The Way of Man by Henry T. Laurency
1. INTRODUCTIONS
1. INTRODUCTIONS
1The name Laurency is a pseudonym of an author who wants to remain unknown. Literary researchers allow no authors to be anonymous; then they have to content themselves with the kinds of authors they have. It must be asserted with all energy, however, that authors have a right to be unknown. That is a right everybody has according to the law of freedom. Just as the individual has an absolute right to have his private life in peace, as long as he does not encroach on the equal right of others, so the author has an absolute right to anonymity. In a cultural society these two rights are written into the constitution.
2If society believes that it may violate the laws of life, then it must also take the consequences, of which fact universal history is a witness. If authors are not legally protected from general gossip and inevitable slander as well as the intellectual spying and bodysnatching of literary researchers, then it may well happen that they do not give out their knowledge any more.
3Esoteric works defend themselves by their content of reality. Who the author is concerns nobody. The interest in personalities is beside the point. Curiosity is a vice; the opposite of the virtue of the thirst for knowledge. There must be no more belief in authority. Everybody has to accept or reject on solely objective grounds. If he is unable to do so, then he should not study esoterics.
4Incurable human curiosity, constantly violating the eternal law of freedom binding everybody, has of course done all in its power to find out who Laurency is. But nobody will ever learn it, and all guesswork is erroneous. Laurency’s true identity concerns nobody.
5All esoteric facts and ideas contained in Laurency’s books ultimately derive from the planetary hierarchy (the fifth kingdom in nature). This is no claim to infallibility. When knowledge is conveyed through human beings, there is always a risk that it is misunderstood or wrongly presented. It has been unfeasable to account, in particular cases, how facts and ideas were communicated from the original sources.
6The recorder (the amanuensis, the pen used in the writing) of Laurency’s works has not allowed himself to put forward his own speculations, vagaries, assumptions, suppositions, guesswork. Sufficient experience of human wisdom has taught him, however, that there are many people who believe they comprehend the matter better than does the planetary hierarchy. Then they may well do so. In that respect the recorder nevertheless prefers the knowledge of the planetary hierarchy, the more so as its members by no means consider themselves to be in possession of the absolute knowledge.
1Laurency wants to orient in reality. His intention is to supply a world view and life view in accord with reality, an irrefutable working hypothesis ready for use the day the present views have demonstrated their untenability. In so doing he wants to enable people to think in accord with reality, as far as this is possible for human beings at all.
2Laurency wants to liberate people from all the ruling idiologies (idiology, from idios = one’s own, logos = teaching) in the spheres of theology, philosophy, and science, put an end to emotional illusoriness and mental fictitiousness, the endless mania for speculation of life ignorance. This also means that he demonstrates the untenability of those imaginative constructions, which have hitherto been allowed to lead mankind astray. Theologians as well as philosophers, mystics, occultists, and clairvoyants are disoriented. They all have their own views of reality, different from all the others. But reality is one and not everybody’s opinion.
3It is not Laurency’s mission to found a new esoteric “school”, nor to teach any method of meditation for the acquisition of higher consciousness.
4There is little new in what Laurency teaches. Most of the facts have been publicized earlier, although in another form. Laurency’s task was to scale the knowledge down to a lower level so that it was made comprehensible also to conceptual thinking. After the year 1920, everything new came through 45-self D.K. (a teacher from the 2nd department of the planetary hierarchy), and does so still until the planetary hierarchy is called back.
5What other 45-selves communicate to their disciples is not publicized. Those who purport to have received communications from the planetary hierarchy (which is an increasingly common phenomenon) are quite simply impostors.
6The recorder is fully aware of the fact that his attempt to offer mankind a firm foundation to stand upon and to start from, an unshakable foundation of knowledge, will meet with stubborn opposition from all who have already got stuck in some one of the countless idiologies. But he is certain that “the doctrine we (the planetary hierarchy) promulgate, being the only true one, must be ultimately triumphant,” however many centuries it will take.
1Laurency’s purpose in writing his first book, The Philosopher’s Stone (PS), was to orient the first self in its worlds. The main purpose of his second book, The Knowledge of Reality (KR), was to furnish a simplified presentation of the hylozoic mental system, the basis of the thinking and science of the future.
2The present work, The Way of Man (WM), gives an account of the individual’s consciousness development through the fourth, fifth, and sixth natural kingdoms. It affords a survey over the way man has gone and yet has to go before he has reached the goal fixed for all monads (primordial atoms). The subsection On the Hylozoic World View also gives a few basic facts about the cosmic worlds and the solar system and about the destinies of the monad ever since it was introduced from chaos into the cosmos.
3WM, like the first two works, wants to help the seeker to find his bearings in our age of disorientation and to find the path to the fifth natural kingdom, which is the realm of knowledge—wisdom as well as love—unity.
4These three chief works of Laurency are in actual fact the three parts of one and the same work. The present volume, WM, is the continuation of PS and KR. Other published or as yet unpublished works of Laurency are to be regarded as commentaries or additional expositions connected with these three.
5This presentation of esoterics is sufficient to orient man in reality and to afford him a tenable basis for his life view. Laurency’s books contain what is needed at the stage of civilization in order to have a right orientation in life, to live purposefully in the physical world, for that is the main thing, not to speculate about everything unnecessary to life.
6Thus Laurency’s works are not intended to furnish materials for continued speculation, which would just result in new disorienting imaginative constructions. An esoterician accepts ideas and facts about the superphysical only from those in the fifth natural kingdom, the only ones who have a knowledge of reality.
7The works of Laurency are a new attempt to present esoterics so as to be comprehensible to contemporary philosophers and scientists with their modes of conception, the old knowledge in a new form. It is not possible to do more than that; comprehension must precede understanding. Laurency can be comprehended by the educated people of our times if they would take the trouble to try to comprehend. All this is mere truisms, but experience has taught us that it cannot be said too often. Most people read so that they do not know what they have read, often have understood just a part of it, often have misunderstood a great part of it. Most people seem never to have learnt how to read and to reflect upon what they read. Too many people have understood so little of the talk about unity that they have not realized that the word “unity” means the same as “love” (a word too much abused to suit in this connection).
8The esoteric knowledge put down into the writings of Laurency is already exoteric, the basic or elementary knowledge. It is esoteric only so far that it was once reserved for the esoteric knowledge orders, since mankind was quite unable to comprehend the true knowledge. In the proper sense it ceases to be esoteric when it is publicized. When mankind wants to listen to the message, it thereby is exoteric.
9There is in the works of Laurency sufficient proof that the content accords with reality. The proofs are the possibilities obtained to explain the problems of reality. Of course the reader must work on the texts. The Laurency books are not meant to be read through once and then be put on the shelf. If so you can just as well refrain from reading them at all. If you study them so that their content comes alive and affords increasingly greater clarity in the matters of the problems treated, then they serve their purpose. The recorder can say this from his own experience.
10The works of Laurency appear without any claims or demands for acceptance. It is up to everybody to test their correctness himself and on his own responsibility, to accept or to reject. It is unavoidable that errors are to be found in the works of Laurency as in all other esoteric works, and this is due to the “human factor”.
11The Laurency system is no dogmatic system but a temporary system, which in due time (like all systems) will be superseded by better systems. It does not purport to be anything else than a “working hypothesis”. It cannot and it must not be turned into a dogmatic system. The new systems justify themselves by their superiority in various respects; containing more facts and ideas; being better adapted to the general human conception of reality and the definitively accepted scientific terminology; making possible a more exact conception of reality; being better suited to facilitate comprehension and understanding.
1The esoteric world view of Laurency’s PS was written for three reasons: to correct the insufficient and in part misleading presentations made by various theosophists and other occultists; to introduce a workable Western terminology; to particularly emphasize the three aspects of reality.
2The esoteric life view of PS was intended to familiarize mankind with the idea of law of life and lay the basis of a new allround orientation in life. That reality, law of life, has of course always existed, but a special term for it has been lacking in Western life view.
3PS consists of aphorisms woven together into a whole where almost every sentence is the result of meditation. Anyone who does not see this does not understand the content that is “between the lines” either. It is a book that summarizes several hundred. It was indeed the purpose to show how books should be written, not like most books with truisms, platitudes, trivialities and with ideas in the weakest possible dilution. However, with that demand most writers and publishers would starve to death; the loss would perhaps not be great. Excuse the remark, but sometimes you need to call the reader’s attention to the fact that there are books that must be studied, not merely read. There really are books you never finish; at least the recorder himself has never finished reading Laurency. At each new reading he discovers more and more, getting materials for further meditation.
4KR is just a detailed commentary on PS, which is the very basis. KR furnishes a survey of the esoteric world view as well as a necessary critique of philosophy and occultism.
1The first part of this series concerning the problems of reality was PS, and the second part was KR.
2WM is principally a commentary on the two earlier works, PS and KR. It proved increasingly necessary to elucidate in detail those basic problems which seem to be unfamiliar to mankind at large, although development has entailed that most people nowadays are able to comprehend what was comprehensible only to the elite in past millennia.
3WM is an attempt at removing the confusion of ideas there is in mental thinking, an attempt at clarifying the different stages of human consciousness development, an attempt at explaining the difference between civilization and culture, all of which most people have understood nothing.
4The terminology is the same as in Laurency’s two previous works. The mathematical nomenclature introduced in PS is used also here. It is the only exact manner in which to indicate the mutual relations between the various worlds, matters, envelopes, etc. The traditional terms have proved to cause an irremediable confusion of concepts and so make it easier for non-experts to assert their muddled notions.
5The purpose in publishing WM is to offer the general orientation the aspirant needs for his preparation for discipleship, which is a condition for his transition to the second self. That orientation mainly concerns the second self’s conception of reality such as it can be rendered by mental concepts. Having become an essential self, the individual of course has to rethink in all respects also about lower worlds. The causal self sees what the first self tries to grasp.
6This third volume on the esoteric knowledge of reality being published, the general, basic orientation may be considered sufficient to afford a vision of existence, sparing seekers the toil of seeking the truth in philosophy, anthroposophy, yoga, and diverse occult literature.
7Thereby man has got a firm basis of knowledge on which to stand and from which to start. He has been informed about all he needs to know in order to live a rational and purposeful life in the physical world and be able to serve mankind, consciousness development, and unity in the right way.
8He does not need to occupy himself any more with problems of world view but can wholly apply himself to practical realization in actual life. We are here in order to live and to solve the problems of practical life. Those are the essential problems that need to be addressed to ensure a happy frictionless life for all mankind.
9We have sufficient political, social, economic problems, not to mention scientific ones (the problem of energy, above all). Strictly speaking, we have not solved even one of the problems of daily life: the problems of housing, clothing (the most expedient manner of clothing), nourishment, hygiene. We have not solved the problems of upbringing and education, just to mention a few ones. So it is clear that we have problems that are more important to solve than speculating up in the clouds on things we need not know. Our constant question when standing before the unsurveyably vast knowledge should be: does it help me live?
1The writings of Laurency are not for all but for those who must have a clearly formulated mental system as their basis for further methodical and systematical thinking in problems of life view.
2There are always those who inquire into the meaning of life, always seekers who want to possess a tenable world view or a tenable life view. It is to them that Laurency turns, hoping that his work will satisfy their need of a usable working hypothesis. It cannot be anything else and does not want to either. It appears without claims. Least of all it appeals to credulity, which has been the curse of mankind. If the reader does not approve of the content, he should put the work aside and turn to those philosophers who better size up to his intellectual demands.
3Those who do not of themselves see that the esoteric knowledge offered is priceless, are not suitable readers, but should wait a few incarnations until they have gained so much experience of life that they have the prerequisites at least of comprehension.
4The writings of Laurency are primarily intended for those who were once initiates of esoteric knowledge orders. Only those are able to realize immediately at the first contact that hylozoics accords with reality. His writings are also intended to make up a working hypothesis acceptable to those philosophers and scientists of the future who will seek for a tenable world view and life view, realizing that there must be superphysical worlds and kingdoms.
5Laurency does not write for emotionalists, for those at the higher emotional stage (the stage of the mystic), but for mentalists who are able to think in accord with reality. It is true that there is much food for emotion in his writings, but it is there only to stimulate to greater mental activity and to counteract every kind of emotional wallowing.
6What is said in the following should be regarded as applying in a general sense and must never be taken in an absolute sense, which emotional mystics as well as the more mental occultists as a rule do and which entails that systems of orientation are dogmatized so that they are regarded as containing the one and absolute truth.
1Readers who understand realize that the writings of Laurency concern the problems of reality as esotericians conceive of them, their view of reality, the teaching of those who were once initiates of esoteric knowledge orders. These problems are not for all but only for those seekers who seek until they find what they have once in a previous incarnation realized to be true knowledge of reality.
2So little readers of KR seem to have understood the contents that they have not learnt to distinguish esoterics and the exoteric, knowledge of reality and the imaginative constructions of philosophers, scientists, and historians. It has been necessary to inform them that of the seven sections of the book, the first four sections contain the knowledge and the last three ones do not contain the knowledge but are a refutation of prevalent views. It is also typical of many readers that they skip the first four sections to study the last three ones.
3Almost all letters the recorder of Laurency’s works has written in reply to readers concern misunderstandings of what they have read. They find contradictions that are just apparent, which a bit of reflective thought should have told them. Esoterics contains many paradoxes incomprehensible to literalists and wiseacres. They should consider that intellectual rule which advises us not to concern ourselves with what is incomprehensible to us. There must be some chance of “intuition” (the automatic combination work of the subconscious).
4The immensely simplified presentation of esoterics (vision of reality) furnished by KR also is designed to liberate the seeker from wasting time on older literature. Instead, it is mistaken as intending to encourage the study of occultism, philosophy, yoga, etc. In PS, aspirants have been informed as to everything they need to know in order to realize the meaning of life for their present incarnation. Instead of living they start speculating and imagining. It is apparently too hard to practise the life of service and to strive to understand people and learn to love forth the best in them.
1Systems are the bases of all thought. All comprehension proceeds from the general to the particular, and this general is precisely the system. The system makes it possible to put facts into their correct contexts, is the criterion of the correct context.
2In science, a hypothesis can be used as an explanatory ground until it can be replaced by a better hypothesis. For scientific pragmatism takes the concept in its given definition not as absolute in respect of knowledge, in absolute accord with reality (since we have not explored reality), but as expedient (usable as an explanation for the time being). It stands to reason that such systems compiled from fictions remain temporary systems.
3Philosophy has given itself the task of establishing the truth, the true knowledge of reality. Therefore, you cannot, as many philosophers do, base your view on the scientific systems of temporary hypotheses changing from day to day. You cannot at all base a tenable view or a system of knowledge on hypotheses or on constructions that contain hypotheses. From this you understand how impossible it has been and is for philosophers to solve the problems of knowledge with their fictional systems. The philosophers’ error has been that they start from bases that individually were unverifiable creeds but were regarded as logical.
4Either you know or you do not know. In true philosophy there is nothing that can be called possibility or probability. Any speculation, assumption, guesswork, supposition is precluded there. It may perhaps interest the readers to learn that this is also the standpoint of the planetary hierarchy. It thinks it better for man to be a skeptic (agnostic, not antimetaphysician) than a believer, that credulity has been the curse of mankind, that all exoteric religions (not the esoteric religion which is one and indivisible, the religion of wisdom and love) are unfit for life, not to say hostile to life. Only when the different religions agree that love is the one essential thing in any religion (no theories), which means preaching universal brotherhood, only then they are true and then they are one religion, too.
5Unless man is to be the victim of the disorientation of diverse uncalled-for prophets, it is necessary that he procures an firm basis of knowledge to start from. The only possible basis are definitively established facts put together into a logically tenable mental system that explains all essentials and proves tenable also in real life. It is such a basis that hylozoics affords, because its system of knowledge accords with reality, as far as this is possible at all to ascertain for individuals in the fourth natural kingdom. That knowledge is a gift to mankind from the planetary hierarchy. It is the duty of everyone to test its tenability himself and not accept it in blind belief, for otherwise he will never have that certainty which is necessary to self-reliance and self-determination.
1Consciousness development, the striving after knowledge, appeared in the Middle Ages in the attempts made at explaining existence and the meaning of life by means of the so-called sacred scriptures. It was a great step forward when, during the 18th century, it was generally recognized that this path was impassable and they started to systematically explore nature and to gain knowledge of at least the physical world. It remains to be discovered that this knowledge is not sufficient, since there is a superphysical reality. Only then will the esoteric knowledge be methodically and systematically studied and will they find the correct solutions of the hitherto unsolvable problems.
2The following excerpt from A. P. Sinnett’s preface to his book, Esoteric Buddhism, may afford a first idea of what esoterics is about.
3”European philosophy, whether concerned with religion or pure metaphysics, has so long been used to a sense of insecurity in speculations outrunning the limits of physical experiment, that absolute truth about spiritual things is hardly recognized any longer by prudent thinkers as a reasonable object of pursuit; but different habits of thought have been acquired in Asia. The secret doctrine which, to a considerable extent, I am now able to expound, is regarded not only by all its adherents, but by vast numbers who have never expected to know more of it than that such a doctrine exists, as a mine of entirely trustworthy knowledge from which all religions and philosophies have derived whatever they possess of truth, and with which every religion must coincide if it claims to be a mode of expression for truth.”
4Esoterics is a mental system of facts and ideas from the planetary hierarchy about existence, the meaning and goal of life. The Platonic world of ideas (the causal world), which extremely few have as yet attained, gives us knowledge of the human worlds. The globememories of higher worlds afford knowledge also of these. Until the individual has reached the worlds of higher kingdoms, however, he must resort to what messengers from these higher kingdoms communicate.
5The knowledge of superphysical reality is obtained either through a teacher in the planetary hierarchy or by the individual himself after he has become a causal self or an essential self. Man cannot by himself acquire the knowledge of reality but he can gain so much common sense that he can receive the knowledge from those in the fifth natural kingdom and realize it to be correct. But far from all have yet acquired that much common sense. To more than half of mankind, the knowledge will never in this eon be anything else than blind belief.
6Human speculations can never be anything else than illusions and fictions. Were it possible to produce the knowledge by speculation, then it would not be esoteric (inaccessible to man). Occultism or speculation on esoteric facts is not esoterics. Clairvoyance does not even reach up to the mental world, whatever its votaries believe they see.
7The esoteric world view and life view is the only one that accords with reality. All other views are subjective constructions without reality content. The world view is a work by causal selves, and the life view is a work by essential selves, both categories belonging to the ancient esoteric knowledge orders.
8Esoterics was taught in the esoteric knowledge orders ever since Atlantis. It was a discipline that could not be rightly understood without a special training that was effected through different degrees during a series of incarnations. Esoterics was only for those who had reached the higher emotional stage; had acquired the ability to keep silent, to understand and not to misunderstand: for those who absolutely refused to use the knowledge of energies (the knowledge of “magic”) for their own good.
9In our times, since the year 1875, a part of this knowledge has been made exoteric, the part taught in the three lower degrees. The remaining part is taught only to disciples of the planetary hierarchy.
10Attempts at spreading the esoteric knowledge meet with resistance from many quarters. In Catholic countries, the church is the resistance. In the Scandinavian countries, it is chiefly science, which idiotizes people into pure physicalism by trying to reduce all manifestations of consciousness into mere physiological phenomena. Medical science as well as psychology fight esoteric ideas and facts with all weapons. But scientific discoveries will soon be made that will demonstrate their total disorientation. Physicalism as a world view will prove its untenability in all respects.
1Two categories of seekers can be distinguished: those who instinctively seek after the knowledge they have latently in their subconscious and those who, like philosophers of all times, seek for an acceptable mental system, a world view that affords them an explanation of existence corresponding to their prospects of conceiving reality. It is to the seekers of the “lost word of the master” that esoterics addresses itself. The others lack the prerequisites of comprehension and regard esoterics as a system of imagination.
2Truth, or the knowledge of reality, no man can find. It is a gift from those in the fifth natural kingdom. We can just ascertain that it accords with reality, since it rationally explains thousands of otherwise inexplicable phenomena and affords an incomparably superior understanding of life.
3Truth and reality is the same thing. From mankind’s conception of reality its content of truth can be inferred. Most of it is not true. It is characteristic of an esoterician-in-becoming that he is grateful also for so-called brutal truths: truths that demolish the whole world of his emotional illusions and mental fictions, which he has been “living on” till then. Reality is not such as he has been told and he has believed, but something totally different, beyond the reach of philosophy and science. These are limited to physical reality. Going beyond their boundaries they grope in the dark. An even harder blow for many people is the brutal truth that the muse of history is a story-teller and no stickler for the truth. The esoterician has to rethink also in that respect. He is able to, because these truths are found in his subconscious from incarnations past. “Knowledge is remembrance anew.” You understand what you recognize.
