Knowledge of Life Two
3. ESOTERICS
3. ESOTERICS
1Under the general heading “Esoterics”, facts and comments have been brought together that have not found their proper places under any other heading.
2The term “hylozoics” has been reserved for such facts and ideas as are part of the hylozoic world view. Hylozoics is the knowledge of reality formulated in a mental system. Soon enough even the term “hylozoics” will be idiotized. That seems a hard a saying, and sensitive minds react. It would be better if they reacted against idiotization, stupidization, and deliberate distortion in pretty combination.
1Among the so-called educated and even in the opinion of the learned, there is an amazing ignorance about the esoteric knowledge of reality. In newspapers you may still meet with such expressions as the “supernatural”. Is it impossible for people to grasp that there cannot exist anything supernatural but that there exists an unknown, unexplored reality? The fact that theologians, philosophers, and scientists consider it below their dignity to examine the reality content of esoterics, proves that dogmatic thinking still prevails over the so-called critical reason they boast about. Scandinavia, in particular, is that “stronghold of science” which deserves the name of Sleepy Hollow.
2However, the signs of the times portend that the age of dogmas is at an end. The new generations are ever more skeptical to the heritage of belief given them.
3When the esoteric knowledge of reality, which during millennia had been taught in secret knowledge orders, was allowed to become exoteric in 1875, even the few facts that were publicized in the beginning aroused a great interest in those seekers who had seen through the absurdity of the ruling idiologies. An English enthusiast, editor-in-chief A. P. Sinnett, published in quick succession two works, The Occult World in 1881 and Esoteric Buddhism in 1883, which were both published in Swedish translation in 1887. The translator of The Occult World, Victor Pfeiff, wrote a preface from which the following is quoted. It testifies that he possessed the prerequisites of understanding the esoteric view revolutionizing all scientific thinking:
4“The seemingly impossible events or ‘phenomena’ described here have of course provoked scorn and mockery from ordinary thoughtless readers as well as from those narrow-minded physicalists who do not recognize any other reality than the physical material one, nor any other life than the one we live here on earth, and who in the matter of human psychology acknowledge only the external aspect, mechanical molecular motion, viewing the spiritual aspect of things (appearing in man as thought and will) only a quality of matter. They do not admit that spirit and matter are equivalent realities, the inner and outer aspects of an eternal, personal, self-conscious life, such as its appears in the course of development.
5“The present book, however, clarifies to the true scientists the necessity of a more profound study of human psychology and of the forces which, once aroused into actuality, may prove to be connected with forces of nature as yet not discovered by science. This book is an introduction to a subsequent one by Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism, which presents a summary of that wisdomteaching, hidden from the public, which is at the bottom of the different religions. That teaching has been handed down from the initiates of the ancient temple mysteries through secret societies unto our times.
6“Of the teaching presented one may hold any opinion whatever; one thing is certain, namely, that at the bottom of it there are profound spiritual truths and that its study will have a reconciling effect during the present conflict between a one-sided materialism, unable to explain spiritual phenomena, and an equally one-sided idealism, unable to explain material phenomena.”
7To Sinnett’s second book A. F. Akerberg wrote a preface from which the following noteworthy comments are quoted:
8“The present work is a systematic presentation of the teaching of those initiated into the secret wisdom of the Orient. The problems treated by it are the most important for mankind, the problems of life itself, what man is, whence he has come, and whither he is going.
9“It has been known and acknowledged, doubted and denied that man is a free and selfresponsible creature. Experience testifies not just to man’s freedom and power but also to his unfreedom and impotence. The ordinary view either stops at this contradiction or removes it with dogmatic and dictatorial statements, whereas the teaching of the initiates clarifies that human freedom is a product of evolution, is a result that is obtained in the course of development. The human self is yet far from its age of majority. The history of mankind presents just the preparatory stages of it. The first step is the development of free-will. The next step is the union of that will with the ultimate purpose of nature. Only when man realizes that no outer authority is the lord of his destiny in spiritual respect but himself alone, will he be able to assume that position in nature from which he will descry the amazing possibilities that are connected with his own future evolution. The self will itself acquire that high estate in which it will become a creative principle in nature.
10“The development of the human individual to that lofty goal coincides with the development of mankind, which is explained in the doctrine of reincarnation. That human self, which develops into consciousness in and through sense perceptions, and into self-activity through physical needs, is (despite its apparent independence) only the envelope of a higher self, which at the present stage of mankind’s development manifests only sporadically in the expressions of hidden soullife.
11“Esoterics makes us perceive the dawn of a new day, the forebode of mankind’s age of majority.”
12Usually you hear from those who begin to study esoterics that it all seems so strange. What do they expect? To read about things they already know? They have a knowledge of physical reality. Does not the simplest reflection tell them that the knowledge of the superphysical must be something totally different, that they must be prepared for the experience that this new and unknown is something truly new and that this new may seem fantastic?
13But how can you know that this new knowledge is correct? That is something you must make sure of. There is just one way of doing it, and that is to learn to master the system, convince yourself that it is non-contradictory and then use it as a basis of explanation. Is it correct in all details? Is it common sense, logical, clear, comprehensible, incontrovertible? The proof that a hypothesis is correct is that it explains in the simplest manner what was previously inexplicable. If you find a hypothesis that proves to be tenable in under all circumstances, then common sense says that it must be correct. There is no absurdity in hylozoics, nothing that must be taken on faith, nothing that cannot be grasped, and it provides a perspective on existence like nothing else. If there is something better, accept that instead.
14Only those who have in previous lives acquired a knowledge of esoterics find it immediately self-evident. Generally they are the ones that are the most disoriented in their new incarnation, since no ruling idiologies correspond to the life-instinct of their latent knowledge. At school they are uninterested because of the slow, discursive method, the tedious repetitions of things they rapidly understand, the absence of perspectives on the material. Therefore they feel inferior to all who are dead certain of what they believe they know. In many cases they also think they are failures, since nobody is able to understand them but everybody thinks they are “odd”. They do not understand themselves, since they have not had an opportunity to study the esoteric fact system with their new brain. Because all new knowledge must be acquired anew in each new life, whereas understanding is innate. Comprehension is the business of the new brain, understanding is remembrance anew. On the other hand, it is a mistake to believe that you can reacquire your old knowledge through “deep meditation”. Such people as think that “this is so obvious that it need not even be said” have never learned to see the enormous difference between before and after. Everybody can pretend to be wise after he has received knowledge. The comical feature of it is that many then consider themselves superior to all the others, feel they are supermen and, as a rule, also think the teacher is inferior to them, “too pedantic”.
15Esoterics is not for those who seek knowledge just to gain clarity, but for those who want to know more in order to serve better with insight and understanding. Rightly understood, esoterics is the science of forces and energies and their right management. Everything else is just propaedeutics (preparatory study), always combined with responsibility, an obvious condition that seems inconceivable to the majority.
16Esoterics is only for those who already possess the knowledge latently, who have seen the insufficiency of the ruling idiologies, who despite everything have remained seekers, driven by an instinct telling them that the “truth” (the knowledge of reality) must exist somewhere. Anyone who is seeking will find it, for he is driven by subconscious certainty that what he is seeking must exist. The esoterician is not motivated by fear of the unknown, by fear of a god that does not measure up to what the humanist’s common sense and humanity requires. He accepts nothing absurd.
17Anyone who is in a position to compare the content of rationality and content of reality of the various “esoteric” sects will also see which of the prevalent working hypotheses is the most tenable.
18The Buddha was asked whether one dared to doubt the ruling religious view, and he answered that if god had given man his reason as life’s most precious gift, then god could not possibly be angry if man used that gift.
19Nobody becomes an esoterician without willing and daring, without the courage to stand alone against all, without possessing emotional as well as mental courage.
20The individual must develop so far as to be absolutely independent of other people’s opinions in all respects. He must get to know reality, for that knowledge is the one rock bottom for his uninterrupted future development. He must grasp the meaning and goal of life and try to arrange his life as far as possible according to this insight. His ascension is done from a lower level, and it is the energies of this lower level that make the ascension possible.
21There is a limit to the possible development of the individual, and that limit is set either by the age of his causal envelope or by the time of the monad’s sojourn in the human kingdom on this or another planet, in this or another solar system. There is a law of normal development, of the reformation of the individual’s envelopes, for the exchange of atoms in the triads, of necessary experiences of life, for requisite qualities and abilities in the different molecular kinds and in the three aspects. Nature makes no leaps, and even though the processes can be accelerated, yet there is a limit to the speed. The individuals who approach the higher stages: the stage of the mystic, the stage of the saint, the stage of humanity, the causal stage, thus are old “souls”. Not anyone is ripe to enter into an essential group with a common consciousness.
22The composition of matter also undergoes a continuous change, you could say a transformation, making higher kinds of consciousness and energy possible. Also this process takes place according to cosmic laws. The result is that also the laggards with a relatively small effort can reach the higher stages before the time is up for the total remoulding of a planet or a solar system. It also works in the opposite manner so that the requirements are continually raised for those who want to reach the fifth natural kingdom. Also this kingdom develops and thereby the demands for transition into it are raised as well.
23In the vegetable kingdom, the monad inhabiting a tree cannot change the form of the tree but it is obliged to use the resources that the given form offers for its experiences. The same is true of all kingdoms.
24It seems that we should be prepared for surprises also as for statements by the planetary hierarchy about the time of evolutionary epochs. New cosmic factors can to an unsuspected degree accelerate changes in material structures and thereby speed up evolution. General physical etheric and emotional objective consciousness for the human organism seems probable within the new zodiacal epoch, and increasing percentages of mankind attain to the causal stage in the current eon.
1In Lemuria as well as in Atlantis the state was the creation of the planetary hierarchy.
2In Lemuria and Atlantis the higher priesthood possessed a knowledge of reality. That knowledge was never a property of the masses, just of the priesthood. Even this was too much, however. The lower priesthood made a revolution and succeeded so far that continents had to be sunk. That is easily done. A small tilt at the earth’s axis and the apple-peel thin crust breaks.
3Races and nations have, like the individual, their life periods. The total lifetime of a nation is calculated at 30 000 years.
4Just as our chronology should be based on astronomical zodiacal epochs (of some 2500 years) in a continuous series, so the epochs of history should be divided on the same grounds. Those are the only correct ones, even though historians do not succeed in discovering them, if they even possess the qualifications to do so. They can be aided in this by the esoteric historian who starts from the very zodiacal epochs.
5To the esoterician who has access to the causal memory of our planet, so-called world history is largely the imaginative construction of ignorance, in so far as it is not deliberate falsification and distortion. The rewriting of history ordered by Stalin in Russia appears grotesque to modern man but is in actual fact just a repetition of what has always been done. If he had succeeded in his attempt, then a few thousand years hence his conception of history would have been accepted by posterity as the true history.
6Some critics have blamed Platon and Aristoteles for not objecting to slavery, and they have thought that its abolition is the merit of Christianity. Actually, it is the merit of humanism.
7“The first Christians thought neither better nor worse of slavery than did the state and the legal authorities in general, and they never thought of abolishing slavery for humanitarian or related reasons – not even in their own circle; on the religious plane, however, equality held sway, here the slaves and their masters were brothers in Christ.” (Harnack)
8An orthodox socialist idealist, quoting the above, adds: “The modern socialist view is, as everyone knows, the direct opposite: on the worldly plane, social democracy demands equality for all citizens, whereas it is fully aware (sic) that the talk about the equality of all on the intellectual plane is a great falsehood.” It will take quite a time before that insight is common property. But as always the genius, in his sanguine idealism, thinks that everybody has as clear vision as himself.
1After 1875, esoteric facts have been publicized. But just very few of these facts have yet been put into their right contexts. Loose facts are worthless and too few facts will easily be misleading.
2It is very deplorable that this “secret knowledge” at its first appearance was given such an abortive presentation. The whole thing was botched from the start. The meaning was to set up a society that would proclaim and realize the law of the divinity and solidarity of all life, and that the “teaching” was to be communicated in different degrees according to individual powers of conception. And the result was a fiasco.
3The various theosophical attempts at esoteric world view are incomplete to the extent of being misleading (Sinnett and Judge), or all too one-sided (Leadbeater) to meet the demands of intellectuals for an all-sided mental system. It is true that Blavatsky publicized a great number of esoteric facts, but she did not bother to put them into comprehensible contexts. Her writings (Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine) are certainly gold-mines of facts, more resembling voluminous encyclopaedias, but are largely inaccessible for those who have not acquired a system. Her inability to find a terminology suitable for Western language usage makes it even more difficult to study her writings.
4Add to this the fact that this knowledge was of course in opposition to all ruling idiologies in philosophy, science, and theology and, consequently, was frantically attacked by all those fictionalists. Then you see what almost insurmountable obstacles the true knowledge still has to overcome.
5Sinnett, Judge, and Hartmann were taught by H.P.B. However, she never taught them to distinguish between esoterics and yoga philosophy. The result was an irremediable confusion of concepts which is clearly apparent in their writings. Only Leadbeater could formulate a truly rational system on the basis of his own research. Regrettably, he thought himself able to settle matters that only 45-selves are able to judge. That was the cause of the many mistakes he made as to the origin of energies, etc. His system, however, is the foremost one in theosophy.
6You undeniably get the impression that those who gave out the first esoteric facts and ideas through Blavatsky totally overrated the perceptive powers of the intelligentsia of the time, not being clear about the fact that new knowledge must be given in a (however simple) mental system and not as loose ideas. Still the intelligentsia is too primitive to be able to put facts and ideas into their right contexts (systems).
7It must be admitted that theosophy had only itself to blame for falling into disrepute. The knowledge offered to the seekers was given such a form that it all had a deterring effect. If the author writes so that not even the learned understand what is intended, it is all rejected summarily. The concepts used must be clearly defined. They must be part of Western language and scientific mode of presentation. If you want to give knowledge to people, you must do it in such a manner that they are able to comprehend it. Instead, there was a monstrous mixture of symbolic sayings and unintelligible terminology with Sanskrit words already misunderstood. When, in addition, even the writers did not grasp what they were speaking about, we may justly wonder that some results were obtained at all.
8It is pretty meaningless to describe the planetary chains (the seven-globe systems), since understanding is not possible until the individual has acquired consciousness in higher worlds with their greater number of dimensions. That is an item of knowledge belonging to the fifth natural kingdom. In the fourth, it will just provide imaginative minds with materials for misleading speculations. The first presentations of esoterics give an impression of helplessness and planlessness. Much could have been left unsaid and much should have been said which remained unsaid. You hardly wonder that the intelligentsia refused to study such vague teachings. Not even Winston Churchill, who nevertheless was a former initiate, knew how to understand Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism.
9We hope that future writers have learnt from these mistakes. The knowledge of reality can be given a mathematically exact formulation and then should be given such a one. The principle must be that only that is said which is allowed to be said and therefore can be expressed exactly. The method of using incomprehensible statements is not part of scientific esoterics. So-called blinds, for which H.P.B. had a predilection, are not allowed since they mislead.
10We must react against Alice A. Bailey’s contemptuous remarks on theosophy, etc. Certainly, the esoteric knowledge had been presented in a highly incomplete and unsatisfactory manner. But it could not be better done with the few facts that the first writers were furnished with. Indeed, the hierarchy encouraged those unlearned authors to do their best, which they did. Then blaming them for not being able to do it better is unjust, not to say outrageous.
11When the esoteric knowledge was allowed to become exoteric (in 1875), H.P.B. was ordered to give out esoteric facts just little by little.
12As a consequence of this method we have got a series of different teachings partially contradicting each other.
13The following table is intended to give a survey of this historical development.
14The teaching of the Hindu Brahmins, popularized by Ramakrishna, reckons with three worlds: the physical world the intermediate world, from which the soul is reborn to the physical world (“metempsychosis”) nirvana wherein the soul is united with the universal soul.
15According to theosophy as presented by H.P.B., Sinnett, Judge, Hartmann, atomic worlds 45–49 were divided into seven worlds.
