousness seek to “inform” matter, via awakening the
self-awareness of those organic units on earth that are capable of
resistance to the gravity of non-being.
As self-aware “transducing units”, the human being has the potential
for going either way - toward intensified being, or toward
intensified non-being. In this sense, humans also function very much
like a lens that can be “adjusted” like a telescope. It can be
dialed to select the viewing range, which can be distant and
inclusive of more “space/time”, or it can be shortened to only see
what is up close and evident in the material world. In other words,
our first and most fundamental choice is to choose what we SEE.
When we choose what we SEE - and here we do NOT mean with the
physical eyes or even psychically, but rather a more inclusive term
that suggests whether or not we are capable of objectivity or
subjectivity - we are receiving impressions. Impressions can become
knowledge if assimilated. Knowledge leads to awareness. Knowledge
and awareness then direct emotions, which then energize actions in
the organic world. This is the transducing of energies of Cosmic
Thought Centers.
Ibn al-’Arabi tells us that Goodness is Being; to which all positive
and beautiful attributes or “names” of God belong. Evil is the lack
of good, so it is “nonexistence”. In other words, at the root, Being
dwells in “non-existence” which is evil.
Here is the sticking point,
the item that is generally omitted from most “systems of ascension”.
Human beings at our level of reality exist at the crossroads of the
Thoughts of Being and Non-being - Good and Evil. Mankind is made in
the form of all the names of God - those of Being and Non-being.
Assuming the traits of the Names is synonymous with manifesting
their properties. The Science of Ascension is to obtain deep
knowledge of all the Names and their true properties, the high and
the low, the pleasant and the loathsome, the light and the darkness,
in differentiated detail, so as to be able to CHOOSE which traits
will be assumed.
It is only with a full field of vision that a man
can discover if what he subjectively thinks is good actually is good
and leads to Being, or if it is a deception that induces to
Non-being by pretense.
God is the root of ALL Names, noble and base. The task of the seeker
of ascension is to bring the Noble traits from latency into
actuality and to discover the positive applications of the base
traits - even if that application is to “overcome” or transmute. The
Shaykh tells us “noble character traits are only those connected to
interaction with others”. In other words: DOing. If you SEE the
illusion of separation, that is certainly the first thing. The lie
is smuggled in by suggesting that this is all that is necessary,
that if you just “see it” everything will “change” for you.
God creates the good and the evil, the ugly and the beautiful, the
straight and the crooked, the moral and the immoral. Between these
traits lie the manifold dangers of the path of the seeker of Truth.
Many modern day “teachers” and “gurus” tell us,
“Since there is only
One Being which permeates all things, all we have to do is see
everything as only light”, and that will transmute the darkness, and
we will “create our own reality of light”.
Such a statement ignores
the fact that the statement “God is One” describes a reality that is
a higher level from which our own “mixed being” manifests. The man
who assumes that he can become like God at this level just by
thinking it, ignores the facts of Being vs. Non-being which outrays
from “God is One” at a level of existence that is clearly several
levels above our own.
Evil is REAL on its own level, and the task of man is to navigate
the Cosmic Maze without being defiled by the Evil therein. This is
the root of Free Will. Man faces a predicament as REAL as himself:
he is forced to choose - to utilize his knowledge by applying it - between the straight path which leads to Being, and the crooked
paths which lead to Non-Being.
Human beings are required to discern
between good and evil - consciousness energy directors - at every
stage of their existence in this reality. Because, in fact, they
must understand that God is consciousness and God is matter.
God is
good, and God is evil. The Creation assumes all the different
properties of the many “Names of God”. The Cosmos is full of
Life-giving and Slaying, Forgiveness and Vengeance, Exaltation and
Abasement, Guidance and Deception. To attempt to assume God’s point
of view and “mix everything” at this level, results only in STAYING
at this level.
Therefore, human beings must always separate God’s
point of view from their own point of view and the fact that all
creation assumes the divine Names and Traits.
Thus, the first Divine Command is BE! And that includes Being and
Non-being instantaneously.
Therefore, the second law is “follow
Being or Non-being according to your choice and your inherent
nature”.
All creation is a result of this engendering command. So,
in this respect, there is no Evil, but the second, prescriptive law
determines to which “Face of God” one will return: Life or Death.
If the engendering command alone is considered, there is no
imperfection in the cosmos, since all creatures follow what God
desires for them. In this respect, what is normally called
“imperfection“ is in fact perfection, since it allows for the
actualization of the various levels of existence and knowledge. In
other words, were there no imperfections - in the sense of
diminishment, decrease, and lack - there would be no creation. Were
there no creation, the Hidden Treasure would remain hidden.
Hence
Being would be unseen in every respect. There would be no
self-disclosure of the Divine Reality, Light would not shine, and
God would be the Non-manifest but not the Manifest. But all this is
absurd, since it demands the imperfection of Being Itself, which by
definition is non-delimited perfection. Being’s perfection requires
the manifestation of Its properties. The effects of the Names and
Attributes must be displayed for God to be God. […] In other words,
Imperfection is demanded by existence itself. To be “other than God”
is to be imperfect.
…But it is precisely the “otherness” which
allows the cosmos and all the creatures within it to exist. If
things were perfect in every respect, they would be identical with
God Himself, and there would be nothing “other than
God.” But then
we could not even speak about the cosmos, since there would be no
cosmos and no speakers. …So, imperfection is a kind of perfection.
[Chittick]
At the particular stage of existence in which man finds himself, he
is equally “receptive” toward the Two primary Faces of God: Being
and Non-being. The Shaykh tells us that whatever property, or trait,
any human being ultimately “chooses” is what it originally possessed
in its state of immutability. The task of the Seeker is to discover
what is immutable within, and to purify and amplify it.
This is the
development of Will. Will is a relationship, which follows knowledge
while knowledge follows the object of knowledge. In the process of
“ascension”, the object of knowledge is YOU. Knowledge, in and of
itself, has no effects. YOU, however, the seeker, can give to
knowledge what you actually are, in yourself, thereby displaying
YOURSELF in knowledge by your actions in concert with your
knowledge.
As noted, there are many Names of God that call to us in our present
state of existence. But you are not required to answer every one
that calls. The fact that human beings are, in general, ignorant of
their own true “essence” gives them the illusion of freedom. And the
fact is, all paths come from God, and all paths Lead back to God,
but again, it can be via different faces.
As the Shaykh says:
“Unto
Allah all things come home, and he is the end of every path.
However, the important thing is which divine name you will reach and
to which you will come home?”
And this brings us to what the Shaykh calls “perspicacity”. This is
the special development of the “eye of insight”, or “seeing the
unseen” that is crucial to the Seeker. Just as the physical eye,
with the refraction of light from the Sun, can discern between the
large and the small, the beautiful and the ugly,the shades of
colors, the moving from the still, the high and the low, the ability
to see the unseen is a property of an “inner light”.
This light
reveals to the seeker things about external objects that are NOT
apparent to the five senses. It reveals to its possessor when a
choice that may appear to be benevolent, is a step on the path of
Evil. It reveals when a choice that may appear to human estimation
as negative is actually a difficult step to felicity for all
involved. The Sufis tell us that some individuals have achieved such
a level of “seeing” that - upon seeing a person’s footprint on the
ground, even if the person is not present - they are able to say
whether he is following a life of felicity or wretchedness.