4Esoterics opens up entirely new aspects for consciousness. Mental life with its scaleddown causal ideas has, however, too great a theoretical effect on many people, so that they forget to live along with mankind with its problems. They forget to live in order to theorize, and ideas replace life.
1There are individuals who (unbeknownst to themselves) unselfishly serve the planetary hierarchy, mankind, evolution, and unity. They are mostly independent workers but are also found in all organizations.
2Most of them have once been initiates of some esoteric knowledge order of the planetary hierarchy. Many of them are, unbeknownst to themselves, disciples of the planetary hierarchy, for you are aware of your discipleship in only three incarnations. (Once a disciple, always a disciple.) In the intervening incarnations you have to find your proper task of life by yourself, using the “esoteric instinct” you have got, in order to acquire the requisite qualities and abilities according to the law of self-realization.
3The third time you are aware of your discipleship (accepted a disciple anew, as it were) you have the prerequisites of acquiring full causal consciousness and becoming a causal self.
4Discipleship has six degrees; the sixth degree entails a full membership of the hierarchy. It depends on the individual himself how many incarnations he will use to reach this final goal. In order to be accepted it is required that he has reached the mental stage and has almost reaped up his bad sowing. There are special reaping incarnations with rapid liquidation of bad sowing accumulated. They are always misinterpreted, especially by outsiders who are able to judge everything and whose guesswork is taken as facts, the usual, daily stupidity.
1The biggest, most basic logical and psychological mistake that almost all people make every now and then is to judge a thing without examining it themselves. That mistake is the ground of the human misery.
2Nobody has a logical right to give an opinion on things he has not examined himself. If you do not have the possibility, the opportunity, the ability to examine it yourself, then you must refrain from giving an opinion of it. If this rule were observed, then an unbelievable amount of illusions, fictions, dogmas of all kinds would be quickly scotched, people would be liberated from more than 90 per cent of all the lies they have accepted with blind eyes.
3The present writer counts it as his true merit that he has himself examined everything of which he has tried to form a view, being grateful for that philosophical education which clarified the intellectual norm saying that you shall not accept anything without sufficient grounds. In that procedure not even law reports were sufficient. For as every judge knows, a court cannot establish the truth. It has to judge on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of witnesses. All too many wrong judgements are passed daily for making it possible to invoke judicial decisions. An esoterician never does.
4The holy spirit of truth condemns all who give opinions without examining the matter themselves. Nobody has any right to do so.
5Anyone who says “everybody knows that”, “all authorities agree on that score”, “science has established that fact long ago”, etc., in any case is no esoterician for such a one must not give opinions on the basis of what is said, what is thought, what is believed, what is stated, what all agree on, what public opinion knows, etc.
6The World-Teacher (Bodhisattva, later Buddha) Gautama inculcated in his disciples the importance, above all, of acquiring common sense and not accepting anything that is in direct conflict with that faculty. In our times, 45-self D.K. has elaborated on the Buddha’s admonition. He points out that there are three different attitudes in the conception of the uninitiated: to regard esoteric facts received as interesting and possible hypotheses pending confirmation; to accept them because you have faith in the person giving the information; to reject them as being fantastic, uncontrollable, and meaningless.
7Of these three standpoints he regards the first to be the only rational one, since it grants the seeker mental integrity with a readiness to accept what on critical examination seems possible and probable, at the same time protecting him from uncritical credulity, which has been the curse of mankind, and uncritical belief in authority, which is closely related to credulity.
8That system, which has demonstrated its tenability in all respects, is accepted and used until it is superseded by a still better one.
1The mark of a truly “educated” person is that he is not ready at once to give his opinion on a matter but waits until he knows what it is about and has acquainted himself with the available facts. He has seen that there is so much beyond man’s power of judgement. He knows much and yet infinitesimally little. That insight results in true humility and makes it impossible for him to adopt that self-exaltation, which is so common, not least in the greatest authorities.
2In contrast, nothing is more typical of all people who have not been thoroughly trained in ordinary logical inference thinking than the tendency to give opinions offhand before they have studied the requisite facts or even know what the matter is about. People comment on most things of which they actually can know nothing, not even seeing that they need facts to judge things. They are quite content to assume something on purely imaginary grounds. That is why almost all their statements are wrong when they are to account for things that go beyond their individual experience of the present.
3When will they have learnt that most simple, most basic principle of rational thought: Never accept anything without a sufficient ground? Faith in authority is no sufficient ground. The views of public opinion, newspaper reports, other people’s statements are no sufficient grounds. It is typical of the dogmatist that he refuses to study the arguments of those who do not share his opinions. He knows that he is right and that all others are wrong.
4This appears idiotic to anyone who has studied this tendency occurring spontaneously in groups of all kinds (political, social, economic, theological, philosophical, scientific, etc.). The very idiocy is that you believe you know.
5Few people have learnt to distinguish what they understand and what they just believe they understand, have learnt to see what they can and what they cannot understand in a general life sense. That ability presupposes the refusal to accept anything you do not comprehend fully and thoroughly. If you had assimilated that attitude you would not have accepted the current views and opinions. Once you have adopted them it is not very easy to rid yourself of them.
6This irremediable tendency to believe you know, comprehend, and understand, to believe in vagaries and brainwaves, is also present in occultists, and that is the reason why most of what they say should be taken with a good share of skepticism. There is immensely much that remains to be known, immensely much that we do not know, immensely many facts we still need in order to make correct statements about anything at all whenever it comes to more than quoting verbatim what we have been given to know. Our individual choice of words is most often misleading in matters requiring exact formulation.
7It is part of general injudiciousness that people have been taught how to think, and then believe they have discovered by themselves how to think and are very intelligent and important in their own eyes. Most people, however, do not think for themselves but just repeat what they have grasped to some extent. Sometimes they quote an authority, but as for the greater part of the content of their consciousness they do not care for origins. They seem to have forgotten that they have taken it from home, from the school, from the daily press, etc. As literacy is spread more and more, those found on the emotional intermediary levels find it increasingly easier to draw their own conclusions. The greater ability to think, however, does not imply the ability to “think right”, in accord with reality and the actual things of life, as these people invariably believe. The failure to see this is the ground of that chaos of consciousness of which our time affords countless examples. All who are able to write think they have something to teach others, not seeing through their own illusoriness and fictitiousness. They do not know that knowledge of the content of the human worlds we receive only from the causal world, and knowledge of life in general we receive from the essential world. It is individuals from those worlds who communicate them, either as teachers in physical incarnation or as inspirers of minds receptive to these ideas. The disciple of the planetary hierarchy is taught the method for self-acquisition of ideas, an ability that is otherwise slowly learnt during many incarnations.
8People seem to have an inveterate tendency to put an individual on a certain level, to stick a label on him (that’s how he is), to judge other people according to their own templates. They do not see that this is unfeasible and testifies to either over-or underestimation, generally the latter, since a true assessment is hindered by the feeling of not being the one you want to be.
9Typical of the presumption of human life ignorance is the belief of the supernormal mind in its own power of judgement. This can be ascertained particularly in the so-called great philosophers (Kant, Hegel, etc.). Probably it will take some time yet before they have made the Sokratean realization of the fact that what man is able to know is like a drop in the ocean. We know too little (possess too few facts) to rightly judge superphysical realities.
1A fifty year old man smiles at the view he held when fifteen, if he even remembers it. The people of the nineteenth century smiled at the views of the eighteenth. We, living in the twentieth century, smile at those who lived in the nineteenth. But how many people draw conclusions from the fact that all people in all ages and at all ages are as cocksure that their very views are the only true ones? How many people learn from this fact to be less cocksure of their views? When will we learn that our views are just temporary?
2Typical of the narrowness of dogmatic thought is its treatment of all pioneers. It is typical that Blavatsky is still shouted out as the biggest fraud of her times, just as she met with the same destiny in her preceding incarnations as Paracelsus and Cagliostro. They stopped at no infamy when trying to drag her down into the dirt.
3If Cagliostro had been such a notorious swindler, then Richelieu would not have invited him to the gala banquet he gave in honour of Gustavus III, King of Sweden, in Paris; perhaps the only true story about Cagliostro.
4It is typical that the same individual in his incarnations as Rosencreutz, Francis Bacon, and Saint Germain was regarded and is still regarded as a notorious cheat. You could go on with the enumeration of these martyrs if they were better known to history. So esotericians should cherish no illusions of gaining personal recognition. Rather they run the risk of being regarded as injudicious fantasts. Anyone who is before his times must suffer if he shows it. Still martyrdom is the pioneer’s lot. The freemasons have been smarter. They are respected for they have learnt to be silent so that their teachings have not been critized by the many injudicious authorities of public opinion with their pedantic pseudo-knowledge.
1The esoterician has no belief in authority. Quite the reverse, he is encouraged by all authorities of the planetary hierarchy not to accept anything he has not himself seen to be correct. We must all work with hypotheses, assumptions for the time being, possibilities also where we find no grounds for probability. This is so self-evident a thing that it need not even be discussed.
2It is of no importance whatsoever who said or who wrote something. Either it is right or it is wrong. It is up to everyone to decide for himself. In esoterics, there is no authority, not even a divine authority. You accept or reject on your own responsibility.
3Emotion must not have any say in matters pertaining to the world view. Emotion has a part in life view, and the history of the world is just one big example of its unreliability as a criterion of truth. It is high time that critical reason, however it be, were made the supreme authority. “Everybody is the master of his own wisdom” but then only for himself and never for others. We must develop into independent thinkers and stop being echoes, stop believing because others have believed and claimed they knew.
4Every book must defend its justification by its contents. An esoteric book may claim to be a link in the chain of research if it survives the criticism of common sense, contains something new and essential, accords with definitively accepted views. Any invoking of authority is ineffective.
5Nor is it of any importance whatsoever who first said something. The important question is whether it is correct. No esoterician claims priority. Nobody is first because whatever is claimed by right of priority exists in the causal world.
6Nowadays esoterics has been given such a form that anyone who is ripe for that knowledge does not need to confide in it blindly as an authority, as has been the case hitherto. The esoterician does not any longer accept loose statements but will ascertain for himself that facts have been put into their right contexts, be logically convinced that whatever is said squares with the facts. There must be no more accepting without comprehension and understanding. Esoterics must not be turned into a matter of belief. Whatever you do not understand you are wise to doubt or leave undecided.
7Perhaps it was not that strange that the disciples of the planetary hierarchy first appearing – Blavatsky, Besant, Leadbeater and others – gave rise to a cult of perfect teachers despite the latter’s protests, a thing that harmed the esoteric cause enormously. Even though the teachers make an overwhelming impression with their powers incomprehensible to us, yet the insight that a 43-self has 42 stages left to cosmic omniscience and omnipotence should have counteracted the dogma of absolute infallibility.
8In the planetary hierarchy, there is only one view concerning the knowledge of reality within the seven atomic worlds of the solar system. It does not follow from this, however, that there is any infallible or unitary opinion as to what measures taken by the planetary hierarchy can prove the most advantageous in every human case. The individuals making up our mankind are found at all the various evolutionary stages, and the law of freedom and the law of self-realization have inviolable validity. Therefore, assessing how mankind will react is for the planetary hierarchy a calculation of probability, and so different opinions about it are possible.
1By the aid of scientific research we are able, within certain limits, to answer the question “how?”. But man is quite unable to answer the questions “what?” and “why?”. In those matters he is dependent on the knowledge of reality and life given to him by the fifth natural kingdom. That knowledge has been taught in the esoteric knowledge orders. These have existed, for close to fifty thousand years, among all nations that have attained such a level that individuals at the cultural stage have been able to incarnate in them. After the year 1875 this knowledge has been allowed for publication gradually to an ever greater extent.
2The knowledge orders had seven degrees. The majority of initiates seldom reached beyond the two lowest degrees in the first incarnation and seldom beyond the third degree in subsequent incarnations. One cause of the initiates’ difficulties was the hampering influence from prevalent illusions and fictions, which had been inoculated in childhood and which necessitated considerable work by the individual if he would liberate himself from them later in life. That was a weeding work the individual had to perform himself before he could be initiated anew and pass the degrees.
3The symbolic representation of the knowledge in the two lowest degrees of the knowledge orders approximately corresponded to what was taught in the Grecian mysteries (the lesser and the greater mysteries). So far, the content of the teaching was by and large the same for all orders and, properly speaking, not secret.
4The knowledge became truly secret only in the third degree. There began that presentation of the teaching which was especially adapted to the general view of life characteristic of the one dominating the individual in his race, nation, culture (temporary phenomena), different in different orders and with different symbolism.
5For admittance to an order it was required that the individual had attained the stage of the mystic (the higher emotional stage, 48:3). That was the prerequisite of comprehending and assimilating a knowledge that was far beyond the general level. The fundamental axiom for all degrees was the unity of all life (“universal brotherhood”). From the orders, too, emanated all ideas that could be comprehended and have an ennobling effect. In the higher degrees, they were taught that there are higher worlds and that existence is a gigantic process of development, even though the idea of development did not have such a scientific formulation as it has in Pythagorean hylozoics. It took more than 2500 years before there was a general understanding of this idea, prepared through the analogy with biological evolution, an idea that was fought vehemently by all idiologies and could break through only after much conflict. History, which should afford us knowledge of the past, has found it all too easy to disregard the history of ideas, particularly the history of how ideas had to fight tremendous battles to win their justification. That history, however, is more important than any war and other devilry, glorified in the holy temple of history.
6The esoteric knowledge orders were not at all unknown to the great majority. Only the teaching was secret. Only as Christianity came into power and, as a result, all dissident thinkers were bestially persecuted, the very existence of the orders had to be kept secret. In the Vatican and in the Jesuit Order they were convinced that such orders existed and they were constantly on the hunt for the least sign of such heresy, being ready for implacable persecution and annihilation.
7The use of the term “the ancients” protected the initiates, which was necessary since the Church persecuted heretics. Those persecutions cost approximately 50 million human lives.
8It is strange that scholars may aver that they know everything about what the ancients taught when they know that the hundreds of thousands of manuscripts lodged in the library at Alexandria were destroyed and that Christian fanatics during the fourth and fifth centuries destroyed systematically all older manuscripts they could lay hands on, regarding them as the delusions of the devil. The learned know practically nothing of what the ancients knew. There was scarcely a manuscript left from the time before 400 A.D., and just the little that was buried or chanced to be outside the dominion of the fanatics was saved.
9Titus Burckhardt’s book Introduction aux doctrines esoteriques de l’Islam gives an account of the esoteric basis of Sufism. In this it appears that this basis is taken from the common source of all esoteric teaching, that it has been misrepresented in many respects, that the writer apparently is not familiar with other esoteric literature and so has not discovered from where the Sufis obtained their esoterics. Generally the same can be said of those who have treated of the yoga philosophy. They obviously do not suspect that the original material was once received from the planetary hierarchy and has undergone many metamorphoses since then.
10The Rosicrucian Order was founded in 1375, in an age when the Catholic Church ruled and persecuted. In this Order, the initiates knew nothing of each other, nothing of higher degrees; only the initiator was known under a cover name. This was the reason why, for instance, Goethe, who was an initiate, did not suspect that Cagliostro was a member of the Order and had attained its highest degree, being a personal disciple of Saint Germain (both were members of the planetary hierarchy).
11Other secret orders were instituted in the 18th century on Saint Germain’s initiative to make it possible for people “to think freely” and in safety from the mental tyranny of the Church. Those exoteric orders all failed their purpose.
12Researchers who are ignorant of esoterics search in vain for the original impulses, those that emanated from initiates of esoteric orders. This is especially obvious when it comes to the ennobling influence of Christianity. Such an influence is felt only in the 18th century, the age of the great humanists, who were also initiates of the Rosicrucian Order. Before then, mostly barbarism ruled the Church, whose representatives were seldom receptive of nobler influence.
13The Masonic teaching, which actually belongs in the seventh department, is a distortion of the original esoteric presentation. A reform is necessary and will also be made some time in the next centuries.
1To rightly appreciate theosophy you must be alive to the fact that it did an enormous amount of pioneering work. What was publicly known when Blavatsky was commissioned with the task of making the esoteric knowledge accessible to Western thinking were the symbolic writings worked out in the various esoteric knowledge orders and the distorted presentation of the knowledge to be found in yoga literature. Add to this the fact that Blavatsky never received any higher education whatever and that the home education she was given in the 1830s was of the most elementary description.
2Blavatsky was a causal self, although it was only later that she regained her full capacity. This limitation (in accord with the law of reaping) was the result of mistakes she made as Cagliostro. It took to be a causal self to accomplish the superhuman mission that was given to her. Of course her mode of presenting the teaching cannot be said to meet modern demands of methodical and systematic thinking. But she had a clear knowledge of esoteric facts and ideas. To the extent that she was allowed to communicate such facts, she publicized them, even though in a planless manner.
3Sinnett, Besant, and Leadbeater were given the task of ordering those facts and ideas into a comprehensible system. That work required the highest mental capacity and an innate understanding of esoteric knowledge. That, too, must be called pioneer work of the most difficult kind. In view of those conditions the total result must be called a superhuman achievement, the more so since Besant as well as Leadbeater were largely thrown upon their own independent research to fill out the gaps there were in the system while not having the necessary scientific qualifications for it. Some mistakes they made in that work were of course unavoidable.
4Causal thinking is no system thinking in the philosophical or scientific sense but rather a seeing of the objective realities searched for. The higher the kind of consciousness acquired by the individual as a second self, the more forbidding this gradual, slow inference thinking appears to him. It is the task of mental thinking to put this viewing into a system in order to apprehend it by concepts. This presupposes, beside the ability to systematize, also the skill of pedagogic formulation. Those were skills that very much distinguished the pioneers Besant and Leadbeater, who consequently were able to lay a solid groundwork for the requisite superstructure.
5Theosophy is largely only Blavatsky, Besant, and Leadbeater, primarily Blavatsky, since she was more of an amanuensis of 45-self D.K. than an independent author. Besant and Leadbeater worked mainly on their own, in their latter years certainly as causal selves but not always aware of the limit to their own capacity. In his writings, D.K. corrected many of their statements. Especially in the matter of discipleship almost everything they said concerns the life of aspirants and is not valid for accepted disciples. In any case, it is abortive to make their statements any kind of dogmas. The wisest thing is to regard them as “working hypotheses”. Besides, there is no dogmatism in esoterics, since everything said has a temporary validity and is soon superseded by more exact presentations. Add to this the fact that reality in the three lowest atomic worlds (47–49, the worlds of man) is something quite different from higher kinds of reality, and that is the reason why the first self is unable to understand those higher kinds. Anyone who has realized this also understands why Alice A. Bailey, who had the opportunity to work as D.K.’s amanuensis for 30 years, could say that in her next incarnation she would willingly give up everything she had been given to know, if esoterics had by then been supplemented with new knowledge and because of that had been given a different presentation. Esoterics affords us a vision of existence, valuable not least because it liberates us from all the philosophical imaginations of ignorance. Esoterics is nothing we should speculate with, however.
6Both Besant and Leadbeater were strongly influenced by yogic views (picked up from Indians at Adyar), and that is the reason why their presentations of esoterics do not always tally with the exact description of things. They had a tendency not to separate the things in themselves and their genesis, and this made it more difficult for them to present the ideas clearly.
7The numerous errors in theosophical literature are explained by the fact that these disciples of the planetary hierarchy published several works in succession, at the same time being taught and having their own experiences. That method is untenable, since you cannot write faultlessly on a subject-matter you are studying and therefore have not mastered yet. In consequence, they made errors that had to be corrected, and all too defective knowledge systems reduce confidence in authorities who were too certain they had a true conception of reality. The systems have had to be revised bye the bye. Such things have prejudiced the cause of theosophy in the eyes of scientists and philosophers who expect more of the treatment of a subject and so have been deterred by the sometimes infantile presentation of the knowledge materials. It should be emphasized, however, that the theosophical systems, with all their shortcomings, are incomparably superior to all those systems which have been constructed by other people than disciples of the planetary hierarchy.
8The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 by disciples of the planetary hierarchy, but proved not to fulfil the expectations nourished by some members of the hierarchy. Its failure was foreseen as early as 1882, and this became apparent in 1895 as the Society split. Nowadays, the Society has no connection with the planetary hierarchy.