16According to theosophy as presented by Annie Besant, Leadbeater, Steiner, there were worlds 43–49.
17According to esoterics (D.K.) there exist worlds 1–49. (Also theosophists got that idea after 1919, when D.K. started dictating articles to Alice A. Bailey.)
18Through its secretary D.K. the planetary hierarchy during the years 1920–1950 gave out certain facts in order to put and end, if possible, to the enormous mischief occultists have practised with speculations, which are fancies from the emotional world. The planetary hierarchy has categorically declared that it has no concern with anything in the emotional world. D.K. is the only possibility of contact with the planetary hierarchy (KR 3.9.1) after 1920 and he has said everything he intends to say before the year 2000.
19There are live “replicas” in emotional matter of some members of the planetary hierarchy. These individuals have as categorically declared that those live figures are downright falsifications that do not correspond to the “originals”.
20Letters have been published, purported to be written by “masters”. Also those “occult communications” are forgeries.
21The planetary hierarchy does what it can to develop reason and energetically to counteract everything that furthers that occult gullibility which occultists promote, victims as they are of the illusoriness of the emotional world. And this is true of clairvoyants of all sorts, also of raja yogis. They quite simply have not a chance to guess right, being victims of impulses whose origin they cannot determine or of phenomena in the emotional world which they are unable to judge rightly. D.K. warns energetically against any experimentation with and meditation on centres in the envelopes, such as occultists are busy with. The consequences will just be deplorable. (Se also KR 3.7, 6.3, 7.14, 7.15)
22All serious seekers are encouraged to use their common sense, their highest sense, and the power of critical judgement they have acquired through their own experience on their levels.
1The serious error made by those who begin to study esoterics is that they do not distinguish between what they have been taught exoterically and esoterically. They introduce esoteric facts and ideas into their previous stock of ideas. This warning they have been given before, and several times, but they forget it constantly, and so they mix up esoteric and exoteric concepts, with the result that what they then think to be esoterics is abracadabra pure and simple. It cannot be stressed too emphatically that anyone who begins to study esoterics must definitively refrain from any attempt at mixing it with exoteric ideas and concepts. Esoterics has nothing in common with exoteric views. It is a matter of two totally different mental spheres that in no point must touch each other. The neophyte must step out of his old mental sphere and leave everything he has learnt hitherto outside. He enters into a completely new sphere with totally new concepts and he must carefully keep the two spheres apart. The least error in this respect results in superstition.
2From this it also follows that it takes a great while before the neophyte has gathered so many esoteric facts and ideas that he can start “thinking right”. It was a pedagogically correct principle that Pythagoras did not allow beginners even to ask questions during the first two years of preparatory teaching. For in order to be able to ask rationally you must know what you ask about, what the matter is about. And it takes at least two years of study before the uninitiated has any prospect of asking right.
3Therefore the result is grotesque when an exoterist tries to judge the esoteric knowledge. People are ready at once to give their opinions before they know what the matter is about. Modern presumption starts to correct the teacher before it has read even one single book. This is evidence that the modern “education” the young receive at school turns them into conceited fools who are able to judge everything without further ado.
4Very few people understand of themselves that they cannot comprehend without knowledge of facts and that, where esoterics is concerned, it is a matter of thousands of facts previously unknown to them. The esoteric knowledge is not acquired at once. New facts are combined with a fictional system already acquired, and the necessary consequence is that the study implies a continuous re-thinking until gradually all fictions have been discarded and thinking deals with nothing but esoteric facts.
5It is characteristic of the presumptuous conceit even in born esotericians who possess the knowledge latently that they often imagine that they are able to judge all “esoteric problems” because they believe themselves able to understand at once. It remains for them to learn to see that their new brain must be supplied with all the mental molecules that existed in the former brain before they have reacquired the power of judgement they once had. An esoteric teacher experiences the same thing again and again, that the pupil very soon believes he is better able than the teacher to judge the matter. The pupil starts from what he has already learnt and conceived in his own way. And since his conception must be correct, the teacher has not fully grasped the matter. It is the same phenomenon at all stages. They think they comprehend what they have been taught and do not see that the learning has largely been mixed up with older conceptions and become new fictions. Sometimes it happens that the pupil, years afterwards, realizes that the teacher was right. But most often he forgets that he was ever mistaken. The acquisition of the new knowledge would be enormously facilitated if the pupil could be brought to see that he must postpone his work of reflection proper until he has learnt the new system mechanically quite apart from his old one and without mixing up old and new.
1The present secretary of the planetary hierarchy, 45-self D.K., dictated during the years 1919–1949 to clairaudient Alice A. Bailey 18 esoteric works. The expert very soon sees that no human intellect could have authored this.
2D.K. is the foremost expert on the literature written by the Atlantean “rishis”, whose archaic locutions he is especially fond of quoting. Most of what he writes is symbolical, even when it appears comprehensible. There is a great risk that much of it will be wrongly conceived, despite D.K.’s recurrent warnings against misconceptions and his repeated statement that he writes only for “initiates”. Probably, only causal selves are able to rightly understand his work. Certainly it can serve to train intuition in 47:5-selves if they refrain from believing they understand the meaning intended.
3As an exoteric philosopher, D.K. is a pronounced Oriental who disregards the matter aspect of reality wherever it can be done. Many of his tenets are undisguisedly subjectivistic. Obviously, he did not observe that axiom of logic which says that one must not mix up the different conceptions of reality there are in the different atomic worlds, must not, when it comes to clarifying physical, emotional, and mental reality philosophically, start from the conception of reality there is in the essential world. The result is an irremediable confusion of ideas. Occidental exoterists and esotericians spend a great amount of toil in fixing the reality concepts once and for all. The result achieved with so much toil must not be ruined with new illusion concepts.
4“Everything is illusion.” “Everything is consciousness.” “Everything is energy.” “There is no time.” “There is no astral world.” These and similar absolute sayings, which constantly recur, must be misleading, to say the least of it.
5If such expressions were sporadic, the absolutification they imply could be left out of consideration. But when they constantly recur, are constantly repeated, the formulation certainly is misleading.
6One of the most curious formulations is the following, which recurs: “There is naught but energy for God is life.” Logically it means that because god is life there is only energy and neither matter nor consciousness. The intended meaning probably is that the entire cosmos is a dynamic whole.
1Esoteric literature is no easily accessible literature. Anyone who thinks the contrary is mistaken. Esoteric authorship – the effort of making esoterics comprehensible for exoterists – is always a difficult task.
2Who should write books on esoterics? Masters of symbolism may have particular difficulties in writing comprehensibly for discursive intellects. Higher selves possessing knowledge of all the facts perhaps do not know how to compile them and present them in the most suitable manner. “Lower” selves lack the knowledge of facts and, because of that, cannot present esoterics in the best way, however skilful writers they are.
3It is astonishing how even the most eminent esotericians are unable to find exact terms and express themselves exactly. They use the causal language when writing for mentalists, orientalisms for Westerners, subjectivisms for objectivists. It is about time they learnt how to write comprehensibly. The only one able to do so was C. W. Leadbeater. A. P. Sinnett, too, would have been able to, had he been given more facts.
4Neither H. P. Blavatsky nor A. A. Bailey had the qualifications for treating esoterics scientifically (methodically and systematically). One may ask whether this was a condition for their work as amanuenses of the planetary hierarchy.
5It is perhaps thought that those who have reached higher kingdoms and thereby incomparably greater knowledge and insight, would be the most suitable teachers of mankind. It is not, however, a matter of course that individuals of the fifth or sixth natural kingdom possess the best qualifications for authorship.
6On the contrary it has appeared that the “distance” is too great, that they find particular difficulty in entering into general and individual illusoriness and fictitiousness and adapt their presentation to these conditions. Even essential selves (46) are too far removed from the mental selves’ possibility of understanding. What to 46-selves are evident realities only humanists thousands of years hence will be able to grasp rightly, unless they have once been initiates of esoteric knowledge orders and possess the insight latently.
7The assertion you sometimes may hear from theosophists (wherever they have got it from) that only causal selves can treat of esoteric problems comprehensibly is erroneous. On the contrary, mental selves (47:4,5) should write for mentalists.
8Of course causal selves are able by themselves to ascertain facts in the worlds of man, and concerning superhuman facts they may consult members of the planetary hierarchy. However, it is by no means a matter of course that causal selves understand the particular difficulties with which the uninitiated (who moreover start from highly varying individual conditions) have to contend, decide which facts should be included or excluded. The causal self knows but cannot communicate his knowledge in a comprehensible manner unless he has been trained in concrete thinking.
9Thus causal selves do not as such suit to be writers. They have removed themselves too far from human ways of looking at things. Some of them have lacked the ability of clear expression or the sense of system. Paracelsus as well as Blavatsky proved unsuitable as teachers.
10Only mental selves who have acquired a knowledge of the collected ideas of mankind and received the training in logic requisite for methodical and systematic thinking are suited as teachers of esoterics. And they can become such teachers, if they are given the necessary facts and ideas. Professors should not write textbooks for children in the first form. That should be done by educators who have experience of how children are taught to read. The analogy holds good all the way up into the highest sphere of consciousness.
11The problem of the mental selves is that they often lack the requisite facts. Probably, the happiest solution would be a collaboration of the teacher and the giver of ideas. Then the mental self can to an unlimited extent consult the causal self furnishing the facts, while the mental self formulates the system. Moreover, the mental self should have the second as well as fifth departments in his envelopes. And finally Westerners should write for the peoples of the West.
12Sinnett, Leadbeater, and Laurency have shown how to treat of esoteric problems: simple common sense with facts objectively presented, without symbols and various adornments. Leadbeater could even as a causal self write in a manner that made him easily understood because he learnt that skill before he became a causal self.
1Causal selves are in an intermediate position between the planetary hierarchy and mankind. They are practically perfect men in so far as they are able to explore the worlds of man on their own. They understand human language and people on the different levels of development. They are able to convey the ideas to men. And all of this because consciousness in the causal envelope contains the true knowledge of the course of past events, the ideas that have dominated mankind in the different epochs, and the ideas that remain to be acquired by mankind before it will possess the knowledge of reality and life. At the same time causal selves are in touch with members of the planetary hierarchy and are informed about the hierarchy’s plans for the next evolutionary phase.
2In contrast, the essential self has had his old causal envelope with all its content of ideas dissolved. Certainly the essential self is able to remember anew what he once knew as a causal self. But this involves extra work, thus is no direct knowledge as it is for the causal self. The essential self has entered into the worlds of the fifth natural kingdom, has the view on reality belonging to this kingdom, and has thereby in some measure become estranged from mankind’s views.
3From this it follows that causal selves find it easier to help human beings directly with their problems, their mental problems in particular, easier to convey the knowledge in an educationally suitable manner. This is what makes many causal selves voluntarily refrain from trying to become essential selves. Such an attitude may justly be called one of “sacrifice”. Much pleasure cannot be derived from incarnating in a mankind ignorant of life and finding it generally impervious to common sense.
4From what has been said above it follows that the higher kingdom an individual has attained, the more difficult is it for him to be a suitable teacher of men before they have acquired at least objective consciousness of the lowest material worlds and have learnt to think in accordance with that reality, liberated themselves from their emotional illusions and mental fictions which make it impossible to think right or to acquire what esotericians call common sense.
5It is true that the conception of reality is different in the different worlds, but the pervading analogy between the worlds makes it incomparably easier to understand the different conceptions and, above all, to easier for those in higher worlds to communicate with those in lower worlds when the latter have acquired knowledge of their own worlds and do not any more live in their own imaginings about these.
6The important thing for human beings thus is to become first selves and understand their own worlds, reach the knowledge of reality concerning these worlds. That is the prerequisite of further consciousness development. The fantasts in the occult sects, who begin to imagine about the second selves’ view of reality and imagine they are second selves, live, they too, in a illusory world of self-made fictions. Men must become perfected first selves before they can proceed any further. They have still a very long way to go even to that goal.
1There must be some authority because the individual who knows nothing must learn from one who knows something. On the other hand, all cult of authority is to be rejected. Blind and uncritical trust in authority is always wrong. The ignorant attack authority. Thereby they show that they have not understood and that they do not know what they are speaking about. Cult of authority and contempt for authority are equally primitive.
2Anyone who possesses insight and understanding never cares about authority. It does not matter “who said it” but whether it is factually correct or not.
3The opinions of the great authorities (not to say the many lesser ones) concerning things that none of them can know anything about (in the history of religions, for instance) appear almost comical to an esoterician. When the public accept their guesswork, it turns tragicomic. Where historical figures such as Buddha and Christos are concerned, the planetary hierarchy asserts emphatically that everything said about them is part of the legend. Then historians of religion and all other so called authorities may say what they like. Truth is one and single. And whenever there are different opinions among the learned, then all are wrong.
4There are three different kinds of contempt for authority. The first kind is that of the fool who knows everything best. The second kind is the realization of the illusoriness and fictitiousness of theology, philosophy, and science; contempt for authoritarian manners and authoritarian demands. The third kind is the skeptic’s dogmatic contempt for everything that does not suit him in his Nietzschean self-apotheosis.
5The esoterician obtains knowledge of the limits to human understanding of reality and the progress of the various idiologies towards those limits. Contempt is a word that does not occur in his dictionary. That quality he has definitively discarded from his subconscious acquisition of qualities. 6The esoterician also knows that ignorance is due to the absence of authoritative knowledge. We receive all our true knowledge from individuals in higher kingdoms. And this is true of everybody in the six natural kingdoms of the solar system and in the five lower cosmic divine kingdoms. All are disciples all the way up. Anyone who has ceased being a disciple has ceased to learn and has concluded his consciousness development for that incarnation.
7The esoterician is also informed that knowledge without application in real life is dead knowledge and just implies increased responsibility in life. He receives the basic facts he needs to understand existence and its laws. But the problems that he thanks to this knowledge is able to solve he must solve by himself. For that is the only way of developing. Such solutions as we steal from others do not help us but instead make it more difficult for us to solve future problems. Even those in the fifth and sixth natural kingdoms have their problems to solve, as difficult for them as our problems are for us. Only the problems we have solved ourselves we are able to solve at once in our next life.
8Theoretical learning (facts) we can communicate to others. The experience we can share with others, however, is the one we have realized ourselves. Anyone who seeks to give what he is will find that he begins to understand, that he is about to enter into the reality which the learning is intended to familiarize us with.
9The leaders in the esoteric groups are automatically those who have the best orientation in esoterics. They give no orders, however, not even advice to others in the groups, and they do not assert their own opinion. Their task is to supply facts and to help those who want information in order to orient themselves better and form their own opinion. There are no dictators in higher kingdoms. There are always those who know more and are better able, but they give no instructions, just help those who desire clarity about how things are. The planetary ruler himself governs through his supreme insight and ability to clarify his greater knowledge of the Law, and he does not resort to the language of force.
1The system puts facts in their right places, inserts facts into their right contexts, and indicates that they have also ended up there. The system affords us clarity and enables us to comprehend. Without a system facts end up in wrong contexts. The greatest teacher is the one who elaborates the best, that is to say: the simplest system.
2Facts are the building-blocks and the system is the house.
3What more than anything else has hindered people from examining the tenability of esoterics has been the absence of systems, real systems. Thinking esoterically is possible only when you can proceed by deduction from universals to particulars. And you can do that only when the correct system has been formulated.
4Neither theosophists nor Rudolf Steiner nor the so-called Rosicrucians have been able to formulate that system.
5The precondition of a correct system also is that the concepts are formulated in close agreement with the conception of reality possible for man, so that readers trained in philosophy and science have the greatest possible clarity. That is the reason why the systems must be reformulated according as research progresses and new reality concepts are added that facilitate conception. However, the reality concepts formulated by Pythagoras should be in such agreement with reality that they cannot be superseded by better ones. They probably match all demands until mankind has acquired causal consciousness and is able to live in the world of ideas.