The light of perspicacity seems to be a gift that not everyone has,
and those who do have it, may not have developed it to the same
degree. What is evident is that those who have it possess an
immutable nature of Being which is able to “see” good and evil - they
do not see “only good”. Thus, they are able to discern between the
“calls” of Nonbeing and Being, and therefore, are able to strengthen
their Will along the path of intrinsic Being. It then follows that
individuals who are not able to see - or who choose not to see - both
Good and Evil, are formed in the mold of subjectivity, which is the
human expression of the Call of Non-being.
A human being whose immutable nature is that of Being can strengthen
the light of perspicacity by “assuming the traits” of the Names of
Being. This does not mean that a person comes to possess traits that
do not already belong to him. It means that these traits are
amplified and “cultivated”. The Ruling property of an individual is
determined by what Face of God is disclosed to him, and this is
determined by his preparedness.
Felicity can only be disclosed when
Evil has been turned away from, rejected; which can only be achieved
by a long period of “testing” or being challenged to SEE and then to
choose Being over Non-being in order to grow the Will or alignment
to Being in a feedback loop. As the Seeker travels this path, he
must not see these traits as his own, but rather that he is a locus
of God’s manifestation of an ontological attribute.
People imagine that they believe in God when, in fact, what they
believe always takes the shape of the receptacle. The old saying is
that the water takes on the color of its cup. The deeper implication
of this is that a person will only be in disequilibrium if his
conscious beliefs are not in conformity with his own immutable
nature. In other words, a person whose intrinsic nature is aligned
toward Being, will experience disequilibrium, struggle, and even
illness by attempting to assume those traits that do not exist in
him. In this sense, careful observation of the physical state - even
the physical environment - can act as a guide as to whether or not
the whole being is coming into alignment.
So it is that different paths can produce different effects for
different individuals according to their immutable nature within.
Those whose intrinsic nature is toward Being, follow the path of the
developing the ability to SEE and to choose alignment with the
infinite potential of creation, thereby being conduits of Being as
God chooses to manifest through them. They not only see that
limitation is illusion, they consciously ACT - they utilize that
knowledge to generate energy and light.
Those whose intrinsic nature is toward Non-being, follow the path of
limitation of Infinite Being by assuming that they, in their state
of ignorance and subjectivity, know better than God how Creation
ought to be fixed. They pray for change, they perform rituals, they
chant mantras and repeat endless visualizations of “magickal forms”
that are supposed to “change” reality. They bomb others with “Love
and Light”, (their subjective version of it, of course), and they
seek to fix the world “out there” by projecting their subjective
view of reality onto the infinite wisdom of Creation.
This
“consciousness energy direction” even includes the assumption that
just knowing that all division is illusion will accomplish the goal
of “Ascension”, and that is the most cunning lie of all.
Each approach “ties a knot” in the heart of the believer and fixes
him on a path, the object of his belief being the end of the path.
All beliefs are equivalent in that God - of one sort or another - is
their ultimate objective. But each belief is different in that it
leads to a different name of God, or Thought Center. Even
materialistic skepticism is a “belief” and leads to “matterizing” of
the consciousness that follows this belief. What is more difficult
to discern are the many mixed up “spiritual” paths that twist and
distort the concepts of Being to engage the seeker on a path to
Non-Being.
Going back to the idea of the human being as a transducing unit with
a “lens capacity”, what seems to be so is that the process of
Ascension begins with the choice of tuning the lens. If the
individual chooses to “adjust the dial” to see the entire field of
Thought Centers influencing creation, he can then begin to select
those that enhance and enliven Creation and Being - the Thought
Centers of Awakened Consciousness - then a feedback loop that selects
that probable future will be established.
A human being can, by great effort, expand his or her “field of
view” toward greater and greater objectivity. With a wider and
farther field of view, the awareness of those things, which emanate
from the Thought Centers come into focus. When thought centers are
more in focus, the individual then has greater ability to discern
whether impressions emanate from the Thought Centers of being, or
from the Thought Centers of non-being. At this stage, the individual
is then able to further “shape” his emotions and direct his actions
so as to become an efficient transducing unit of the cosmic energies
of Being into this reality. This is knowledge utilization, which
generates energy, which generates light.
As this process continues, as the feedback loop is activated between
the Cosmic observer and the transducing/actions of the creature - the
organic unit, the transducing organ, so to say - strengthens and the
exchange between it and the Cosmic Observer accelerates and
intensifies. The transducing organ then begins to act as a “homing
beacon” for greater levels of that chosen Thought Center energy that
“observer from the future” - the “eye” that is the creator.
In the development of such a feedback loop, the human being - as a
conduit of creation, a vessel - becomes an active participant of the
creation of his own FUTURE in the act of choosing which observation
platform and scope he accepts as “real” - objective or subjective.
Furthermore, as the energy of such a being is changed and enhanced
by the “flow of cosmic energy” passing through him, as he perceives
more and more of the creative expressions of Infinite potential, and
chooses those he wishes to align with, he becomes colinear with
those other expressions of Being - other organic units that may be
quite different in make-up, but similarly aware of Infinite
Potential - and is thus able to interact with them in a manner that
further expands and commutates the energy of transducing.
This can then lead to exponential amplification of the transducing
of the energies of Being which can then completely alter the
physical nature of the organic unit. Just as a pipe that is used to
channel water gets wet from the water flowing through it, so does
the human being who has begun the process of aligning with Being
becomes saturated with the higher energies being manifested through
him or her.
This process leads to permeation of the organic nature
of the vessel which leads to transformation, in that it “awakens”
the “sleeping matter” of the organic unit and makes it a full
participant in Being, rather than a weight for the soul to carry or
struggle against. The energy of the organic vehicle is then
available in the terms described in Einstein’s famous formula, which
might give some indication of the potential of such a being.
As the reader can easily see by now, the teachings of the current
spate of New Age Gurus constitute the idea that we can exert our
will and voice that exists “down here” upward to change what is
“above” us in order to change our reality down here. They tell us
that we can change our lives, our thinking, move our brains into
harmony, or aid the “heart in opening”, obtaining “harmony and
balance” which is then going to “open windows in our mind, our
heart, and our spirit”, etc. It is claimed that we can do this
basically by assuming God’s point of view that “all is one, all is
love”. It is stated, (with some truth I should add, since good
disinformation is always wrapped in a warm and fuzzy truth), that,
“without Divine Unity inside of us, these windows of inspiration are
rarely available”.
What they do NOT tell you is that the staircase
to Divine Unity of Being requires a full field of awareness of Being
and Non-being, and this can only be achieved by divesting oneself of
the controls of Nonbeing which are, indeed, part of Being, but which
seek to obviate Being in a paradoxical sleep of “Unification” which
often begins by believing the lie that “knowledge protects” simply
by having it.
Indeed, many of the “techniques” sold in the slick packages of
“ascension tools” will temporarily produce chemical changes that
will feel VERY good, the same way a good meal satisfies hunger
temporarily. It really, “feels good”! But just as the steak and
salad are digested and most of the matter excreted in a few hours,
and another steak and salad is needed to fill the stomach again, so
do such practices fail to do anything more than perpetuate the “food
chain”.
And, staying with the analogy, very little of the
“substance” of such practices actually “stays with” the individual.