9It is to be deeply regretted that the Theosophical Society never saw that the division of the Society in 1895 automatically cut off the connection with the planetary hierarchy. The fact that some disciples, who were also theosophists, were still in communication with their teachers was falsely understood to mean that the Society was connected as well.
10It is characteristic of discipleship that such things as the disciple must learn to understand is never pointed out by the teacher. Neither Besant nor Leadbeater realized that the Society was finally disconnected. Whether a reconnection will be possible some time in the future (which seems highly improbable) depends on the attitude of theosophists themselves: whether they have learnt that any division (despite differences of opinion), any expression of intolerance, any gossip about and criticism of members precludes a connection. Theosophists have not understood even that little. There remains much to be learnt by occultists and socalled esotericians of all kinds until they will be as judicious as they think they are. It is not enough to have a theoretical knowledge. We have received the knowledge in order to realize unity. How many are concerned with that aim?
11Ever since the Rosicrucian Order was instituted in 1375, there have existed false Rosicrucian orders. The black forces have always kept pace with the white ones and have always managed to mislead those not initiated into the orders of the planetary hierarchy. So it will remain.
12The division of the Theosophical Society into various sects is also a proof of how the black ones are able to mislead those who believed they were on the safe side.
13Whatever you think of theosophy in the formulation it was given by Blavatsky, Sinnett, Besant, and Leadbeater (all being in contact with the planetary hierarchy), it nevertheless marks the acme of mankind’s development in knowledge up till then. Anyone who underrates the importance of theosophy in that respect evidences his own real ignorance of life. Anyone who recognizes the importance of theosophy just pays a small tribute of justice. You could say that theosophy was the first appearance of the planetary hierarchy before the public. The fact that occultists have ignored this is the proof of their unreliability. They have all robbed theosophy and should be grateful to it for the little knowledge they have. What they have in addition is nothing but disorienting fantastry. None of them have been in contact with the planetary hierarchy.
14The criticism that all manner of occultists have directed at theosophy only evidences their own total incompetence.
15It is instructive to study two books by Sinnett, The Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism, because all the objections to the new teaching, which he details, are heard even today and after more than one hundred years. It is the same inveterate dogmatism and obduracy. All the experiments he describes are explained away with the same infantile arguments. People have not changed a bit, the same parrotry without any ability to test and judge. For everybody knows that theosophy, etc., is humbug. You needn’t take the pains to examine that. Everybody believes and says so.
1For his works D.K. had to use a mediator or interpreter, Alice A. Bailey, and even though she was outstanding (unique, according to D.K.), the result was not faultless, as it never can be when man is involved. This needs to be emphasized, since the enemies of truth certainly will make the most of the occasion to discredit D.K.’s work. Therefore it should be said that the errors are on the whole insignificant and never concern anything essential. Obvious contradictions occurring are probably evidence that the interpreter did not always interpret right. Figures and years appear to have involved particular difficulties.
2What has greatly reduced the value of D.K.’s work, especially where the world view is concerned, is the fact that the interpreter did not have a suitable terminology but consistently used the miserable, often misleading terms that Blavatsky invented and the theosophists traditionally preserved.
3In the theosophical colony Crotona, California, Alice A. Bailey had come in contact with some theosophists, who boasted that they had been “initiated” by Leadbeater, which was absurd, as all theosophists should know. Christos—Maitreya is the one initiator, and only he is entitled to accept anyone as a member of the hierarchy. Soon enough she came into acute antagonism with those “initiates”, also those who were “initiates” of the Esoteric Section. The conflict apparently resulted in an aversion to Leadbeater, who actually was innocent of the madness. This aversion had the effect that she could not rightly appreciate Leadbeater but reduced his work and contribution. This is the more deplorable as Leadbeater was the foremost esoteric educator, having a special talent for clarifying the basic principles and work out an easily comprehensible system. Then he had the fifth department in his causal envelope. His capacity was expressly recognized by D.K.
4Alice A. Bailey’s husband, Foster Bailey, wrote of her: “We are all very human, and she was very human, too.” “No adoration of saints here”, apparently is his opinion. Saints exist only in the Christian Church. The emotional stage of the so-called saint merely marks the conclusion of the emotional phase of development. Yes, we have all of us a long way yet to go, and particularly those who think they are near the goal.
5There is a great risk that the Arcane School, founded by Alice A. Bailey in New York (with many affiliations), will degenerate into slavery to the letter of the writings D.K. dictated to his secretary A.A.B. Yet D.K. himself warned not to regard his dictations as instructions of general applicability. They have their limited utility on account of the many obscurities there are in the terminology A.A.B. had at her disposal when presenting D.K.’s ideas.
1The art of reading is connected with the ability to meditate, to think your own thoughts. The majority of readers have not acquired that ability. The recorder’s correspondence with readers of PS and KR has convinced him that most of them are unable to read. They do not see what it says in the books, and after they have read the books they cannot summarize their contents. They see only what they recognize or what pleases them or agrees with their ideas. Whatever is beyond that, they have not seen, and that is the reason why they learn nothing. Most of them forget what they have read, many as soon as they put the book away, many in a short time afterwards.
2Educators seem to be more interested in technical modes of reading and fast reading. But such methods are totally ineffective if applied to esoteric literature. When reading this kind of literature you must meditate, “read between the lines”. The works of Laurency consist of aphorisms joined together into chapters. Every sentence has a meaning and is of significance for what comes after it and for the understanding of the whole. Almost every word may have its particular function in the total context. Thus there is much more in what is said than readers generally discover. Most readers read too fast, being accustomed to reading literature that never requires reflection. Those who read Laurency in that manner could as well leave him unread.
3In order to have real use of the esoteric knowledge you must work at it, study it until you master it. You do not do so merely by reading the books through. You must be able to combine all the facts that belong together, widely spread throughout the volumes in various contexts, so that it all is turned into a living whole. Otherwise you will misinterpret most of it.
4If you read esoteric literature from the background of an exoteric system of thought you have already accepted, then you must have special qualifications to assimilate the esoteric knowledge with its new terms of realities previously unknown to you.
5To those who have been initiates in previous incarnations (a small portion of mankind), the content is immediately obvious. To the others, it is still “esoteric” (inaccessible).
1It must be strongly emphasized that everything in the matter of speculation can just lead to misunderstanding, often irremediable misunderstanding. The hermetic tenet, “as above, so below; as below, so above”, thus the principle of universal analogy, is certainly correct in a general sense, but we can never determine its validity in the individual case. Those who cannot content themselves with a careful recording work but must speculate should keep to the innumerable speculative idiologies in theology, philosophy, yoga, and all manner of occultism. Man is not in a position to solve the esoteric knowledge problems on his own. Only those in the fifth kingdom are able to do so, and then often only by the aid of those in still higher kingdoms.
2Whenever we speculate, believe we are able to draw conclusions on the basis of overwhelming probability, we make a mistake. That is a kind of error, which even causal selves have made when judging things in the worlds of the second and third selves. The modern disciple (being wise after such mistakes in past times) has learnt never to speculate, never to assume anything, never to believe. He may certainly enjoy himself by analysing hypotheses, but these always remain uncertain, not to say erroneous, hypotheses, and they are never assumptions. There are an immense number of ideas which appear possible though they have no basis in reality. Such are the ideas that theologians, philosophers, and scientists are prepared to accept when they are presented in a literary form that is emphatic and dazzling.
1It was very wise of Pythagoras to prohibit disciples even from asking questions during the first two years of study. Experience confirms that many too intelligent people are too quickly finished with a so radically revolutionary view, which involves passing out of the world of illusion and entering into the world of reality.
2It is a very common mistake to try at once to fit esoteric facts and ideas into current views, ruling world views and life views. However, these have nothing in common with the knowledge of reality, but they are as erroneous as to turn the conception of reality into mere illusion. There is only one correct conception, and that is not in mankind’s possession. As it is now, everybody has his own opinion, which thus must be more or less erroneous, the less so the more it approximates the only one that is true and incontrovertibly valid for all.
3Instead, the neophyte should rethink everything from scratch with completely new bases and in so doing switch off everything he has learnt before. Otherwise the result will be just one more abortive occult system to be added to the many already existing.
4Many years of esoteric study are required in order to attain the requisite level of knowledge, the basis of further study and enhanced power of perception. It also takes many years before all the new things that have sunk down into the subconscious have been worked up and vibrations from the esoteric reality concepts have been able to affect the superconscious, so that a contact with the world of Platonic ideas may be reached. For without such a contact esoteric study cannot result in true understanding, at best only comprehension. The many abortive occult sects are as many hard-earned experiences and proofs of that truth. They have led millions astray.
1Esoterics is not intended for the great majority (“the public”), not for those who get their information from daily and weekly papers. It is totally abortive to make propaganda for a knowledge that remains incomprehensible to those who have not been initiates in any esoteric knowledge order for the last fifty thousand years. Knowledge is remembrance. Learning can be anything, theology, philosophy, science, occultism, etc. True understanding of the human worlds, the causal world included, can only be possessed by former initiates. Anyone who, when hearing about rebirth and the law of sowing and reaping, does not at once see the truth of these ideas should not concern himself with esoterics. It is no matter of belief, no object of speculation. It is a system of facts we have received from our elder brothers in the fifth natural kingdom. Esoterics asserts firmly that no individual in the fourth natural kingdom is able to ascertain those facts. Others may then say what they like. It is possible for man to convince himself that the system is reliable, since it explains existence and thousands of otherwise inexplicable things in the simplest possible manner. The system, once mastered, moreover affords the possibility to foresee much of future events.
1Mankind has not yet come of age but is still largely irresponsible. It is true that the knowledge is available, but it has become distorted and those who have examined it as a theory have seldom applied it in practice. The insight that we are responsible is gained only at the higher emotional stage. Many talk about the law of sowing and reaping but do not know what they sow and have hardly any idea of what is meant by responsibility. It should not be expected that the esoteric knowledge, even if it is accepted as a theory, will have as great an effect at the stage of civilization as at higher stages. The majority of students are content to have the problems of existence solved for them and then go on living without much thought, as though everything will be all right without further ado. “It will straighten itself out if you take it as it comes,” is the motto of carelessness. They do not realize that omission is a serious mistake. Mankind has not received the knowledge in order not to apply it.
2Knowledge entails responsibility. Responsibility is exacted in subsequent incarnations. Nothing is given for nothing, for everything must be paid for. Whatever the individual has received is a talent to be put to good account and bequeath to others. The price you must pay for becoming wise is the work you do to reach wisdom and to help others. These truths cannot be too clearly inculcated.
1Undifferentiated primordial matter is unlimited space. In this primordial matter its omnipotent primordial force, dynamis, generates “points of force”, objectivations of dynamis. These points of force are the so-called primordial atoms. Primordial matter contains the inexhaustible store of primordial atoms. Another name of primordial atoms is “monads”.
2Primordial atoms appear to be voids in primordial matter. How immensely small these voids are is best seen from the fact that the physical atom contains billions of primordial atoms. The highest cosmic selves are able to ascertain that. They can moreover ascertain that primordial atoms (monads) possess rotatory motion from the beginning and lack consciousness but that consciousness must be potential since it can be “roused to life”. The primordial atom is the least possible part of primordial matter and the least possible firm point for an individual consciousness.
3It is in the cosmos that the primordial atoms’ potential qualities are actualized. Our cosmos is a globe in primordial matter. In primordial matter there is an unlimited number of such globes. The cosmos is composed of primordial atoms, which are the sole content of the cosmos. The cosmos is built in such a manner that primordial atoms form a continuous series of ever more composed kinds of atoms, ever coarser particles. The same process can be described so: the voids of primordial atoms are composed to form ever larger voids in primordial matter.
4Through the supply of primordial atoms the cosmic globe swells until the requisite size has been reached. The cosmos appears to be a void, a bubble in primordial matter, precisely because its sole content is primordial atoms. The cosmos is so packed with primordial atoms that there is not space for one more primordial atom. If it were not so, the cosmic globe would collapse under the enormous pressure of primordial matter.
5The cosmos consists of a series of 49 interpenetrating material worlds. These worlds are called “atomic worlds”, since each world is composed of its own kind of atoms. The worlds are called higher and lower. Uncompounded primordial atoms make up the highest world (world 1). The atomic kind of each lower world is composed of more primordial atoms than that of the next higher world or, expressed differently, has a greater primordial atomic density than the next higher atomic kind. The physical world is the lowest, having the coarsest kind of matter. Higher worlds exist in all lower worlds. In the physical world thus exists the whole series of atomic worlds. In spatial respect the 49 atomic worlds make up one single world; the physical world, if you like.
6The worlds are built out from above, from the highest world. Primordial atoms are involved to form atoms of an ever coarser kind with each lower world. All the pertaining processes of involvation are denoted by the common term “involution”.
7Due to differences of primordial atomic density each world has its own kind of “space” (dimension), “time” (continuous existence, duration), atomic matter and aggregates composed of it, motion (force, energy, vibration, “will”), and consciousness. “Beyond space and time” is thus primordial matter.
8The conception of space and time thus is totally different in the different worlds and is of less importance with each higher world. The concept of time disappears as the perception of “eternal present” increases. With each higher dimension the worlds appear to shrink until in the 49th dimension (world 1) the whole cosmos is like one single point with which the monad–primordial atom can identify itself.
9From the description of the composition of matter it is seen that all higher atomic kinds enter into all lower kinds of matter. As for the consciousness aspect this means that all higher kinds of consciousness potentially enter into all lower kinds. What separates the 49 atomic kinds from each other is the number of primordial atoms in each atom, a number that increases with each lower atomic kind.
10All the possibilities of qualities and abilities that are actualized in the cosmic processes of manifestation are potential in the very primordial matter. The question whether the same qualities are developed in all the innumerable cosmoses in primordial matter cannot be answered. We can know nothing about that, since each cosmos is a reality isolated from all the others. Our cosmos is a perfect organization.
1With respect to the theory of knowledge everything is above all what it appears to be but in addition always something quite different and immensely more.
2The trinity of existence is made up of three equivalent aspects: matter, motion, and consciousness. None of these three can exist without the two others. All matter is in motion.
3All matter has consciousness. Every molecular and atomic kind has its peculiar kind of consciousness. Consciousness is either potential (not roused) or actualized (roused). Actualized consciousness is passive (inactive) or active.
4The basis of the ultimate unity of everything is matter, which is one, primordial matter; consciousness, which is one, the cosmic total consciousness; force, which is one, the dynamic energy of primordial matter. These three are indissolubly and inseparably united without confusion or conversion.
5There is only one matter: primordial matter.
6There is only one force: dynamis.
7There is only one consciousness: the cosmic total consciousness.
8Everything is a unity.
9The three immediately given ones explain themselves by their modes of being and cannot be further explained, just be ascertained by everybody.
10It is a seemingly ineradicable view that we do not know what the three aspects of reality “actually are”. We certainly do. They manifest themselves in 49 different ways in the 49 different atomic worlds and they are equally real in them all. Of course a man cannot know how they manifest themselves in the superhuman worlds. But we know how they manifest themselves in the three lowest atomic worlds (47–49), the worlds of man, and it is from this fact that we must start in our position to the aspects. Otherwise we end up in a conceptual chaos, which the fate of philosophy clarifies to us.
11The matter aspect and the energy aspect are the two original ones, issuing from the primordial matter and dynamis of primordial manifestation. The consciousness aspect is a product of manifestation. Dynamis produces in primordial matter primordial atoms, which in manifestational matter (the cosmos) acquire consciousness and, as the final product of evolution, cosmic omniscience with the ability to use dynamis in manifestational matter (cosmic omnipotence). Probably it cannot be more exactly formulated for mental consciousness.
12Light is matter and sound is energy (motion), two esoteric basic facts. Since light is matter, it can be attracted by objects and deviate from the otherwise straight line. So simple is the explanation of the Einstein phenomenon.
13Matter, energy, and consciousness are three inseparable aspects of the same reality and exist in countless degrees. Speaking about matter we emphasize the matter aspect, and speaking about energy we emphasize the motion aspect. But everything is a unity of all the three aspects. There exists nothing else. Light (matter) and sound (energy) appear to be different things, since they are perceived in different ways. The lowest degree of consciousness (in the mineral kingdom) is beyond human conception, and so language has no term by which to denote it. But all matter has consciousness, although in countless degrees or, if you like, of countless kinds.
14Matter is always the basis of consciousness and necessary as a medium for dynamis. This indicates the importance of matter but also its subordination under the two other aspects of reality. The Western view of reality starts from the matter aspect. In so doing, it is probably inevitable and understandable that this view overrates matter. For matter is, in contrast to consciousness, objectively perceptible and has therefore become the material of natural research. But matter is useless as a sole basis for the explanation of existence. The importance of the two other aspects grows ever greater for anyone who wants to acquire a satisfactory world view and life view.
15Matter is the vehicle of consciousness. When consciousness has so developed that it can function rationally, then consciousness and not matter will “decide”. Consciousness can assimilate the energies of life and thereby control matter. That is magic. The individuals of the fifth natural kingdom demonstrate that this is possible and how it is possible. But it requires that the individual knows what he is doing and is conscious of his responsibility for everything and everyone. The power of the matter aspect is abolished when the individual has become a causal self and can apply the Law rightly. Then the consciousness aspect seizes power. It is consciousness that develops the brain from the start; it is not the brain that develops consciousness. The brain is an instrument and functions as a receiver and transmitter.
16The study of the matter aspect is part of the world view, the study of the consciousness aspect is part of the life view, and the study of the motion aspect is part of the world view as well as of the life view.
17Westerners start in their world view from the matter aspect of existence, the aspect immediately given, and from the disciplines of physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and biology. Anyone who wants to arouse understanding of esoterics in the most simple manner therefore starts from the material forms of existence and presents the two other aspects, the motion aspect and consciousness aspect, in connection with the matter aspect. This also affords esoterics that scientific character which Westerners miss in the systems that start from the consciousness aspect.
1What has of old been called “creation” is not one single act of creation but a continuous process, which in esoterics is called the “great process of manifestation”.
2The whole cosmos makes up one single continuous process of manifestation in which all monads participate with their consciousness expressions, unconsciously or consciously, involuntarily or voluntarily. The higher the world and kingdom the monad has attained, the higher the kind of consciousness it has acquired, the more the monad contributes to the process of manifestation.
3The whole cosmos is in respect of consciousness a gigantic process of development, in which every monad acquires an ever greater share in the cosmic total consciousness until it has reached the goal: cosmic omniscience and omnipotence.
4The great process of manifestation is divided into the process of involvation and evolvation, the process of involution, and the process of evolution. “Involvation” is the term of the monads’ composition to form atoms of different kinds and the atoms’ composition to form molecules of various kinds. “Evolvation” denotes the corresponding process of dissolution.
5After being introduced into the cosmos from chaos, the monads go through the countless involvations in the current of atomic circulation (the basic cause of the development and existence of material forms and the basic cause even of motion) during thousands of eons. Thereupon the monads go through the process of involution, finally to embark on their process of evolution in the mineral kingdom.
6The monads acquire collective consciousness in the process of involution and individual self-consciousness in ever higher worlds in the process of evolution.
7The process of involution implies for the monads that they automatically acquire passive consciousness. The process of evolution implies for the monads that they activate their consciousness themselves.
8Involution starts with primordial manifestation (non-involved monads), atomic world 1, and is divided into 48 ever lower worlds of ever more composed atoms. The physical world is world 49, the lowest world.
9Evolution starts in the physical world and is divided into twelve natural kingdoms of which the mineral kingdom is the lowest or first kingdom and the twelfth is the highest kingdom. The six lower natural kingdoms exist within the solar systems and in the seven lowest atomic kinds (43–49). The six higher natural kingdoms exist in the cosmos outside the solar systems, are therefore called “cosmic kingdoms” and comprise: the seventh kingdom atomic worlds 36–42, the eighth kingdom worlds 29–35, the ninth kingdom worlds 22–28, the tenth 15–21, the eleventh 8–14, and the twelfth natural kingdom atomic worlds 1–7. From the fifth natural kingdom, evolution is also called “expansion”.
10It is seen from this how the mathematical terminology simplifies enormously the description of the cosmos with its worlds and kingdoms and affords an unsurpassable exactness.
11
11–49 cosmic atomic worlds
43–49 atomic worlds of the solar system
46–49 atomic worlds of the planets
12The higher the world, the deeper the insight into and the larger the overview of the countless processes of manifestation entering into the four fundamental processes (those of involvation–evolvation, involution, evolution, and expansion). In the four lowest natural kingdoms, there are also the continuous processes of involvation into a temporary life-form and evolvation from it (“cycles of rebirth”). The matter aspect dominates in the processes of involvation—evolvation and involution; the consciousness aspect, in the process of evolution; and the motion, energy or will aspect, in the process of expansion.