1The basic fault with all those premature teachers who at the stage of culture think themselves competent to teach esoterics is that they lack that essential qualification: the realization that only when you have mastered the whole (the system) you are able to rightly understand and judge the part (a separate fact), that the meaning of what is said is lost if you cannot insert it into its right total context, that – to put it philosophically – the relative emerges clearly only when it has been given its right place in the “absolute”.
2Bostrom defined philosophy as “the doctrine of the absolute and the explanation of the relative from it”. As applied to philosophy with its human limitation, his definition seems almost ridiculous, but as a causal idea it is correct. The part has its true meaning only when seen in relation to the whole. Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is the result of deduction. Detached statements lose their meaning. Bostrom had several causal ideas, which he himself misinterpreted, since he inserted them into wrong contexts, because he did not have the absolute mental system.
3Thus you should not be a teacher until you have mastered the system that you are about to teach to the pupils. That is a viewpoint which has been all too little considered in theosophical education. Certainly the teacher learns by teaching others, but if he does not have a clear system, then neither the pupil can reach clarity. That is the reason why theosophical literature is unsatisfactory and has rapidly become obsolete. Moreover, if the teacher possesses the system, he stands on firm ground which affords his teaching an exactness that would else be lacking. Clarity and exactness are what the mentalist must have. In contrast, what the emotionalist needs is material for his imagination. By supplying such material you do not help philosophers and scientists, intellectuals worldwide. The “theosophical method” may be right for esoteric researchers who are also teachers. Using their method they ascertain facts. These facts end up in their correct contexts or not depending on whether the researcher already has the system or not.
4The purpose of theosophy was not to give mankind a finished system. Mankind was neither ripe for that nor had a right to receive it. Theosophy was intended for initiates of old who possessed the knowledge latently. In ancient times they had received the knowledge in secret orders for several reasons. Because of their attitude to the planetary hierarchy they had not betrayed it in Atlantis. Subsequently they did not deserve to be idiotized by the ruling idiologies. In our times, however, mankind had so developed that intellectuals could start thinking independently to an ever greater extent. And old initiates (the “elite”) would be put before harder tasks: through isolated facts and stray hints as their only guides be forced to remember anew the knowledge which they had received up to then and which they had once acquired themselves. From then on it has been harder still, since the knowledge they must acquire in addition will be the result of their own research and meditation. No more cramming or stuffing, no more mere idle study, no more parrotry. The important thing is independent thinking, the acquisition of perspective consciousness, system thinking, and finally intuition. You do not get that for nothing. Aspirants shall no more live in their feeling or imagination but only in their mentality. Emotionality has to sink down into the subconscious. The “will” shall no more be emotional but mental, the energy be directed by mental motives. Human beings shall be directed to consciousness development and so have quite other interests. That will put an end to the hyenalike interest in personalities and all manner of gossip displayed by newspapers and individuals. A great thing!
1All esoteric works are to some extent deficient. This is due to the absence of many esoteric facts as well as to the inability of writers and readers to grasp the teaching right.
2To be able to conceive you must have concepts. That is the difficulty in presenting the esoteric knowledge which mainly is concerned with realities for which concepts still are absent in thinking and words in language. The presentation is in its chief features determined by the possibility there is to connect, at least by analogy, to prevalent views, which almost entirely consist of fictions, and eventually introduce some few new concepts and discard some old ones, until in a long process everything old has been weeded out. Otherwise it would be like speaking to the blind about colour.
3Such concepts as “cause and effect”, sowing and reaping” are properly just symbols and not very happy ones. The cause is never single, and sowing often fails. Starting from such a conception the idea may eventually be refined into a concept that better agrees with reality.
4Higher worlds are described with concepts taken from the worlds of man. What in these higher worlds is absolutely new and unknown must remain incomprehensible until such facts are obtained as make some sort of visionary sketch possible. Also in its present formulation the presentation of esoterics is probably unintelligible to others than those who have through studies assimilated facts to such an extent that visionary imagination can make the description graphic. The corresponding is obtained in studying astronomy, if the student is unable to calculate the orbits of planets, for instance. As you can talk about imagination in mathematics or astronomy, you can also talk about imagination in esoterics.
5Mankind has physical experience, and concepts (attached to words) are physical concepts. “Concepts” that refer to reality beyond human objective experience, that are based on subjective experiences (emotions and thoughts) are highly conventional concepts and remain so until it will be possible to study the pertaining realities objectively, to study all three aspects of reality scientifically and make them the objects of scientific experiments. Only causal selves possessing causal sense (objective consciousness in causal matter) are able to do so. If you have grasped this fact, you understand that all phenomena in the emotional world and the mental world largely remain emotional illusions and mental fictions to physical man. Phenomena in still higher worlds, which thus are beyond the experience of even subjective consciousness, must be incomprehensible.
6Those ignorant of life who begin to study esoterics and believe they are able to comprehend “everything”, demand that this totally unknown reality be made conceivable, which is impossible. For new realities a terminology must be constructed. Regrettably, those who have tried to make comprehensible systems of the esoteric facts that little by little have been communicated by the planetary hierarchy have used old misleading terms that have made esoteric study even more difficult.
7The only possibility to have a vision of higher worlds and kingdoms is to apply the method of analogy and start from concepts already known (space, time, matter, motion, energy, consciousness, law, development, unity, etc.). It is necessary to see that the experience we put into these concepts can never correspond to the reality of higher worlds, and that is why all speculations must be erroneous.
8To the esoterician, the conventional concepts lose their significance more and more in as much as he sees the fictitiousness of their content. They have lost their meaning. If you use the same words (the vocabulary of a language is limited), you must try new definitions so that people may see that you mean “something else”. That is a thing which esoteric writers have considered all too little; a heedlessness that has caused unnecessary misunderstanding. The best solution would be to introduce new words for new concepts and new realities. But then they raise an outcry, calling it incomprehensible. Nowadays you hardly dare to use old, uncommon words and expressions. Those who do not understand should not be content with their deficient vocabulary but should procure a dictionary.
9However, one cannot sufficiently warn people who start reading esoteric literature to believe they always understand what is intended. The disciple is taught to consider the writer’s insight and understanding. What a causal self, an essential self, a 45-self says can mean different things, even if they use the same words. Rightly it has been said, therefore, that esoterics remains esoteric, even though it is publicized and the symbols are elucidated.
10Everything in the physical world is part of evolution. But there are seven parallel evolutions and not all of them use triads for their evolution.
11We have not received information about how mineral triads and vegetable triads are distributed in nature, except for the fact that there is a triad in every tree. Presumably we are not given such data because we do not need them. We get as many fact as we need in order to know how the cosmos is composed and to have a conception of the processes of manifestation in broad outline to get the necessary perspectives.
12There are immensely many things which we cannot picture to ourselves (view plastically with our objective sense as graphic objects) but which we must try to comprehend with our subjective reason as well as that can be done. We cannot conceive of a primordial atom, not even a 45-atom. Everything that is beyond possible human experience also is beyond our conceptual world. Our prospects even to comprehend the fourth or fifth dimension are ridiculously small. We must do what we can, but that is not much. One feels little, very little before the task of trying to understand. The consciousness of a man relates to that of a 45-self as the consciousness of a plant to that of a man. And for a 45-self there is the consciousness of 44 worlds left to be acquired, and each higher world consciousness presents the same distance. We should try to comprehend such realities by thinking “mathematically”.
13It is meaningless to invent new names for higher worlds, higher kingdoms of which only know that they exist. The only expedient nomenclature is the mathematical one. We cannot comprehend how higher kingdoms perceive reality, their work at the processes of manifestation, their methods for the facilitation of consciousness development in lower kingdoms. It is sufficient information for us that matter, energy, consciousness are totally different from one world to another. Using mathematical terms we at least know where the world in question belongs in the totality. If that method had been used in the ancient knowledge orders, then there could not have arisen such a total confusion about nirvana, which Indians delegated to some imaginary world anywhere above the emotional world.
1Esoterics teems with paradoxes, which properly speaking imply logical contradiction. Such a paradox is for instance: the various worlds are totally different and yet analogous. Paradoxes clarify that we lack the facts necessary to comprehension. For life is logical once we have got the facts. Without facts it appears illogical. Without facts it is paradoxical. Without facts it is a mystery. Without facts it is incomprehensible. All these expressions have the same meaning.
2Mystics (emotionalists) and causal selves use paradoxes. Mental selves prefer logical consistency. To the great ones the paradox is very close to a kind of humour (which in the widest sense means: a sense of proportion).
3Many are confused by the apparent contradictions in the esoteric authors. According to some of them the entire biological and psychological evolution has worked its way up gradually through the various natural kingdoms. According to others, the civilizations and cultures that have been produced cannot possibly be the products of a mankind descended from ape-man. Both views are right and imply no contradiction. Culture is the work of individuals from the fifth natural kingdom who have incarnated in order to help mankind. It stands to reason that the pertaining problems still cause problems to scientists who deny the existence of superphysical kingdoms and worlds, and that they are unable to solve these problems. They must give up most problems of human life as insoluble. They do so rather than they examine esoterics, which provides quite sufficient explanations.
1To the esoterician there are in principle nothing absolutely “unknowable”. The degree of unknowability indicates the level of development. Absolute knowledge, however, is attained only at the highest cosmic stage of development.
2Spencer’s “unknowable” logically implies a contradiction. One either knows or knows not. Thus one cannot know whether there is anything unknowable. Another matter is that we are able to fix the limits to exploration of reality once we have received authoritative information about the ever higher atomic worlds and about the worlds in which the individual has succeeded in acquiring his own material envelopes with their kinds of consciousness. The individual can by himself acquire knowledge of the world his material envelope is part of but not of higher worlds. His level of development indicates to what extent he has succeeded in realizing this possibility. The proofs that esoterics accords with reality are logically incontrovertible and cannot be denied by anyone who claims to possess common sense. There is nothing else that can be defended with such incontrovertible proofs. One must be incurably idiotized by illusions and fictions not to see that no theological, philosophical, scientific idiology contains anything that matches up to these proofs in their tenability.
1If one observes how students assimilate the esoteric knowledge one can distinguish two strikingly opposite types, the subjective personal and the objective impersonal type. The subjective type must conceive everything in his own way and therefore has to take a long roundabout way to reach the exact conception of reality. The objective type studies the matter such as it is independently of the self’s demand of seeing it as the self wants. Thus it appears also in the case of objective reality that the individual’s self-assertion always is a hindrance to true understanding. The subjective type generally prefers to start from the consciousness aspect, whereas the objective type finds it most natural to start from the matter and motion aspects. The subjective type therefore is an extra burden to the teacher imparting the knowledge. He meets with constant opposition from the part of the student, which often has the result that he must give up his attempt at teaching him and must leave it to self-assertion to learn in its own way, a circuitous path through many misconceptions. If in addition the subjective type is hyperintelligent and has always been intellectually superior in his dealings with other people, then there is a risk that he never reaches the objective conception in that incarnation but goes astray in a fiction system of his own making. Well-known such types were Swedenborg, Rudolf Steiner, and Ramakrishna. If the subjectivist in addition has emotional objective consciousness, which always confirms individual misconceptions in the emotional world, then you may consider the case hopeless.
2In esoterics the thesis applies saying that knowledge does not precede experience but is a consequence of it. We learn by living, by making our own experiments in life. The knowledge we have received before experience has quite another significance through experience. Neither does knowledge impart the ability of realization. Man learns that by experience, by the endless number of unsuccessful experiences. Life-ignorant man lets himself be cast down by failures, blames himself, and loses his trust in life. The man experienced in life knows that mistakes are unavoidable and that he learns the most by making mistakes. He acquires trust in self through his failed attempts, for having made them he knows much more than before. Anyone who does not dare to act for fear of failing often misses valuable opportunities of learning. Many people also fear the criticism of others. Criticism (other people’s lack of understanding) must be taken into account and be used to liberate oneself from the dependence on the opinions of others.
1Anyone who starts studying esoterics on his own is wise in not demanding to comprehend what he reads at once, for this is impossible. The right method is to read the book through several times attentively. Then you will find that you understand more at each new reading, until finally everything has been clarified. You should allow some time to pass after each reading in order to give the subconscious the time to do its work, which facilitates comprehension.
2A serious reminder to esotericians: Do not try to do as exoterists do: conclude from effects to causes, but try to obtain knowledge of those causes. That knowledge exists in the “world of Platonic ideas”. Exoterists pursue the path of induction, esotericians that of deduction.
3The most important knowledge to understand the meaning and goal of existence is the knowledge of the three aspects and the consciousness development of the monads through the natural kingdoms.
1As the term “esoteric” has become generally known, also the original meaning has been lost. The meaning of course is ever more debased until it reaches the bottom level. The original and true definition of esoterics is that knowledge of reality and life which was imparted to the initiates of the secret knowledge orders instituted by the planetary hierarchy. Actually, not the hierarchy itself but some member of it (a 46-self) instituted the order and formulated its teaching (approved by the head of the second department), adapted to the general conceptions ruling at the time. There is a risk that also the idea of “planetary hierarchy” is soon enough idiotized so that every fool thinks he has got his brainwaves from that superhuman organization.
2Esoterics has been allowed for publication to an ever greater extent. But still this concerns only the most basic facts about the cosmos, worlds, matter, consciousness etc. As this knowledge comes to the fore, everything that acute and profound philosophy has fantasized is relegated to the archives of cast-off superstition. It is just a question of time (a century or so), however much the conscious or unconscious enemies of truth in all camps try to delay that process. (Dogmatists are and remain the enemies of truth.)
3In our time, they have also started calling all the literature belonging to the stage of the mystic (religious mysticism) “esoteric”, for instance Islamic sufism, popular works on vedanta and yoga, Jewish Kabbala, Tibetan mysticism, all the various conceptions handed down through generations among the medicine-men of various ethnic tribes, a diversified mixture that will probably become even more diversified.
4Mentally uncontrollable imagination has produced all manner of speculation in various domains. This gets a greater market value if guilded with the special advertisement name of “esoteric”, which is still salable.
5The old terms “mysticism” and “occultism”, which bring about unclarity and misunderstanding, as all traditional terms do, could better be replaced with “emotionalism” and “mentalism”. It is desirable that neither term is used in literature treating of the superphysical. That part of the planetary hierarchy’s knowledge which exists in the causal world and which does not need to be kept secret anymore, should not be called “occultism”. It is not occult, or secret.
6After the knowledge has been allowed for publication, the word “occult” (secret) is downright false. In contrast, the term “esoteric” is still justified, since “higher knowledge” will always exist. It does not need to be “secret” for it is inconceivable to consciousness of a lower kind.
7Laurency has kept the term “esoteric”, partly because it clarifies the historical origin of the teaching, partly in order to replace the abortive terms mysticism, occultism, theosophy (meaning “divine wisdom”), anthroposophy (“human wisdom”), Rosicrucianism, etc. The knowledge system of the hylozoician Pythagoras is not concerned with either divine or human wisdom but with reality.
8The esoteric knowledge of reality and life is the knowledge in possession of the fifth natural kingdom, the planetary hierarchy. That knowledge will always remain incomprehensible to man. The portion of their knowledge given to us is the representation of reality that man (the mental self) is in a position to understand. It is thus adapted (“popularized”).
9That is not all, however. If you have rightly understood what the very designation esoterics in the inmost sense implies, then you see that everything is esoteric that is part of a higher level of development than the individual has attained. That is an insight which democrats can never reach.
1Since neither philosophy nor science will ever be able to ascertain that esoterics agrees with reality, esoterics is not meant for those who have been able to content themselves with philosophy and science. Esoterics is not for all but for those who have seen that such idiologies or views are untenable. Not to see this is one of the many mistakes made by the theosophists and other closely related societies. Another mistake they make is to consider their primitive mental systems (based on too few esoteric facts) final. There will never exist a final system, since the number of facts is unlimited. At the utmost, a fundamental system can be achieved, a system that can constitute the very founding stone for future systems of ever vaster dimensions.