A considerable period of time is required for the seeker to finally
come to the realization that techniques that relieve stress or
produce “good feelings”, have done nothing to actually change their
lives or their “vibrations”. They are still recognized by their
neighbor’s dog, they still find new gray hairs on their heads, and
they still get sick and have aches and pains like everyone else. The
problem is, again, the “bottom up” ideas have been employed, which
only result in remaining in the “mixed” state, or worse, being drawn
deeper into the path of non-being.
Well, I should qualify that: to those for whom Non-being is their
immutable nature, this is only natural and right and they will
thrive following the path of non-being. But for those many, many
seekers whose immutable nature is toward Being, this is a terrible
trap - the gravitational effect of the Thought Center of Non-Being - to draw all of Creation into Non-Being will act on them in ways
that are crippling to their relationships and health. Human beings
who go through life feeling as though they have a “hole in their
hearts” are those who are not synchronized with their immutable
nature.
The natural field of view for the organic unit alone - with no
connection to the higher self - is that of the material and/or
mechanical interpretation of all phenomena. The influences of the
Thought Center of non-being - the source of matter - have been
increasing through the manifestation of billions of such units at a
single point in time: the present.
The Thought Center of non-being is of a certain nature - contractile
subjectivity - that exerts a more or less “gravitational” pull - a
desire to absorb and assimilate the soul energies of Being - so as to
feed its own contracting nature. Even if it promotes a full field of
awareness in principle, it can only view Being as a traitor to its
own need to not exist. This results in an individual who may
proclaim that all is illusion, but whose actions - or rather lack
thereof - betray the deeper immutable state of being.
Due to its
intrinsic nature, there is a powerful exertion of non-being to
destroy and obviate Being and Creation - all the while it is unable
to achieve the awareness that it only exists by virtue of Being and
Creation IN ACTION!
The powerful exertion of the Thought Center of non-being to absorb
and assimilate all of creation, powered by its own contractile
subjectivity, poses certain problems both for itself and for Being.
Since the fundament of non-being is a LIE - that is to say, the state
of absolute non-being that it promotes is a paradoxical
impossibility - and the fundament of Being is the objective fact that
Existence simply IS via ACTION - or utilization of knowledge which
generates light, the essential conflict is between lies and truth.
The Thought Center of non-being tells itself the biggest lie of all - that it does not exist - and goes to sleep in pretense. And from
this essential point, we see that the nature of subjectivity is that
of lies. Lies and belief in lies - whether or not the believer is
aware that they are believing a lie - all partake of the same essence - subjectivity and non-being.
The Thought Center of non-being - in its expression as matter - as
being “impressed” by Creative consciousness in ACTION, which
partially awakens it and draws it into the creation of the organic
world - wraps itself around this awakened consciousness. Its
intrinsic nature of pretense to non-being acts “gravitationally” on
consciousness, and twists and distorts it into varying degrees of
subjectivity. It is this interaction of the energy of all
possibility, lensed through subjectivity of matter, that produces
the myriad manifestations of the material universe.
In the realm of the Thought Center of non-being, there are many
manifestations - or ways - of seeking annihilation - the “Base Names of
God”. These modes act in a gravitational way to engage, enfold, and
distort consciousness to their ends. This results in the formation
of consciousness units of great power and depth of cunning - far
beyond anything imaginable in our own reality.
These consciousness units use their wiles to assimilate weaker
consciousness units so as to accrue more contractile power.
Obviously, the more “dense” the consciousness units “consumed”, the
more “nutritious” they are. And so they seek, by great cunning, to
carefully, and with great patience, manipulate the consciousness
units selected for assimilation.
It is, effectively,
trans-millennial stalking.
These Overlords of Entropy, or so we may call them, by virtue of the
overlay of intensified subjectivity - the hallmark of the influence
of the Thought Center of non-being - interface with the organic world
on a “geographic” scale. Since they have, so to say, an intimate
relationship with matter, the contractile consciousness of such a
being can affect its area of chosen dominion very much like an
overshadowing “cloud” with millions of tendrils of connections
between it and its range of influence. This includes even the very
matter of the bodies of human beings. It is through these etheric
fibers that the Overlords of Entropy assimilate energy.
These overlords have “organs” so to speak. Just as a group of people
were described by the Apostle Paul as “the body of Christ”, so are
the organs of entropic overlords manifested as individual beings,
though their direct connection to a single massive consciousness
unit makes them more like “projections” than individually souled
beings.
Because of their great drive to conserve and assimilate energy, the
overlords are “stingy” with allowances to their organ-beings. It
seems that they do not “waste” energy in manifesting and maintaining
organic structures for their organs, and thus the organic
physicality takes on the configuration of less complex creatures in
the organic world. Rather than interacting with an organic structure
in a cooperative, awakened state, they exercise control over theirs.
Utilizing organic structures that require the least energy to
maintain conserves energy. To this end, they draw the energy for
their organic units from the pools of archetypal form of the animal
kingdom. This energy is more easily accessed, is lower in frequency,
and thus more amenable to control.
This seems to be the reason why, when perceived by individuals of
the third dimensional self-consciousness - third density - realm,
their appearance is generally startling. The reptilian type comes to
mind as being the most energy efficient. Again, remember that
consciousness is merely “reading waves”.
Due to the contractile nature of this hierarchy and its energy
consumption, it is extremely difficult for these organ-beings of the
Overlords of Entropy to actively function in our realm for any
period of time. When they enter our realm, assuming a third density
organic form, they are at a disadvantage. They are temporarily
disconnected from the energy pool, which weakens them, but they are
at another great disadvantage as well.
Since they are not internally
connected to an expanding, creative feedback loop of Creative Being,
their own entropic overlord is a constant drain on them, pulling
them gravitationally as it were, making them even weaker than the
natural denizens of this realm. Such are those called aliens and
“Men in Black”. It is this great strain on their energy resources
that makes such appearances so rife with anomalous glitches. There
is no creativity, and thus no ability to pull off such an intrusion
into our reality with any convincing effectiveness.
For this reason they generally avoid direct interaction in the
organic world, preferring to utilize other methods to stalk and
conquer weaker units to “feed” the Thought Center of non-being. To
this end, these entropic overlords seek to establish and maintain
the “entrainment of creative energy” within the third density
reality by deceptively enhancing third density, material
interpretations of the phenomenal world.
In short, such beings of enormous geographic domination actively
operate, within their geographic field of influence, to divert and
discourage those organic units who have tenuous connections to
creative energy - their higher selves - from interpretations which
will lead to the establishing of a feedback loop with those Thought
Centers of Being/Creation.
As noted, the nature of such beings, and the dynamic of their
existence, requires massive energy input in order to “control” and
direct their own organic physicality. This is possible at the level
of overlord/sub-units of the Thought Center of non-being by virtue
of the extensive assimilation of other consciousness units, and most
especially by virtue of their “geographic” character, which enables
them to “connect” to thousands, if not millions, of organic beings
in the organic realm.
This is, effectively, the “Program of the
Matrix”.
This connection is naturally enabled by the aforementioned intrinsic
nature of organic units to only perceive the field of view of the
organic realm. That is to say that mechanical and material feedback
loops are far more easily created between organic units and the
sub-units of Non-being by a sort of “gravitational” pull of these
sub-units upon the natural inclinations of the organic being.