1In the cosmic process of involvation, primordial atoms (atomic kind 1) are successively involved to form 48 ever more composed atomic kinds (atomic kinds 2—49). In the subsequent processes of involvation and evolvation, four different kinds of manifestational matter are obtained: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary matter.
2The atoms of primary matter have rotatory motion and potential, not yet actualized consciousness. This rotatory motion makes it possible for primordial atoms to be composed into atoms and molecules of ever lower kinds.
3Secondary and tertiary matter has rotatory cyclic spiral motion and actualized (roused) consciousness. In secondary matter (involutionary or elemental matter) this consciousness is just passive, that is: easily activated by vibrations coming from without but incapable of selfactivity. In tertiary matter (triad matter), there is incipient self-active consciousness, incipient will.
4The cyclic spiral motion of secondary and tertiary matter enables atoms and molecules to be held together in material aggregates, to make up material forms.
5Quaternary matter is ready at last for the final process of evolution and expansion, which presupposes the faculty of self-activity, the ability to self-acquire ever higher kinds of consciousness.
6In the fourth process of involvation, quaternary or evolutionary monads belonging to the human parallel evolution are involved into a chain of three triads.
7The two material compositions, primary and secondary matter, making up all the 49 atomic worlds, form the basis of the processes of evolution and expansion, the expansion of evolutionary monads. All those processes take up thousands of eons. Even those members of the planetary hierarchy who occupy themselves with the calculation of these periods are taken aback at their enormity.
1The solar systems are formed from the seven lowest cosmic atomic worlds (43—49) and the planets from the four lowest worlds (46—49). All higher atomic worlds penetrate all lower worlds.
2In solar systems and planets, atomic kinds 43—49 make up the original material of 42 molecular kinds (states of aggregation), 6 in each atomic world. The figures put after those of the atomic kinds denote molecular kinds.
3The cosmos is the 49 atomic worlds. The solar system is the 42 molecular kinds.
4In all the worlds of the solar system there is involvatory (primary) matter, involutionary (secondary and tertiary) matter, and evolutionary (quaternary) matter (evolutionary monads in permanent atoms and triads).
5Every world represents one of seven different main kinds of energy. These seven are further differentiated into the various molecular kinds in worlds 43—49. We have not yet received any knowledge of the energies of the 42 ever higher cosmic worlds, energies which always make themselves felt in one way or other in the seven atomic worlds of the solar system. Those energies must be mastered successively, according as the individual acquires consciousness of ever higher kinds and in so doing becomes an ever more efficient co-worker in more and more processes of manifestation.
6Our solar system is a system of the second degree, a rebirth of an earlier system of the first degree.
7The theosophical presentation was mostly a description of the genesis and functions of our solar system. In actual fact it depicted a rebirth of a previous system. In order to understand such a second degree system, however, you must have a description also of a first degree system, since the individuals developing in our system have undergone the processes of the first system.
8Such a description shows in detail how the worlds of man (47–49) have been formed and how the monads have developed through the four lowest natural kingdoms. It affords understanding of how seed-and egg-forming originated, which in our system has enabled the organic growth of plants and animals from those seeds and eggs. It explains everything already automatized and much of nature’s finality, a problem philosophers have vainly pondered on. “Was the first hen a hen, or was she an egg?” In this solar system she was already an egg. In the seed lies the potential for growth. It took a solar system to “produce” seeds, produce cells with all their potentials for growth so that the process could become automatic.
1Apart from primary matter all matter has consciousness. The atoms of secondary matter have only passive consciousness, which they acquire in the process of involution. Passive consciousness is activated by external vibrations, which are made up of active matter (atoms, molecules) with active consciousness and energy, affecting lower kinds of matter. If such a lower kind of matter is exclusively primary matter (rotatory matter without passive consciousness), only a matter and energy effect is obtained. If it is secondary matter (involutionary matter, robot matter with passive consciousness), then there is beside a matter effect also a consciousness and an energy effect.
2Involutionary monads live a subjective life of “endless” bliss but lack the ability to distinguish between outer and inner, lack the faculty of self-activity, lack the faculty of selfconsciousness.
3It is in secondary matter that all kinds of material forms arise; and in tertiary matter, robots of countless kinds. All evolutionary kingdoms possess active consciousness, all produce live material forms. Because even the faintest expression of consciousness has its effect in elemental matter.
4The more often atoms have undergone involutionary processes of countless kinds, the more easily they can function as perfect robots under the influence of active consciousness, assume any form whatever and act as independent beings. Elementals are of course not responsible for their doings; the responsibility falls on the evolutionary beings that formed them. Physical etheric, emotional, and mental elementals are distinguished. Many call the mental ones “thought-forms”. Their life-time is dependent on the intensity of the power that formed them. The majority has a life-time of a minute or so (the product of normal man); but there are those which have subsisted for millions of years.
5There is much in the passive consciousness of involutionary matter of which we know nothing or cannot understand without the requisite facts from the planetary hierarchy, facts that have not as yet been publicized. So much may be said, however, that the consciousness mentioned holds the explanation of the law of sowing and reaping, its mechanical and automatical work, and its infallibility.
1Involution implies the involvation of the monads to the lowest solar systemic world; evolution, their return to the highest cosmic world. They thereby acquire in the lowest world full, active self-consciousness, and later omniscience and omnipotence in ever higher worlds. Evolution thus consists in a series of ever higher natural kingdoms, ever higher stages of development. Every monad is found somewhere on this enormous scale of development; where it is found depends on its age: the moment of its introduction into the cosmos from primordial matter, and its transition from a lower to a higher natural kingdom.
2Evolution is divided into five natural kingdoms and seven divine kingdoms. The planetary worlds contain the natural kingdoms, the solar systemic worlds (43—49) the lowest divine kingdom, and the cosmic worlds (1—42) the remaining six.
3The process of evolution in the solar system is for the monad—the self to acquire consciousness in all kinds of matter from the mineral kingdom to the manifestal kingdom. The self concludes evolution in the proper sense when it leaves the human kingdom and enters into the essential kingdom. Then begins expansion, which is the continuation of evolution in the superhuman kingdoms. There the self is to acquire a share in the collective consciousness of ever higher kingdoms, identify its self-consciousness with atomic consciousness of ever higher kinds. This is done according to the law of self-realization through methodical and systematical consciousness activity and the ability to assimilate cosmic energy as well as the ever greater energy of dynamis in ever higher atomic kinds. Consciousness is acquired by participation in processes of manifestation of countless kinds, by fulfilling a function, by being an instrument for the selves in higher kingdoms, by “serving life”.
4Mankind, having up to now explored about one millionth part of reality, has in the physical world the possibility of exploring about one per cent of the whole of existence. The monad in the fifth natural kingdom can be conscious of about 10 per cent, as a divinity in the lowest, or first, divine kingdom about 14 per cent, in the second divine kingdom 28, in the third 42, in the fourth 56, in the fifth 70, in the sixth 85, and in the highest or seventh divine kingdom 100 per cent. All knowledge of existence is authoritative through the whole series of monads in ever higher worlds, until the individual will be able to acquire the necessary firsthand knowledge by his own experience.
5Before the monad has attained the highest divine kingdom, it distinguishes between god immanent and god transcendent. Immanent divinity is always conscious of its unity with all life. The superconscious is part of transcendent divinity.
6When the monad has gone through the involution and evolution of the process of manifestation, acquired and discarded its envelope in world upon world and finally in the highest cosmic world has liberated itself from involvation into matter, it will be conscious of itself as a monad. Until then it will identify itself with some one of the envelopes it has acquired and activated.
7When a sufficient number of monads have succeeded in working their way from the lowest natural kingdom up to the highest divine kingdom, this collective being is able to leave its cosmic globe in order to begin to build out a cosmic globe of its own in primordial matter, the material being primordial atoms taken from the inexhaustible store of primordial matter.
1The cosmos is made up of monads (primordial atoms) and envelopes of monads. It is these envelopes that make the consciousness development of the monads possible.
2All life has a form, from atoms, molecules, aggregates, to planets, solar systems, and cosmic worlds. These forms are subject to the law of transformation, are continually changing, dissolving, and re-forming. The monads (primordial atoms) make up (as viewed from the physical) an ascending series of ever higher forms of life, in which lower ones enter into and make up envelopes for higher ones. The entire cosmos constitutes a series of increasingly refined forms of life, serving gradually to furnish the monad consciousness with the “organ” it needs for its continuous development.
3The monads are the only indestructible things in the universe. There is no “death”, just new forms for the monad consciousness. When the form has fulfilled its temporary purpose for the consciousness development of the monad, it is dissolved.
4The different kinds of monad envelopes correspond to different kinds of consciousness (and energy).
5The higher kind of matter making up the material form, the higher kind of consciousness and the more efficient kind of energy are possible in it.
6The higher kind of matter and consciousness corresponding to it, the higher kind of material envelope for the monad.
7It is an all-pervading principle in evolution that the monad must learn to master all its envelopes with their matters and energies, so that they serve as perfectly automatized robots. Thereby the individual has self-acquired the qualities and abilities that are possible in these kinds of matter.
8The monad automatizes its envelopes by gradually exchanging molecules of lower kinds for molecules of higher kinds, so that the envelope finally contains only atoms. All this is done in an automatic consciousness process on ever higher developmental levels. The higher molecular kinds there are in the envelopes, the more the monad dominates these envelopes with the corresponding consciousness and energy.
9The material envelopes of evolutionary monads consist of involutionary matter, robot matter.
10With his physical, emotional, and mental consciousness expressions in emotional and mental matters man shapes living beings in those worlds, beings charged with the material energy that shaped them. The vibrations emitted by those robots fill up the emotional and mental worlds and are as many transmitting stations.
1Consciousness is one. The whole cosmos makes up one total consciousness in which every monad has a share after its potential consciousness has been roused to life in the process of involution. Subsequently, the monad can never lose this share, even though it can become unconscious (“sleeping”) for a short or long time when the activity of manifestation has ceased. As soon as life activity starts again, however, the monad is immediately awake.
2All consciousness is primordial atomic consciousness, the primordial atoms’ potential universal consciousness, actualized in the process of involution.
3“The life eternal” is the cosmic total consciousness, alive through the action of dynamis in every primordial atom. It is the condition of consciousness and the power that makes existence a gigantic evolution, although during immense spaces of time.
4The universal consciousness is, as it were, a sum total of the consciousness of all monads, like the ocean is the union of all water-drops. All consciousness thus by nature is both collective and individual, although the normal individual cannot grasp this, his resources being enormously limited.
5The collective consciousness is the primary one. His individual self-consciousness the individual must acquire himself in the processes of evolution and expansion ever since the mineral kingdom, which is possible thanks to his share in the collective consciousness.
6The individual consciousness is, strictly speaking, a concentration and at the same time a limitation of the collective consciousness. It is necessary, however, to the acquisition of the faculty of self-initiated consciousness activity without which the individual would be a mechanical robot. Isolated individual consciousness has its disadvantages, to which fact the actions of human beings bear witness every day. This evil is inevitable and fortunately transient, as the individual capacity is put at the service of life when the will to unity has been acquired.
7Consciousness is by nature subjective but also directly and immediately objective: determined by material reality.
8The cosmic total consciousness expresses itself in different modes in the different atomic kinds and in the different molecular kinds, depending on their different primordial atomic density.
9The conception of reality is different in the different worlds depending on differences of material density resulting in different dimension, duration, material composition, motion, and consciousness.
10There are as many different kinds of consciousness as there are kinds of matter. Each world has its own total consciousness, just as each monad envelope has its own. Each next higher world presents, as compared with each next lower world, an enormous increase, intensively as well as extensively, in respect of energy and consciousness. In each world the monad consciousness apprehends reality totally differently. This is what was originally meant by the saying that all apprehension of reality is maya, or “illusion”, since there is no common apprehension that is universally valid until in the highest cosmic world.
11In the cosmic total consciousness there is no past time either in the cosmos or in the 49 cosmic atomic worlds. The corresponding is true of the 49 different kinds of atomic consciousness which preserve the memory of all that has happened within its cosmic world.
12The cosmic “original memory” is the memory of the “ultimate selves” (the highest cosmic selves) ever since the consciousness of those primordial atoms was once actualized. The cosmic “original memory” is common to and shared by all who have acquired the highest kind of cosmic atomic consciousness. Just as individual self-consciousness must acquire all higher kinds of consciousness itself, so the “memories” of those higher kinds of consciousness become accessible only when the higher kinds of consciousness have been acquired.
13All envelope consciousnesses are simultaneously memories of what the envelopes have experienced. That is true also of the envelopes of the planet, the different worlds in the planet. All events within those envelopes with their content of atoms and their experiences have been recorded. And the highest envelope of the planet contains the memory of all events in all the lower worlds of the planet ever since the planet came into being. The highest envelope of the solar system contains the memory of all events within the seven atomic worlds of the solar system.
14Also the events of dissolved solar systems are preserved in cosmic world memories. All events within the cosmos exist in the highest cosmic world memory. When the cosmos dissolves, its memory is preserved in the primordial atoms that have attained the highest world and thereby the memory there is in the cosmic total consciousness.
15Every world, every planet, solar system, etc., thus has its own collective consciousness, and makes up a unitary collective being having one monad as its supreme dominant. The higher the kingdom attained by the monad, the greater its share in the cosmic total consciousness. When the monad has acquired planetary consciousness it is a planetary being. When, finally, it has actualized its potential universal consciousness, it has become an individual unit in cosmic omniscience and omnipotence. Until then, it will have been the furthest developed monad in that increasingly larger material envelope which it has been able to regard as its own envelope. In each world it robes itself in an envelope of the matter of that world, this envelope becoming increasingly more extended.
16The monad is indestructible individual consciousness which, being originally potential (unconscious), is roused to active consciousness in the lowest natural kingdom of the lowest world (the physical mineral kingdom) and gradually acquires consciousness in ever higher worlds. Only the coarsest matter offers sufficient resistance for the subjective monad consciousness to learn to discriminate between the opposites of inner (subjective) and outer (objective) reality, and to acquire active consciousness, which is the prerequisite of selfconsciousness in all kinds of reality. After that, the monad is able by self-activity to acquire the requisite qualities and abilities in ever higher natural kingdoms in ever higher worlds.
17Consciousness in a lower kind of matter and world does not entail consciousness in or of a higher world, which thus appears to be non-existent. All that is superior to the monad is part of its superconscious. The whole past of the monad is part of its subconscious, in new incarnations only indirectly accessible as remembrance anew in connection with experiences of similar kinds.
18For the monad, evolution does not mean only self-acquisition of ever higher kinds of consciousness, but also liberation from identification with lower kinds, which always appear to be the only knowable and certain ones, since they are the only ones experienced and known up to then.
19Just as higher matter penetrates lower matter, so higher consciousness apprehends all lower kinds of consciousness.
1The self is the consciousness of the primordial atom, the monad. All other consciousness is of the envelopes.
2By the term “monad” is meant the individual’s matter aspect; by the term “self”, the individual’s consciousness aspect.
3The self is self-consciousness, always identified with some one of its envelopes or, after essentialization, with a collective consciousness. When the monad in the highest world has liberated itself from involvation into matter, its identification with any envelope thereby ceases.
4The self cannot apprehend consciousness in a higher matter than it has itself activated. A lower consciousness cannot apprehend a higher; a higher contains also a lower.
5The self’s understanding of reality is dependent on consciousness in the monad’s envelopes and the ability of activity of that consciousness. That is an axiom.
6We cannot have any true proof of the self as a monad. We have been given to know that the self is “psychologically” the very attention and that attention is the sign of the presence of the monad in some one of its envelopes. When we experience our feelings, then the self is in the emotional envelope, and when we “think” purely mentally, the self is in the mental envelope or, expressed more correctly: the monad in the triad has its attention directed to what is happening in the emotional or mental envelope. We activate consciousness in our envelopes and in their different molecular kinds by directing our attention (“living in”) ever higher kinds of consciousness. If we direct our attention towards lower kinds, then “we live” in this lower and strengthen the power of this lower consciousness to attract attention.
7In Laurency’s writings all individuals from the highest cosmic 1-self to the 46-self, causal self, mental self, emotional self, physical self have been denoted by the term “self”.
8In international nomenclature it is probably better to use the term “monad” instead of “self”, thus: physical monad, emotional monad, mental monad, causal monad, etc.
1In the motion aspect dynamis, material energy, and will are distinguished. Dynamis is the inexhaustible, dynamic energy of primordial matter, the origin of all motion, the total energy of the universe, the source of all power; eternally active, unconscious. Dynamis is a blind force whose omnipotence appears in its power to produce primordial atoms in absolute dense and homogenous primordial matter and to afford these primordial atoms the faculty of rotation.
2Because of the “cosmic motion” all higher kinds of matter (atomic kinds, molecular kinds) are energy in relation to all lower kinds of matter. The cosmic motion is made up of currents of primary primordial atoms circulating through atoms of all kinds from the highest to the lowest and from the lowest to the highest. These primordial atomic currents issue from the highest cosmic world and have dynamis as their propulsive force.
3Will is the ability of active consciousness to make dynamis act through consciousness. The higher the kind of consciousness, the greater the efficacy.
4Energy is the very condition of any kind of activity. Energy in the higher atomic kinds forms the lower atomic kinds, makes the composition of matter possible and is the cause of the subsistence and continuous change of material forms. All development depends on the expedient assimilation of the energies of existence. Misdirected energies are the causes of all kinds of failures, all kinds of disease. Of those energies we know very little, and the same is true of our ability to use them in the right way.
5Esoterics gives us knowledge of the fundamental energies with its teaching of the 49 atomic kinds with their energy aspect. Hitherto all too great emphasis has been laid on matter and consciousness; attention has not been called to the fact that consciousness as well as matter also has an energy aspect. Esoterics asserts that the knowledge of the energies is the essential one and that without this insight all knowledge is sterile. The knowledge of the energy aspect of existence is the most important and the most neglected one.
6Astrology is based on a very simple fact: that all bodies (material globes, etc.) radiate energy received from the cosmic atomic circulation. There is a constant exchange of energies between the solar systems. Every solar system is related to certain others, and the cyclic reception of energies is intended to facilitate the ongoing process of manifestation affecting all atoms and material aggregates (thus also human material envelopes) within the solar system. The fact that also the consciousness aspect is concerned in this is understood by those who have realized the trinity of existence, which also implies that every planet forms a collective being and is a “being”.
1There has been an endless speculation on time. Time is objective as a measurer of motion, events and processes of all kinds. Physical time is determined by the rotation of the earth in relation to the surrounding stellar world and its revolution round the sun. Our day and night together make up a rotatory revolution and our year is a solar revolution.
2Many people have thought that time is subjective. That opinion is a typical product of speculation, which is due to the confusion of objective time and subjective perception of time. The perception of time is, just as any perception, objective when objectively determined by external, material reality. That is possible for man only in the physical world, since that is the only world in which he has objective consciousness. In the emotional and mental worlds the normal individual is quite unable to perceive objective time, quite unable to measure motion and change. This fact has been misunderstood to imply that those worlds do not exist objectively. Even in the physical world you can fail to notice the flight of time, if your attention is somewhere else than in the physical. Amicitia horam vincit, friendship conquers time, said the ancient Romans. Among boon companions you do not notice the flight of time. And the night of anguish is an “eternity”. In our experience there is something that makes us understand the expression “condensed eternity”.
3The fact that individuals in ever higher worlds are ever less dependent on time and space does not imply that time and space lack objective existence. Planets, solar systems, galaxies are proofs that space with all its higher worlds exists, and the processes of manifestation are proofs that time exists.
4The concept of time belongs to the motion aspect and is absent in the consciousness aspect. To consciousness there is no time but everything is an eternal present. It is motion that gives the conception of past, present, and future. In the consciousness aspect past and future meet in the present. This, too, is part of the basic concepts of esoterics, of course incomprehensible to man’s inherited reason.
5Time has no dimension. Einstein’s space-time as a fourth dimension is an imaginary construction that has no counterpart in reality.
6Rhythm in existence, or the law of periodicity, concerns all three aspects. It evinces countless different durations from fractions of a second to solar systemic periods (eons) of more than four billion years. The law of periodicity has been all too much neglected in the West but it explains phenomena of many different kinds. Rhythm is a law that science, also medical science, has every reason to study very closely, for it is of the greatest importance to hygiene, not least mental and emotional hygiene.