2Esoterics is for those who have the prerequisites of understanding it. In the hands of others, it will be distorted into false doctrines, as it has always been. All existing religions and sects of all kinds are proofs of that. This cannot be said too often nor be inculcated sufficiently.
3The fact that the esoteric knowledge has been made accessible to the public at large, to those at the stage of civilization and not least to those at the stage of culture, has had deplorable consequences. All who have read some esoteric literature believe they understand what they hardly are able to comprehend. They make cocksure statements that just seem comical and think they are able to judge things of which they actually know nothing. The result of this attitude is particularly serious when these esoteric novices have the most primitive superphysical experiences. Not having any idea of what is required for correct perception of things in world 48, they believe they have acquired causal as well as essential consciousness. It is no use warning these know-alls about the pertaining experiences, which they are absolutely unable to judge. They receive everything as divine revelation and they say the warner just wants to inhibit their spiritual development. For the teacher it only remains to leave these self-deluded people to live in their illusions. To those who are not filled with their own importance it may be said that we are here in the physical world in order to get to know it and not higher worlds, that we are here in order to acquire the qualities and abilities that can be acquired in the physical world only, that all occult experiences you have on your own without a direct physical contact with a teacher from the fifth natural kingdom will most often be hindrances to self-realization, particularly to the acquisition of common sense. Common sense is rarely met, also in the occult societies. In this connection, the pen refuses to write “esoteric”.
4They talk about theosophy or divine wisdom and anthroposophy or human wisdom and they lack the qualifications for any kind of wisdom. It is more important to acquire common sense.
5It is utterly meaningless to try to convince anyone that esoterics is true. You must realize this yourself at the first acquaintance, experience the knowledge as a revelation that solves the problems you have till then tried to solve in vain. Trying to convince people is not mere meaningless but even harmful. For truth to an individual is what he is able to understand and must never be a matter of belief. If he accepts truths that are above his level, then it will unfailingly sooner or later be a setback the consequences of which may be disastrous. Only whatever the individual has acquired by his own work has a firm foundation.
6It is in this respect that the occult sects have made serious mistakes. Theosophists, anthroposophists, and Rosicrucians are largely believers just as those who believe in religious dogmas, even if their conviction is somewhat more mentally conditioned than it is in the religious people who are solely emotionally determined. The fact that members of those occult sects are believers is clear from their dependence on authority. They have not comprehended the esoteric idea system, let alone understood it. Because those who understand also see that that reality and existence must be like that and cannot be otherwise.
7They have perhaps been brought to see that the teaching of reincarnation and the law of sowing and reaping are sensible explanations. There goes the limit to their understanding. The rest is a lesson they have learnt by rote not grasping the meaning and goal of existence. For this reason the teaching in the societies should be done in graded classes and remain esoteric until the teachers have made sure that the pupils have fully understood what they have been taught.
8The Catholic Church does not allow its faithful to study the Bible, and very rightly. For nobody can understand it. It can just be misinterpreted, which it indeed has been with hundred of Christian sects as a result, every one of them as little wise as any other.
9Something similar we may see in esoterics when books are put into the hands of people who lack the prerequisites of understanding them. That mistake will not be repeated in the new esoteric knowledge orders that are in the making.
10There are plenty of occultists who devour one esoteric book after the other instead of studying thoroughly one single book. The result is superficiality, conceited enterprisingness, and injudiciousness. All too many theosophists have read everything and understood nothing. It is more important having assimilated the contents of one book than having read a hundred.
11The great mistake occultists make is that they generalize everything they hear about in esoterics, not understanding that everything is rather individual or unique, applies for a certain time, for a certain group, for certain types, etc., or even for one single individual.
12The history of occultism has already clarified that the perception and judgement of occultists are not of a higher level than that of the average intellectual. This fact appears in their comments on the esoteric facts that mankind has received. Their own opinions have been erroneous without exception. That is partly due to the fact that they still use exoteric ways of looking at things. That admixture is totally abortive. But above all their level appears in the fact that they have not learnt to put off expressing an opinion until the planetary hierarchy formulates one for them. We may certainly “fantasize”. It develops us. But that does not mean that we can guess right.
13Esoterics is the only knowledge that can teach man to see what an idiot he is in life. When he sees this, there is a hope that he is able to learn something sensible. Thereupon he will be able to learn from the lessons that life must give him constantly anew. That he profits by them is necessary if he will be wise, be able to rightly apply the knowledge of life. He will not learn that from theory only.
1Hylozoics presents that skeleton framework, that basic system which cannot be ruined except with a great amount of skill. What is said in addition is said with continuous warnings to the immature: Do not venture into matters you cannot master! Do not imagine you understand things that are beyond your qualifications. The history of philosophy is a two thousand years story of how the most acute minds did not possess even that amount of self-criticism that they saw how ridiculous it is to have faith in one’s own judgement. Do not teach things the correctness of which has not been confirmed to you! We have had enough of coxcomb prophets of all descriptions. And they sow much bad sowing for the future. Leading people astray entails a responsibility that none would take if he knew the consequences.
2Moreover, esoterics must not be turned into a source of income for all manner of charlatans, be they however ignorant of the fact that they are the tools of the black lodge, always ready to idiotize or mislead.
3The usual criticasters will of course scoff at such warnings, saying that esotericians try to revive the medieval fear of hell, etc., in that reviewer style which is just too well-known. They are mistaken. Esoterics and theology have nothing in common. The motives of satanists in all times were to prevent mankind’s consciousness development by every available means. How well they have succeeded in our time is witnessed by all the modern idiologies, by modern culture (literature, art, and music) and not least by the inhuman policies of Nazism and Bolshevism, which have brought mankind to the edge of annihilation.
1The esoteric knowledge is true science. Therefore, it should be given a scientific formulation in accord with solely scientific views, and it should be given a scientific terminology. To go on using old, completely abortive symbolism is to directly counteract the purpose of spreading the knowledge.
2One has every reason for wondering why the different world, different envelopes, different kinds of consciousness and energy cannot be given a scientific treatment, one freed from those incomprehensible, unsuitable, and misleading names they received in the religious, mystic, occult, Vedic literature of past ages. Why should we waste an enormous amount of energy on studying symbolic names in all languages and in all kinds of literature? Why not “put new wine in new bottles”? Everything can be given an enormously simple presentation.
3As for presenting esoterics to mentalists (philosophers and scientists), it is important that you use exact concepts only and do not presuppose causal intuition, which does not need such concepts but manages with hints. That is a thing which Orientals apparently have difficulty in understanding. Yoga philosophy is a very typical example. Its terms are explained by hints, and so every yogi has his own idea of their meaning. Also from Indian philosophy in general it is apparent that precise, clearly defined concepts are necessary if you wish your readers to gain clarity and have an exact conception of reality. Hints are always cherished by mystics (emotionalists) but impossible for mentalists (a category including not only those at the humanist stage but civilizational individuals as well: the higher and the lower mental stage).
4Lacking handy terms for new (hitherto unknown to man) realities, esoteric writers resort to previously existing terms that have already been given their exact definition, and in so doing they cause confusion of ideas. Thus for instance the terms involution and evolution have been used also for cultural phenomena (universal wave motion up and down), the phase-out of a cultural epoch and the shaping of new civilizational and cultural phenomena.
5A confusion of ideas is also caused by the use of the term elemental about evolutionary beings that have not yet acquired self-consciousness. According to the exact terminology, elementals belong to involution, are made up of elemental matter formed by evolutionary beings. It is deplorable that disciples who are to present facts from the planetary hierarchy have not learnt the common names for the things they write about. All of it finally degenerates into a regular confusion of terms as the different schools use current terms for quite different things. It is almost shocking when a disciple (B.S.) of a 45-self calls the causal world the “higher astral”, to cite just an instance. Is it too much to expect that writers have a basic orientation in the esoteric literature and terminology?
6You cannot understand or interpret esoteric literature or judge from the facts it presents until you have acquired causal consciousness. Just as the religious concepts have caused a never-ending confusion of concepts, so in the future the concepts and facts of occult literature will cause a mental chaos. The signs are already at hand in the rubbish of theosophists, anthroposophists, and Rosicrucians.
1The world view affords us a knowledge of reality and of the three aspects of reality.
2The life view shows us that the meaning of life is consciousness development and how we can develop.
3All life views must start from some sort of world view. If the world view is untenable, the whole of the life view is in the air. An esoterician has no difficulty in leading the life view back to its world view and determine its content of reality.
1The majority of philosophic terms have been coined by subjectivists. Those are subjectivists who either deny that matter exists or assert, like Kant, that we cannot know anything about matter or, like Hume, that we cannot know whether our perception of matter is correct.
2In contrast to the subjectivists, esotericians declare that the knowledge of matter we have is correct as far as it goes, but that the knowledge we can acquire in the “visible” physical world is only one per cent of the content of matter; so composed is it.
3Also the occultists are subjectivists if they have any idea at all of this problem. This is partially due to the fact that they have borrowed their designations from philosophy with its subjectivist terms. Their inability or unwillingness to find new words for new things is remarkable. Some of them probably think that the new will not seem so strange if the familiar terminology is used. If so, they underrate the risk of confusion of ideas. That risk is always great, as experience has shown.
4Some occultists call everything conscious subjective, it may then refer to any one of the three aspects. Those who have borrowed terms from the Indian philosophy of illusion sometimes call everything visible illusion and everything invisible subjective, independent of the aspects. All of it is evidence of the usual confusion of ideas.
5According to hylozoics, the conception by consciousness of everything in the consciousness aspect is subjective and the exact conception by consciousness of everything in the matter and motion aspects is objective.
1Every now and then you come across expressions like “inner worlds” or “subjective worlds” in esoteric literature. The right term is “higher worlds”. Those are neither “inner” nor “subjective” but quite as much outer and objective as the physical world. As seen by the highest or 49- dimensional vision, all the 49 worlds make up one single world, the cosmic world or the cosmos.
2According to the terminology elaborated by Alice A. Bailey in Arcane School, a distinction is made between the individual’s life in the three lowest atomic worlds (47–49) and his life in higher worlds, and man’s life is called “life in form”. But also higher material kinds consist of atoms and molecules, and even the atom is a “form”, the planets, the solar systems are forms. It should be sufficient to give the mathematical designations of the various material worlds without using this nebulous terminology, which introduces a number of perfectly useless new designations. The more you can simplify it all, the more intelligible will it be for future generations. We need to rid ourselves of all unnecessary burdens.
3When you have once clearly indicated the kinds of matter, kinds of energy, and kinds of consciousness of the various worlds, their atomic kinds and molecular kinds, it is subsequently sufficient to use the mathematical designations without dragging around all the repetitious periphrases, which must tire everybody unnecessarily and irritate the beginners. That is why it is so important to have as few, simple, and exact definitions as possible. The unclear ones are not made any clearer by being repeated.
1The terms soul, spirit, spiritual, ego, monad, self, overself, personality, individuality, triad lack an unambiguous meaning with most writers.
2When speaking about soul some of them seem to refer to 47:1-3 or 46 or 45–47 (the second triad).
3The monad develops in and through envelopes from the lowest etheric envelope to cosmic worlds. The monad acquires ever new envelopes in successively higher worlds. Step by step it acquires self-consciousness in the ever higher molecular kinds of its envelope by learning to activate consciousness in these. So doing it finally becomes the master of its envelope. Until then, the monad is disoriented in the consciousness chaos of this envelope.
4The old terms, always abused by ignorance, soul, spirit, god, etc. had reference to the envelopes of the monad in higher worlds. Soul meant man’s permanent causal envelope (47- envelope); spirit, his future 45-envelope; god, the 43-envelope.
5You cannot take someone’s “life”, destroy a “life”. Life is the monad, and it is unassailable in all kingdoms. You can destroy the envelopes of the monad but not the “life” (monad) of the envelope.
1In theosophical literature you often come across the expressions “physical”, “psychic”, and “spiritual” consciousness. Many people do not see that in this juxtaposition, psychic refers to the emotional and mental, and spiritual to the causal and essential. There is an amazing vagueness prevalent in these matters because of the generally stereotyped mode of presentation in speech and in writing.
2The ancients called collective consciousness anima mundi = the world-soul, comprising all individual souls (soul here meaning consciousness).
3In esoteric writings there is much talk about the “planetary logos”. This refers to the collective consciousness of Terra as well as those monads of the two cosmic divine kingdoms 29–35 and 36–42 who have voluntarily joined the Terran evolution.
4Cosmic consciousness begins in world 42, thus does not exist within the solar system (43-49). People who believe they possess “cosmic consciousness” are victims of emotional illusions. They do not even possess consciousness within the words of man (47-49). To do so would require the status of being a causal self. Those victims of illusion know nothing about the worlds of the planetary hierarchy (43-46).
5When in esoterics there is mention of “continuity of consciousness” this may refer to a number of different things. Continuity of emotional consciousness implies that the individual has acquired the ability to remember everything he has experienced in his emotional envelope during the sleep of his organism with its etheric envelope. Continuity of causal consciousness implies that the individual knows about his experiences in past incarnations (whenever he needs them). Everything the monad has experienced is found in its subconsciousness. It can be aroused to remembrance anew in the form of understanding. What the monad has experienced as a man is found in the memory of the causal envelope. What the monad has experienced in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms it can explore as an essential self. In order to study the monad’s past on other planets in the solar system 45-consciousness is required. In order to go still further back in time ever higher kinds of cosmic consciousness are required, starting from 42- consciousness. When the monad has become a 1-self in the highest cosmic world (1), it is able to study the coming into being of the its own cosmos. Everything the monad has experienced and learnt in its three triads is unlosable and available quite easily to the self as a 43-self even after it has dissolved its three triads.
1The public has picked up the word “meditation”. And at once religious prophets, mystifying the subject-matter, start fabulating about the art of teaching the art of meditation. The meaning of the word is the easiest conceivable one: the ability to think for yourself and to analyse a problem (a mathematical one, for instance) yourself. The majority cannot think. They can think only as they have been taught to think. Their thinking is a memory thinking and belongs at the lowest mental stage (47:7).
2Like other esoteric terms, concentration, meditation, etc., means different things at different stages of development, since other kinds of consciousness have other resources. Everyone uses his capacities according to his own ability. Meditation means something quite different for a mental self than for a causal self, an essential self, etc.
1The juxtaposition “spirit–matter” can be understood in several senses. In hylozoics, it means that spirit is the unlosable consciousness of the atoms. Some esotericians call world 43 with its three aspects “spirit” and world 49 “matter”, since the matter aspect has vanished to 43- consciousness and the consciousness aspect has vanished to 49-consciousness. The vague formulation (the absence of the three aspects) had the result that many people believed this meant that matter was a coarser form of spirit and spirit a finer form of matter, that spirit and matter were basically of the same nature, that it was an instance of some sort of “sublimation”, transformation, of matter. This confusion of known (matter) and unknown (spirit as a symbol) – which the logician regards as absolutely forbidden and common sense, as deplorable – is the cause of the confusion of ideas so frequent in pupils of Blavatsky.
2Some esotericians call matter in lower worlds matter and that in higher worlds, substance, which, however, is just another word for matter. Likewise, they call energy in higher worlds energy and energy in lower worlds, force.
1Strangely enough, there are still esoteric writers who use the terms “matter” and “space and time” only in reference to the physical world and express themselves as though everything superphysical were “beyond space and time”, which is impossible.
2Matter, space and time exist in all manifestation (all the cosmic atomic worlds), although they are of different and not quite comparable kinds and are perceived in quite a different manner in each particular world. Of this fact, that they are perceived differently, they have made an untenable construction, which must entail confusion of ideas. Fundamentals must not be reconstructed. The term “materialism” should be changed for “physicalism”, since otherwise you easily get the impression that only the physical world should be thought of as material. The misleading expression “beyond space and time” should be replaced with “beyond physical space and physical time”. It always turns out that terms that have not been given their exact definitions will sooner or later cause confusion of ideas.