This establishes “feedback loops” as previously described. The
organic unit, “infected” with the material/mechanical view, begins
to act according to that Thought Center’s dictates, and this
generates activities of that nature in the organic unit.
Due to the
fact that any given sub-unit of the Thought Center of non-being may
be connected to millions of organic units in third density, any of
them may be activated singly, or in concert, to fulfill the wishes
of the Overlords of Entropy, a “larger” sub-unit of the Thought
Center of Non-being.
Gurdjieff and Mouravieff
Machiavelli observed that religion and its teachings of faith, hope,
charity, love, humility and patience under suffering were factors
that render men weak and cause them to care less about worldly and
political things, and thus they will turn political power over to
wicked men who are not influenced by such ideals. Of course, the
real trick is to convince people that the “afterlife” is the only
thing worth thinking about, and it is to this end that Christianity
has been formulated.
It is also to this end that many of the New Age
beliefs and “formulations” of the truth about Ascension have been
engineered. All you have to do is have faith or meditate or acquire
knowledge and awareness that will help you love everything and
everybody. Nothing is said about the day-by-day struggle and the
necessity for action.
Again let me say this: if the Truth about the REAL process of
Ascension were not so detrimental to the agenda of the Controllers
of our world, the Matrix, they would not have gone to so much
trouble to cover it up. When we finally make the connection between
that fact, and the fact that our governing elite is operating on the
instructions of the Controllers, we then begin to realize that the
drama on the political stage is a shadow of the higher-level agenda.
And that leads us to realize that the COINTELPRO operation in the
New Age and Human Potential movement has truly been the “opening
act”.
Based on observation and research, it is apparent that humanity has
now reached a great historical crossroads. We have come to the end
of a two thousand year history of intolerance, cruelty and
stupidity, which has created our present state of global, collective
madness. Humanity, as a collective whole, is arriving at a state of
Spiritual Bankruptcy, or “death”. And yet, we cannot assume that
this is meaningless.
Those who understand the principles of
electricity will comprehend when I say that this present global
estate is the way nature works and is the establishing of sufficient
Contact Potential Difference for the inflow of energy of Cosmic
Light. But just as it is in the case of the individual, when that
point is reached - that Dark Night of the Soul - there is a “choice”
that becomes apparent: the soul is offered the way “up” or the way
“down”. In order for this coming inflow of energy to act in positive
ways, to create a new reality of Free Will and Balance, there must
be a point of contact that can conduct the energy.
There must be
human “micro-chips” or “circuits” sufficient to sustain this energy
or all of humanity will perish. This means that only the development
of human beings of a certain sort - with a certain “wiring”, so to
say - will result in the global capacity to confront the energies of
the Crossroads.
The only other Turning Point in history that can be compared with
the present one is that of the “Great Flood”. And so, we come to the
idea that the search for the Holy Grail and the alchemical work of
distillation of the Philosopher’s Stone is ALSO the “building of an
Ark” in order to pass over into the New World.
As things “heat up” here on the Big Blue Marble, we have received
much correspondence from individuals asking “what to do”. Many of
the old fears and turmoil have surfaced with ideas of pulling up
roots and - for reasons of self-preservation - moving here or there or
undertaking to follow this or that promoter of “methods of
ascension” or methods of “fixing the planet” so that everybody can
just “get along” or we can all snuggle up with some warm fuzzies and
get some rest.
The reader who has surveyed the material on our website has surely
come to the conclusion that what we are saying is “nothing is as it
seems and never has been”, including the many religions and “methods
of ascension” promoted down through the ages.
But what is lacking is a clearly defined WAY that might give
guidance to the seeker in his quest for the keys to his own
“salvation” in whatever terms he might define it. I have worked on
presenting the WAY in both the Wave Series and the Adventures series
by sharing my own experiences and what I have gleaned from much
study and research, but some readers are put off by material that
deals with all the lies and deceptions that we face in our reality
and simply want to read something “uplifting”. It doesn’t seem to
occur to them that one cannot be “uplifted” as long as one is mired
in quicksand.
What seems to be true is that we live in a world of
lies - ruled by lies and stealing - and that human beings lie because
it is impossible for them to do otherwise. Without a Way, that is.
As a result of our own searching and questing for answers, our
repeated trying and testing of sources and materials, little by
little we have come to the idea of what NOT to do. But again, there
has not been a whole lot about what TO DO.
The Cassiopaeans have indicated certain pathways to follow in terms
of research, but as always, we are more or less on our own in
acquiring the knowledge and learning how to apply it - and for good
reason. You cannot become yourself in the future if you avoid doing
those things that make the future what it is. You can accelerate it,
or enhance it, perhaps, but you certainly can’t have it handed to
you on a platter. If you did, you would avoid doing the many things
that are necessary which may include making contacts and connections
that “shape the future”.
Among the things we have found via this exertion, is a body of
teachings that not only meshes with, but vigorously expands upon the Cassiopaean Transmissions to an extent that we cannot think is
accidental. The work in question is that of the Russian exile
Boris Mouravieff, presented in his three part study and commentaries
entitled Gnosis. Very little information is available on the
background of these materials while a good deal of disinformation is
circulating in other circles, and it is best to address these
problems at the outset.
As it happens, during our research into Boris M., we discovered that
he was being soundly lambasted by William Patrick Patterson in his
book Talking With the Left Hand in which he accuses Mouravieff of
“stealing” his ideas from Gurdjieff. Patterson is the author of four
highly praised books on spiritual development and is a longtime
student of John Pentland, the man Gurdjieff chose to lead the
Gurdjieff Work in America, and the editor of The Gurdjieff Journal©,
the only international quarterly devoted to exploring the “ancient
teaching of the Fourth way brought and embodied by G. I. Gurdjieff”.
Just in case the reader is not familiar with Gurdjieff, let me give
a little background. Dating from his first lectures in Moscow and
St. Petersburg in 1912, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff attracted the
attention of occultists and many Western aristocrats. His teachings
(often referred to as the ‘Gurdjieff Work’ or ‘Fourth Way’) became
widely known through the writings and lectures of his pupil, the
famous Russian mathematician and journalist Pyotr D. Ouspensky, and
were later propagated by Alfred Orage, John G. Bennett, Rodney
Collins, and Dr. Maurice Nicoll.
Gurdjieff himself admitted that he was utilizing ‘stolen’ teachings
from a wide range of groups that he had encountered (including the
Yezidis, the Russian Orthodox Church, and Sufi ‘Bektashi’ and
‘Naqshbandi’ sects in the Hindu Kush and Pamir regions) in his world
travels. A deep study of Gurdjieff’s work shows that he was
obviously experimenting with his own ideas on how to utilize bits
and pieces from these different teachings to create a system that
would enable individuals to overcome ingrained “cognitive defects”,
become more conscious, and awaken the Higher Self’s “Objective
Conscience”.
At a certain point, it seems that Gurdjieff realized that he had
undertaken an impossible task since nearly all of his students
“heard” only what they wanted to hear. He closed his school and
concentrated on putting his ideas into allegory in his book
Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson (1950), which also incorporated
and developed additional esoteric themes into his ideas.