1The meaning of life is the consciousness development of the monads in the consciousness of ever higher material kinds of ever higher natural kingdoms. The goal of life is the omniscience and omnipotence of all monads in the whole cosmos.
2The monad develops through learning from its own experiences and reaping what it has sown in previous incarnations. Everything good and evil that the individual meets with is his own doing. Nothing can befall him that he has not himself merited. Injustice in any respect whatsoever is absolutely precluded. The saying “life is unjust” is a manner of speech of the ignorant of life and envious.
3In monads of repulsive basic tendency, development can take a wrong course, which appears already in parasitism of plants and in predacity of animals. In the lower kingdoms the monads by and large counteract development, disarranging the order of things, everything on their own responsibility. Unconscious and, to a still higher degree, conscious encroachment upon the monad’s inalienable, inviolable, divine freedom, limited by the equal right of all living beings, results in the struggle for existence and the cruelty of life.
4The fault is not with life that the individual at lower stages of development in his almost total ignorance of life makes mistakes about almost every one of the laws of nature and life.
5According to the fundamental axiom of esoterics, there are laws in everything and everything is expressive of law. Anyone who possesses knowledge of all laws in all worlds is omniscient. Omnipotence and freedom are possible only through absolutely faultless application of all the laws.
6Everything is divine for everything has been formed by the highest beings in order to enable the monads to acquire ever higher kinds of consciousness. The monads are potentially divine and will some time be actually divine. The guarantee of this is their unlosable share in the cosmic total consciousness. Nobody can be lost definitively. Everybody will reach the final goal of life sooner or later.
7The individual will be fully conscious of his potential divinity only when he has entered into unity, into the common consciousness of the essential world, and experiences that all monads are one because of their share in the total consciousness: all have the same origin and all will reach the same goal. All will, when they have entered into the fifth and higher kingdoms, live in order that the meaning of life be realized, live to help others to reach higher.
8The cosmos has been formed for the purpose that all unconscious primordial atoms (monads), which have been introduced into the cosmos and then make it up, will through the process of manifestation reach final omniscience and omnipotence. The monads cannot acquire omniscience and omnipotence without help. The whole cosmos with its involution and evolution has come about for the monads’ sake. We receive help for our development. The whole cosmos is divine, since its meaning and goal are divine. This is the basic esoteric view on existence.
1In the process of development a series of ever higher natural kingdoms from the mineral kingdom to the highest divine kingdom can be distinguished, and within these kingdoms a series of ever higher levels of development. It is entirely up to the individual himself, as soon as he has acquired self-consciousness (has reached the human kingdom), how long time he will use to reach the goal.
2
49—47 the worlds of the four lowest natural kingdoms 46_and_45 the worlds of the fifth natural kingdom the worlds of the planetary hierarchy 44 and 43 the worlds of the sixth natural kingdom 42—1 the series of six ever higher cosmic kingdoms
3There are individuals, monads, in all kingdoms, for instance mineral monads, vegetable monads, animal monads, human monads, 43-monads, 35-monads, 25-monads, 10-monads, and finally 1-monads (liberated from the involvation into matter).
4The different kinds of consciousness of the six systemic natural kingdoms and the highest kind of consciousness attainable in the different kingdoms are indicated below. The monads are always found in some one of the stated kinds; which kind depends on the level attained.
5
The mineral kingdom 49:7—49:4 The vegetable kingdom 49:7—48:7 The animal kingdom 49:7—47:7 The human kingdom 49:7—47:2 The essential kingdom 49—45 The manifestal kingdom 49—43
6The highest attainable consciousness in the natural kingdoms of the solar system
subjective consciousness objective consciousness the mineral kingdom 49:4 the vegetable kingdom 48:7 the animal kingdom 47:7 48:5 the human kingdom 47:2 48:2 the essential kingdom 45:1 45:4 the manifestal kingdom 43:1 43:4
7The monads spend seven eons in their respective natural kingdoms before they have acquired the qualities and abilities necessary to their transition to the next higher kingdom.
8The monad consciousness “sleeps” in the mineral kingdom, “dreams” in the vegetable kingdom, awakens in the animal kingdom, acquires self-consciousness in the human kingdom, and knowledge of existence in the fifth natural kingdom, subsequently to continue its consciousness evolution in the seven ever higher divine kingdoms, thereby acquiring omniscience and omnipotence in ever higher worlds.
9The planets represent the five lowest worlds and the five natural kingdoms. Of these five kingdoms, the mineral kingdom belongs to the visible physical world. The vegetable kingdom also has a share in the physical etheric world, the animal kingdom in the emotional world (improperly called the astral world), the human kingdom in the mental world, and the fifth natural kingdom in the causal world.
10When the mineral monads have succeeded in acquiring physical etheric consciousness, they pass to the vegetable kingdom. Consciousness first manifests itself as a tendency to repetition, becoming a tendency to organized habit, or “nature”. When consciousness increases, there arises a striving after adaptation.
11Vegetable monads develop by plants being devoured by animals and humans and the monads thereby being exposed to the strong emotional vibrations there are in those animal bodies.
12Vegetable monads become animal monads by acquiring emotional consciousness. When their mental consciousness is sufficiently active, the animal monads pass to the human kingdom. Man passes to the fifth natural kingdom by acquiring full consciousness in his causal envelope.
13In the mineral kingdom, a group of monads is enclosed by a common envelope, a mineral group-soul. In the vegetable kingdom the group is enclosed by a vegetable group-soul, and in the animal kingdom by an animal group-soul. In higher worlds the monad is to enrobe itself in an envelope belonging to the matter of the respective worlds. Having developed so as to acquire an envelope of its own in the causal world, the animal monad transmigrates to the human kingdom. The monad is subsequently, during the whole of its sojourn in the human kingdom, always enclosed in its causal envelope. One can say that it is the causal envelope that incarnates, embraces, and penetrates the lower envelopes. It should be evident from this that a man can never be reborn as an animal, any more than an animal can become a plant, or a plant a mineral. Transmigration cannot work backwards.
14It is by no means necessary for the monad to develop through organic envelopes. In actual fact, most monads (those following the parallel deva evolution, for instance) have never had other bodies than aggregate envelopes consisting of atoms and molecules held together electromagnetically, such as man has in all worlds except in the “visible”.
1Man is an individual, a monad, a self.
2Man is an evolutionary monad (primordial atom), involved into a triad in a causal envelope. That is the exact definition of man. Thereby it is asserted that man is an individual with self-identity through all his incarnations.
3Mankind consists of about 60 billion individuals at different stages and levels of development. Where the individual stands depends on the age of his causal envelope, the time of his transition from the animal to the human kingdom.
4When the monad (the individual, the self) has come so far in development that it is able to pass from the animal kingdom (with its group-souls) to the human kingdom, which is done in the process called causalization, then it is enclosed in a causal envelope. This causal envelope is an empty shell of mental atoms. It is the human individual’s task to fill this shell.
5The causal envelope is furnished by an individual from the deva evolution. In Pythagorean terminology he is called Augoeides. He has reached the essential stage and does not need his causal envelope but hands it over to the newly causalized individual. In that connection he engages to supervise the development of the new man.
6In the course of incarnations man has the experiences which his Augoeides considers to be the most suitable for his development but which the man himself often thinks to be the effects of an adverse fate.
7Simultaneously as the monad, the self, passes from the animal to the human kingdom it leaves its group-soul whose immense experience has been at the monad’s disposal. In its causal envelope the monad is now to acquire knowledge of the world, of life, and of the laws of life. In this envelope the individual’s consciousness is isolated from that of other individuals. The only help he receives in each new incarnation is the knowledge that tradition in his environment has gathered. By means of his envelopes of incarnation (physical, emotional, and mental) he must have his own experiences in these worlds: with physical objective consciousness in the physical world and subjective consciousness in the emotional and mental worlds.
8In theosophical literature this acquisition by the self of knowledge of the worlds of man is presented as though the self had never before been in contact with these worlds. The contradiction of this presentation is apparent from the description of the group-souls where the self is said to begin its evolution in the mineral kingdom. So much is correct that the self in its causal envelope for the first time has its own experiences and by working these up develops its various kinds of consciousness and it is through incarnations and envelopes of incarnation that the self can develop.
9The isolation of consciousness in the causal envelope is the essential difference between the experience of the self as an isolated individual and the common consciousness in groupsouls and collective beings.
10During incarnation the normal individual at mankind’s present general stage of development is as a rule objectively conscious in his organism only, subjectively conscious in his etheric, emotional, and mental envelopes, and unconscious in his causal envelope. “Visible” physical reality, comprising the three lowest physical states of aggregation (solid, liquid, and gaseous), is the only one which man knows about and which he considers to be the only one existing. He perceives his desires and feelings in his emotional envelope and his thinking in his mental envelope as subjective phenomena only, not understanding that they objectively correspond to vibrations in the kinds of matter of the respective worlds.
11When the individual has acquired objective consciousness in all his incarnation envelopes together with causal intuition and thus consciousness in his causal envelope, he passes as a causal self to the fifth natural kingdom.
12Before the monad has acquired the ability of permanent causal activity, it is after a terminated incarnation to await a new rebirth asleep in its causal envelope. Thereby the monad’s continuity of consciousness is lost and its memory of the past becomes latent until it is able to be causally conscious.
13The number of incarnations in each natural kingdom is unlimited, until the individual will have acquired the qualities and abilities requisite in the respective kingdoms, and an envelope of his own in the next higher world. It should be noted that all qualities acquired remain latent in a new incarnation if they are not developed, a thing which becomes increasingly easier, however. Usually only understanding is actual.
14In each new incarnation man thinks he is a new individual, being ignorant of his higher envelopes and the process of incarnation, ignorant of what his self is, ignorant of all his previous incarnations as a man, ever since he left the animal kingdom. You could as well say that he is ignorant of everything essential and leads a life of ignorance in the physical world, as if there were just a physical world. What conceptions of life and its meaning he then forms, if he takes an interest in that problem at all, are what his imagination has made up from the speculations of ignorance he has picked up. Thus he lives until he leaves the physical world and to his surprise finds that he is still alive, as disoriented in this new world as he actually was in the physical world, as disoriented by his erroneous conceptions of this new world as all the others in the emotional world. When later he leaves his emotional envelope and lives on in his mental envelope, he leads an absolutely subjective life of imagination in the mental world, being ignorant of the fact that he lacks any possibility of objective perception of the world he lives in, ignorant of the fact that everything he experiences as though it were objective reality are figments of his own imagination. When the ideas he has “realized” have exhausted their energy, the mental envelope dissolves and his consciousness dies down to be roused some time to a new life in the physical world in a new human organism. That is, briefly, the story of his incarnation.
15Out of the total number of 60 billion individuals, who go to form our mankind, about 40 per cent passed from the animal to the human kingdom about 21 million years ago. They still make up that part of mankind who do not think for themselves and can at best just parrot what they have been taught to say. (Parrotry is not individual thinking.) The other portion has been transferred to the planet at different turns with successively more developed clans; the last ones arrived (about 600 000 years ago) thus being the most developed. This is the explanation why there are different stages of development in mankind. These stages are actually due to the age of causal envelopes, the time of the monads’ transition from the animal kingdom. Human beings thus are no equals in developmental respect, and there is no “injustice of nature” in this fact. There should be no need for saying that all are brothers since they all share in the cosmic total consciousness as well as in the human kingdom of nature. Differences of causal age abolish no brotherhood.
16It is the task of mankind to become realizers of the intention of the solar systemic government on earth through common sense, motivated by love and activated by the energy of unity. Just as the planetary hierarchy supervises and guides the consciousness development of mankind, so mankind will some time supervise and guide mineral, vegetable, and animal consciousness; transfer mineral monads to the vegetable kingdom, vegetable monads to the animal kingdom, and prepare for the causalization of animals.
1During incarnation in the physical world, the monad in the human kingdom has a total of five envelopes at its disposal, one envelope in each of the five lowest worlds: an organism in the visible physical world, an etheric envelope in the physical etheric world, an emotional envelope in the emotional world, a mental envelope in the mental world, and a permanent causal envelope in the causal world (Platon’s world of ideas). Of these five envelopes, the four lower are renewed at each incarnation and dissolve more or less rapidly after the monad has freed itself from the organism. All envelopes except the organism are aggregate envelopes. Etheric matter encloses every cell of the organism and conveys those different functional energies which the ancients called vital force. The emotional, mental, and causal envelopes embrace and penetrate all the lower ones. They are oval in shape and extend between 35 and 45 centimetres beyond the organism, making the so-called aura. Approximately 99 per cent of the matter of these envelopes is attracted to the organism and is held together within its periphery, so that the aggregate envelopes form complete replicas of the organism.
2Man’s envelopes of incarnation are filled with matter of different molecular kinds; primary as well as secondary matter. The emotional envelope consists of six molecular kinds, the percentages of lower and higher matter indicating the stage of development attained. The envelopes are never at rest. They are pervaded by vibrations of countless kinds which activate consciousness in the various molecular kinds. Secondary matter has passive consciousness but is activated by vibrations. The level indicates which molecular consciousnesses are most easily affected. Secondary matter thus has its own consciousness and, through experiences in the process of manifestation, some sort of “knowledge” that is significant for the collective consciousness of the envelope. The envelope activity entails a constant exchange of the material content; matter thrown out is at once replaced by other matter of the same kind from the surrounding world. Primary matter in the envelopes keeps them alive through a constant exchange of atoms in the molecules. In its activity, primary matter is only material energy; secondary matter is consciousness energy as well.
3The following tabulation concerns the envelopes and worlds of man. In each world man has during incarnation an envelope of the respective matter:
49:5-7 the “visible” physical world the organism 49:2-4 the physical etheric world the etheric envelope of the organism 48:2-7 the emotional world the emotional envelope 47:4-7 the mental world the mental envelope 47:1-3 the causal world the causal envelope
4Only on our planet do the individuals of the fourth natural kingdom develop through organisms and reincarnation. On other planets development is done through aggregate envelopes, which subsist until the individual has acquired the consciousness of higher molecular kinds and the envelopes corresponding to that consciousness.
5The causal envelope is man’s one permanent envelope with the monad always enclosed within it. It is the causal envelope that incarnates. Upon the conclusion of an incarnation and dissolution of the lower envelopes the monad awaits, asleep in its causal envelope, the opportunity of a new incarnation. When man has acquired the highest causal consciousness (47:1), he enters into the fifth natural kingdom and acquires envelopes of the kinds of matter of those worlds.
6What is said of consciousness in the different molecular kinds is intended just as a general orientation and must not be defined too strictly. The boundaries between the kinds of consciousness of the different molecular kinds are not as rigid as a schematic outline might indicate. In a manner that is inconceivable to lower consciousness, the various kinds of consciousness overlap, being affected by the energy that follows thought. This is true also of causal consciousness. Any dogmatism will mislead also in that respect. Add to this the fact that consciousness in the whole cosmos is one, even though it must be divided into a series of different kinds in order to be understood by us. Consciousness makes up a continuous series of ever greater possibilities to share in the cosmic total consciousness.
1Classes are the natural order of things. The natural classes indicate different classes of age, in the human kingdom as well as in all other natural kingdoms, both lower and higher ones.
2Consciousness development appears in an immense series of levels from the lowest mineral consciousness to the highest cosmic consciousness; more correctly: in a multitude of series within each natural kingdom.
3To understand the great number of levels within each stage of development one should know that each molecular kind consists of 49 material compositions and therefore presents 49 different “nuances” of consciousness in the lower worlds. In the higher worlds these are synthesized so that the kinds of consciousness follow the kinds of matter.
4Human consciousness development during tens of thousands of incarnations presents five stages: the stages of barbarism, civilization, culture, humanity, and ideality.
5Of these stages, those of barbarism, civilization, and culture make up the emotional stage, since at these stages emotional consciousness is more important to the individual’s development than mental consciousness and the individual in his feeling, thinking, and doing is determined by emotional motives.
6The stage of civilization is also called the lower mental stage. The lower or emotionally determined mentality also comprises such phenomena as theology, philosophy, and science.
7The stage of culture can also be called the higher emotional stage or the stage of the mystic, since at this stage the individual overcomes his innate repulsion (“hatred”) and replaces it with the attractive, loving understanding of all living creatures.
8The stage of humanity is the first true mental stage where the higher mental consciousness is activated. The individual is there in his feeling, thinking, and doing determined by mental rational motives and lives in order to serve mankind, evolution, and unity.
9The stage of ideality is the stage at which the individual activates causal consciousness so that it dominates all lower consciousness.
10The primitive physical needs are the same for all. But the emotional and mental needs are, as should be obvious from what was said above, different at the different stages. It is the purpose of upbringing and education to satisfy them all.
11The basic purpose of society is to make this consciousness development possible.
12The four different, successively higher kinds of mental consciousness are: inference thinking, principle thinking, perspective thinking, and system thinking. Of these four kinds, the two former belong to the lower or emotionally determined mentality, the two latter to the higher or pure mentality.
13At the lower mental stage, mentality develops through emotionality. Mental atoms in emotional molecules are activated, in which process emotional and mental consciousness coalesce and emotionality is mentalized.
14All rational thinking uses concepts put into systems. System thinking uses systems instead of concepts, thus is a kind of thinking which summarizes everything knowable in the various systems. It constitutes the transition to intuition, which does not need mental systems but is based on them.
15“Common sense”, the higher mental consciousness, man’s foremost tool, can be used by him to achieve a contact with the causal world (the world of Platonic ideas) and to gain the control of the various kinds of consciousness in man’s four envelopes of incarnation, the only kinds that man (before he has become a causal self) can be conscious in and conscious of.
1The monad is an individual with individuality, and this in all worlds. But it also has a collective consciousness which, due to its stage of development, is actualized or activated, unconscious or conscious.
2The cosmos is a unitary cosmic collective being (a common collective consciousness). Every solar system, every planet, every world in the planet is likewise a collective being. All material aggregates are collective beings.
3There are collective beings of countless kinds from the lowest to the highest kind of matter and kind of consciousness. A basic division of collective beings can start from the 49 atomic kinds. One can also divide them according to the twelve natural kingdoms in the cosmos: six kingdoms in the cosmos outside the solar systems and six kingdoms in the solar systems: 1—7, 8—14, 15—21, 22—28, 29—35, 36—42 outside the solar systems; 43—45, 45—47, 47—49, and the three lowest ones: the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdom (also within 47—49) in the solar systems. The collective beings of the three lowest natural kingdoms are called “group-souls”. Collective beings in the proper sense, self-conscious collective beings, exist only in the fifth natural kingdom and higher kingdoms.
4It is typical of group-souls as well as collective beings that they have a common group consciousness. In groups-souls this group consciousness is unconscious and automatic. In collective beings all are fully aware of each other (to the extent they need to be so for their work in the processes of manifestation). What is essential is that the group consciousness implies a common and shared knowledge and ability. The group is a living being composed of atoms or molecules from the envelopes of all the group monads, and this being is in respect of consciousness and energy a capacity that automatically is at the monads’ disposal. What reassures us is that the limitation of individual character in respect of consciousness and energy has been eliminated in a collective capacity. There are group-souls and collective beings of countless kinds. For collective beings there is always a possibility of contact with a collective being of the next higher kind in a continuous series.
5In esoteric literature there is often mention of the “planetary logos”, which means the collective planetary consciousness. At the head of this is always an individual as a dominant, as is the case with all kinds of collective beings.
1The introduction of monads from primordial matter into the cosmos is done in groups and is divided into different departments, seven in number. This group and this original department are the basis of the so-called esoteric group the individual belongs to and always contacts anew at his reincarnation, being brought together with a family, a clan, a nation, and a race. To prevent “spiritual inbreeding”, however, the individual is sometimes to have experiences in quite different relationships, races, etc. This may be the cause of the individual’s sense of isolation, of having “come to the wrong planet”, etc. Such a dispersal is particularly frequent at the transition to a new zodiacal epoch with ensuing chaos in all respects (politically, culturally, etc.) and general lawlessness.
2When, in the course of evolution, the group eventually reaches the mental stage, the stage of humanity, contact between individuals is more and more constant and the mutual understanding ever greater until the time approaches for the common transition to the fifth natural kingdom. As causal selves they are then able to ascertain the group they belong to. In contrast, the talk about “twin-souls” is based on an illusion, a distortion by ignorance of the ancient legend about Castor and Pollux, which was a symbolic description of the partition of the causal envelope at incarnation into a greater and a lesser envelope.