3You can understand why those authors from the fifth natural kingdom use such expressions, because there is no conception of space and time in the emotional and mental worlds. It is in the very nature of the matter that you cannot use the methods of the physical world to measure the passing of time in worlds 48 and 47, but this does not mean that there is no duration in those worlds. The fact that in worlds 46–43 time is measured by centuries, millennia, eons, time periods, or cycles of any kind means that there is time or duration. If a 45-self would visit Sirius, he certainly would experience space as well as time on his journey. Even in higher kingdoms rules the law of relativity, and so no such concepts should be made absolute. Alice A. Bailey’s assertion that time is merely the apprehension of the human brain is subjective, illogical, and misleading.
1The abortive concepts also include “eternal present”, which is used by many. It belongs to the concept of time, which has never been given its rational definition.
2There is no time in the usual philosophical sense. However, there is duration. Time is only a manner of measuring motion (the processes of nature or of manifestation), and this is why “time” has been divided into countless segments from millionths of seconds to eons (billions of years) whenever there has been a need for determining the duration of a process. For practical reasons it is handy to keep the division into past, present, and future.
3“Eternal present” is another way of expressing the absence of time when measurement is not necessary.
4Esoterically, eternal present implies that both the past and the future live in the present. It is devoid of meaning, however, if you are incapable of ascertaining the past as though it were present and survey the future so far as it is determined by past causes.
5Time exists and is absolute, whatever is said about it. Time exists where manifestation exists and thus processes of manifestations are going on for time is the gauge of processes. Only primordial matter is without space and time. In man, the brain is the only organ capable of recording time. Neither emotional nor mental organs are able to do so. Planetary time is measured by the movements of the planets and the solar system and cannot be ascertained in those worlds of human rest. Perhaps the seemingly endless chatter about time may be considered finished by this.
1It is typical of the misleading terms of life ignorance to call the release from (and subsequent dissolution of) an envelope “death”. Regrettably, such terms have largely been preserved in occultism. The esoterician regards it as one of his tasks to liberate mankind from such a barbarous terminology.
2Many people seem to love the word death, although there is no death. The primordial atomthe monad - the individual - the self is immortal. And everything consists of primordial atoms. What happens is that matter dissolves (and subsequently re-forms). What people call death is the passing of the monad to higher envelopes in higher worlds. Where man is concerned, there are three “deaths”: the passing from the organism to the emotional envelope, to the mental envelope, and to the causal envelope.
3Out of predilection for the word death that term has been used about the elimination of the long series of world views and life views according as people have acquired a greater knowledge of reality and life. In that respect, even the word “annihilation” has come to be used; it is, however, unsuitable as well. Most views, belonging on different levels, still live on and also enter into that history of knowledge where everybody may pick whatever corresponds to his selfacquired experience and understanding of life.
4If you want a suitable and more international term for this process (death), then elimination probably is more apposite. You eliminate your lower envelopes when they have accomplished their service. You eliminate a view when you have found a better one.
1You are not an esoterician merely because you are a member of a society (theosophical, anthroposophical, Rosicrucian). The level of the societies is very low. Except the fact that they possess a few facts (rebirth, law of reaping, some higher worlds and envelopes) they are found on the average level as those in the religious sects, at the transition from the stage of civilization to the stage of culture (48:4–48:3).
2 People think they are esotericians whenever they have studied esoteric writers and have accepted their teachings as a matter of belief. To call himself an esoterician, however, the individual must be able, not only to lecture on the hylozoic system but also see that its esoteric facts are correct. For the esoterician there is only one authority – his own common sense. Anyone who talks about other authorities has not understood that matter.
3You do not become an esoterician merely by learning the hylozoic mental system but by mastering it, and very few people have done so – actually only highly intellectual people who have devoted their lives to it as their only true task. You master it so that you can yourself explain, in a simple, unitary, and rational manner, whatever in default of this knowledge has remained inexplicable and a mere matter of belief. You must in this way be able to prove its accordance with reality and become independent of “who said it”.
4Only anyone who has entered into esoterics and mastered the esoteric mental system can experience the incomparable clarity, survey, understanding of the phenomena of life afforded by that system. It activates his mental consciousness as no other system can do, due to the fact that his own mental vibrations harmonize with the vibrations of mental reality. The greater the accordance, the stronger the effect. Too many esoteric students are content to comprehend the system and think about it at particular occasions. That is not how it becomes a living power or the benefit it could become.
5The esoterician (if you by that mean anyone who has acquired the hylozoic correct conception of reality) need not at all be “intuitive”. Mental systems belong to the mental stage. Intuition is obtained only when the individual has acquired consciousness in the knowledge or unity centre of the causal envelope by which a contact with the second triad consciousness becomes possible. Even with the Sokratean realization (that man, despite everything, is an “idiot”), the individual finds it very easy to overrate his own capacity. Intense desire to reach higher easily becomes a source of many kinds of self-deception. You all too easily believe you are greater than you really are.
6There are many categories of people interested in esoterics. Those of the most elementary category have acquired understanding of the concepts of rebirth and the law of sowing and reaping. Next in succession are those who see that the visible world cannot be all that is but accept as a hypothesis the facts of esoterics about higher kinds of matter and material worlds. And among these “esotericians” you can discern a number of degrees, like different grades in school.
7Two kinds of esoteric students can be differentiated: those who have the knowledge latently (here, too, there are several degrees) and those who have acquired the knowledge by a thorough study of the pertaining facts. Those who have the knowledge latently find it immediately evident. They have previously acquired this knowledge just as far as they find what they learn evident, but not further. There goes the limit to their old learning and from there they must resume their study. It is not uncommon to meet “esotericians” who have been in the first grade but imagine they have taken the tenth degree.
8Those who in past centuries were members of esoteric knowledge orders have this knowledge latently (generally limited to a knowledge of the five worlds of man, man’s higher envelopes, reincarnation, and the law of reaping) and have thereby acquired an “esoteric instinct”. Even if in new incarnations they may accept other hypothesis systems, this remains temporary, until they again catch the old knowledge system, and in any case their “belief” is always subject to strong doubt.
9Only anyone who has the esoteric knowledge latently at once sees its validity. The others must, in order to independently assess its reality content, have so entered into the knowledge that they can draw conclusions from the system and these prove to agree with reality. Prior to that they have not mastered the system and until then their opinions about it are without significance.
10If you do not have the esoteric knowledge latently, if you have never before been acquainted with it, you will not understand it. But you can easily learn to comprehend it and then instinctively feel that “there is something to it”. If this instinct is sufficiently strong, you go on researching until you are able to explain for yourself realities that were previously inexplicable. This happens ever more often and finally your are convinced that it is correct.
1It is true that (apart from the effect of the law of destiny and the law of reaping) the instinct of life makes itself felt even at seven years of age, but to what extent this happens depends on the environment and its emotional and mental atmosphere. (It is high time that the expression “spiritual atmosphere” were eliminated. “Spirituality” belongs in the sixth natural kingdom and not in the fourth.)
2If the esoterician in a new incarnation has no opportunity to re-establish his contact with his subconscious esoteric knowledge, so that he can remember it anew, the knowledge remains latent. And this will be a very trying incarnation characterized by constant uncertainty and insecurity with a sense of estrangement. Of course he will be judged by the environment, always without understanding, as poorly gifted and on the whole unfit for life. If he is born into an environment belonging to the stage of the mystic, his situation will not be much better, since his subconscious instinct tells him that the idiologies of this stage do not agree with reality. It is true that he finds the emotional atmosphere to be the right one and to be preferred to the family atmosphere of the stage of civilization, but often he is put off by the lack of common sense. The excesses of emotional imagination in those who are not capable of mental control are often trying.
3Often the latent esoterician feels more lost and disoriented in life than other people. Those other people are disoriented, it is true, but they do not feel that way, because they find support in the idiology they embrace. That recourse is not available to the esoterician and because of that there is a risk that he makes big mistakes. With amazement he observes the behaviour of other people and wonders what is wrong with himself, since he thinks that others “behave so absurdly”. Others consider him an eccentric, and he resigns, putting up with the belief that he is even more absurd than the others.
4If, later in life, he has an opportunity to remember anew the old knowledge he has lost and instinctively have been missing, to be an esoterician again and begins examining the reality content of the conceptions he held in years past, then there is a risk that his view of his environment becomes too negative. Reaching the insight that you have largely made nothing but mistakes, however you have thought, felt, and acted and whatever you have said, that you have always been misunderstood, wrongly judged, and underrated, then this may re-act on his balance. He is greatly helped to regain his balance by his knowledge of the levels of development, the fact that all development of consciousness implies a never-ending, continuous series of ever higher levels for all individuals from the mineral kingdom to the highest divine kingdom. His experience helps him to see how easily you misjudge other people’s levels of development, since you can never determine what exists in other people’s subconscious. It is true that this usually appears in the understanding of life other people show, but the ruling idiologies also can have the effect that the true understanding of life will never assert itself.
5A 45-self points out that a perfectly balanced human being cannot exist but would be an anomalous phenomenon. The lack of balance is due to the fact that centres are over-or underdeveloped and that the capacity of the human brain does not yet match that of the etheric envelope. Man has for more than twelve thousand years idiotized his mental faculty, been content with parrotry, and neglected mental self-activity, not dared to think for himself out of fear of theologians and the masses under their rule, not dared to think by himself on account of the theologians’ mental taboos and dominating fictions of a vindictive god that condemns everybody to an everlasting hell. Only theologians knew the will of god, knew what god sanctioned and condemned. And such mad ideas dominate the majority of mankind this very day.
6Those esotericians who decide to incarnate in our time make a great sacrifice merely by doing so. For what awaits them? From the beginning they become idiotized by parents, brothers and sisters, friends. In school they are crammed with the ruling illusions and fictions. The esoteric literature, which could rouse their latent knowledge into life, is largely unknown and so practically unavailable. It appears to be pure “chance”, if they would in any way have an opportunity to familiarize themselves with it. They walk through life as eccentrics, finding everything meaningless, not to say senseless. If they, at long last, acquire the knowledge, they are abandoned by their associates who consider them “nutty”. How would they be able to help when no one desires such help?
7The esoterician must feel compassion for young people who in their idealism and enthusiasm want to make a contribution and help people. They plunge headlong into “science” to discover, when they have completed their education, that they have been chasing a chimaera. Science with a capital S proved to be an immense mass of learning which is of little avail to them when they want to help others. Many have a shock which they never get over. Many resign with the phrase, “As science now stands…”. They have learnt a profession. They must put a good face on it and keep up the appearances of expert knowledge. Most of them do not even discover how little they understand of reality, never realize the enormous limitation of science. Extremely few reach the “Sokratean realization”. They are content to be narrow specialists.
8The more the esoteric world view (hylozoics) becomes a generally accepted working hypothesis and the esoteric life view (the knowledge of the laws of life) is seen to be the most rational one, the easier will it be for the esoterician in future incarnations with ever increasing prospects of having the right attitude to life even in childhood and be spared that mental uncertainty and insecurity with those crises of consciousness that normally mark his seeking after the lost knowledge.
1Anyone who in developmental respect is ahead of his times cannot expect to be accepted by his contemporaries. Even if he is silent about things which other people cannot understand, they must become aware of the fact that this person is “odd in a strange way”, since there are so much in other people that he cannot “appreciate”, if he does not “give up himself” and compromises about his conviction to please other people.
2The would-be esoterician is informed that he must be prepared for loneliness, since he cannot be understood by others. That is no voluntary loneliness due to some exclusiveness. The esoterician is never exclusive but always inclusive in his attitude to human beings. He counts nothing human alien to him, which not at all means that “everything is equally good”, that there are no differences in level. The fact that you love people does not mean that you share their views, share their ways of life, share their tastes.
3An esoterician is a first self with the second self’s view of existence. And that is always a difficult situation, since to the esoterician’s common sense physical life today appears as one big asylum or as a hell. Perhaps a matter of taste whichever expression you prefer.
4The esoterician is born with envelopes of incarnation of the kinds he left behind in his previous life. After his latent knowledge has been roused to a new life through his contact with esoterics, he is able to ennoble his envelopes in seven years through diet, emotional striving after unity, controlling his thoughts. As a rule this brings about conflicts with his environment. If the people around him have not reached the same level, loneliness is the necessary consequence. According as he runs through the developmental stages of the various ages, he changes into another human being, having other interests, new associates, new “ideals”. He does not grieve for the loss of friends he must leave, for he knows that he will find them again some time. He must leave everything that in any way conflicts with his further development, obstructs his assimilation of a continually changing view of life with new valuations.
5The esoterician is independent of the opinions of the day, of all the thousands of unessential diversions offered by the present day amusement industry, feels no need of squandering the energies of his attention on the propaganda of life ignorance that falsifies reality in almost all respects of life. He leads a quiet life in his own world, undisturbed by the noise and din of the world. How a rest that is for all his envelopes and his tired nerves. The lives of exoterists are immensely complicated. That of the esoterician is immensely simple.
6There are reasons for warning esotericians lest they yield to unnecessary irritation. Certainly they cannot become full of self-importance. They have too much common sense for that, are too much aware of their enormous life ignorance and how much remains for them to “conquer” (46 ever higher atomic worlds) before they have reached the goal. But the deep gulf separating the esoterician from the exoterists makes itself felt every now and then. The difficulty of saying some words of sense to help others catch a glimpse of reality, the difficulty of adapting to the many twisted and perverted things, the difficulty of “setting the time right”, the difficulty of avoiding being misunderstood in most things you say and do, everything conspires to paralysing the joy of doing and the spirit of self-sacrifice.
7Even individuals at the stage of humanity, who incarnate in order to develop further, as children become disoriented through being fed with the ruling idiologies and can begin to liberate themselves from them only after the age of 35. Until then they have felt instinctively insecure and uncertain, since their instinct has told them that it cannot be as the learned say. Often others as well as themselves look upon them as “failures”, until they possibly recover the knowledge of reality. It should be to their interest to avoid this immense waste of incarnations as far as possible by working for the spread of the knowledge, so that in their next lives they have a prospect of receiving the right conception of life even as children and be able to quickly reach their old levels.
1The monad is dependent on its envelopes, is a slave to them, until it can control their content.
2The mental envelope has its ideas, impressed during childhood and adolescence, imbibed through studies of the ruling idiologies (historically conditioned).
3The emotional envelope has its tendencies, often warped through a perverse upbringing and life-ignorant company.
4The individual must set about working with all this, completely breaking with it when studying esoterics, which affords him totally new concepts in all respects. It should be quite clear that this work of radical transformation cannot be accomplished at lower stages. The individual must at least have realized that all exoteric idiologies are untenable. And how many people have done that?
5The many different kinds of atoms in the molecules and of molecules in the envelopes all have their own kinds of consciousness (passive and more or less easily activated from without, from the subconscious of the triad and the undeveloped monad – the self). It is these kinds of consciousness that the self – the individual must learn to control. As an esoterician he understands the function of these different kinds of consciousness at the different stages of development but also their obstructive burden to the individual who has reached the stage of humanity and strives to reach the stage of ideality. As a causal self he can in a sovereign manner control them in his evolutionary work, in his happiness of service. As an essential self he is definitively free from the dependence on lower worlds (47–49), and the envelopes he forms himself in these worlds are completely automatized robots obeying his slightest hint. All of this is his own work done through the abilities and qualities he has acquired in the physical, causal, and essential worlds. He regards the emotional and mental abilities rather as by-products.
6D.K. calls emotional consciousness the “soul of form”. That is an expressive definition clarifying the power of emotionality over physical man. Anyone who has mastered emotionality and liberated himself definitively from all kinds of illusions has accomplished his worst work. By means of esoterics it is then relatively easy to liberate oneself from the power of mental fictions. Perspective consciousness raises the individual up into a mental sphere where principles no longer are obstacles but allow themselves to be fit into a greater context with constantly widening horizons, until the intuition fits the systems into reality. Anyone who has experienced an intuition is then able to concretize it in a series of mental systems that agree with reality.