Many of Gurdjieff’s concepts have profoundly influenced our present
culture due to the fact that some of his followers were famous and
wealthy and had the means to promote them to others in the upper
classes. After his death in 1949, Gurdjieff’s legacy was
disseminated through many people, and much of his work has been
passed on through fragmentation of the many groups into something
akin to secular denominations. One of the biggest problems with what
happened to Gurdjieff’s work, which seemed to be a sincere attempt
to help humanity, was the formation of what can only be called
personality cults and identifications with Gurdjieff at the expense
and obfuscation of his ideas. It seems that Gurdjieff himself saw
this coming at the end of his life.
Groups that are offshoots of Gurdjieff’s teachings have been known
to use all kinds of things to reprogram their members, including
isolation, group think, authoritarian power structures, and other
psychological methods designed to unmask or break down the personal
ego. But, what seems clear is that, in the case of Gurdjieff, no one
group can claim the whole cheese since he was curiously selective
about what he told whom, and even those who were closest to him
obviously misunderstood what he was trying to convey, as evidenced
by his own statements about this factor towards the end of his life.
Mouravieff comments on this:
People interested in esoteric matters will probably have read the
book by P.D. Ouspensky, published posthumously, titled
In Search of
the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. The ideas in that
book were presented to Ouspensky by Georges Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff
indicates the basis of his teaching: “for the benefit of those who
know already, I will say that, if you like, this is esoteric Christianity.”
Ouspensky’s book - correctly indicated by the title - contains only
fragments of a tradition which, until recently, was only transmitted
orally. And only a study of the complete tradition can give access
to the revelation.
The system disclosed by the fragments that form Ouspensky’s book and Gurdjieff’s work, originates from revelations
issued by the Great Esoteric Brotherhood to which the Apostle Paul
alluded in his Epistle to the Romans:
We are assured and know that all things work together and are
fitting into a plan for good to and for those who love God and are
called according to design and purpose. For those whom He foreknew,
He also destined from the beginning to be molded into the image of
His Son, that he might become the firstborn of MANY brethren.
And
those whom He thus foreordained, He also called; and those whom He
called, He also justified, made them righteous, and those whom He
justified, He also glorified. What then shall we say to this: If God
is for us, who can be against us?
[8;28-31]
Boris Mouravieff asks: What should be the attitude of students
towards the “Gurdjieff phenomenon” and Ouspensky’s “Fragments”?
The attentive reader will easily find the answer to that question
himself in the contents of this book: we must begin by separating
the message from the messenger, and we must look for the message
beyond the level or information. This is the way to discover and
eliminate error.
Robin Amis, editor of the English translation of
Mouravieff'’s work tells us:
In a myth well known in the Orient we are told that there exists a
race of ‘Royal Swans’. The fable adds that if we put milk mixed with
water in front of one of them, it will separate out the milk and
drink it, leaving the water. That must be the attitude of students.
Saint Gregory Palamas said the same when he wrote in his first
Triad:
“As for those people they call ‘theologians’ or ‘teachers,’
and think themselves able to borrow their theological terms, is it
necessary even to mention them? Is it necessary that we keep away
from ‘the light which lights every man who comes into the world,’
and wait for the terrible shadows of ignorance to illumine us, on
the pretext that, just as serpents are useful, this is something
useful for us?
For the flesh of serpents is only useful to us if
they have been killed, and cut up and used with reason as a remedy
against their own bites. Those who kill them in this way turn a part
of these snakes against themselves, just as if they had killed with
his own sword a new Goliath, who had taken arms, who had set himself
up to oppose us, who cursed the army of the living God - someone
educated in divine things by sinners and illiterates.”
The fact is, Gurdjieff faced great difficulties at the point in time
when he sought to experiment with waking up humanity. As noted
above, it was “Mission Impossible”. However, what he and his
followers did manage to do was to slash a trail through a jungle of
lies and disinformation. It is not appropriate for his followers to
insist that this bare trail is all there is and that there is no
more. Rather, it is only logical to widen the trail, to pass through
the gate revealed at the end of the trail, and to discover what lies
on the other side.
A student of
Mouravieff asks:
Why did Gurdjieff hide his sources? Why does he remain silent on
this subject,
except in rare exceptional circumstances, such as that encounter
with Mouravieff at
the Cafe de la Paix:
“I find the system at the foundations of the
Christian doctrine.
What do you say on this matter?” [asked Mouravieff of
Gurdjieff]
“It is the
ABC,” Gurdjieff answered me. “But they do not understand this!”
[A
response to
William Patrick Patterson’s criticism in his book “Taking with the
Left Hand” by a
student of Boris Mouravieff Translated from the French by Theodore
J.
Nottingham]
In his book, Struggle of the Magicians, Patterson includes quotes on
the front pages which say:
The Magus is the highest that man can
approach to God. - G.I. Gurdjieff
Toast to Gurdjieff:: God give you the strength and the manhood to
endure your
lofty solitude. - Rachmilevitch
Gurdjieff is a kind of walking God - a planetary or even solar
God. - A.R. Orage
In response to these ideas, obviously dear to the heart of many
Gurdjieff followers, including Patterson, let me just point out that
Gurdjieff never accomplished the transmutation. He died just like
everybody else. 33
33 And I should add, so did Rene Schwaller.
Considering the fact that several other “seekers” were reputed to
have transitioned without seeing death - Flamel and Fulcanelli among
them - we might think that the only parts of Gurdjieff’s work that
should interest us are the parts that elucidate the work of the
affirmed Masters. And frankly, Mouravieff has offered many clues
that do, in fact, contribute to the body of alchemical/hermetic
knowledge in a significant way.
Mouravieff’s work is extraordinary in its clarity and completion of
what was started by Gurdjieff, explaining much that Gurdjieff never
explained, or if he did, those he explained it to either did not
understand it, or sought to keep it secret so as to dispense it in
controlled dollops to those they considered worthy (or who had
enough money to pay for it).
I would like to note here that the work of Mouravieff provides that
ineluctable bridge between the works of Gurdjieff, Ibn al-’Arabi,
Carlos Casteneda, conjectured esoteric Christianity,
hermeticism/alchemy and the Cassiopaean Transmissions. It should be
noted that the Cassiopaeans - us in the future - have definitively
supported the existence and work of a man around whom the Jesus
legend formed - though they tell us that the story in the Bible that
is supposed to be history is a myth - and here we find a body of
teachings that lends background
to this view, as well as supplemental information that elucidates
the many clues offered by the Cassiopaeans.
This brings us back to the issue of what we are supposed to DO in
this day and age that is getting scarier by the minute?
When I was
at that stage myself, asking what should I do, where, when, how and
why, I was quite surprised when the C’s responded that all of the
running around to look for “safe places” was just “3D thinking” and
that the only thing that counted was:
“Who you are and what you see.” SEEing = perspicacity. And what you
see, combined with who you are,
determines what you DO. This leads to another important point:
C’s:
Beware of disinformation. It diverts your attention away from
reality thus leaving you open to capture and conquest and even
possible destruction.
Disinformation comes from seemingly reliable sources. It is
extremely important for you to not gather false knowledge as it is
more damaging than no knowledge at all. Remember knowledge protects,
ignorance endangers. [...] Remember, disinformation is very
effective when delivered by highly trained sources because hypnotic
and transdimensional techniques are used thereby causing electronic
anomalies to follow suggestion causing perceived confirmation to
occur.
In the following sections, I will be quoting heavily from
Mouravieff’s books, including the introductions, but often with the
insertion of “modern terms” at certain points, or terms which will
make the excerpts more comprehensible to those who have not delved
deeply into such studies. It is my hope that this condensation will
inspire the readers to read the works of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and
Mouravieff.