1There are seven parallel evolutions and thus seven kinds of hierarchies in the planet, solar system, and cosmos. By “hierarchy” is meant a collective of monads (a collective being) that has entered into unity. They belong to the cosmic organization, working on the process of manifestation (involvation, involution, and evolution). We have received facts only about two: the planetary hierarchy (working at the consciousness aspect) and the deva hierarchy (working at the matter aspect). There are intimations as to a third hierarchy (working at the will aspect). We may assume that the others are subdivisions of these three. Speculation on them can result in nothing but misconceptions, as usual.
2These hierarchies should not be confused with what Blavatsky called “creative hierarchies”, a misnomer, rather natural kingdoms, evolutionary kingdoms, monads having the faculty of activity. By “creative” in this connection is meant the ability of consciousness activity, the ability to form elementals in involutionary matter.
1Hylozoics is the only logically tenable world view, the only one acknowledged by esoteric science. It is the conception of reality that is common to all causal selves.
2Pythagoras, then a 46-self (essential self), was the first one to present hylozoics and to formulate it into a conceptual system, a mental system of knowledge. Pythagoras, now a 44-self, is the future world-teacher after Maitreya. His intention with his formulation of hylozoics was to lay the foundation of a mental world view and life view in agreement with reality; a tenable basis for mankind to build on in its research; a basis of necessary facts.
3Hylozoics is the system that gives the most exact description possible of reality with its three aspects: the matter aspect, the motion aspect (energy aspect, will aspect), and the consciousness aspect. Hylozoics is the very basis of the conception of the three aspects of reality.
4The hylozoic system is presented in KR 1.4–41 with the reality concepts of modern science (popularized, if you like).
5Only in our time did it become possible to publicize the hylozoic system of knowledge. What the history of philosophy has told about Pythagoras and “what Pythagoras taught” thus is part of legend as are most things told in history. The history of the world we study is the opinions of historians constructed on insufficient facts as well as legends. Past events can be researched only by causal and higher selves.
6Hylozoics is the firm basis, the only basis, of any knowledge. Until this fact has been generally realized and recognized, mankind will grope in the dark and remain irremediably disoriented. The learned may then say what they like. Probably it will be a long time yet before they admit their ignorance of life and the fictitiousness of their hypotheses.
7Hylozoics affords us a vision of existence and its meaning. It liberates us from the fictionalism of theology and philosophy. It clarifies that science is limited to mere physical existence. In practical respect hylozoics prepares us for the service of life in all its forms, the striving after knowledge and wisdom, the acquisition of loving understanding of all, the realization of truly human relations.
8Hylozoics is a gift from the planetary hierarchy, from the individuals of the fifth natural kingdom. They are the only ones who have a knowledge of reality, whatever spiritualists or occultists say. No individual in the human worlds can by himself acquire knowledge of reality. If he possesses such a knowledge, then he has received it from the planetary hierarchy. If he has not received it from the hierarchy, then it is no true knowledge.
1No tenable world view and life view can be based on the short-lived hypotheses of science. That is a truth so evident that one is amazed at the shortsightedness of those philosophers who have not seen the fictitiousness of the hypothetical method: the belief in assumptions and conjectures. The facts and ideas provided by research and valid during an epoch are logically summed up in a system of orientation. Such a system can only be temporary, is not usable as the basis of a tenable view. If it is turned into a system of hidebound dogmas, development is hampered. This is what has often happened.
2Pythagorean hylozoics, being a system based on the fundamental facts about existence, can become an enduring system. According as we receive more and more facts and ideas from the researchers of the fifth natural kingdom, present-day hylozoics will be superseded by more complete systems. However expanded the new systems will be, the Pythagorean system will never lose its validity. It will always be the irreplaceable basis of the subsequent systems.
3The only service human research can render in this connection is to confirm the validity of the esoteric system by its own facts. Anyone who has seen the irremediable limitation of science will see this too. Science will never be anything else than physicalism. A world view and life view based on physicalism will always, sooner or later, demonstrate its fictitiousness.
4The constantly recurring assertion that hylozoics makes it impossible to explain nature mechanistically is false. Hylozoics views the laws of nature as fundamental. Then the question remains: What laws are laws of nature? For there are other “laws” as well. It appears that those who have criticized hylozoics have never possessed a true knowledge of it. Kant, for instance, who thought that “hylozoism would be the death of all natural philosophy”. But then it is not too strange, since hylozoics was not rightly presented until done so by Laurency. Till then it was esoteric, and the small part of it that was allowed for exoteric presentation was insufficient for any verdict. On the same grounds the hylozoism of Chrysippos was misleading.
5The basic standpoint of the hylozoic conception of reality, of the logical corrective against all fantasizing, is the fact that reality in every particular world is different from that of other worlds, that every world is real to the pertaining consciousness, that you must not explain the reality of one world by the reality of another. Reality is always what it “appears” to be and in addition something totally different.
6Pythagorean hylozoics grants us a vision of the meaning and goal of existence. In addition we have been given to know something about the great processes of manifestation. We know practically nothing, however, about the countless kinds of processes going on in the different worlds of the planet and in man’s three triads and their envelopes during the emotional eon. What occultists fantasize about these matters is nothing but abracadabra. Not even the planetary hierarchy can foresee much more than the processes within a zodiacal epoch of 2500 years. It is by no means certain that these processes lead to their precalculated results, and this appears best in the fact that the planetary hierarchy is often forced to change its plans.
1The various knowledge orders used quite different methods of presentation and of explanation. Anyone who tries to penetrate this symbolism, not having previously mastered hylozoics to completion, easily ends up in an irremediable confusion of concepts. That was the reason why, in ancient times, nobody was allowed to be a member of more than one order.
2Without the knowledge of reality, the knowledge that the West obtained through the mental system of Pythagoras, there is no possibility of comprehending the esoteric symbols such as they were imparted to the initiates of the esoteric knowledge orders, with successively new interpretations in every higher degree. The symbol of “death”, for instance, referred to the dissolution of the envelopes of incarnation, but also to the dissolution of the triads, and to reincarnation.
3Certainly everything comes from above: all worlds and their compositions, the triads (of which the lower ones contain atoms from the higher ones), all energies, all knowledge etc. It is the monad, the self, however, which by the help and guidance from above has to work itself up step by step from the lowest mineral stage. All this has been made so mystical in the occult writings that it is not easy for the uninitiated to find his way through symbolism.
4When studying traditional esoteric symbolism with its circumstantial explanations you see how much more simply, exactly, and concisely everything is presented in Pythagorean hylozoics: the monad or self with its long series of envelopes which are put off in succession according as the self has learnt to master the possibilities they provide.
5Those who have studied Leadbeater’s theosophical presentation of the teaching and compare it with hylozoics can easily convince themselves of the essential difference. Leadbeater had in one incarnation reached the third degree of the Pythagorean Order; but in a subsequent incarnation, the highest degree of the Gnostic Order. These facts explain the difference between theosophy as presented by Leadbeater and hylozoics. The two cannot be directly equated. Although they agree in most details when describing the different worlds, they quite disagree when explaining the triads and the realities pertaining to them. Thus Leadbeater calls the first triad “the permanent atoms” and the second triad “the triad”, as though there were only one triad. The third triad he calls “the monad”, which is false to facts. His mystical intimation that the monad puts something of itself down into the personality is irreconcilable with hylozoics. Also his presentation of the three aspects of reality and the three total processes of manifestation – involution, evolution, expansion – as being three different persons of the Logos (= god) must be said to be abortive. The Logos is a monad, an individual. Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva symbolize three different collective beings, not three different persons, and, above all, an individual cannot consist of three individuals.
1If the knowledge of reality were merely a working hypothesis, it would not be any true knowledge. Knowledge becomes knowledge when you have realized that it accords with reality. To those who have in previous incarnations reached the third degree of an esoteric knowledge order, the mental system of Pythagorean hylozoics is immediately self-evident. It is true that in the third degree the system was not elaborated in such detail as it was for those of still higher degrees. The essential principles were explained, however, so that they were able to comprehend the system. Add to this the fact that they were given the opportunity to experience the processes of manifestation in a graphic way similar to our modern film showing. They experienced reality in such a manner that any theoretical doubt of this reality was precluded. Thereby the knowledge was once and for all indelibly engraved in the subconscious. “Knowledge is remembrance anew” (Platon). When the esoterician contacts the knowledge in a new incarnation, his understanding of it is immediate. Thus it is no more a matter of “working hypothesis”. If understanding is not immediate, then the individual concerned has not been an initiate of the third degree.
2To scientists without experience of other worlds than the physical, hylozoics can, of course, be only a working hypothesis. Some say this is so because hypotheses are inevitable at the present stage of the development of mankind (or science). That is incorrect, however, if they mean that we have no other resources than the shortlived hypotheses of science. Because it has proved to be possible to elaborate the mental systems in such a way that it is logically cogent for those who take the pains to master the system and then by its means explain thousands of otherwise inexplicable things. The hylozoic mental system can never be refuted through new scientific discoveries; it is an incontrovertible logical system. Mankind can never reach farther than that. The system is based on the reality conception of second selves and formulated with a view to the perceptive powers of the first self. It is based on the facts of reality received from the planetary hierarchy. Such a system must finally be generally accepted by the truly intelligent people as an incomparably superior working hypothesis.
3That day will come when hylozoics will be accepted by all those who now reject it as an imaginative construction. Unless mankind, in its immeasurable folly, annihilates itself, we may look forward to that day when the process of death will be filmed and thereby the dogmas of theology, philosophy, and science go down into the slop-pail.
1It is highly desirable, as hylozoics is presented to the West, to find a terminology that is as exactly formulated as possible. Such a terminology liberates from the dependence on old, unusable, outdated, abortive terms, sayings, and vague symbolism. Anyone who has understood what the matter is about also is able to formulate the content of reality and of ideas with his own words and desist from the manner, typical of mental laziness, of quoting the ancients and so flaunt one’s erudition. As a teacher of philosophy said: “Here we do not quote but think by ourselves.” It is also a stage in the process of liberation from the credulous dependence on alleged authorities. For independent thinking it is an imperative demand not to imitate or parrot in essential things. It is a duty of all who are able to form their own independent view. This includes the ability to tell the difference between what you understand and what you just believe you understand, the latter condition being that of the majority.
1Hylozoics is the best possible knowledge system at the present stage of mankind’s development. When research has progressed so far that the present reality concepts have been superseded by still more exact ones, the system will of course be outdated. It can never be erroneous. It will always remain correct at the same stage of development with the same possibilities to perceive reality as have existed ever since Pythagoras.
2It is impossible for our modern natural researchers to find a better system than hylozoics. That is a task that would require researchers having causal consciousness. But it would not be possible to make such a system comprehensible to present-day mankind. For it presupposes the capacity to objectively study molecular motion in a continuous series of compositions and dissolutions and in so doing to obtain material forms in 18 different, ever finer, interacting molecular kinds or so-called forms of aggregation. Probably, only causal selves of the deva evolution would be able to exactly describe these processes. That side of the issue does not in the least interest the planetary hierarchy. With their higher kinds of consciousness they find other means of processing matter. They see it all from the consciousness and energy aspects, and matter is for them “une quantite negligeable”, which they recommend their pupils to leave aside. That time will come when they will be taught how to be “magicians”, that is when they have learnt to apply the laws of life without friction.
1Those who understand hylozoics at once, at the first acquaintance, have been accepted disciples of a member of the planetary hierarchy. Those who see that it is correct when they have studied it more closely have once been initiates of a genuine esoteric knowledge order (that is: one instituted by a 46-self). For all others who accept hylozoics it is a matter of belief or, at best, a working hypothesis.
2At the present stage of mankind’s development most people cannot understand hylozoics. But then most people do not need any world view and life view, in any case no tenable such view. They manage with the hypotheses of the day.
3Hylozoics need not remain a matter of belief, in any case not for those at the mental stage. True insight certainly requires remembrance anew, previous working up, also between incarnations. But also those who lack latent knowledge can reach a clear conception of hylozoics. Anyone who takes the pains to assimilate the system in order to test to what extent it explains otherwise inexplicable things will find that it can be regarded as a philosophical system. Then it is no longer a matter of belief, not even a working hypothesis but a rationally motivated conviction of a system of concepts based on facts.
4Hylozoics will remain a working hypothesis for the individual until he is able, by mastering the system, to verify hylozoics in fact and demonstrate it to be logically correct. Only then will he comprehend hylozoics.
5Hylozoics explains sufficiently much to convince logicians. It affords such a sovereign conception of reality that everything that the esoterically ignorant bring forward in that respect seems commonplace, trivial, fictive.
6Every seeker who has found the esoteric knowledge system and learnt to master it thinks this is so self-evident that everybody should realize that it is the only true one. To his astonishment he will soon find how completely he has overrated the possibility of most people to even grasp what the matter is about. They accept only what has been crammed into them, not even being able to answer the question, “Is it true or not?”. A thing so radically different from everything else must be a hoax, they think. If in addition it is ridiculed by the authorities of the day, their opinion is confirmed.
7It will take some time yet before philosophers and scientists at large have acquired the preconditions of understanding how hylozoics agrees with reality, understanding how it explains in a unique manner thousands of facts inexplicable by philosophy and science.
8Still hylozoics is only for those old initiates who have incarnated in our time. They are still very few, but they will be much more numerous in the new zodiacal epoch. When the new Aquarian vibrations make themselves felt, it will be worthwhile for them to be reborn in order to continue their interrupted consciousness development.
1Hylozoics is a theoretical world view, a system of esoteric facts that explains the nature of existence. It affords a firm basis for future addition, an unshakable groundwork and a definitive solution of the fundamental problems of reality and life. That is why we have received hylozoics: to be liberated from all superphysical problems in science, philosophy, and theology, all kind of speculation in those respects. We need not wander in the dark any more. We can devote our lives to solving the problems of daily life individually and in our dealings with others; learn to apply the law of freedom, the law of unity, the law of selfrealization, and the law of independent thinking.
2Most students of hylozoics seem to think that the very study is enough. The riddle of the universe is solved, and then you can settle down to a quiet life and return to your old tracks. Of course you can. But then you should not expect in future incarnations to reach understanding of anything beyond the possibilities of the first self. There are many mental geniuses to whom everything higher is something ridiculous and absurd. A study of the opportunity they once had would explain their blindness.
3Esoteric knowledge is no human speculation. It is a gift from the planetary hierarchy. If you do not wish to use it for your development, then you have made your choice for many future incarnations, perhaps for the rest of the current eon. “Knowledge is power.” There exists knowledge which is dynamite, dangerous things to handle for the ignorant. Many people have been made cripples in such experiments. History affords examples of entire nations which have taken that course.
4What is the use of the most exact world view if people will not do everything to realize the meaning of life, to live in order to serve evolution, mankind, and unity, but go on in madness? When all live for all, paradise will be realized on our planet. Then there will be an end to all conflicts and all material want.
1Esoterics divides the history of the planet into zodiacal epochs of some 2500 years each. Every new zodiacal epoch brings with it other kinds of energies than the previous ones, energies from another constellation. The last 2500 years have constituted the Piscean zodiacal epoch and have simultaneously been the epoch of the sixth department. This information is valuable for those who are interested in esoteric astrology and departments. It explains much of the history of that epoch, an age of horror, the rule of barbarism with clans at the barbaric stage in incarnation.
2New energies, Aquarian energies, pour into our planet since the year 1950. They have a destructive effect on everything standing in the way of a necessary reconstruction and restoration of what is viable in the old. The emotional and mental chaos we experience in our time is directly due to this transition from the Piscean to the Aquarian zodiacal epoch.
3Each such transition brings about a revolution in nature as well as in all human spheres, a total upheaval in the ruling ways of thinking. The old accepted world views and life views then prove deficient by their inability to assert themselves against the assaults of acute criticism. Thereupon follow eventually a new world view and life view formulated on the basis of the learning of the time. When the knowledge of reality then increases, even those new views will prove untenable.
4So it has progressed through the ages. The radically new in our time is that, for the first time, individuals of the fifth natural kingdom, the only ones to possess the knowledge of reality, have presented the public with part of their knowledge.
5The revolutions and diverse revolts of our time are signs that a general awakening is taking place. Men become (certainly still dazed and half asleep) aware of their human dignity and, instinctively groping towards recognition of the brotherhood of all, demand the right to be themselves in their individual character.
6Whereas those at higher stages only demand freedom within the limits of the equal right of all, those at lower stages take freedom, about which there is so much talk, as the right of unrestricted self-will. There are risks to letting loose the beast in man. The authorities of reaping also make use of the opportunity during revolutionary epochs “to square old debts” in various respects, individually as well as collectively. It is obvious, too, that the black lodge does not miss the opportunity to produce chaos. They know that this is their last chance, for when universal brotherhood has been realized at last, they will have very small prospects of counteracting development. It is a struggle of life and death for mankind waged between the white and black “spiritual powers”.
7Every race (root-race, sub-race, branch-race) has its mission to fulfil in consciousness development, even though they have hitherto failed, to their own detriment. Also a race is a “spiritual” phenomenon. Everything that contributes to the continuance of society, makes science and technology possible, is “spiritual” work. States as well as communities are necessary to consciousness development, and the nations of the future will cooperate to promote development. Everything that counteracts unity, causing division, is proof of life ignorance. We are all one and must sooner or later realize unity. Unity is the basis of consciousness, the condition of the realization of the meaning of life. This is what the planetary hierarchy has always proclaimed through its members—the one true religion, the religion of wisdom and love, the religion of common sense, which has always been distorted in the various historical religions, the products of the black lodge.
1To a thinking man life appears to be a physical existence afflicted with pain and disease, in addition emotional suffering and mental darkness. No wonder that man seeks an explanation of the meaning of life.
2All theological or scientific explanations of reality and life presented hitherto have sooner or later proved their logical insufficiency. In that respect you must agree with the agnostic who doubts that man is able to solve the problem of existence.
3There is, however, an immensely old so-called esoteric explanation (often distorted and misinterpreted by ignorance), which has proved its logical tenability and cannot be refuted, and that is the teaching of reincarnation. What you could demand of the individual is that he, before he gives way to skepticism, makes the effort (for effort it is) to examine that teaching. It affords sensible explanations of innumerable otherwise inexplicable facts of life, which everybody can discover for himself when he has once mastered Pythagorean hylozoics.
4There are so many problems of culture that cannot be solved right without esoterics. But it will probably be long before the so-called cultural elite sees the truth of this. Our so-called cultural radicals believe everything will be better if you just make it different. But it may happen that the last error is worse than the first. The first error has the advantage that it is based on some kind of experience. The opinions of radicals are only based on haphazard assumptions and have never been tested in experience. However, experience is the only firm basis. The esoterician knows what he is speaking about because the new brainwaves are not new. They have proved their inviability in ancient civilizations of which the normal individual knows nothing.
5A primitive mankind cannot realize ideals at once. This is a fact that idealist reformers have never been able to grasp. An ideal state presupposes ideal people. It is people who make up and support society. If people are egoists, then all attempts at ideality are turned into their direct opposites, a truth demonstrated by the Soviet Union and all the other dictatorships. It is no use trying to explain this to fanatics, however. They believe in their ideas blindly. What is lacking is the psychological understanding of the possibilities of mankind. Psychology is still found at the lowest experimental stage. Consciousness is an aspect of existence that has been incredibly neglected by the learned.
6The most serious lack of understanding of life, however, is the ignorance of the laws of life, the one and only tenable basis of a conception of right. It is typical of mankind’s general stage of development that the very concept of law of life is totally strange to philosophers as well as theologians, not to mention moralists. Small wonder then that such a chaos prevails in the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong also in the legal code and the general conception of right in civilized states. They have not even seen that law is the condition of freedom, that without law there can be no freedom. They should be able to grasp that lawlessness results in chaos and a condition where right cannot prevail. Only law is right. There must be law. Without law there is no ordered process, no development.
7A contribution to pragmatism: “The opportune is the legitimate. The criterion that our thoughts are right is that they are successful (the businessman’s philosophy); that their success is due to the majority (the logic of democracy); that this success is preordained (the dogmatism of Calvinism); that something is true because it suits me (the metaphysics of most people).”