7Esoterics is the fundamental knowledge of existence as it is conceived by a causal self. The esoterician tries by means of this knowledge to understand grounds and causes of circumstances and events, both individually and generally. He thus tries to enter into the life of a causal self, tries to see how a causal self looks upon that which is and happens, and to act accordingly. So doing he eventually comes into contact with his Augoeides. This continuous attempt at living “as if you were” a causal self is a psychological method of great value. But of course it requires common sense, simplicity, naturalness and, above all, freedom from being overstrung or self-important. You quite simply are such as man should be and such as he some time will be, without any trace of saintly manners or a Messiah complex, those too common pathological phenomena.
8“Just as the ancient Greeks he [Goethe] thought that man could by his own power rise to some kind of divine level of life.” That is a proposition which needs to be commented upon, since all esoteric concepts have been misinterpreted. “The ancient Greeks” were initiates and knew what they were speaking about. What they said has been misapprehended, as usual. “By his own power” means the assimilation of higher kinds of energies (still unknown to mankind). “Rise to some kind of divine level of life” means the acquisition of the consciousness of intuition, causal and essential consciousness. Anyone can do so who has been taught the right method. According to an esoteric saying, it is not god that attracts man, but man that attracts god. But how could esoterically ignorant people grasp such things? And finally: “man” is not any man whatsoever. The different stages of development imply distances of tens of thousands of incarnations of work for self-realization. The democratic concept of man has no counterpart in real life. It is a caricature, since such a man has never existed and will never exist. Democracy has not the knowledge of reality and life and is a grotesque political fiction.
1Sometimes you hear occultists expressing the wish that they could study their past incarnations. They should be grateful for being spared experiencing them again. They are generally of such a kind that, when the individual has acquired causal consciousness, he is grateful for not having to look back on his idiocy and bestiality. The esoterician takes no interest in his past incarnations. They teach him nothing that he does not know before in the matter of law of reaping and law of destiny. Such a study is a kind of curiosity about his own and other people’s lives, a curiosity that he has learnt to regard as a violation of the sanctity of private life. As to both present and past lives he has been taught to never look back. He lives in the present and in unity. Only so doing can he solve the problems of the present, for each moment has its own problems, which he must learn to discover and solve. In any case there are so many unsolved problems on hand that could be brought out and scrutinized that he will never be without occupation. There are so many thoughts to be constantly emitted into the mental world; so many thought-forms that need to be reinforced so as to become easily available to seekers, beacons with light energies for sailors in the dark night who are seeking a haven.
2The esoterician takes no interest in the so-called magical phenomena. He has a theoretical knowledge of their reality and this is sufficient. He is not interested in childish matters. His interests are wholly in learning the facts of the three aspects of reality, the evolution of the monads through the natural kingdoms, and the Law the infallible application of which is the condition of everything.
3Perhaps it need not be said that the esoterician has already assimilated what he has been able to learn in the “instructions for a perfect life” or similar writings by exoterists and mystics. The esoterician thus is dealing with other concepts than those occurring in philosophical ethics or the conceptual world of mystics or yogis. He starts from another world view, the one that agrees with reality.
4A mentalist, a mental self, without a knowledge of reality may be better adapted to physical reality, more successful in domains of societal activity. That mental self, however, who in addition is an esoterician, is incomparably superior in understanding of life and assessment of people. He does not easily fall a victim to the illusoriness and fictitiousness of human life. He is grounded on the rock-bottom of reality. That spells a solidity of quite a different kind. He is liberated for ever from the dependence on theological, philosophical, scientific speculation and eternal guesswork, not least from the “heritage of history”. This may in some respects cause people to underestimate him in social intercourse. But he does not feel the need of taking part in total disorienting physicalism, that is to say: fictionalism in everything except the mere physicalvisible, one per cent of reality.
1To begin with, the esoterician is unaware of people’s almost total injudiciousness. Being full of enthusiasm about his recently gained insight, he is eager to preach the knowledge to people. Not having sufficient experience he too often believes he has made a “find”, hit upon a “real person”, found someone who “understands”, because he has chanced upon intelligent people who have picked up some esoteric ideas and appear very understanding. All too often he is cruelly disappointed. Too late he realizes that he has sinned against the commandment of not casting pearls. Only when he discovers that people begin looking upon him as a psychopathological phenomenon does he realize the necessity of keeping silent about what he knows, regrettably often too late for his physical wellbeing.
2It is natural that the esoterician is very eager to communicate his learning to other people. He may then present the ideas of reincarnation and the law of sowing and reaping. If he meets with no understanding of these simplest and most rational explanations of the meaning of life, he is wise to be silent, not just about esoterics but about everything connected with true understanding of life. Then it remains little more than to report the opinions of others. He has to keep his own to himself. The more or less abortive opinions of others are not his responsibility. So he might criticize them, exhibiting his erudition, if that is his profession or if he wants people to think for themselves.
3The esoterician is prepared for loneliness in so far as he cannot speak to the “uninitiated” about his conception of reality and life. If he does so, he will be looked upon as an injudicious fantast with absurd ideas and will become isolated also in his outer life. Regrettably, there are many who have had their career ruined, since they have not learnt to keep silent. Painful experiences teach them to be cautious with a view of life that is so far from the ruling religious, philosophical, and scientific views. Tolerance is still a rare quality. Such an exhortation to caution has been construed as expressing a tendency to egoistic and proud isolation, which is one more proof how everything can be misconstrued.
4The esoterician thinks like an esoterician and speaks like an exoterist.
5The teacher of esoterics is wise not to satisfy curiosity about his personal circumstances or his level of development. Most people misunderstand most things. The less facts they have, the more erroneous therefore are their opinions and the less they harm the teacher and themselves. Thoughts and feelings not in agreement with reality do not affect the teacher, and the sillier the opinion is, the more easily will those hearing it rebut it.
6A work must bear witness of itself, stand or fall on its own content of reality. The interest of curiosity in the personal lives of esoteric writers must be eliminated for the future. This should be obvious to those who see the mankind’s (85 per cent) general level of development (the lower emotional) and understand the effect of vibrations in the emotional and mental worlds. The writer has an absolute right to remain anonymous. He shall not be the target of injudiciousness, gossip, and repulsive energies. He has sufficiently much to bear as it is and should be spared additional strain. Anyone who does not understand even that little has much to learn before he has any prospects of understanding esoterics.
7The difficulty of acting as a teacher and imparting knowledge that most people cannot apprehend rightly has the effect that those who have acquired the “art of being silent” as a matter of principle only answer questions. If these are rational, proofs of a desire to know, and evidence something else than curiosity, the longed-for opportunity is at hand. You “cast pearls” when you try forcing your esoteric opinions on people. That is not permitted and therefore brings about unpleasant consequences.
8Even in so-called esoteric circles there are risks involved in presenting “new facts”. The reaction is the same as among the “uninitiated”, and the venture causes (note this!) generally greater harm. It is difficult to be wise.
1The esoterician makes no propaganda for his view. That would be pointless, since more than 99 per cent of people are quite unable even to examine whether hylozoics agrees with reality. And he does everything to prevent hylozoics from becoming a matter of belief, for in that case it would very soon be idiotized so that it would be unusable as a world view, as a scientific working hypothesis. Possibly, hylozoics is for those who for logical reasons have rejected all the ruling idiologies in theology, philosophy, and science.
2The esoterician does not criticize the opinions of other people. Everybody has a right to his own opinion and to be left alone with it, unassailed by the criticism of other people.
3Esoterics is nothing you discuss. The pertaining problems are not solved by means of any verbal arguments.
4It follows from this that esoterics remains esoteric. Nowadays it is available in literature, and anyone who seeks will find it, if he has resolved to seek until he finds. There are in all “born” esotericians an “instinct of the soul”, which forces them to seek. And other people than born esotericians (who have the knowledge latently) have no prospects of understanding it. Then they do not need it.
5That day will come in a not too distant future when hylozoics has been accepted as the only tenable working hypothesis of science. Then it will be a matter of belief for the masses. But until then it should not be allowed to become a “religion”.
1The esoterician makes no propaganda for the esoteric knowledge but tries to help everyone on his level with the conditions of understanding that may be there. Everyone judges from his level. And the ignorance of life in particular is boastful. Wisdom, the true knowledge, is never preached on the marketplace of opinions (in our times literature and other mass media). That would be pointless. For the knowledge is for the “initiates” (those who have the knowledge latently, and they are scarcely 15 per cent).
2You never need to propagate for and to advertise the true knowledge. You need not repeat it incessantly, preaching it every Sunday and preferably also in between. It is sufficient that the individual has once clearly conceived the idea. Then it is ineradicable and a power in existence that need not be thrashed over and over again or be emotionalized.
3It is not the task of the esoterician to convey esoteric knowledge to the “masses” at the stage of mental discursivity (47:7). The esoterician turns to the intellectual people (47:6), who in their turn “popularize” the knowledge of the laws of life into emotional ideals.
4There is a difference between informing ignorant people and fobbing off one’s opinions on others, as the fanatic does. The esoterician does not wish to convince anyone. He is silent about his knowledge in the circle of those who do not understand. Only seekers wish to know and are able to receive.
5You do not benefit consciousness development by forcing the knowledge on people. It must be acquired through insight. The mentally blind has no use for the light of knowledge.
6You can never convince people that their illusions and fictions are untenable, if these are contained in a self-acquired idiology. Anyone acquires himself the view of life he needs on his level. In time, in a new incarnation he must quite simply relearn, and then he will see his old limitation.. If the mental system he possesses meets his needs and affords him satisfactory explanations of what was previously inexplicable to him, then that system is right for him. Often you harm people by demonstrating untenability to them, for then they inculcate the fictions on their subconscious even more. Often you also arouse repulsion with hatred against the dissenter – yourself – a hatred that harms themselves.
7Mankind has become so disoriented by all idiologies that criticism of the ruling illusions and fictions largely is a waste of time. Most people are unable to understand, even to see the elements of contemporary culture that falsify reality and are hostile to life.
8The esoterician will have to content himself with orienting the seekers who are still seeking and thus have seen the life perversions of the ruling religion, science, and philosophy. If people do not want to listen to the “truth”, but go on in madness, then there is nothing to be done.
9The esoterician makes no propaganda to recruit believers and proselytes. Esoterics is nothing for them. Esoterics is only for seekers who have not been able to accept the ruling idiologies, for those who have seen through the untenability of the exoterists’ conceptions of the world and of life and who know that reality is something “totally different”. Only the man who has seen the fictitiousness of the various forms of religion, of philosophical speculation, and the scientific hypotheses and theories is ripe for esoterics. It is to those seekers that the esoterician presents his view so that they have the opportunity to examine the reality content of esoterics. Anyone who takes such a trouble will find that esoterics is the simplest, most rational explanation of all those things that were previously inexplicable.
10Esoterics is only for those who have the esoteric knowledge latently in their subconscious and who at their first contact with it in this life at once see that it agrees with reality. It is not sufficient to realize that rebirth and “karma” are correct explanations. Almost all who were once incarnated in India realize this, so that is exoteric knowledge. Esoterics equals hylozoics, and that is quite a different thing.
11Rather, what characterizes the seeker is the need of perspective on everything in existence, the need for increased clarity, the answer to the question of the meaning of life and, above all, the absence of dogmatic restriction. Anyone who has locked himself up in some idiology is finished for that incarnation and should be left alone with his petty belief unassailed by disturbing throwins.
12It is the seeker you are able to help, not he idiologist who is confirmed in his dogmas. Anyone who has finished seeking and inquiring, finished working to constantly expand his consciousness, who refuses to consider uncomfortable facts, is unable to reexamine, time and again, the tenability of his own system has also concluded his own mental development.
13Esoterics is for young people who are “on the hunt for a world view”. It is not for those who have already acquired such a one and who are content with it. Generally, only those who have once been initiates of some knowledge order realize that it agrees with reality. Certainly, a trained intellect is able to comprehend hylozoics and realize its superiority as a working hypothesis. However, this presupposes such a strenuous work that a powerful inner urge or a powerful outer stimulation is required for anyone to set about doing this. When, some time in the future, the authorities of public opinion accept hylozoics, then we shall have quite a different starting position. Then it will be part of general education to study hylozoics. And then it will be a matter of belief to accept it without the demand of understanding. Then hylozoics will gradually become emotionalized, so that feeling and imagination are satisfied and hylozoics will not appear to be a cold, mental system as it does now.
14Esoterics is by no means a necessary world view and life view. You can be a true humanist without these. The essential thing is “community”, right human relations, true good will. Esoterics is no human product, can never be more than a working hypothesis. It is only for those who realize that it is superior to all other working hypotheses. If you cannot realize this, then you are wise in keeping to something you can understand better. The planetary hierarchy considers that the overcoming of hatred is incomparably more important than an exact world view. It is repulsive emotionality that divides people and is the origin of all inhumanity. The knowledge is for those who have overcome hatred in all its expressions.
1The esoterician does not isolate himself but lives and works among people, familiarizes himself with the ruling idiologies in politics, science, philosophy, religion, literature, and art. He tries to be as allround as possible, conversant with the mental ideas that people accept. The more oriented he is, the more he is able to help.
2It is characteristic of those who have mastered esoterics that speculation, wishful thinking, and “hopeful aspiration” are absent in them. Those things have been supplanted by the knowledge of reality and trust in the Law.
3Esotericians make a mistake if they judge the phenomena of their times from an esoteric viewpoint. Then they do not assess or judge, but condemn, criticize without understanding the inevitable limitation of their times. Add to this the fact that clans at very different stages of development incarnate at different times. Esotericians have received their knowledge in order to look forward, not back; looking back hampers them, since all energies have to be put in to conquer the higher kinds of consciousness.
4Ambition breeds pride. The esoterician is humble, but not before the ignorant of life who demand humility in their sense of incompetence or envy. He is humble because he knows the seemingly endless distance that separates him from the final goal of life (the highest cosmic world), how little he knows about everything in the cosmos or in the solar system or in the planet or in one single world of the planet. Eons of research and strenuous work extend before him. (One eon = 4320 million years. It is important to fix the time length, lest we shall have the same situation as in India, where a manvantara meant an eon but eventually has come to be a synonym for any shorter period whatever. There is already talk about the eon as though it were a zodiacal period of 2500 years or a period of incarnation of indefinite length.)
5The esoterician knows that everything he really knows has been given to him for nothing. It is nothing to boast about. And he also knows that even if he knows a thousand times more than others, it is just as a drop in the ocean in comparison with what a causal self knows, not to say still higher selves. There is nothing more ridiculous than a man who thinks himself important in any respect whatsoever. It bears witness to a very profound ignorance. The talk about equality presupposes that individuals have the same level of development and the same distance covered, the same understanding and capabilities in all respects. The correct view of “democracy” is the fact that we are all in the same natural kingdom, all (consciously or unconsciously) under way to the next higher kingdom and that it only is a matter of time when we shall reach it. The differences between the various human developmental levels are just a matter of the time of the monads’ transition from the animal to the human kingdom. It is all a question of age. And generally the last one to arrive has acquired the greatest capacity as a man, since he has had the opportunity to profit by an incomparably greater knowledge and so doing has acquired the corresponding experience, something that always makes itself felt in monadic individual character also in higher kingdoms.
6An esoterician must in his heart always be among the opposition, since those who are in power always abuse it. That does not hinder him from being in power. But in that case he is there in order to try to prevent the tendency to abuse power in legislation and execution. Such an old initiate was, unbeknownst to himself, Dag Hammarskjold.
7The book containing a “selection” of the speeches made by Dag Hammarskjold in the years 1953-61 (published in Swedish by Norstedt & Soner) deserves very well to be studied by all who are seeking the eternally valid norms of a humanist lifestyle. It can be considered as a truly edifying book. Hammarskjold’s speeches evidence common sense, all-round orientation in general human values, statesman’s wisdom, and that religion without a creed which has been common to all wise men of all ages.