Robin Amis gives us a little background about the
Tradition:
Boris Mouravieff’s trilogy Gnosis is an attempt to recover and
describe, in terms understandable to modern man, a particular
Tradition handed down over the centuries, in a sometimes broken
line, but one that still exists today in the Eastern Orthodox
Church. This tradition could be said to be the Christian equivalent
of Yoga, Zen, and the other inner traditions of the far Eastern
religions, disciplines, which have each existed as specializations
within the religion of which they are a part.
It is not one man’s system or invention, but has its roots far back
in the history of Christianity - whose roots lie in certain
statements of St. Paul, and perhaps even of Christ himself. Their
development can be traced first through formative figures of the
early churches, and it clearly relates to the doctrines expressed in
the key texts of Eastern spirituality such as the Philokalia.
It clearly relates the oral tradition known as the Royal Way that
survives to this day in the main centers of monasticism in the
Eastern church. But it does not claim to be a work of Orthodox
theology, nor to reinterpret Orthodox doctrine.
Mouravieff admits that the survival of this tradition within the
church is tenuous, that the doctrine does not appear to survive in
full or has not been collected together in full. Monks on Athos
admit the existence of the Tradition but say that it has never been
fully spelled out in writing. The importance of Mouravieff‘s work is
the effort he has made to collect that dispersed information and to
make it accessible in practical form.
What are the sources of Mouravieff’s knowledge? It is clear that his
text consists of knowledge of a high order.
There are several ways in which the accuracy of a text can be
verified, and Mouravieff’s stands up to all these methods of assay.
First of all, it fits the Orthodox tradition as expressed by those
who still possess the Royal Way. It evokes the confirmation of
inspiration described in Plato’s seventh letter. It predicts, in
what appears at first to be mere theory, the actual events of the
life in the study of Gnosis. It stands the test of practice, and in
doing so it remains internally consistent. When it does introduce
ideas from other traditions, such as the concept of karma, it does
so in ways that, properly understood, remain consistent to the
overall statement of the doctrine with a degree of precision equal
to that of the mature external sciences.
Those who can discriminate between different levels of knowledge
will find in Mouravieff an almost inexhaustible treasury of
knowledge that can lead to true spiritual transformation. But it is
necessary first to work for this discrimination. Without it, not
only will you be unable to differentiate between gnosis and its
imitations, but even Mouravieff’s work will not release its gnosis
to you in trust.
The idea of esotericism is often misunderstood. The clue can be
found in the Gospel of Saint John: “I am the vine, ye are the
branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth
forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”
The word translated “without”, the Greek “choris”, quite definitely
means “outside”. What this means is that in those times there was an
inner knowledge, based on assenting to traditional knowledge - gnosis - which is then confirmed experimentally through techniques of inner
observation, and a purely external kind of knowledge, gained through
the ordinary senses.
Constantine Cavarnos confirmed that there is an exoteric and
esoteric Christianity:
“The first kind of philosophy, external philosophy, comprises for
them ancient Greek philosophy and the pagan philosophy of early
Christian centuries. The second kind, “internal philosophy”, is
identical with the [true] Christian religion.”
[The Hellenic
Christian Philosophical Tradition, Institute for Byzantine and
Modern Greek Studies, Belmont, MA, 1989. p. 109, quoted by Robin Amis in the introduction to Mouravieff’s Gnosis II]
Over the years, this esotericism has formed a Tradition, a science,
or discipline of knowledge which may have existed before the time of
Christ, but which has since been totally assimilated to the inner
meaning of Christianity. Boris Mouravieff says that, “This
Tradition, which in Antiquity was only revealed in the Mysteries
under the seal of absolute secrecy.”
Under the influence of self-proclaimed initiates of The Tradition
such as Guenon and Schwaller, Mouravieff has, unfortunately adopted
and included many false teachings in his “social commentary”
included in the three volumes of Gnosis.
Among these errors, he
includes the idea that this Tradition passed from Egypt to Judaea
and thus to Christianity - at least not Egypt as we understand it
today. What is clear is that the True Tradition of the Eleusinian
mysteries is behind Christianity, and it was the Egyptian Tradition
elucidated and popularized by Schwaller and other Western occultists
that is at the root of the false teaching that corrupted and
distorted the work of the man we have come to know as Jesus.
It is
only in more recent times, with much additional research, including
that of Picknett and Prince in
The Stargate Conspiracy, that we are
even able to begin to separate these threads and come to this
understanding. In short, even the work of Mouravieff must be
“separated” like the milk from the water.
Regarding the error of understanding True Esoteric Christianity in
terms of the Egyptian Religion, in Manly Hall’s exhaustive
compendium,
The Secret Teachings of All Ages, we find mention of the
fact that St. Irenaeus was complaining about the efforts to compare
Christianity to the religion of the Egyptians which included the
death and resurrection of Osiris/Horus.
Irenaeus had some other
interesting things to say about this, as Hall points out:
According to popular conception, Jesus was crucified during the
thirty-third year of His life and in the third year of His ministry
following his baptism. About AD 180, St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons,
one of the most eminent of the ante-Nicene theologians, wrote
Against Heresies, an attack on the doctrines of the Gnostics. In
this work, Irenaeus declared upon the authority of the Apostles
themselves that Jesus lived to old age.
To quote:
They, however, that they may establish their false opinion regarding
that which is written, maintain that He preached for one year only,
and then suffered in the twelfth month. [In speaking thus], they are
forgetful of their own disadvantage, destroying His whole work, and
robbing Him of that age which is both more necessary and more
honorable than any other, that more advanced age, I mean, during
which also as a teacher He excelled all others. For how could He
have had His disciples, if He did not teach? And how could He have
taught unless He had reached the age of a Master?
For when He came to be
baptized, He had not yet completed His
thirtieth year, but was beginning to be about thirty years of age;
and, according to these men, He preached only one year reckoning
from His baptism. On completing His thirtieth year He suffered,
being in fact still a young man, and who had by no means attained to
advanced age.
Now, that the first stage of early life embraces thirty years, and
that this extends onward to the fortieth year, every one will admit;
but from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man begins to decline
towards old age, which Our Lord possessed while He still fulfilled
the office of a Teacher, even as the Gospel and all the elders
testify; those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple
of the Lord, affirming that John conveyed to them that information.
And He remained among them up to the time of Trajan.
Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles
also, and heard the very same account from them, and bear testimony
as to the validity of the statement. Whom then should we rather
believe? Whether such men as these or Ptolemaeus, who never saw the
apostles, and who never even in his dreams attained to the slightest
trace of an apostle?
Well, obviously, this “Gospel” that Irenaeus refers to as testifying
that Jesus did not suffer and die has disappeared! But, commenting
on the foregoing passage, theologian Godfrey Higgins remarks that it
has fortunately escaped the hands of those destroyers who have
attempted to render the Gospel narratives consistent by deleting all
such statements.
He also notes that the doctrine of the crucifixion
was a vexata question among Christians even during the second
century.
“The evidence of Irenaeus”, he says, “cannot be touched”.
“On every principle of sound criticism, and of the doctrine of
probabilities, it is unimpeachable.”