8It is characteristic of the lack of culture still prevailing that the majority of literary writers, who should be guides for mankind, instead either mislead people through false promises or drag them down into the swamp of base emotionality or strengthen the ruling illusions and fictions. Still they seek to establish the seemingly ineradicable psychological superstition that falling in love is the same as enduring love; that serious mistake which is the ground of most unhappy or at least ill-matched marriages. How many enter into the married state in order to make their partners happy, or for a concerted mission in life or in order to help one another to develop emotionally and mentally— Instead, the ignorant of life are confirmed in their idiocy that sexuality is the essential thing.
1As regards the term “subjectivism” you must be clear about the difference between philosophical subjectivism (in India: Advaita), which denies the existence of matter, considering it to be illusion, and esoteric subjectivism, which is aware of the three aspects of existence—matter, consciousness, motion — but deliberately views everything from the angle of consciousness, which facilitates the acquisition of intuition.
2They have made a great feature of Kierkegaard’s slogan, “the subjective is the truth”. But that is nothing more than what also sophists Protagoras and Kant said to make themselves important (“reality conforms to our concepts”) and our modern art and culture proclaim: arbitrariness is truth, lawlessness is right, I am god and I do what I want. Kant and Nietzsche ended up in the night of insanity, which to be sure was the logical consequence.
3Whether you say like the poet that life is a dream or like the philosopher that it is a logical construction, it is all the same. In both cases you are out of contact with reality.
4Without the world view as your basis your life view “is in the air”. In order to say how it should be you must first know how it is. The absence of a tenable world view has always been the weakness of every theology and moral doctrine. You cannot speak of “god” or of a “life hereafter” without having a basis of reality to start from. Moreover, it conflicts with the first law of thought: assume nothing without sufficient grounds. What an immense amount of balderdash we would have been spared if that law had been observed.
5In his book The Forces of the Soul Walter Rathenau (just as so many others) tried acutely and profoundly to demonstrate the existence of the soul through its expressions in man’s life of consciousness. However, something substantial, objective is required to obtain the unshakable, firm basis.
6Semantics is a typical modern phenomenon, subjectivism in its most extreme form. The gross physical disregarded, mankind lacks knowledge of reality but has always used imaginative constructions (fictions), words that have no counterparts in reality. This they are beginning to discover. And so our alleged knowledge is just words devoid of meaning. No wonder that semantics and zen Buddhism have found one another in a mental chaos. “It is better to become a stonemason and woodcutter and start handling realities and things you can grasp, physical objects the existence of which you can ascertain. What cannot be ascertained by everybody is hallucination and does not exist.” The fact remains that there are in man organs for the perception of other things than mere dense physical reality, organs for the perception of different kinds of “superphysical” reality. When in the future these organs are more generally activated and vitalized, then also subjectivism will be refuted definitively.
1According to an old philosophical as well as theological notion there are two worlds: the world of senses and the spiritual world, the phainomenon and noumenon of the Greeks. These two worlds are the only ones that exist for the religious, “spiritually minded” man, and they make up his universe.
2The clairvoyants find that this assumption agrees with reality. With their clairvoyance they are able to observe material phenomena in the spiritual world. There are no higher worlds for them. Many clairvoyants call the spiritual world “the cosmos”, and the consciousness of the spiritual world “cosmic consciousness”, exceedingly erroneous, misleading terms. Also the spiritualists keep to these two worlds. The spiritualists know about the spiritual world what the spirits have told them through mediums.
3It is important to always keep this mind in order to understand the possibilities of these two categories to grasp esoterics. The clairvoyants in particular are certain that what they cannot see does not exist. Such was the belief of Swedenborg, Steiner, Martinus and all the rest. Such is the belief of the Rosicrucian sect AMORC: they speak of physical consciousness and cosmic consciousness, the two kinds they know of.
4According to esoterics, their “world of senses” is the physical world and their “spiritual world” is the emotional world; the “cosmic consciousness” of clairvoyants is objective consciousness in the emotional world. These two worlds are the only ones accessible to human objective consciousness. Steiner did not get any farther than that and the yogis do not either; then they may have their subjective notions of nirvana, etc.
5The mental world as well as the causal world are objectively accessible only to disciples of the planetary hierarchy. In order to perceive those worlds objectively the disciple at the mental stage must be specially trained by a teacher from the planetary hierarchy.
6No self-taught seer (clairvoyant) is able to state where the limit is to his perception of reality or whether his observation agrees with enduring reality.
7The value of the speculations of theologians, philosophers, and scientists should be clear to all esoterically oriented people. But even less reliable are the speculations that are supplied in the emotional world by self-appointed all-knowers and that are generally accepted by countless occultists as higher revelations. In the physical world there is at least the possibility for all to collectively ascertain physical facts. That possibility does not exist in the emotional world, since anybody can there imagine anything whatever and then ascertain that his imaginings are objective, material things and take them to be enduring objective facts. According to the planetary hierarchy, everything in the emotional world is mere illusion (“lies”) and the knowledge to be obtained there is of the same kind. These are the possibilities of mankind to explore. Mankind remains ignorant of reality and life until some time during its further consciousness development and by the aid of the fifth natural kingdom it will be able to acquire consciousness in the causal world.
1Historians of philosophy use to call pre-Sokratean philosophy “the first attempts at thinking”. Still they have not grasped that pre-Sokratean and Platonic philosophy was of necessity preceded by thousands of years of mental work. That many revolutionary ideas do not appear that suddenly. Moreover, the pre-Sokratean ideas have not yet been rightly grasped by the philosophers, which indeed is impossible without esoterics. Especially the terms “earth, water, air, fire” are meaningless if they are not understood to refer to the four lowest molecular kinds, or states of aggregation. It should be added that the speculation of the exoterists started only after Pythagoras.
2You must be very ignorant of philosophy and esoterics, if you think that philosophy affords the possibility of understanding esoterics. Philosophy is physicalism just as science, and much-vaunted “metaphysics” is nothing but imaginative constructions without connection with reality.
3Anyone who has not realized that philosophy is fictionalism is recommended to study a philosophical dictionary where each philosopher presents his own opinions. That study will demonstrate to him that there are no two independent thinkers who have had the same conception. (The many dependent parrots can be left out of account.) Thus philosophy lacks a common basis, a basis acceptable to all. In that case you really could speak about subjectivism. But the knowledge of reality (hylozoics) is one and only one, and is shared by all who have become causal selves.
4The philosophers are unable to achieve a common, definitive result: a world view. That fact should, if anything, demonstrate that human reason is unable to solve the problems of reality. Our reason is limited to mere criticism of the philosophers’ achievements.
5The expression “on that point the learned disagree” should be taken to mean that the problem has not yet been solved or is considered insoluble. That could be said of all the chief problems of philosophy about which the majority have and will always have divergent opinions. The Uppsala philosophers Hedvall, Hagerstrom, and Phalen were true physicalists, which means that they like Kant considered any talk about superphysical reality an unwarranted assumption. Only reality that all could ascertain was logically inevitable. Thus for instance they considered the pragmatic view of Poincare and others to be philosophically unwarranted. Even absurdities have been defended by the pragmatic method. The human intellect cannot solve the basic problems of philosophy.
6Like science, philosophy is quite unable to afford us a tenable world view. A scientific world view will never be anything more than a hypothesis. The only possible task of philosophy is to be what it was from the beginning, the search for wisdom. That means: no hidebound view but instead never-ending criticism of all attempts at world view, of constantly expanded learning. If it tries to be something else, it neglects its proper work.
7The critic subjects his standpoint to constantly renewed criticism and never considers his verdict final. Above all, he is independent of the verdicts of others.
8European philosophy is a product of life ignorance. It is the result of 2500 years of speculation with reality concepts which the philosophers misunderstood after they took them over from Pythagoras and Platon, who originally received them from the planetary hierarchy. The philosophers have been totally ignorant of the fact that there is a fifth kingdom in nature and that the common reality ideas (causal ideas) of this kingdom were the basis of the teaching on reality of those two pioneers.
9An esoterician knows that no one in the fourth natural kingdom is able to solve the “riddle of the universe”. How would man be able to without objective consciousness and the possibility to explore at least the causal world? Man is a first self. As such, he is ignorant of life and unable to solve the problems of life. Only the second self is able to do that.
1So-called semantics is no philosophy, which tries to solve the basic problems of philosophy, but it is a new imaginative speculation, which leads its practisers astray. Western esoterics starts from the Pythagorean conception of reality (hylozoics). This was also the basis of the scientific concepts that have been common to all natural research. Semantics strives to supplant these reality concepts with fictional concepts influenced by findings in modern socalled nuclear research.
2The mathematical sciences treat the quantitative relations of the matter aspect and motion aspect and use symbolic formulas more and more. Thereby the conceptual analysts are hindered, at least on this domain, from their unsuccessful attempts at supplanting traditional reality concepts by fictions. Also the attempts made by modern logicians to quantify logic will prove abortive. Logic has reference to quality and is dependent on exactly defined reality concepts. These can be dropped when mankind will some time have acquired causal objective consciousness (causal intuition) and is able to ascertain the corresponding realities graphically. Then everybody will know what he is speaking about and everybody will speak of nothing but reality.
3The conceptual analysts are at best only able to ascertain that human concepts are untenable. They are untenable since constructed by individuals ignorant of reality. They are thoroughly mistaken, however, if they believe they think in accord with reality when using concepts they have constructed themselves. True concepts we are able to formulate only if we receive the requisite ideas and facts from the planetary hierarchy. The inevitable fiasco of semantics will contribute to the realization that conceptual analysts are unable to find the true concepts. Their formulation will be the task of the esotericians some time when philosophers and scientists have once seen that hylozoics is the only tenable working hypothesis.
1Before we received esoterics from the planetary hierarchy, the exoteric doctrine of the yoga philosophy was the most viable. It does not afford knowledge of reality, however, and it is highly unsuited to Westerners. Regrettably, on account of the yoga propaganda of ignorance it has got a foothold in the West and has thus become one more obstacle to a true life view.
2The assertions of the yogis that they know are untenable, which also the esoterician-inbecoming soon sees. Without question the yogis are immensely superior to all theologians, psychologists, and mystics of the West. However, they lack that fundamental basis in reality which only hylozoics with the three aspects of reality can afford.
3The talk of Indian philosophers about the unreality of matter, bodies, worlds can just seem illogical and absurd to a Western conception of reality. The fact that certain kinds of consciousness do not perceive those realities or regard them as unimportant does not warrant calling them “unreal”. Everything that exists to some kind of consciousness must be regarded as reality. Every world has its own conception of reality corresponding to it and thus is objective reality.
4The talk of Indian philosophers about illusion in reference to material reality may very well have deterred many Westerners from studying Indian philosophy, giving them occasion to assume that such a conception bears witness to a deficient understanding of life and, consequently, is nothing to take an interest in.
1The fundamental importance of Western science lies in its ideal demand of understanding why, with facts for everything. It is obvious that this demand can be satisfied only exceptionally at the present stage of mankind’s development. Still, the demand remains a guiding principle for continued research. It is a reaction that set in as life ignorance had assumed all manner of brainwaves in history, theology, and philosophy.
2The learned are often chock-full of facts like encyclopaedias, but not many of them are able to put new facts in their correct contexts. Every discipline touches on several others in various respects, and these points of contact are often important to all the disciplines concerned. As specialization increases, however, the prospects of synthesis and overview are reduced.
3Much esoteric knowledge has already entered into both the scientific and the general learning, whereas people do not in the least know where that knowledge has come from. It is ascribed to science, of course. If researchers knew whence they had got the ideas that made most of their discoveries possible, then they would not so blindly overrate the merits of science.
4Medicine men begin to see that the experience of previous generations contains much that should be saved from oblivion, that not everything is superstition merely because it is ancient. When science then appropriates it, it is scientific all of a sudden. Well, you must be an esoterician to see what science is able to do and know.
5How far from true knowledge science still is appears from the fact that two esoteric axioms — matter is light and energy is sound — must seem absurd to science. And that is best, for mankind is not yet ripe to rightly utilize these two revolutionary findings. Real atomic (49:1) fission will be possible only when they have discovered that sound is energy, when a science of sound is obtained. A small beginning can be made by the study of the effect of colours on plants, animals, and men as a preliminary to the acquisition of etheric vision (49:4).
6Science makes attempt at “dissolving matter into energy”: dissolving lower kinds of matter into higher kinds, in which process energy is set free. Science does not seem to realize, however, that also the reverse method, the “conversion” of energy into matter, is possible. Science should have learnt from its own history that the greatest obstacle to scientific progress is the adherence to hypotheses once formulated, and that this adherence largely prevents science from making new discoveries. It will probably be long yet before science admits (can realize) that no hypothesis is a definitive explanation.
7If scientists were not so blinded by their own theories, they would see that science, more than anything, proves their life ignorance to them. The more they discover, the more remains to be discovered, a scientific paradox for the “uninitiated”.
1As for psychology, Westerners are ten thousand years behind Indians (educated Brahmins). Only in the 18th century was there an awakening interest in psychological phenomena, and since then research has not progressed very rapidly. Still Western psychologists lack the prerequisites of understanding Patanjali’s orienting analysis of the consciousness aspect.
2It is essential for esoteric psychology to see the limits to the consciousness of the different envelopes and the characteristics of each kind of envelope consciousness. Without this knowledge man lacks the most elementary prerequisites of grasping the everyday phenomena of his own so-called mind, not to say understanding the consciousness aspect of existence.
3Esoterics, explaining evolution, psychological (the evolution of consciousness) as well as biological evolution, and presenting the great number of evolutionary levels through all the natural kingdoms from the mineral to the highest cosmic kingdom, puts a definitive end to the life-ignorant belief in the equality of all. It is beyond comprehension that people believe that, with the right opportunities, any individual could have become a Platon, a Michelangelo, a Newton, a Rembrandt, a Mozart. There would have been crowds of such geniuses, for many have had similar opportunities.
4When a Kretschmer comes up with a categorization of psychic disease or a Freud puts forward a theory of subconscious and superego, then thousands of researchers pounce upon the products of their brainwaves as though they were great scientific discoveries. But when an esoterician offers a psychology that can really explain things, then this is “no science”, and such things they do not condescend to examine. If someone nevertheless makes an attempt, this just results in superficial opinions based on a total misunderstanding of the esoteric terminology. Only time can effect an improvement. After a few hundred years the mistake is acknowledged. Truth is condemned before examination is begun. It is only a matter of finding apposite arguments and construct the discovery. The history of science abounds with such instances. But this truth they do not see or do not want to see and admit. At any event they refuse to learn from it. It is always hopeless to fight dogmatism in theology, philosophy, or science, the authority of the first self.
1The history of the world is the story of mankind at the stages of barbarism and civilization, in the regions of repulsive energies. It is by and large the story of human ignorance, folly, and delusion: the history of illusions and fictions. The entire history is one single lamentation, drowned in Te Deums and songs of praise to the “heroes fallen in the fields of honour”.
2We should have learnt to see that hatred has ruled between men. But as it is written: “Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not?” What we can learn from history is how we should not think, feel, say, and do. It is valuable in so far as he knows what is good who knows what is evil.
3Apart from the history of ideas and the history of culture, history has been onesided military and diplomatic history, has omitted the other factors there are in the historical process. The result is parody of history.
4The history of religion is part of history and must not be separated from this, since religion has been an essential factor also in political life and has often determined the motives of the acting persons.
5True history is a unity of countless factors. This true history is still unwritten. It exists in the archives of the planetary hierarchy and is something quite different from our so-called universal history.
1Politics is part of the problems of world view whenever politicians demand to decide what people should think. Therefore this should be said.
2Democracy proclaims that all men are “equal”, are at the same stage of development, are equally competent to comprehend and understand reality. This belief in equality is the gravest of all human errors. Those who are the most ignorant of life and the least understanding thereby believe they are able to judge everything. That folly could be called the ineradicable part of the idiology of democracy.
3It is a serious error to confuse universal brotherhood with democracy. Universal brotherhood concerns the mutual relations of individuals. Democracy is a political system that puts power into the hands of life-ignorant leaders. It is a system that inevitably entails demagogy.
4Socialists and communists are blinded by an ideal theory. They have never understood that ideals can be realized only when mankind or, at any event, a decisive minority has reached the stage of ideality, become ideal men. The condition of this is that the unselfish common spirit has become normative for thought and action. This spirit means that you do not demand more from life than what is necessary to fulfil your duties, that you are glad to forgo everything that is not necessary to life. At mankind’s present stage of development, where the spirit of both individual and collective self-sacrifice is lacking, socialist and communist systems must demonstrate their untenability. For instance, communist regimes must introduce private profit for industrialists and workers in order to raise the standard of living for the people.
5What was the outcome of ideal communism in the Soviet Union? The prohibition of all other thoughts than those decreed by the temporary rulers. An efficient spy and police tyranny. Concentration camps where millions of people perished every year. An upper class whose members did not have fixed salaries but just requisitioned whatever they wanted. A working class of slaves. What an ideal society!
6You must be as helplessly life-ignorant as a man to believe in social idiologies of any kind. Still they have not reached the essential insight that it is not a matter of the “right doctrine”, but of the “right life”, life in accordance with the laws of life, the laws of freedom, unity, development, etc. If freedom and unity cannot be combined as two sides of the same thing, then every social system will be abortive. The question is whether mankind is ripe for such insights.
1That old saw, “We do not learn for school but for life”, quite simply is not true. Apart from certain skills (reading, writing, arithmetics, languages) most people do not find any use for what has been crammed into them. In most cases it would have sufficed to give them a general introduction to the various scientific disciplines without any study of details. The school has never afforded a rational world view and life view. The teachers themselves did not have one. The guesswork of the philosophers cannot help either, just shows that they did not grasp anything of reality, and so such study merely aggravates the pupils’ uncertainty and sense of absurdity.
2Most people remain forever dependent on the world view and life view drummed into their receptive brains in childhood and at school. Exceptionally some few are roused to examine for themselves and to rethink (for such work must always rouse them to think in new tracks). And this process must go on as long as there can be divergent opinions on objective matters, which there will be until all have entered into the causal world and are able to ascertain facts for themselves in the three worlds of man.
3Anyone who obeys the laws of the land in a free country leads a purposive life, and that can be considered sufficient for those at the stage of civilization. As a teacher the lawyer may well replace the priest. Beyond that, the purpose of the school should be to teach the young what they need to live in the physical world as useful members of the community. In contrast, it is not the purpose of the school to teach any sort of life view. Those now existing can just have a disorienting effect. If the school has taught you how to think for yourselves, then anyone who needs a life view or world view will find one corresponding to his level of perception. Such a view should be self-acquired.
4University education may be useful if it trains you how to think logically, systematically, methodically. Regrettably, it still all too easily fosters young people to parrot and accept the prevalent dogmas in most disciplines. It is true they say “as research now stands”, which amounts to an indirect acknowledgement of the principle of development. In practice, however, that does not prevent them from accepting the prevalent fictions as definitive facts to start from. All too often university graduates have an excessive faith in the usefulness of the opinions they have assimilated. All too often they seem dogmatic and onesided.
5Most of what university and other education imparts is useless and an unnecessary burden; often it is erroneous. The present author would have saved an enormous amount of time, would have acquired more, and more useful learning, on his own. Everything that an intelligent person needs to know what a certain discipline contains is in an introductory book and, possibly, in short introductory courses. The usefulness of university education is enormously overrated. Self-education is more valuable.
6It is highly desirable that an esoteric school for children of esotericians be established. It would teach esoteric world view and life view instead of the prevalent disorienting dogmatism. Such a school would give children quite a better start in life. It is also important to watch over the children’s company so that they do not get unsuitable (brutalizing) friends.
1The so-called educated people may be divided into two categories: those who deny the existence of superphysical reality, thinking that the physical world is the only one there is, and those who know that there is a superphysical reality, superphysical material worlds. That is the essential and decisive issue. Whether you then as a “cultured person” are an “atheist” or a “religious person” or a “humanist” is quite irrelevant. Either there is a superphysical reality so that consciousness development can continue after so-called death, or there is no such reality: that is the point. There is no harm in having clear ideas, so that you need not mix up unessentials with essentials.
2In so far as theologians, philosophers, and scientists are not physicalists they are fictionalists. The same may be said of those who are ignorant of the existence of the worlds of man, worlds 47–49, of the fact that man is a monad in a triad in a causal envelope.
3It is typical of the confusion of ideas and life ignorance of so-called intellectuals that they consider all discussion of superphysical reality as anti-intellectual. This emotional attitude is understandable. In the past they have had more than enough of theology and other kinds of superstition and more than enough of victims to such unreason. In our time they have seen more than enough of all manner of imaginary and senseless brainwaves. They keep to the results of scientific research and reject everything that is not “scientific”. That is a new kind of dogmatism, a priori denying all the obvious proofs of superphysical reality. They do not see that they make the same error in thought as dogmatism has always made, that it is the same kind of emotional thinking, however critical they believe they are.