8We might desire that a 45-self of the second department would let himself be born in the West and plough through the cultural heritage of the West as thoroughly as 45-self D.K. has sifted the Oriental heritage and the esoteric archives, whose Western treasures seem to have been left disregarded.
9The greatest service to be done by those who have acquired knowledge and thus are able to think in accordance with reality is to think and emit their correct ideas into the mental world. For they may not speak lest they will be considered as fantasts. They are not needed in the physical world. They can do the same service by thinking.
1Those are the esotericians who consciously or unconsciously develop the causal intuition and ever more easily have access to the ideas of this world (the world of Platonic ideas). They are precursors to a new order of things, a radical rethinking in all respects. They are to be found in all nations, in all kinds of societies. They are among “them that are quiet in the land” and work through their personality. They belong to no party or religion and yet they belong to all parties and all religions. They refrain as a matter of principle from criticizing those holding other opinions, take no stand for or against, do not join in the disputes of the day. They are neither for nor against the existing forms of government. They attack nobody, organize no campaigns, spend no money on literature that takes sides. They do nothing, say nothing that arouses hatred, divides people. They realize that all are on their way to the next higher kingdom, fellow wanderers on the path, whether they know it or not.
2That does not mean, however, that their striving is without a goal. And this goal is their work for spreading the knowledge of reality and life and its laws, and their efforts at unifying mankind, rousing the will to unity, common good will, and furthering right human relations, also counteracting hatred in all its forms, stimulating mankind to do what it must to enable the planetary hierarchy to appear again. That was the meaning intended by the expression, misinterpreted by Christians, “establishing the kingdom of god on earth”. It is the free choice of mankind and no enforced theocracy. Mankind did not want its great leaders. It is up to mankind to call them back. To do so requires the understanding that mankind cannot on its own solve its problems of life. It should soon have learnt this lesson from history, which is the record of sheer madness and error.
3The esotericians work to heal what is broken. They cultivate the sense of unity. They teach others to see that we are all dependent on one another. They do not want any racial barriers, national barriers, class barriers, religious barriers. They work for universal understanding, for right human relations. They are people of “good will”. They are inspired by disciples of the planetary hierarchy and are, often unbeknownst to themselves, aspirants to discipleship. They are distinguished by common sense, by freedom from fanaticism and all manner of onesided views. They are no impractical mystics. They know what they want to do, rouse public opinion and bring all people of good will together. They stand together in complete understanding and in concerted work for the welfare of mankind.
4There is a religion, the religion of love and wisdom, common to all wise men in all ages. There is a brotherhood of those who have seen that all are brothers. They may be unknown to one another. But they exist and they recognize each other when they meet as members of the same brotherhood, and support each other’s work for mankind. It is only a matter of time when their desire to find each other finds the requisite expression. They create no society, no organization, for such things degenerate, strengthen egoism, excludes other people from community. They are nevertheless more firmly united than in any organization. They sensed their loneliness and isolation until they discovered the existence of the spiritual community in the “unknown million”. They want to know each other’s existence in order to unite in mental community. The thoughtform they shape would contribute to reinforcing the idea of brotherhood throughout the world.
1A genius is an individual who has in many incarnations cultivated a certain speciality, a certain ability. Then he is born with an organism that allows the genius to express this speciality, it is true, but in other respects does not enable him to hold the balance against the energies of over-vitalized chakras.
2In their total ignorance of everything esoteric and of bases and causes of gifts, talents, genius, the pertaining authorities have believed themselves able to find the explanation in physical heredity. Rather, the truth is that when a talent or a genius desires to incarnate, he selects an environment that will be able to facilitate his remembrance and reacquisition of old abilities. There is a real ground for the jocular expression, “you should know how to choose your parents”.
3Regrettably, geniuses seldom have children possessing the same genius. This can have many causes. Old antagonisms, bad reaping for both parties, competition about the place, in which someone has the right of priority, also old friendship between individuals. The individual must develop his brain on his own. Children of a genius have no use for ingenious brains if they are unable to utilize the opportunities. Either they lack the requisite latent ability or they have no opportunity to develop it. Genius is not hereditary, only the brain potential, which must be utilized by a child having a latent genius.
4All great thinkers have many incarnations behind them as thinkers. The same is true in art. It is also true of so-called saints. The latter have during many lives strived to reach ever higher within the sphere of emotional consciousness. They are artists in life of a particular kind. It is an esoteric truth that apparently cannot be too often repeated that three incarnations of specialization are required to become a talent in some certain domain and seven incarnations to become sovereign (a so-called genius). And the truly great geniuses have cultivated their capacities in even more lives. In one examination it was seen that a brilliant orator had twelve such lives behind him.
5The so-called geniuses in philosophy, literature, oration, art, music by no means need to have reached the perspective consciousness of the stage of humanity (47:5).
6When you see how easily people lose their balance and become nutty out of sheer selfimportance at even the most trifling homage of the public, you almost congratulate the geniuses for having been unappreciated. Perhaps that, too, was the intention of destiny, and not mere bad reaping. The greatest genius is an idiot whenever he thinks himself important. True geniuses are true channels of higher forces. Any “self” turns into a hindrance.
1The voice of one crying in the wilderness dies away unheard. A lone esoterician is seen as a psychopathological phenomenon. But more and more people will reach the insight that Pythagorean hylozoics is the only rational philosophical and scientific working hypothesis. This reduces the risk for the esoterician to end up in a psychiatric hospital. This enhances his prospect of teaching the doctrine of common sense without being regarded as an unreliable fantast. And this increases his duty to life and truth of not being silent about what he knows of the esoteric world view and life view. He is not alone. They cannot easily lock up one million esotericians who share the same view. If only they become sufficiently numerous, they may hold any opinion whatever without being regarded as mentally deranged. This is seen in the matter of the religious sects. The pertaining follies are regarded as perfectly normal phenomena.
2Spiritual leaders must be able to stand alone, and they are always able to do so if they have the capacity for love. They must not let themselves be hindered by those who cannot keep up with the pace. Leaders must have a goal, a sense of proportion, be able to think clearly, possess humility and the ability of adaptation, feel sympathy for everybody within the sphere of their activity, avoid pedantry.
3Leaders must be count on being blamed for the failures of co-workers, on being attacked by all who expect too much, by those who are unable to see and understand, by all criticasters of all kinds who agitate public opinion.
4True love (essentiality) is impersonal, objective, and imperturbable. Egoism and sentimentality of any kind are alien to it.
1As soon as people learn that there exists a fifth natural kingdom, they are eager to get there as soon as possible, not understanding all that is required to attain that goal. Discipleship is for the elite at the stage of humanity who often, without esoteric knowledge and without religion, have spontaneously devoted their lives to the service of evolution and mankind. Of course this is not said to deter anyone from trying, only that the aspirant should not feel disappointed. At all event no effort done is ever wasted. Everything done is done ready for the future.
2However, we have not been given the knowledge of reality in order to quickly become supermen. The knowledge has been allowed for publication because there is nowadays a general realization that theology and philosophy cannot answer the question of the meaning and goal of existence. The general spread of agnosticism is evidence of the fact that theology and philosophy have had their day and cannot any longer offer people a basis on which to stand. Mankind has developed so far that it can comprehend esoterics and realize that it is the one tenable working hypothesis. It is important, too, that mankind is liberated from a theology that poisons emotional life and a philosophy that disorganizes reason. People who are seekers, who have never been content with such things but go on seeking, restlessly, have the right of life to have at least the most essential questions answered.
3If mankind, in its immeasurable madness, is not to annihilate itself, the possibility of living together without friction must be clarified to it. We must learn how to help and not to hinder each other. We must learn how to lead rational lives. We should have learnt from history that it is not possible any longer to lead our lives such as we have done. There must be a change and an end to the reign of lie and hatred. Esoterics is the only possible basis, the rational explanation of the meaning and goal of life. We have the prospects of learning to see this. That is precisely the reason why esoterics has been allowed for publication.
1The knowledge of reality is still esoteric except for certain basic facts that have been allowed for publication, since mankind has reached such an intellectual development that an understanding of those hylozoic facts is possible for everybody.
2What esoteric knowledge is found in the Indian Vedas and Upanishads is still esoteric. The Brahmins (the clerical caste), who are in possession of these writings, are unable to interpret the majority of them and their symbols. And this in spite of a well-preserved tradition extending over millennia.
3“Orientalists”, Western researchers into these Indian writings, have taken the pains to translate them and try to interpret them. They are apparently ignorant of their esoteric character. It will take a long time yet until they are correctly interpreted.
4No matter how many esoteric facts are publicized, there will always be true esoterics that cannot be taught to others than those who have definitively entered into unity.
5Beginners in esoterics can seldom grasp why they are not taught that simple (even though unobtainable without instruction) technique which would vitalize the chakras of the etheric envelope above the diaphragm and so would put such energies at their disposal as would make them causally conscious and causal power beings. They do not realize that this would infallibly imply catastrophe for them. Nobody can skip levels of development with their qualities and abilities that must make up a firmly built basis for the faculties of higher levels. And above all, any possibility of self-assertion must be precluded for ever, a clear insight into the laws of causal life and into all the risks connected with “powers” must be acquired, and all of this can be had after long experience only. Seemingly ineradicable human conceit, which thinks itself competent to judge things of which it knows nothing or too little, does not appear to be able to learn that individuals in higher kingdoms comprehend more, that their highest desire is to assist the individual with knowledge when it becomes possible for him to receive it without harm to himself.
1It has been asserted that the old knowledge orders have been disbanded. That is wrong. No such orders are disbanded, since the individuals who were once initiates are still members of them. The fact that nobody is nowadays initiated into them is due to the fact that the essential of it has already become exoteric and so accessible for the uninitiated. However, new orders will be instituted in which the knowledge will be taught according to entirely new methods. Each order had its own method, one adapted to the current ways of looking at things and prospects of apprehension. Modern natural research has made new modes of presentation possible and all such are utilized.
2Many people are indignant that there may exist secret knowledge at all. Instead, they should use a wee bit of their power of reflection. There is a knowledge of forces of nature, which in the possession of irresponsible people would counteract evolution and make it impossible to discover or, in any case, prevent any kind of crime, and you do not put such knowledge into the hands of individuals who are able to abuse power. You do not put weapons into the hands of murderers and bandits. The indignant may be calmed with the information that everybody receives as much of the knowledge of reality as he needs and is entitled to receive.
3There is one very important reason why the esoteric knowledge can be communicated in a piecemeal fashion only. Facts are not merely vibrations in the brain. They are also mental molecules charged with energy, and such energies can have a disorganizing effect on brains that have not been reorganized to endure the pertaining vibrations.
4“Ideas rule the world, for “energy follows thought”.
1The exact knowledge of reality is made up of a system of facts in their correct contexts. Apart from the systems that natural research formulates out of the facts of physical reality most human learning can be said to consist of erroneous constructions. Idiologies replace each other at an ever increasing speed. Never-ending analysis discovers ever more easily the errors in those syntheses which are called theories and hypotheses and which largely are the guesswork of ignorance and are based on insufficient facts. Add to this the fact that “visible” physical reality makes up only one per cent of all reality. If etheric physical, emotional, and mental reality (to the normal individual only partially subjectively perceptible) is included, then the result is about five per cent. Since these lower worlds are composed of the matters and energies of higher worlds, it is seen that our possibilities to explain events, the true nature of the three aspects of reality, and the meaning of the whole are beyond the reach of human reason. This was made clear by the Buddha about 600 BCE. What real avatars have said, however, has always been misunderstood, distorted, or unheeded by mankind. False prophets have always successfully idiotized mankind.
2Truths cannot be fitted into the systems of illusions and fictions. But all lies can. That is why people reject the teachings of the light-bringers without further ado and without taking the trouble to really examine them.
1Our time is characterized by the struggle between emotionalists and mentalists, illusionists and fictionalists. It is good that it is possible for man, if he uses his common sense, to see that both categories are almost equally ignorant of life.
2Everything is idiotized by life ignorance. The knowledge of reincarnation is turned into the belief in metempsychosis. The knowledge of the laws of life is turned into moral prohibitions, into the belief in sin and punishment. The knowledge of avatars and the sacrifice they make when incarnating in a barbarous mankind is turned into the belief in the vicarious suffering of atonement. The proclamation of brotherhood is idiotized into the fiction of the equality of everybody.
3Among the sayings of public opinion there are many words that people think they comprehend, which is a very big mistake. When, some time in the future, they have acquired the esoteric knowledge of reality, they will learn something different, they will relearn, they will learn to see that they have not understood what they have been so eloquent about or analysed logically in acute and profound philosophic treatises. They do not understand the correct meaning of such words as self-reliance, self-determination, freedom, independence, for example. Do they realize that “absolute freedom” means cosmic omniscience and omnipotence? That this freedom is possible only through absolutely faultless application of the knowledge of all laws of nature and life? Do they realize that anyone who talks big about “independence” is a victim of one of the biggest illusions of life, gives evidence of his total ignorance of the laws of consciousness development?
4If a man has once made himself a view (in whatever way he did this), then this is of course the only right one. Then there is no use presenting some divergent view to him. And so that incarnation is wasted. Small wonder then that they need so many unnecessary incarnations.
1Life is change, constant change, change in every moment. But people, when they have once settled down in life, want no change. Going on in the same old tracks, mechanizing their habits so that they are spared thinking is their desire. And they regard as enemies all who want to alter the traditional things, even the most absurd conditions. To be able to “remain in undisturbed possession” is their ideal, and they accuse life of lacking in love, if some change comes their way.
2A wee bit of reflection should tell them that without change there will be no development. They do not even know that development means consciousness development. They stare at physical material reality as if it were the meaning of life. They defend the superstitions with which they were inoculated in childhood as though they were final truths. They have at all times persecuted all those who have carried development forward. And such enemies of development call themselves rational beings.
3Esoterics has appeared with its revolutionizing teaching. It knows mankind. It knows what opposition the new will meet. It knows that all are the sworn enemies of change, even though of course they do not know why. The strongest opposition will come as always, of course, from religious circles. But their resistance is vain. True, they will receive all the assistance the black lodge can give them to fight the “new truths”. But the outcome is decided, for against the law of development even the devils fight in vain. And as the supreme chief of the planetary hierarchy’s department of culture (Mahachohan) said: “The doctrine we promulgate, being the only true one, must be ultimately triumphant.” Then may all the authorities of religion, philosophy, science gang up to stop evolution. They fight a hopeless battle. But they will probably say (as did Hitler): “If I will not have my way, then let heaven and earth perish.” Poor superman apes who believe they are gods. You know what happened to Hitler. Try to learn at least something of the history of our times.
1Mankind has not yet reached the insight that human thinking is being revolutionized, and that this revolution will change our entire view of existence and things human.
2The bases of world view and life view presented hitherto have demonstrated their untenability. Religion has gone bankrupt. Philosophy has revealed its inability to solve the problems of life. It is becoming increasingly difficult for science to uphold its pretensions to being a substitute for religion and philosophy.
3In essential respects our culture has been a culture of history. We have lived upon the ideas we have received from ancient cultures, where the West is concerned, mainly the Greek and Roman cultures. The pertaining studies have been called “humanist”, and with full reason during the close on two thousand years that life ignorance and general barbarism have held sway. This literature contains elements that enabled reason to liberate itself from the chains of dogmatic thought and intellectual tyranny. It explained the ideals that could make man sovereign, develop his reason into common sense and so bringing about truly human relations.
4These ideals still await their realization. But the setting in which the ideals have been put has in many respects become unsuited to the times. They need to be set free from the time-bound conceptions in which they have been inserted. It is no longer necessary to study this literature in order to assimilate those ideals or the humanism discernible in those societies, which were built on slavery. Studying dead languages, which only future philologists and historians have any use for, is an enormous waste with the valuable work-energy of young people during the school years that are essential to mental development.