[Anacalypsis, Godfrey Higgins,
London, 1836, quoted by Manly P. Hall]
Regarding the above comments by Irenaeus, we notice that he was
blaming the corruption of the work of Jesus on the Gnostics. What
seems altogether possible, considering the revelations of the inner
tradition of esoteric Christianity, is that Irenaeus - and others - completely misunderstood the teachings of the metaphor of
crucifixion which, it is clear, are an alchemical allegory.
Nevertheless, as years passed, this “misunderstanding” became the
foundation of Christianity itself and those who noted its similarity
to the Egyptian religion and other dying God myths assumed the
transmission from ancient Egypt as we now understand it.
The fad for all things “Egyptian” has been with us for a very long
time.
Schwaller de Lubicz - the vector of many of these ideas - settled in Egypt in 1938 and for the next 15 years studied the
symbolism of the temples, particularly Luxor, finding what he
considered to be proof that the ancient Egyptians were the ultimate
examples of Synarchy, because they were ruled by a group of elite
initiates. He failed to point out that the Egyptian civilization was
static and limited. What’s more, it caved in on itself, and never
managed to produce any significant work of benefit for humanity, as
Otto Neugebauer showed conclusively in his The Exact Sciences in
Antiquity, whose evidence we will quote further on in this volume.
The open-minded thinker ought to really consider the purported
mysteries of Egypt in terms of the fact that they were so ignorant
that they devoted a huge amount of energy to their “cult of the
dead”. The whole Egyptian shtick is focused around preserving dead
flesh for future or otherworldly reanimation. The very fact that
there are so many of these dead bodies for Egyptologists to dig up
is the clearest evidence that the Egyptian beliefs were nonsense.
So, in that sense, certainly, Christianity as we know it has adopted
the “Egyptian religion” and its beliefs in physical resurrection.
The whole issue of the excitement over Egyptian civilization is the
belief that they had some mysterious powers because they built the
pyramids and we can’t. And has it never occurred to anybody that the
existence of the pyramids in conjunction with the worship of an
elite group of human beings, while everybody else was wearing
loincloths and sweating in the hot sun, might suggest a relationship
between the two? The fact is, the Egyptian civilization seems to
have been the chief example of a vast chasm between the haves and
the have-nots, and they managed to do it longer than anybody else.
In examining the work of Schwaller, we have one of the better
examples of the subtle way the negative occult societies attack
those who come to bring light, by association and co-opting. The
tactic is to find a means of subtly allying their message with that
of the truth so as to generate confusion in untrained minds which
would tend, on surface evidence, to accept these actually contrary
messages as similar, at least in intent.
The negative occultists who are promoting the new Control System
borrow all their components from what is of truth, and proceed by
the method of imitation. They literally will ape the expression of
positive teachings, and all the more
carefully when they wish to be mistaken altogether for purveyors of
truth, so as to
subvert the messages.
And so it was that Mouravieff, under the
influence of the Synarchists of his day,
introduced some of their ideas into his own synthesis of the
authentic Tradition,
including the idea that the Tradition was passed from Egypt to
Judaea via Moses.
Regarding his sources, Robin Amis tells us:
Boris Mouravieff tells us that the
Christian Esoteric Tradition has
always remained alive within certain monasteries in Greece, Russia,
and elsewhere. It is true that this knowledge was hermetically
hidden, but at the same time, its existence was known and access to
it was never forbidden to those seriously interested in esoteric
questions.
Mouravieff tells us that his commentaries are drawn directly from
the Eastern Christian Tradition: the sacred texts, the commentaries
written around these texts, and especially from the Philokalia which
is, above all, the same teaching and discipline, transmitted by
fully authorized individuals.
Attentive examination and comparison of Mouravieff’s work to that of
Ouspensky and Gurdjieff will show the incomplete character of the
latter, as well as the deviations from the ancient doctrine.
Christ categorically affirmed that entry into the Kingdom of
God is
closed to those who have not been born anew. This second Birth is
the object and goal of esoteric work.
Most of the writings of the Philokalia were intended for people who
had already acquired some proficiency in esoteric studies. One could
actually say the same about the Gospels, corrupted and glossed
though they be. Bishop Theophan, in his preface to the Philokalia,
insists on the fact that without help nobody can succeed in
penetrating the doctrine. This is why esoteric science conserves and
cultivates an oral tradition which brings the letter to life.
Oriental Orthodoxy has known how to keep this Tradition intact by
applying the absolute rule of Hermetism in each particular case.
From generation to generation, ever since the time of the Apostles,
it has led its disciples up to mystic experience.
If Hermetism has provided a safeguard for nearly twenty centuries,
it must be said that circumstances have now changed. At the current
point in history, as at the time of the Coming of Christ, the veil
has been partially raised. Therefore, for those who want to advance
beyond book knowledge, which never goes beyond the domain of
information; for those who intensely seek the true sense of life,
who want to understand the significance of the mission of those who
labor in the vineyards of the Lord at the time of the Harvest, the
possibility exists for initiation into this divine Wisdom,
mysterious and hidden.
Mouravieff notes that all serious esoteric teaching, as in ordinary
education, is almost uniform.
It is generally accepted that nobody can go on to secondary school
without having completed an elementary education. Nor can a person
be admitted to a university without having a secondary education.
These graduations automatically “select” those able to become active
members of the cultural elite of human society.
Exactly the same is true in the esoteric Tradition.
However, in our modern world, we encounter a curious phenomenon. For
example: we would not seek to discuss Newton’s binomial theorem
without having studied algebra, for without this, every opinion we
expressed on the subject would be worthless.
Yet, in the esoteric field, we find a host of “experts” who declare
their opinions on esotericism without having ever learned even the
rudiments of this knowledge.
At the same time, some of them demand “simplicity” from esoteric
teachings on the generally accepted principle that Truth itself must
be simple. They conclude from this that access to Truth ought to
likewise be simple. Then they assert that the methods to access
Truth must be easily assimilable.
This argument would be perfectly correct if human beings and the
problems they face were simple and just. However, that is not the
case. There is a long road to travel from our state of distorted
inner disorder to any “original simplicity”.
In practice, the doctrine of “simplicity” - if regarded as an axiom - turns the student aside from the strait gate and the narrow way
that leads to Life. Impelled by this counter-truth, he believes he
stands before this door, when he is in reality although undoubtedly
in perfectly good faith - walking the wide path that leads to
perdition, ad majorem Diaboli gloriam, of course.
The Doctrine of Simplicity, correct in itself, but wrongly
interpreted, becomes a snare for hearts and minds that are already
too corrupt; a danger which should be recognized and avoided.
Some people complain that the subject of the fundamentals of
esotericism is not simple. Others have said that it leads to great
clarity. This apparent contradiction is explained by the fact that
esotericism is addressed to readers who are predisposed to esoteric
culture by their nature, formation or personal experience.
Jesus said:
“Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s
clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves”. And then he adds:
“You shall know them by their fruits”.
It is difficult, if not impossible, for an esoterically unevolved
person to discern false prophets spontaneously. He will recognize
them more easily by their “fruits”, by the observable results of
their works, which serve as signs. The Tradition knows and teaches a
whole Science of signs.
Jesus further said:
“Temptations (snares, traps set to entice to
sin) are sure to come, but woe to him by or through whom they come!