4To Schopenhauer life appeared cruel and meaningless. It must so appear to every thinking man who is a physicalist, that is to say: who starts from the assumption that the physical world is the only reality and man the end product of evolution. The pertaining idiologies will never be able to afford a satisfactory explanation of reality or of the three aspects of existence. They assume nothing but illusions and fictions in the matter of everything beyond the mere physical. Besides, they can seldom tell whether it is physical or superphysical.
5Physicalists are not in a position to solve superphysical problems, since they lack superphysical faculties. That is a fact they do not seem to have realized yet.
6In our time computers replace human thinking to an increasing extent. This just shows that man is a physicalist and that human thinking keeps within the limits of physical existence. So far the machine is reliable, since it exactly reproduces whatever has been put into it, only physical data ascertained. Man is no machine, however, even if the majority are content to be machines. Beside physical energies man has emotional, mental, and causal energies at his disposal, and those energies are beyond the capacity of the computer.
7To an esoterician it is quite obvious that because of its theory of knowledge, physicalism must end up in skepticism. Also subjectivism is a form of physicalism, since it starts from the assumption that thinking is a mere brain-product, being ignorant of the existence of superphysical envelopes.
8The greatest difficulty for the physicalist is the idea of invisible worlds. To him all existence must be objectively perceptible to everybody, be susceptible of scientific exploration. Whatever is not visible physical matter does not exist for him.
9The world view of a philosopher is and remains physicalism. Farther than that he cannot reach. Superphysical reality remains inaccessible to him. Ennobling his emotionality and reason he may come up to the understanding of the ideas of humanism (universal brotherhood, etc.), ideas that belong to his subjective life view and bear witness to the fact that he is approaching the stage of the mystic.
10In this connection it should be pointed out that so-called surrealist art has nothing to do with any reality. Besides, there is no “super”-reality.
11Physicalists consider that the physical world is the only world existing and physical life the only form of life existing. They may certainly believe so. A time will come in some future incarnation when their instinct of life (the first manifestation of latent experiences) makes itself felt and they are not so sure of their ground. It may be that, before then, they have become able to photograph the process of death and to observe how the etheric envelope is released from the organism and the emotional envelope is released from the etheric envelope. People possessed of both etheric and emotional objective consciousness are still too few in numbers for their testimonies to affect the doubtful majority. As long as both subjective and objective consciousness exists, most people will be convinced only when their own objective consciousness ascertains facts. In that respect, the history of superstition has had a deterring effect. Still, most people trust the reliability of mental fictions and believe in the capacity of reason to decide what is true and false. That day will come when that conviction too will be proved fictitious.
12When you consider the great multitude of thought systems composed of very few facts and mostly assumptions, suppositions, and guess-work, systems in theology, philosophy, and science that have been accepted by large and small collectives; and when you consider how difficult most people find it to liberate themselves from thought systems they have once learnt; then you see what a revolution in thought is required to sweep away all those follies.
13Revolutionizing discoveries are impending, which will overthrow the conception of reality of theologians, philosophers, and scientists. Then the Pythagorean hylozoic mental system will be the salvation from mental chaos. Until then, hylozoics will be accepted only by those who have obtained this knowledge in a previous incarnation.
1During the second century of the current era some 70 gnostic sects came into existence. Everyone of them had its own conception of truth, a different teaching about truth, but all preached the one and only truth. In the new epoch we live in, when all idiologies, old and modern, prove untenable and all are seeking desperately for something firm for emotion or reason to keep to, we witness something similar to what happened during the gnostic epoch: a great number of occult sects appear. Self-deception is inevitable and ineradicable.
2These sects will disappear, however, when causal selves have incarnated in sufficient numbers, causal selves whose mutually agreeing and superior conception of reality and pioneering contributions will demonstrate their capacity. Until then, the few who cannot of themselves decide which teaching agrees with reality will adhere to some religious, philosophical, scientific, occult view. In their next incarnation they will have an opportunity to relearn. Anyone who cannot by himself determine the reality content of the various systems of thought does not need the true esoteric knowledge, since he is unable to use it for his consciousness development in a purposeful, lawful manner.
3Only essential selves obtain permission from the planetary hierarchy to institute new knowledge orders. The old orders were closed by the hierarchy in 1875. No new orders will be permitted for institution until the year 2200.
4Knowledge orders instituted by the planetary hierarchy must not be confused with the occult orders that exist in our times and proselytize more or less openly. What is taught in such occult orders or sects and thus proclaimed as “secret” is not esoteric any more, since Pythagorean hylozoics, containing as much knowledge of reality as mankind at its present stage of development can grasp, has been made exoteric. Therefore, occult orders serve no useful purpose.
5Human consciousness development is a slow jog-trot through millions of years. It is possible for individuals, however, to hasten ahead of the general evolution. Those who do so and could be guides, pioneers, meet with little appreciation by the backward majority and largely become martyrs to their attempts at helping them.
1It is important to tell theology and religion apart, and also to distinguish ideal religion from the various forms of religion. Theology is conceptual thinking about religious ideas. In contrast, religion is the emotional experience of a reality that is inaccessible to human (first self’s) concepts. In actual fact, that reality is fully understandable only to essential consciousness, which clarifies all phenomena of human consciousness.
2Two basic ideal religions can be distinguished. The one, belonging to the emotional stage, is intended to ennoble emotionality, raise people who are at lower emotional stage, where repulsion (hatred) dominates, to the higher emotional stage, the stage of attraction. This was the endeavour of Buddha for the normal individual. At the same time he wanted to teach his disciples the complete liberation from their dependence on emotionality. The purpose of the other ideal religion is to help the self at the mental stage to enter the next higher kingdom, the fifth natural kingdom, and this was Christos’ mission with his disciples. The forms of religion that invoke those two avatars cannot be called ideal, however, but have largely misunderstood the contribution of “their” avatar to consciousness development.
3All existing forms of religion are distortions of the one true religion, the knowledge of reality, the knowledge of higher kingdoms. Out of the few ideas of those kingdoms theologians picked up they constructed an absurd idea of god, which common sense must refuse to accept. But theologians of all kinds have become so idiotized by their own absurdities that they will refuse to acknowledge Christos—Maitreya as the promised Messiah even after the non-religious people have seen his “divinity”.
4Religions that strengthen egoism (also so-called spiritual egoism, the desire of individual salvation and disregard for that of others) and so-called secret orders that just satisfy egoism, counteract consciousness development. It is important that people wake up, learn to see the meaning of life, and do not go on adhering to idiotizing (stupidizing, blinding) traditions.
5There exist many different religions, such as Hinduism, Zoroastrism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jahveism, Islam, Christianity with its three main churches (Roman, Greek, and Protestant, the last one divided into hundreds of sects). The adherents of all those religions are equally convinced that their faith is the only true one. Should not these two facts alone make people think? Division is so great also in the sects mentioned that many students of religion have arrived at the result that every human being has his own religion. But the truth or the knowledge of reality can only be one.
6A wise man was that Indian maharaja who after a comparative study of religions chose as his motto: “There is no religion higher than truth.” The esoterician may add: “No religion has possessed the truth, which is the knowledge of reality.” And a mankind at the emotional stage will never find it.
7Still they do not seem to have understood that all human concepts and conceptions are just temporary means, usable on some certain level of development.
1“Do you believe in God?”
2An esoterician can answer this common question: Firstly, the word “belief” has several different meanings. If the word is supposed to mean “blind acceptance”, then the word is not found in the esoterician’s dictionary. You either know or you do not know. The assumptions you are often forced to make are no items of belief but are valid only temporarily, like scientific hypotheses whose life-time you do not know.
3Secondly, as for the word “god”, all esotericians probably agree that all theological definitions of god are untenable imaginative constructions, that the ideas of god in all religions are abortive. There is no possibility to rationally define the concept of god. You arrive at nothing but absurdities.
4In any case “god” is no person. There are innumerable “gods”, however, that is to say those who have reached cosmic consciousness. They are no isolated individuals but make up collectives with common consciousness.
5Consequently, the question whether god exists or not may be answered by “yes and no” as well as by “neither yes nor no”.
6If the word “god” must be used, it nevertheless does not refer to an individual but to a collective. The Jewish, Christian, and Moslem monotheism is the big error. We live in a pluralist universe.
7“God” means the cosmic total consciousness. “God immanent” means the monads’ (primordial atoms’) unlosable share in the cosmic total consciousness. “God transcendent” indicates the existence of cosmic natural kingdoms, which all monads in lower kingdoms will reach some time. All those kingdoms have the same task: to serve life.
8The so-called ten commandments are no commandments of god. There must be commandments for the less rational people to go by, since without laws no community can exist.
9Probably the majority of people are prepared to accept the existence of a fundamental intelligence (usually called “god”), the truths that behind all appearances the impelling force is love, that all the best things in man (the will to unity and understanding) are the effect of the will and activity of god, also the obvious truth that mankind alone can realize the kingdom of god on earth.
10Buddha was no atheist. He objected to the prevalent mythology, so-called trinity (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva), the misinterpreted symbol of the three aspects of existence (matter, consciousness, and motion).
11The highest divinity is that collective which has shaped the cosmos in order that the primordial atoms, unconscious in primordial matter, develop their potential consciousness and, in due time, acquire cosmic omniscience and omnipotence just as those in the highest collective.
12Praying to god that he “save the souls of men”, as theologians do, is as intelligent as asking a loving father to help his children. That is evidence of an amazing lack of psychological insight, quite apart from the fact that they lack a knowledge of life. However, it is not the business of god to save us but our business to acquire higher kinds of consciousness, until we enter into the divinity of the common consciousness.
13The basic error of theologians of all ages is that they have refused to see that god realizes his will through man and that he seeks to express his love through man. It is in the human kingdom that the will and love of god must be realized, and man realizes this by becoming an instrument of god among men. Without men god is not able to achieve anything for mankind.
14When Pythagorean hylozoics has been generally accepted as the only rational and tenable working hypothesis, then most theological terms will be replaced with exact ones. So, for instance, “god transcendent” will be replaced with “higher natural kingdoms”, and “god immanent” will be replaced with “the individual’s unlosable share in the cosmic total consciousness”. Without this share the law of self-realization would be an absurdity.
15The insight that god is the cosmic total consciousness, in which all individuals in all natural kingdoms have an unlosable share, is an insight that man wins only when he has entered into unity. Those who have once been initiates have an instinctive certainty of this fact. This makes it possible for them to find the right path through the labyrinth of life irrespective of all fictional systems; enables them to live happy and unconcerned in the certainty of the “wonderful freedom of god’s children”.
1The basic error of the theological way of thinking is that it distinguishes between “spiritual”, “sacred”, or “holy” and “profane” or “worldly”. Everything in existence has come about for the consciousness development of the monads and therefore is “spiritual” or “holy”. Everything that is done in the right spirit is “spiritual”. It all depends on your motive. Scientists who work at the countless problems of the matter aspect, politicians who unselfishly work at the solution of political problems with universal brotherhood as their aim do more spiritual work than theologians who lack understanding of the meaning of life and largely counteract consciousness development. Theologians have no priority to the “kingdom of heaven”. On the contrary, by their dogmas they hinder men from becoming second selves, from attaining man’s true home, the causal world.
2The very ideal of “saint” has deprived man of his naturalness. What was originally intended by the concept of “becoming a saint” was the acquisition of the qualities of attraction, the liberation from hatred, the will to unity. In order to become a causal self an even greater liberation is required, namely the forgetfulness of your own self (your personality).
3Writings can just convey knowledge of reality, and there is nothing particularly “holy” in that fact; if what is said in the writings is beyond the power of people’s comprehension, it is merely secret, mysterious. As Buddha rightly pointed out, there are no holy writings. The Bible is no “word of god”, no more than other religious documents. The Bible does not even give us the knowledge that Christos taught his initiated disciples. The information given in the Gospels is just what was intended for the people together with a number of gnostic symbols, which have remained symbols since their correct interpretation has not been given.
4If the Bible is called the “pure, unadulterated word of god”, then by this alone it is an absurdity. As a historical document the Bible is the “The Big Book of Lies”; as a symbolical book it is still not interpreted. Hitherto life ignorance, injudiciousness, conceit, superstition, literalism have interpreted it. In order to interpret it rightly you must be at least an essential self with access to the planetary memory and to the original authors themselves.
5There is no “holy land” either, no more than there are “holy books”. Either all countries are holy or none. It is just a meaningless name. If you consider the history of Palestine through the ages, then the expression “holy land” is rather a mockery, a bloody parody. The ancestors of the Jews, the Israelites, conquered Palestine from about 1300 B.C., exterminating the former inhabitants in the process. They abandoned the country 1900 years ago. According to the Law nobody has any right to conquer a country. Such a country must be lost. The dispersion of the Jews was in accordance with the Law, apart from the fact that they murdered their Messiah. The Jews have no right to Palestine whatsoever, and that is a lesson they have to learn.
6Mankind is on its way to rise above the stage of barbarism, if it does not prefer to annihilate itself with its barbarous civilization.
1The Jews as a nation had no history of their own before the Babylonian captivity (587—538 B.C.E.). During the fifty years they spent in Babylonia, however, several new generations grew up who became “intensely religious”. They shaped their own religion on the basis of studies which the most talented Jewish youngsters were allowed to do. In this connection the Jewish “holy writings” were compiled from documents in Babylonian archives, in which process many original data were misapprehended.
2However, their past and their new, spiteful Jahve religion prevented them from developing their consciousness. The law of reaping and the law of destiny in conjunction made their definitive dispersion necessary. The purpose of this suffering was to rouse their higher emotional consciousness so that they could missionize in the nations among whom they would live.
3This purpose has not been achieved. Instead, the Jews want to return to the country they first conquered and then abandoned. Their “historical mission” is to be assimilated into the nations that have received them, the result being the dissolution of a religion that is abortive because it cannot be ennobled.
4Jewish history has demonstrated more clearly than any other history that the world’s history is the world’s tribunal. The history of the Jews is the story of repeatedly frustrated hopes because of their defiance of the laws of life, the law of unity in particular.
1The Gospels, such as they are presented in the New Testament, are the results of the revision by Eusebios of original gnostic manuscripts. The gnostic manuscripts were thoroughly symbolical. Also when they seemed to depict factual events, this was just apparently so, since also those descriptions were symbols. Moreover, a historic description was impossible after 200 years, since the authors, except for the parables, had no better sources but a very unreliable oral tradition. They were almost completely reduced to using gnostic current sayings and putting them into the mouth of Christos. The statements ascribed to Christos are in many cases (far from always) in his spirit though not literally genuine or correctly worded. Another fact is that Paul subsequently destroyed the work of Christos in all essentials. At the time, Paul was not even a causal self.
2Thus in their present form the Gospels must be regarded as distortions. It is very uncertain whether there is in the Gospels one single genuine saying by Christos. They contain much that Christos cannot possibly have said. Literalists and fanatics cannot read the Gospels in the true spirit and rightly interpret the many symbolic sayings.
3The same is true of the Sermon on the Mount. It is no collection of sayings by Christos but a mixture of gnosticism and later additions and revisions. Large parts of it contain statements that Christos cannot possibly have made. In its present form it is not sanctioned by Christos—Maitreya.
4The disciples of Christos—Maitreya were gnosticians, initiates of the very secret Gnostic Order, which was composed of members of other esoteric knowledge orders. They were “fishermen” only in the symbolic sense; by the name of “Fishermen” it was intimated that they belonged to the zodiacal epoch of Pisces or the Fishes, just as present-day esotericians are called “Aquarians”. Knowing this you realize that whatever in the Gospels is presented as speeches to the disciples cannot be genuine, Christos’ last speech in the Gospel of John, for instance. That is how you speak to ignorant people, not to initiates who have a knowledge of the planetary hierarchy and things connected with it. Christos cannot have had disciples on the stage of ignorance, since a 43-self does not accept disciples whom a 45-self is fully able to help.
1The theological dogmatic system is untenable. It is not based on reality but is an imaginative construction of life ignorance. It is not necessary to have reached the stage of the mystic (48:3) to see this, but you certainly see it at the that stage, which is above the two lowest mental stages (47:6,7), which for the majority represents the highest reason.
2Theologians speak about the “material world” and the “spiritual world”, esoterically: the physical world and the emotional world. No theologians have reached further. They speak about “soul” and “spirit”. But since they do not recognize anything but objectively perceptible matter and consciousness is subjective, their notions of soul and spirit are working hypotheses, and very vague ones at that.
3“The death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ” are three esoteric symbols which Christian theology has misinterpreted totally. To be sure it is impossible to understand them rightly without the knowledge of consciousness development and higher worlds. “Death” meant the liberation from the lower for the attainment of the higher. “Resurrection” meant just development, more exactly the acquisition of causal consciousness, and “ascension” meant the individual’s entry into the planetary hierarchy.
4One of the blackest lies in the Gospel novels is the alleged saying of Christos about nonresistance to evil. The planetary hierarchy maintains vigorously that whoever does not resist evil hands the power over to evil; that if men will not do their utmost to fight violations of the law of freedom they betray the kingdom of god on earth and cannot count on assistance from the planetary hierarchy among whose tasks is to fight the enemies of evolution.
5Winston Churchill as well as Franklin Roosevelt were disciples of the planetary hierarchy (albeit unaware of this in their incarnation). This fact should be sufficient information as to the necessity of resisting evil.
6In this connection there is an apposite statement by D.K. as to what the planetary hierarchy means by “evil people”: “Those are evil who try to enslave people in any respect whatsoever, who try to violate any of the four freedoms (Franklin Roosevelt’s declaration of the 6th of January 1941), who try to gain wealth at the cost of other people, who try to reserve for themselves the produce of the earth (belonging to all).”
7To “god” there is no good or evil creature, just individuals on various levels of development. The saying in the gospel novel attributed to Christos, “none is good save one, that is, god”, was a gnostic saying. Christos would never have expressed himself thus. Goodness is unity.
8The theological expression “divine mercy” amounts to attributing to god all too human qualities, as usual. Anyone who understands the unity of all life, who lives in unity (the true love), perceives such sayings as proofs of perversion, a total lack of understanding of life.
9The saying “god’s will be done” expresses two opposite views: that humility which sees that the decisions of higher powers are wise; that fatalism which regards man’s mistakes and impotence as inscrutable blows of fate.
10So-called vicarious suffering has a basis in fact which, however, theologians have misapprehended totally. That suffering is namely represented by the planetary government and planetary hierarchy whose burden of work is increased as human beings counteract development. Liberating others from the consequences of their mistakes would imply barring them from having the necessary experiences of life and hampering their development by not letting them reap what they have sown. Bad reaping, suffering, is no punishment but a necessity. When the self has become causally conscious, it will understand why.
11Lin Yu-Tang: “According to Christianity, god was so angered when Adam and Eve had eaten an apple that he condemned the whole human race to eternal hell. But when they murdered his son, he was so delighted that he forgave them everything.” Thus appears the doctrine of the church to an unbiassed mind.
12Christian theologians know nothing worth knowing about other religions. They are far from that insight which the philosophy of religion could have taught them: that there is only one true religion, the religion that all wise men of all ages have had in common: the religion of love and wisdom.
1The hostility to the Christian religion such as it appears in many people is easy to explain by esoterics. The reincarnations of the approximately 50 million people who were the victims of the theologians’ hatred in torture-chambers and at the stake cannot nourish any love of that religion. Historians are able to ascertain how theology prohibited free thought and free research whenever in disagreement with the dogmas of theology, and it stands to reason that they cannot accept such a church. Scientists and their followers have seen through the absurdity of the world view on which the Bible and Christian theology are based, and they necessarily turn away from such primitivism with contempt. Esotericians can add their knowledge of the fact that it was never the intention of the planetary hierarchy that a church was to monopolize the teaching of Christos. What esotericians disapprove of most of all is that the opinions of various writers have been put together into a Bible as though it were a consistent product with claims to be accepted as the “word of god”, a claim that must be called grotesque.
2Along with their dogmatism Christian theologians introduced moral fictionalism into the West, a thought system which is hostile to life and which still terrorizes people in the domains of the Roman Catholic Church. It will be a great step towards liberation from this moral tyranny when people accept the correct medical view on sexuality and the judicial view on marriage as a social and not a “divine” institution.
The above text constitutes the essay Introductions by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book The Way of Man by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1999 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.