5As it now is, young people are faced with the choice of studying classical literature or mathematical-scientific-technical subjects. It is to be hoped that the esoteric literature will soon have such an extent that its significance becomes increasingly obvious and it will so be possible to set up esoteric high schools and universities.
1When people have developed so far as to see that the illusions and fictions controlling mankind do not agree with reality; when they have reached the insight that esoterics is the true knowledge; when they see that there is something beyond physical reality, that the individual is immortal, that all life develops according to laws of life; when they begin to care about laws and to apply them, then we shall receive more knowledge of life as a free gift.
2Mankind must have reached a certain stage of development before it can comprehend and understand true reality. The planetary hierarchy has ever since 1875 been making a long prepared attempt at “opening the eyes of people”. There is a possibility of comprehending esoterics. The question is whether this attempt is doomed to failure and men will in their folly commit suicide. Forces have been put at their disposal which can result in the annihilation of the race. In the long run it is impossible to play with these forces. They must be put at the service of life or “death”. A new catastrophe of the Atlantean kind is menacing, this time through mankind itself. Mankind is at the crossroads.
3It is high time that mankind realized that it cannot solve its most essential problems by itself. It will be the task of the disciples to convey the knowledge from the planetary hierarchy to mankind and to work for the reappearance of the hierarchy. There will be no peace on earth until then.
4Actually, only conscious or unconscious aspirants to discipleship take an interest in esoterics. Others will accept it only when philosophers and truly great scientists declare it to be the only tenable working hypothesis. It will not be accepted in this century. A revolutionary scientific discovery will force an examination of hylozoics.
5No recognition of esoterics can be expected from science, which is totally unable to ascertain superphysical facts and which refuses to accept anything that it cannot ascertain itself in its laboratories.
6Perhaps hylozoics will not be generally accepted until sufficiently many causal selves incarnate who with their incomparable superiority in all respects and their complete consensus as for facts have convinced a sufficient number of eminent seekers that hylozoics is the only tenable working hypothesis.
7Theology will be the greatest obstacle to truth, until mankind has seen the absurdity of the theological dogmas and have their eyes opened to the one true religion: the religion of wisdom and love, which has always been distorted.
8According as the knowledge of superphysical reality becomes more common, the pertaining problems will be treated in a fully natural manner. As it now is, many writers approach these things with bated breath and wrap it all up in a veil of mysticism and oddity that makes a comical impression on an esoterician.
1Human thinking and research is a never-ending process with a constantly changing content of reality. To mankind esoterics is the knowledge of the fifth natural kingdom, the fundamental facts of the fifth natural kingdom. What is important for us to realize is that man is unable to acquire right superphysical knowledge, is unable to rightly understand the phenomena in both the emotional and mental worlds. That is a realization that spiritualists have not made. They believe in their guides in the astral world and that these possess the knowledge of reality.
2It can be firmly stated that no human intellect is able to construct the esoteric mental system, which is non-contradictory in itself (the only non-contradictory system in existence), which explains thousands of previously inexplicable things in the simplest, most logical, rational, purposive manner, which can never be refuted by future research but will only be gradually confirmed.
3Everything in the matter of theology, philosophy, and science is belief, for they are all ultimately based on articles of faith. Everything is belief which is not esoterics, true knowledge of reality. True, esoterics cannot be anything else for most people than the only tenable working hypothesis. But that exclusively depends on their inability to see the incontrovertible logic of the “five proofs” for the agreement of esoterics with reality.
4Since apparently you cannot express yourself too explicitly and too exactly (since people are mentally too dull, lazy, and inactive) but must particularly emphasize what logically is the most obvious conclusion, it must be clearly stated that knowledge is a gift from the planetary hierarchy, that this knowledge has been given the name of esoterics, hylozoics, and that human so-called knowledge (theology, philosophy, and science) are the speculations of ignorance, largely distortions of the ideas communicated through disciples of the planetary hierarchy. If mankind does not want to realize this, if it stubbornly refuses to receive the knowledge given it, then mankind has itself to blame and has to pursue its path to destruction.
1Esoterics affords life a meaning. Thanks to it, the question “why” can often be answered. Without esoterics there is no rational answer to that question.
2“Everything is lie in us and about us.” (Pythagoras) Lie rules the world of men. Esoterics, which is the truth, is the only remedy. “The doctrine we promulgate, being the only true one, must be ultimately triumphant.” (Mahachohan)
3Esoterics grants man a view of reality, a basis of judgement, basis of valuation, understanding of life, and knowledge of the Law, all of which is a condition of common sense. It liberates from the idiologies of ignorance, emotional illusions, mental fictions, from the dogmas of religion, the speculations of philosophy, the belief in the hypotheses of science and all the other kinds of superstitions. It is probably inevitable at the present stage of mankind’s development that you find most of these things idiotic.
4“Only esoterics can elucidate the nature of religion, the meaning of science, and the aim of education. Mankind knows nothing of this as yet.” D.K.
5People pray for “light and power”. They are ignorant of the fact that the molecules that contain both ideas and energies are pouring down from higher worlds through lower worlds. It is up to the individual to “catch them”. In doing so, however, difficulties arise. For the essential, causal, mental, emotional molecules caught by them often bring about chaos in unprepared brains, which have been idiotized by the current idiologies. Too many people become “nutty”, lose their balance. Even in such cases esoteric reality systems would restore the balance.
6Esoterics does not “separate” us from mankind. On the contrary it shows us how we should relate to people in the best way, affords us a greater possibility to understand them and so to help them better on their levels. Esoterics shows us the path to right human relations and a life together without friction. It shows us the poisoning effect of gossip. People at the stage of hatred seize every opportunity to have an outlet of their hatred and contempt. The least failing in the greatest genius or saint is the only thing they are able to “appreciate”, being blind to everything else.
7“To learn to observe the right relations to other people and to the environment is both art and science.” (D.K.)
8Esoterics is the only tenable basis of science. It will become ever more obvious that esoterics is the only thing that comes up to the name of “common sense”. Exoteric views are rational to the extent that they since old have contained esoterics. Exoteric disciplines are based on insufficient facts. They are in no position to decide whether sufficient facts are there for a reliable verdict. Man requires something firm for his feeling and thought. That is why he accepts things exoteric.
1The esoterician fully appreciates the great significance of religion, philosophy, and science both past and present. Science puts in tremendous work exploring the three lowest molecular kinds of physical matter, and is approaching with rapid strides the lowest state of aggregation of the physical etheric world. Religion increasingly endeavours to cultivate the higher emotionality and to combat hatred between individuals. Philosophy teaches people to activate consciousness in the two lowest mental molecular kinds. All of this is of importance to the development of consciousness. There is no reason to depreciate those great contributions to development, as many occultists do. What the esoterician must resolutely object to, however, is dogmatism and selfsufficiency of scientists, their unwillingness to examine the content of reality of spheres outside their specialities. The true seeker examines everything. At all events he is never content with the statements of other people on matters he has not had the opportunity to examine himself. Belief in authority is an emergency to be taken when no other possibilities are available to him and is resorted to only when circumstances compel him. However, he will not make the present-day hypotheses the basis of any world view. They are not good enough for that.
2The problem for physical man is to reach certainty that there is some higher kind of life than the physical one. Science cannot provide that certainty until it has discovered physical etheric reality and is able to film the process of dying, which will be possible within a hundred years. Religion has lost its power, after science with its philosophy has broken the power of mass suggestion over people’s minds. Mental doubt has proved to be ever stronger than the certainty of emotional belief. Only esoterics is able to provide an irrefutable, unassailable mental system that comes up to all demands to logic.
3When philosophers and psychologists finally begin to concern themselves with esoterics, it need not any longer be the expression of latent instinct seeking after the lost knowledge, but it may be the philosopher’s need of a tenable world view, which philosophers have vainly searched for in philosophy.
1True knowledge of reality is automatically accompanied by thinking in accordance with reality and synchronization of one’s own vibrations with the cosmic vibrations.
2The increasingly correct perception of reality by our consciousness has the effect that the human organism and the higher envelopes of the monad gradually, over the ages and to our superficial reason imperceptibly, adapt to and are transformed to be in agreement with ever higher kinds of vibrations.
3“The mysteries [the unexplored part of reality] are revealed, not primarily by the reception of information anent them and their processes, but by the action of certain processes, carried out within the etheric body of the disciple; these enable him to know that which is hidden; they put him in possession of a mechanism of revelation and make him aware of certain radiatory and magnetic powers or energies within himself which constitute channels of activity and modes whereby he may acquire that which it is the privilege of the initiate to own and to use.” (D.K) This mechanism is created during a long series of incarnations. These afford the self opportunities to experiment, have experiences and test them in practice.
4“We shall be aware of reality only when we have eliminated those molecules which have aroused illusions and fictions in us.”
5Seeing reality in everything (liberated from the appearance or “veil” of illusions and fictions), the relations of unity, the possibilities of evolution, makes the aspirant a disciple.
6To know something that is found in literature is to believe or, at best, to presume. To know what is reality is something quite different. Not even “experience” will do, for it may be misinterpreted, but only by conformity to the causal idea, for it renders unadulterated reality. Neither emotional (48) nor mental (47:4-7) experiences are any proofs whatsoever. The only proofs are causal experiences (47:1-3). All lower experiences need to be checked through the causal consciousness. Anyone who has not acquired causal consciousness lives in “appearances” and never knows whether “facts ascertained” are true facts.
7In the matter of everything esoteric exceptions from the “rule” are numerous in all respects, so that only ascertaining each thing in each particular case affords exact knowledge. The more development proceeds during the course of millions of years, the more pronounced is the individual character of everything. The concepts of time used in esoterics are different from the ordinary ones, to be sure. We understand those who say they cannot discern any development. They have no logical right, however, to contest the fact of development.
1There is a great confusion about these three concepts. Perhaps the following can contribute to increasing clarity.
2Facts are practically useless until they have been put into their correct contexts.
3In order to be correctly comprehended, facts must be put into their correct contexts.
4In order to understand you must possess a system of knowledge that explains the previously inexplicable. True understanding implies the insight that the explanation given is the only true one.
5In order to judge correctly you must start from a system of knowledge that agrees with reality.
6The four above propositions contain the logical basis of esoterics.
7There are many kinds of facts, as many as there are different kinds of consciousness.
8Reality is one, but the perception of reality changes with each kind of atomic consciousness. Anyone who studies esoterics must never forget that each higher atomic world has one more spatial dimension.
9Good and evil are social concepts.
10Right is everything that accords with the Law. Correct is everything that agrees with the three aspects of reality.
11It is not true, as the Greek sophist Protagoras asserted, that all people have an equally correct conception of reality. In this case, correct and right have been confused. It is a totally different matter that everybody has a right to his own conception, however erroneous this is.
1The ability to understand at once and to realize at once is an ability that Christian theologians have never understood and that is why it is called “grace”. There is no grace in the whole cosmos, only Law. That is the only groundwork on which to build our understanding of the realities of life. That groundwork affords ideas for interpretation that in any case approach the correct explanation in contradistinction to the fiction of “grace”, which falsifies everything.
2It is true that the whole cosmos has been brought into existence in order to enable the unconscious monads in primordial manifestation (chaos) to acquire consciousness, omniscience, and omnipotence. It is true that the entire cosmos has been built by an inconceivably vast collective of 1-selves, that all the processes of manifestation are directed from the seventh divine kingdom in worlds 1–7, that involution and evolution, and everything pertaining to them in the matter of never-ending work at the three aspects of reality, are the results of the activity of higher kingdoms. But it is an activity that in lower kingdoms has its reward in the form of help to a quicker consciousness development and knowledge given of superconscious worlds. It is a law of evolution that all must receive help and all must help with everything that all need, and this in all kingdoms. Anyone who does not see and realize this counteracts evolution and commits treason against life, assisting those who are consciously working to turn the cosmos into chaos. They are similar to parasites in the human body that are working to destroy the home they have taken as their abode. They have forfeited their right of domicile. If in addition they spread infection, they are enemies of life, enemies of all men.
3The individual is in debt of everything. He is in debt of the solar systemic and planetary governments who have provided him with a planet where to develop, have supervised his involution and evolution in the process of manifestation, given him his three triads, permitted him to pay his debts by instalments, debts that would otherwise make it well neigh impossible for him to continue his development. He is in debt of the different natural kingdoms (those of involution and evolution) that have lent him envelopes and their matter. He is in debt of all people who have in thousands of incarnations given birth to him, brought him up, etc. What if the individual made the effort of thinking through all the processes he has been made to go through and not just accepted life without thought, as a meaningless fact he in his unbelievable stupidity complains about? He has by and large made nothing but stupid things and disdains others for theirs. Stupid. He has received knowledge for nothing from all the geniuses of mankind and thinks he is remarkable. Stupid. What if he learnt to see his unbelievable stupidity? Until he does so, he stands no chance of becoming a disciple.
1Esoterics affords us knowledge of reality, life, and the fundamental laws of life. It liberates us from the illusions and fictions of ignorance. All of this are essential conditions of being able to see the path that lies before us, the path to be walked. It remains to walk it, however, and that presupposes the ability to walk. That ability remains to be acquired.
2The “fresh initiate” thinks that “this is all you need to know”. Soon he will find, however, that only now do the real difficulties begin, only now can he begin living purposively, only now does he have the prospects of solving his daily problems in a purposive manner, only now does he discover the significance of the energy aspect and that the art of living consists in discovering the energies and being able to use them lawfully.
3When the neophyte has “received the second degree”, he says that he knows nothing and can do nothing, so enormously do the problems pile up before him. By each step he takes they increase in numbers and appear ever more difficult to solve. And each new vision of the path before him gives him a dizzy sense of ignorance and impotence, his perspective is too overwhelming. Only his confidence in the Law restores assurance to him.
4Intellectualism, looking at things superficially, has instilled into people the delusion that “knowledge is capability”. That is radically false. Knowledge is theory. It affords no capability, which can be acquired only now, if in addition you use all the energy you have at your disposal.
5Many people who study esoterics are eager to be informed of ever more facts. But we do not receive more from the planetary hierarchy than we need to make a comprehensible system for us, a general conception of existence that can serve as a practicable working hypothesis. Above all, we do not receive facts that mankind is in a position to produce by its own exploration, being aided by the system given to it. The essential thing, moreover, is not the theoretical world view but the practical application of what we have been given to know.
6There is much that esotericians would like to know, but they must wait until at least the learned have started considering the esoteric knowledge already available. The esoteric elite have already removed themselves too far from the rest of mankind with a risk of losing understanding of general human views and being estranged from the people they should help. Besides, there are still so many esoteric facts that esotericians have not fully utilized that they need not be short of material. And above all they have neglected to put the knowledge received into real use in practical life. That is a neglect which makes the planetary hierarchy reluctant to communicate more facts for mere theoretical study. We have been given to know enough to be able to liberate ourselves from the ruling idiologies and acquire a basically correct view of reality with an overwhelming evidence for the reliability of this knowledge. Those who were initiated into the three lowest degrees of the knowledge orders did not receive more. Those who by their service show that they deserve to receive more knowledge and need such a knowledge for their increasingly efficient service so doing qualify for discipleship and are brought together into groups for common training. Such groups remain esoteric.
Endnotes by the translator into English:
3.3.8 the “orthodox socialist idealist” quoted was Swedish professor Bengt Lidforss (1868–1913), and the quotation is from his book Kristendomen forr och nu (“Christianity Past and Present”; I do not know whether it has been translated into English; it was published in Swedish in 1911.
3.20.5 the 45-self mentioned is H.
3.40.1 “them that are quiet in the land”. Psalms, 30:20.
3.50.4 “will not be accepted in this century”. Since this was written in the 1960-ies, the 20th century is intended.
3.54.4 The D.K. quotation is taken from The Rays and Initiations, p. 357.
The above text constitutes the essay Esoterics by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book Knowledge of Life Two by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1999 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.