It would be more profitable for him if a millstone were hung around
his neck and he were hurled into the sea than that he should cause
to sin or be a snare…”
This warning is disturbing, but its value is real. A thief can carry
off our wealth; a ‘ravening wolf‘ can deprive us of salvation.
That ‘ravening wolves’ appear in sheep’s clothing we shall learn
from the following text, well-phrased to frighten us:
“It is not everyone that saith unto me: Lord, Lord, who shall enter
into the kingdom of heaven, but he that accomplishes the will of my
Father which is in Heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord,
Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast
out devils? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then I
shall declare unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye who
work iniquity”.
The conclusion is that neither prophecies that are fulfilled nor the
occurrence of miracles give us any surety against ‘ravening wolves’.
And in our own times:
“There shall arise false Christs, and false
prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if
it were possible, they should deceive the very elect.”
Our era is the time of Transition. We are in the heart of this
period, which is relatively short. All the signs show that the
necessary conditions for the End are emerging before our very eyes.
As expressed by Boris Mouravieff in his presentation of the
Ancient
Science of Ascension, only human beings of iron will, guided by a
higher consciousness, or Noë, will advance into the New Heaven and
New Earth, in literal terms.
The coming era has Two Faces: One of
Paradise Restored, the other a Deluge of Fire. We can choose which
Face we behold.
Mouravieff tells us that the direction humanity chooses will depend
upon the attitude of contemporary man. It is not enough to repeat,
“Lord, Lord!” to enter the Ark and pass through to the New World.
Everything depends on a person’s work; the conscious efforts during
this very time. And it is not just efforts applied in any direction,
but rather very specific efforts to achieve a state of “living
leaven”.
“Leaven” represents a numerically small, even infinitesimal group,
lost to sight, even, in a vast and teeming global population, but
whose effect and influence will reach the farthest corners of the
world. A Divine Revelation is not Static. The time has come when, in
the esoteric domain, private research and the pursuit of individual
salvation for the self must end.
As Mouravieff says, every era is an “ambience” which holds within it
the solution to the problems specific to it. Man can choose his
response according to the level of his understanding and Being. And
so, the ambience that exists at the present time, at the end of an
Epoch, opens up possibilities for man on all planes. It will also
eliminate those possibilities that belong to the previous era.
It is in this present period of history that we observe an upsurge
in esoteric interest much of which includes, as is usual in such
eras, wide promulgation of false teachings and cunning
disinformation. At the same time, the Seeker is being offered the
data for the “strait gate”. It is up to each individual to
understand the significance of what is being offered here, and to
get down to work. Many workers are needed in this time in the same
way physicians are needed on the battlefield. After all, a doctor is
of little use in a society of people who are in a state of robust
health.
Today, and in the not-too-distant future, Esoterically Developed
Teachers will be in demand in all branches of human activity. It is
the purpose of The Quantum Future School to assist in filling this
demand for teachers who can aid the individual in his or her
personal spiritual processes, as well as to prepare them for the
time when they will be needed, and asked, for their services as
Spiritual Physicians.
Getting back to the process, assisted by the Cassiopaean
transmissions from “myself in the future”, in avoiding the trap of
emotional amnesia, I began by collecting data. I had no idea what
data would prove to be important, and the Cassiopaeans stressed from
the beginning that it was better to assume NOTHING and just collect
and sort and see what patterns emerged of themselves from the
sorting process. It was rather like the preparations made to put a
large, complicated jigsaw puzzle together.
One begins by sorting the
pieces by color into piles.
At the same time, if one comes across
fragments that are clearly the “border” pieces, one then puts them
in an altogether different pile. Once in awhile, while sorting,
serendipity brings two pieces together, and those are put in little
“sub-piles”. After this process is completed, it is done again in a
more refined and exact way.
However, the Grail Problem has certain complications. It is like
having the puzzle; only someone has hidden half or more of the
pieces. Not only are we going to have difficulty getting a full
outline, even if we DO assemble the pieces we have accurately, we
may not be able to determine what the picture truly portrays. Add to
this the fact that someone may come into the room and drop pieces
into your pile that do not even belong to the puzzle!
Yes, it is that bad, if not worse.
As the reader may guess after thinking about the problem of “putting
the puzzle together”, the process of gathering and sorting the
pieces as well as the details of the discoveries along the way was
lengthy and tedious, but the conclusions arrived at were, to the
mind of the present writer, nothing short of shattering. In fact, if
an individual CAN fully outline ALL the steps taken to solve so
complex a problem as the Grail, he or she probably doesn’t have a
clue!
Of course, in the broadest of terms, the Grail Quest is always
personal to each and every one who is inspired to undertake it. But,
in my case, I was not exactly on the track of the “Holy Grail”, per
se. I was simply a seeker of truth - the purest and most objective I
could find. After years of collecting puzzle pieces and sorting
them, I began to realize that everything became dense as it
coalesced around the Grail problem.
It is not just a symbol in a
story about knightly quests and their performance of feats of
derring-do along the way!
At some point I realized that this is the
Secret of Secrets; the Grand Destiny; the gnosis of the means of
uniting Science, Philosophy and Religion, as well as Mind, Matter
and Time.
It took me a long time to come to this realization because my nature
is fundamentally skeptical. I am constitutionally incapable of
taking anybody’s word for anything - I have to “see for myself”. If I
read a quoted source in a book, I have to read the source from which
the quote is taken. If that source quotes someone else, I am driven
to find the original. And, if I ever finally get to the originator
of an idea, I am driven to study the life and methods of that person
and to discover, if possible, the observations they made which led
them to a particular conclusion.
This is time-consuming and tedious,
no question about it; but it is the only way that satisfies me; and
it has certainly borne valuable fruit in the long run. Many ideas
and teachings that other seekers accept at “face value”, I have long
ago discarded as useless after investigating them deeply and finding
they are built on foundations of lies and deception.
Skepticism, the ability not to be fooled, is important; but
skepticism can also be “cheap”. It is easy to disbelieve everything,
and some scholars seem to take this approach. A better approach is
to initially consider nothing absurd, and spend the necessary time
to examine it closely and minutely. If you throw away puzzle pieces
indiscriminately, you may never complete the puzzle!
But, when you
find the flaw, even a small one, if it is solidly established as a
flaw, you must be prepared to ruthlessly kill the idea and move to
another.
Scientific training doesn’t keep your senses from fooling you, but a
good scientist doesn’t accept the impressions his senses deliver. He
uses them as a starting point, and then he checks, and double
checks. He looks for additional evidence, and for consistency among
his measurements. A scientist differs from other people in that he
knows how easily he is fooled, and he goes through procedures to
compensate. 34
34 Muller, Richard, Nemesis, (University of Arizona Press 1988).
So, with each little pile of puzzle pieces, one takes up a likely
starting piece and attempts to fit the others to it one by one. But,
as I noted, it may be so that the “starting piece” has been tossed
into the pile to lead one astray, and will NEVER fit anything! And
it may take a long time to realize this. Many people never realize
it.
They trim the piece, they trim other pieces, they force and
maneuver to make them fit!
And then, of course, having done this,
other pieces are found that do, actually, fit, and they crow with
delight that they have solved the puzzle never realizing that the
“keystone” they started has caused all the adjacent pieces to come
together around a false center, thus the primary object has been
missed... and the REAL centerpiece will be tossed aside as
irrelevant.
Back to Contents
Previous
Next
|